Caught in the open with nowhere to run, she donned her best defense, the one she used to make children giggle. Blinking innocently, she wrapped a curl around her finger. Her dimpled features, blonde ringlets, and blue eyes could deceive any man into doubting legends. Weren’t all witches dark and dangerous? “Why Nate, whatever are you doing here? Gertrude will be most disappointed without your company.”
“Gertrude went off with that oaf, Harry. You’re much prettier than she is. You shouldn’t have left so soon.” He sidled closer, eyeing her bosom.
She could smell the ale on him and sensed his reckless determination. Despite her short stature, Ninian knew she was strong, but Nate not only stood taller, he outweighed her by several stone.
“Why, Nate, how thoughtful of you to see me home,” she replied airily, “but you needn’t, really. Go back to the fun.”
“Ives land is the long way around to your cottage,” Nate said with suspicion.
“Oh, but I so wanted the watercress in the burn!” Ninian slipped away as he reached for her. If she wasn’t good enough to dance with in front of one and all, she certainly didn’t intend to dally with him in private. Lonely she might be, but crazy she was not. “I’ll be fine. Do go.”
“You know there’s no other man in the village for you but me.” He tried a cajoling tone as he stepped toward her. “My father has the most sheep and the most land. I’m strong. I can do the work of three men.”
Ninian knew the kind of “work” he had in mind and suppressed a wry grimace at his vanity. “Why, Nate! You flatter me.” She couldn’t run fast enough to elude him, but she had five times the wit he possessed, especially when he was muddled with drink.
“I’ll show you how good I can be.” Apparently encouraged by her lack of coyness and a good dose of grog, Nate threw aside his fears and grabbed for her.
Prepared, Ninian sidestepped, thrust out her ill-shod foot, and let him trip over it. In his alcohol-induced haze, he slipped in the mud, threw his arms up to steady himself, and splatted nicely in the icy stream. That should drown his over-heated ardor.
With behavior like this, Ninian supposed she deserved the epithets he spewed as he sat up, gasping.
“I’ll get you for this, witch!” he howled, shaking his fist at her while water rivulets trickled down his forehead.
Well, so much for warding off ill will. She might as well throw sticks and stones while she was at it. “If I were truly witch, I’d rot your balls, you silly fool!” she shouted back. Granny would not have been happy with her. After all these years of taking the safe and narrow path, she was throwing it all away in a fit of spite. She knew better.
Cursing, Nate righted himself on the slippery rocks, splashed to his feet, and lunged for the bank and Ninian. Well, perhaps she hadn’t completely forfeited her innocuous facade. He didn’t fear her enough to run.
As he grabbed for her, a cool voice intruded from the darkness of the trees.
“Is there some problem?”
Startled by a voice from nowhere, Nate slid back down the bank and hit the water again. In the act of retreat, Ninian froze.
She hadn’t felt any presence. How could that be? No one ever walked up on her like that without her extra sense picking up some warning. Wide-eyed, she swerved to stare in the direction from which the voice emerged.
Swiping water from his eyes, Nate shakily climbed to his feet again. “Who’s out there?” he demanded.
Ninian suspected he was shivering with more than cold. Despite his boasts, Nate possessed the same ignorant superstitions as most of the villagers. Right now, at the sound of that eerie disembodied voice, Ninian understood his fear of the unknown.
“We are having a disagreement over my ability to see myself home,” she replied boldly, willing the stranger to show himself. The absence of any human emotion from the direction of the voice scared her as much as the absence of a physical presence.
To her relief, a solid shadow separated from the trees. Male, taller than Nate, with wide shoulders and a disturbingly graceful physique, the mysterious intruder hid his features by remaining out of the moon’s light. “You’re trespassing,” he stated with the same lack of inflection as when he’d first spoken.
“Lord Ives!” Nate hastily backed out of the burn, scrambling up the bank on the far side. He cast Ninian a terrified glance. “He is the devil, and you’re in league with him!”
