Merely Magic

by Patricia Rice

  Gritting his teeth, Drogo surrendered any idea of a peaceful evening reading the pamphlets on astronomy he’d received in the day’s post. “There are no such things as ghosts,” he reminded Sarah as he followed her down the stairs. “There may be squirrels in the attic or mice in the walls, but there are no ghosts.”

  “Well, you just come down out of your almighty tower and tell Lydie there are mice in the walls,” Sarah answered tartly, lifting her wide skirts by the armful to negotiate the narrow stairs. “But I’d suggest you do it after you’ve called the midwife.”

  A midwife. By all the saints in heaven, he hadn’t thought about midwives. Did the village even have one?

  “Isn’t it a little early for that?” he asked cautiously. His experience with Sarah as a child told him she was capricious, irresponsible, and capable of causing him grief just for amusement. She was supposed to be an adult now, but he still took anything she told him with an entire cellar of salt.

  “It most certainly is, so I fervently hope you can trap your wretched mice. Or ghosts.”

  The dual screams echoing up the stairs from the rooms below warned the night’s theatrics had only just begun.

  Sarah flattened herself against the wall as Drogo pushed past and raced downward. In the candlelit darkness, he didn’t see her smile of satisfaction.

  ***

  “It’s all in the diary,” Sarah said defensively, clutching a peeling leather volume to her chest in the face of her friends’ dubious expressions. “It says so right here.” She opened the frail, cracking pages and pointed out a paragraph. “All Malcolm women are witches, so it must have been a Malcolm witch who cursed the Ives.”

  “You don’t really believe Drogo is cursed, do you?” Lydie asked, wrinkling her nose in confusion.

  “All Ives are cursed!” Sarah declared grandly, slamming the book closed. “Just look at them. They all have miserably unhappy marriages and bear nothing but bastards. Boy bastards,” she added in emphasis, as if that were curse enough. “I have three of them for half brothers, so I ought to know.”

  “There wouldn’t be any earls left if that were true,” Claudia, Lady Twane, pointed out. “And if I remember correctly, Drogo has two younger brothers and neither of them are bastards.”

  Undaunted by this hole in her theory, Sarah smiled. “That’s a matter of opinion. My point is, what are we going to do about it?”

  “Do about it?” Lydie squeaked, her eyes growing wide as she realized Sarah was off on another of her schemes.

  “If a Malcolm cursed an Ives, then a Malcolm could uncurse one, couldn’t she?”

  “But, Sarah…” two voices protested as one.

  “It doesn’t matter. The planets say the time is propitious for Drogo to marry and have a son, and we will do what we can to see that accomplished.”

  As Sarah triumphantly returned the tattered leather volume to the library shelf, her companions exchanged knowing looks.

  “If Drogo has a wife and heir, he’ll have his hands so full, he won’t have time to see what Sarah is up to,” Lady Twane translated.

  Lydie rolled her eyes.

  ***

  Drogo located the moon maiden dreamily gathering rosebuds from the rampant brambles along her picket fence. The bushes at the castle weren’t blooming. Wasn’t it a little early for roses?

  Obviously not, if she was picking them. Sarah was the one who believed in ghosts and witches and impossible feats of magic. Rampant roses in early May were not magic.

  He felt a fool for seeking out the little herbalist on such a pretext, but Sarah had insisted, and he’d seen no real alternative—not if he wanted any peace at all.

  Ninian looked up at him as if he’d materialized from another world but said nothing as he explained Lydie’s condition and the foolishness of the women’s complaints.

  “I will pay whatever it takes,” he stated dispassionately when, seeming struck dumb by his appearance, she didn’t reply to the ladies’ absurd request that she come to rid the castle of ghosts. Captured by the enchantment of her cornflower blue eyes, he wondered how anyone in his rational mind could consider this golden-haired innocent a witch, providing anyone rational could believe in witches.

  His gaze dropped to the swell of a generous bosom disguised beneath the folds of her muslin kerchief. Men might call her sorceress, but for her physical charms, not her magical ones.

  Drogo lifted his gaze again to discover a mischievous dimple peeking from its hiding place. Pouty pink lips parted in a teasing smile as if she knew precisely what he was thinking.