Sighing at this inevitable conclusion, Ninian raised her arms, waved the ruffles of her long sleeves, and threw an eerie “Boo!” in Nate’s direction. She laughed as Nate fled, screaming, into the forest.
“I’m glad that amused you,” Lord Ives said from behind her, with what might have been a hint of dryness. “Would you care to explain what it meant?”
Of course, his lordship was new to the area. He didn’t know the local folklore about Malcolm witches and Ives devils. Turning to judge his reaction, she had to look up much farther than she liked. Through slivers of moonlight, his silhouette was breathtakingly impressive and much too close.
Her grandmother had taught her about the temptations of dark forces to which witches were drawn. She should be wary.
“Welcome to Wystan, my lord.” She curtsied as she’d been taught long ago. Straightening, she added wickedly, “I’m Ninian Malcolm Siddons, resident witch.” Her grandmother had also sworn an imp lived inside her instead of sorcery.
Instead of laughing or stepping away in fear as would any normal man, Lord Ives cocked his head with interest. “Ninian? A saint’s name?”
Not only fearless, but with a knowledge of ancient history. Interesting. Grandmother had said men didn’t take well to learning. “My mother had a strange sense of humor,” she admitted. How odd that he queried her name, but not her reputation.
“I see.” The hint of dryness disappeared into cool tones again. “I don’t think it safe for a young woman in these woods at night. I’ll escort you home.”
“Please pardon my trespass, my lord,” she said belatedly, “but there are herbs I need along this stream. Do you mind?”
“Would it matter if I said ‘yes’?”
Observant, also. She shook her head. “I might be very sorry to go against your wishes, but I would not leave young Matthew with a sore throat.”
“Quite.” He seemed to withdraw within himself, or perhaps the moon shifted behind a cloud. “Then let us be on with it. I take it you are an herbalist and not a witch?”
“I see you are a natural philosopher,” she commented evasively as she scanned the burnside where the agrimony grew. She didn’t care what he believed, and she refused to succumb to the temptation of too much Beltane fantasy.
Many men were tall and physically graceful, with voices that could command attention with just a whisper. Granny had told her the devil possessed such charms, while promising much and producing evil. If she pretended the earl was Satan, she could safely ignore the unusual pattering of her heart at his proximity. Just because she had wished for a lover didn’t mean she would fall for the charms of any man who came along—and certainly not an Ives.
Frowning, she crouched down to better study the streambed. Perhaps the darkness concealed what she knew to be there.
He must have heard her muttered curse of frustration. He stepped closer, his long boot-clad legs halting near her hand. “What is it?”
“It’s gone. It used to grow thick…” She pushed past the undergrowth, searching closer to the water. “The watercress is gone too, but that could be…” She prodded the moist soil at the edge with a stick. “Nothing kills violets,” she muttered in puzzlement. “The sweet rushes are dead!” she exclaimed a moment later. “That’s not possible!”
He crouched beside her and prodded his walking stick along the embankment. “I don’t see much of anything but rocks. Are you sure you have the right place?”
The fine hairs on the back o
f her neck rose as his hand brushed near hers, but faced with a disaster of this proportion, she had no patience with her odd reaction. The burn provided a goodly portion of her remedies. If she couldn’t heal, she had no place here at all. A cold chill iced her blood. Surely the legend of Malcolm and Ives bringing disaster couldn’t already be coming true. Maybe it was Ives men alone who caused it.
Refusing to panic, she pushed farther upstream. “I know this is right,” she muttered, mostly to herself. She wasn’t accustomed to anyone accompanying her, and the black void that was her companion registered very strangely, enabling her to ignore him on a comfortable level. “Here’s the path I made. This is where I added ashes and manure to sweeten the soil. I know…” She stopped and broke a branch of willow hanging over the embankment. “Dead,” she whispered as the branch snapped.
“Trees die,” he said from behind her. “In this cold damp, it’s a wonder they live.”
“No. No, it’s not right…” Stepping carefully through the darkness, she broke a branch here, crouched to examine a tree root there. “I’ll have to come back in daylight, follow the stream…” But fear licked along her veins. Without her remedies, she was less than nothing. She must discover—
“You’ll do no such thing,” he informed her. “In fact, it’s time I saw you home.”
Muttering to herself, she tucked the dried leaves and branches she’d gathered into her apron pocket and strode back to the path. According to her grandmother, in the scheme of things, men had only one purpose—the same services as the devil offered Eve. But the earl owned this property, and she had to at least pretend to listen to him.
Striding down the path, analyzing all the reasons the plants might have died, refusing to believe all was lost, Ninian jumped as strong fingers caught her elbow.
“You will break a leg walking so heedlessly.”
Prickles crept along her skin where his fingers pressed her through her shift sleeve. The sensation unnerved her. Had her idle wishes for a lover summoned this man? She should have paid heed when Granny warned her about wishing for what she could not have, especially on a night of power, like Beltane.
“Witches see in the dark,” she said blithely, giving his grasp a not-too-subtle tug.
The long fingers only clenched her tighter. “Unlike that lout, I’m not inclined to superstition and I mean you no harm. I will see you safely home.”
Wisely, Ninian surrendered the fight, lest he grasp her tighter still. His touch unsettled her as much as his lack of emotional presence. Never had her awareness been centered only on the physical. And never had the physical been so deeply felt as with this man. She could not sense if he lied or laughed at her, but perversely, she trusted what he said. A wealthy aristocrat would have no interest in a village wench, or if he did, he would have offered her coin by now.
“Have you studied natural philosophy, my lord?” She would make the best of this enforced detour by picking his brain. Perhaps he would have a suggestion to chase away her fear about the absence of growth along the burn.
He hesitated before answering. “Somewhat,” he reluctantly agreed.
“Do you know aught of the ways of water?”
“It’s wet.”
This time, she was certain she heard the dryness of his tone. He thought her a lackwit. So be it. She spoke aloud to hold back the uneasy awareness encompassing them.
“I know more of plants than water,” she admitted. “I wonder if it’s possible for water to become bad for plants as soil does when it goes sour.”
Silence. Ninian fumed at this lack of response. She really needed someone who could discuss these things with her. Without Granny, she had no one with her level of knowledge.
“I have never noticed a stream without plant life at this time of year,” he said reflectively.
She sighed in relief. “Not even after an unusually harsh winter?”
Again, the long thoughtful silence before his deep voice broke the night. “I am not overly familiar with these climes, but even in the Highlands, I have seen plant life along streams in May.”
“That’s what I thought.” Satisfied at having a part of her theory confirmed, she mulled over the next hypothesis.
“Is your home very far from here?” he asked, breaking the lengthening silence.
Startled anew at thus being awakened from her reverie, Ninian blinked and glanced around. While she’d fretted, they had left the forest and now traversed the road from the village. “Not far.”
She listened to the night around her, the soft hoot of an owl in a nearby field, the cheerful cries carried by the wind from those around the bonfire, and shivered at an all-too-familiar drunken anger she sensed nearby.
“Nate’s hiding in the bushes outside my gate,” she said calmly, nodding toward a picket fence covered in a thicket of overgrown roses. “By morning, he’ll be convinced he saw you with horns and tail, riding the sky on my broomstick. You might wish to have a talk with him.”
He shot her a sharp look and glanced at the bushes rustling outside the fence. “Talk seldom penetrates thick skulls.” he replied.
Releasing her elbow, he strode determinedly toward the gate and jerked Nate from his hiding place.
In fascination, Ninian watched Lord Ives stride off, effortlessly hauling a struggling, protesting Nate without a single by-your-leave.
She thought she had every right to be afraid of a man like that.
Two
“What the devil are you doing here?” Drogo demanded, returning from a dull day with his steward and irritated to discover that one of his brothers had tracked him to this desolate castle keep. Handsome enough to already have proved his Ives ability to procreate, Ewen crouched on the overgrown drive and attached a gear to what appeared to be a junk heap of scrap metal.