  Which, of course, she did, because all men must look at her that way. “The women are hysterical,” he repeated calmly, despite his sudden surge of lust. He wondered why she did not let him past the gate, invite him into the house. In his experience, women fell all over their feet to entertain the Earl of Ives, one of the many reasons he’d fled to Wystan’s isolation. This female smiled enticingly, but twiddled with a rose like a simpleton. Perhaps he’d mistaken her intelligence. Anyone who called herself a witch probably had a cog or two missing in her brainworks.

  Patiently, he tried again. “Lady Twane has a nervous condition, and Lady Lydie is expecting her first child shortly. I understand you’re a midwife. You must know the delicacy—”

  She shook her head. “Call for me when she goes into labor. That, I can help with. Ghosts are not within my realm of knowledge.”

  So, she could speak when she wanted, fluently and with the educated accents of London. Unusual. The golden ringlets hid a brain, even if it was slightly cracked.

  Bewildered by her benign smile, and wondering what could possibly be racketing through that strange noggin of hers, Drogo refused to accept defeat. He merely changed tactics. He nodded complacently. “Of course, I perfectly understand. Ghosts are a figment of the imagination, and you cannot promise what is not possible. I respect your honesty. However—”

  Again, she interrupted with a shake of her pretty curls. “Ghosts are real enough. But I believe they should be left alone. You’re the intruders. Those ghosts could have been there for hundreds of years. Why should they leave their home because trespassers are annoyed with their presence?”

  Exasperated by her lack of logic, Drogo gripped the pickets of the gate that separated him from her. He did not have a temper, he told himself. Given his excitable but generally scientific family, calm logic had always served him best. Silly females who believed in ghosts weren’t rational. Fine, then he would be irrational.

  “Then don’t disturb the ghosts. I’m concerned about Lady Lydie. Examine her, if you will. However, I’d be much easier if you could convince these infernal women that you’ve tried all within your power so they’ll leave me in peace. If they believe in ghosts, they’ll believe in the power of witches too. Merely sprinkle smelly things about the place, mutter a few magical words, yell ‘boo’ for all I care. I’ll have the men on the roof searching for loose slates on the morrow.”

  She slipped the tip of a small white finger between rosy lips and stared at him from behind crystal blue eyes as if they were the insurmountable dividing wall between his world and hers. She blinked once, frowned quizzically as she tilted her head and studied him, then her befuddled mind apparently reached some decision, and she nodded.

  As if that were a signal for her to return from a trance, she straightened her shoulders and her apron and smiled beatifically. “I’ll come tomorrow, shall I?”

  Slightly mystified but satisfied with the result of his task, Drogo relaxed enough to notice the lush profusion of purple, pink, and white flower heads bouncing on thick stalks just over her shoulder. The castle kitchen garden had barely revealed a poor shoot or two the last time he’d looked. Perhaps he needed a new gardener.

  Dismissing the flowers as irrelevant, he nodded at her acceptance and walked away. On a whim, he made the mistake of glancing back. The ny
mph waved at him from her bower of rose canes as if she really were the fairy queen of a flower realm. Ridiculous thought. He straightened his shoulders and returned to the reality of the road ahead.

  As he strode away, Ninian admired the aristocratic line of the earl’s fitted coat, the determined pace of his gait, and the way the sun glinted off his ebony hair. She knew the dull brown of his long-tailed coat was less elegant than those of the gentlemen in London, but it was far above the crude jerkins of the townspeople, and it not only exactly matched his cockaded hat, but revealed the silver hilt of a sword—a weapon not often seen in these parts. The rich leather of his riding boots and the ornate head of his walking stick spoke of the wealth his coat did not.

  She could not fathom why a lord of the realm, a man with riches beyond imagination, would require her poor services, as witch or midwife or anything else. And because she did not understand him, she felt compelled to try, despite the legends. Seldom did she meet someone she could not read, particularly a man. Women often confused their emotions so badly that she couldn’t sort one from the other, but men—men were usually simple.

  Her grandmother would have been proud of her restraint. The legend had it that the last Ives man to cross a Malcolm threshold had carried off the lady against her will.

  Well, she hadn’t let him cross the threshold.

  Four

  Refusing to believe she could be entranced by an aristocrat wearing a fashionable coat and expensive high-topped boots, Ninian firmly closed her portmanteau as she prepared to leave for the castle the next morning. The image of Lord Ives standing at her garden gate, hat in hand, raven hair gleaming in the sun, had haunted her all night, but it was his eyes that held her spellbound. Deep set, shadowed by heavy black lashes, framed by those thick curling eyebrows, his eyes opened fascinating new worlds.