Drogo scraped at the mud on his boots as his brother reached for a wrench. His steward had insisted that he survey the bleak hills belonging to this barren estate, but unless they had coal under them, Drogo really wasn’t interested. He needed to be back in London. Let the local sheepherders have the mud.
And let them keep the moonstruck little witch, too. She had haunted his sleep last night. How the devil had she known that rogue hid outside her gate? And why did he see her laughing eyes in every dark corner of this damned dungeon? She’d have him believing in witches at that rate. Could witches relieve him of disastrous siblings?
It would profit him to concentrate on the here and now, rather than the unattainable. He studied the tangle of wire and metal his brother was assembling.
“I could ask the same of you,” Ewen replied as he threaded a pipe through a wheel, adjusted the gear, and sent the whole assembly wobbling down the drive. “I had to threaten to send Joseph up in my next balloon before he’d reveal your whereabouts. I didn’t take you for the rural sort. I thought that was Dunstan’s role.”
A pity Ewen didn’t possess their brother Dunstan’s penchant for farming; Drogo could assign the neglected Wystan estate to this youngest of his legitimate brothers. But Ewen would sell the castle for wires and tin.
Eyeing the alarming contraption that couldn’t possibly have been created in the few hours of his absence, Drogo assumed his most dour expression. “I’m establishing a coal mine and canal for transport and increasing our profits in the process. The question is, what are you doing besides building children’s toys? Looking for handouts?” From London to Wystan was a damned long uncomfortable distance for Ewen to travel for a friendly visit.
From beneath an uncut hank of raven hair, Ewen didn’t lose his cheerful grin. “I’m developing a better method of making iron more malleable that would require the heat generated by the coal in your mine. Don’t you think that would be useful?”
It would, if Ewen had any chance of accomplishing one of his far-flung fancies. Drogo didn’t see any hope of that, since Ewen inevitably lost interest in
practical applications once he solved the theoretical problem. “And I suppose your creditors are threatening Newgate?”
“Actually, I just sold my capacitor and plans for an electrical circuit to a colonist.” Ewen shrugged. “I can’t see how he’ll trigger the electricity or what he’ll do with it if he does, but that’s his problem. But malleable iron… That’s something we can use.”
“For less expensive swords.” Drogo could see the value. He just knew Ewen’s capricious mind would move on before he profited from it. Giving up on his muddy boots, Drogo climbed the castle’s crumbling front steps. “So, what is it you want? My coins or my coal?”
“Both. I want to start a foundry.” Leaving his contraption in the courtyard, Ewen eagerly followed. “No one would let me inside. What are you hiding in there?”
“Sarah’s lost souls,” Drogo said curtly, not expounding. “Come along then. I have a thousand things I need to do today, and you weren’t among them.”
“You need a woman, big brother,” Ewen said cheerfully. “Do you never take time to look at a pretty girl or embrace the wind?”
“Keeping up with the lot of you is about as futile as embracing the wind,” Drogo replied dryly. He didn’t bother telling his rattlepated brother that he wasted his nights gazing at stars and admiring moon maidens. Someone in the family had to keep a sound head on their shoulders and their feet on the ground as an example of how normal, sane people lived. Their father, God rest his troubled soul, had never done so. As eldest, Drogo had been designated as the person in charge of responsibility.
Stargazing didn’t fit the image he wished his brothers to emulate.
Ewen whistled as they crossed the enormous great room. “This place looks a hell of a lot better than your London place. Is that our stepsister’s touch?”
“Probably.” Drogo shrugged, indifferent to the polish the servants had been applying since their arrival.
At the sound of voices, Sarah appeared at the top of the stairs, her powdered hair immaculately curled, her brocade gown rustling as she glided downward. “Ewen! You have found us. I despaired of ever seeing civilization again.”
Merely Magic Page 2