  Still, she thought it mainly curiosity that drove her to agree to this visit. She wanted to know more about the blighted stream and the castle ghosts and… Lord Ives.

  She supposed she really ought to search Granny’s library for some source of the story about Malcolms and Ives before she crossed his threshold, but recklessly, she chose to find out the truth on her own. It was time she explored a wider world.

  She wouldn’t admit to the restlessness Beltane had stirred in her. She just needed something new and exciting in her life.

  Could she chase away ghosts? It didn’t seem likely, especially since she didn’t like to try. But her grandmother had assured her that Malcolms could do most anything they applied their minds to. Ninian had no proof of that. She couldn’t make amulets work. She had packed her grandmother’s ancient book of incantations, but it might as well be a chemist’s manual for all the good it was. Maybe one of her aunts or cousins could work the spells, but she’d only found success in healing remedies. She’d discovered and tested any number of effective herbs on her own, but she’d never laid a ghost to rest, made a love potion, or bewitched a cow. Or a man.

  Laughing at that thought, she set out for Wystan Castle.

  Portmanteau in hand, her hooded cloak pulled firmly around her against the dew, she stepped through the garden gate and nearly walked straight into a two-wheeled cart.

  “Mornin’, miss.” The driver touched his battered felt hat. “His lordship sent me to wait on you.”

  “How thoughtful.” Surprised and pleased, she threw her bag into the back of the cart and with the help of the driver, clambered up. No one had ever been thoughtful enough to offer her transportation. Perhaps the road was longer than she’d thought. She had never traversed the woods as far as Wystan Castle because no villagers lived in that direction, and the forest was too dense there for her to waste time exploring it without reason. Castles didn’t hold as much interest for her as plants did. “Is it very far?”

  “Not so far as a bird flies, but people can’t fly.”

  Ninian digested the truth behind this platitude some time later as the cart finally ambled off the pitted, rutted main road onto the narrow drive leading to the castle. After years of disuse, the lane had nearly reverted to its natural state. The forest and underbrush beyond the drive looked impenetrable.

  “Will his lordship be clearing the grounds?” she asked casually, eyeing a marvelous clump of birch almost lost in brambles.

  “His lordship has interest in naught but books,” the driver grumbled. “Ain’t natural.” He peered at her from beneath the crumpled brim of his hat. “There’s them that says—”

  “Oh, look at the woodbine,” Ninian exclaimed at the cascade of greening vine ahead, cutting off any descent into gossip. She didn’t want to know what people said about Lord Ives any more than she wanted to hear what they said about her.

  The driver lapsed into silence, and Ninian savored the trill of bird song and the fresh scents of evergreen. Too much of England’s forest land had been stripped bare or landscaped into unnatural quadrangles of neatly trimmed hedges, straight paths, and tidy flower beds. She preferred Lord Ives’s method of leaving the land alone.

  Of course, she would prefer cultivating the more beneficial trees and plants to allowing this kind of impenetrable wilderness, but perhaps, given time…

  The horse slowed, and Ninian glanced ahead. The formidable stone walls of Wystan Castle towered across the road. Fortified at a time when border wars ravaged the countryside, it had never been fully modernized. The main block of the house loomed through the trees, with high stone walls and narrow windows that would allow little light inside. The rocky ground on which it had been built would once have been cleared of brush and trees, but years of neglect had brought the forest nearly to its doors.

  The clouds parted overhead, and a shaft of light illuminated glass in the upper reaches of the tower. How odd, Ninian thought as she scrambled from the cart. Lord Ives had installed windows in the unheated watchtower.

  A housekeeper let her in, and Ninian followed her stout, black-clad figure through the great hall and up the steps to the private floor.

  Little had been done to improve the ancient decor. Moldering tapestries had apparently been cleaned and patched, but nothing could restore them to their medieval grandeur. The covers on the furniture had been removed and the wood beneath dusted and polished. The towering carved walnuts and oaks of an earlier age looked foreign and uncomfortable.

  An old-style upholstered bed draped heavily in crewel-embroidered linen with faded blue silk linings filled the center of the room to which the housekeeper led her. At first, Ninian assumed she’d been brought to the bedchamber of Lady Ives, but the servant opened Ninian’s bag and began laying her drab homespun into a chest of drawers inlaid with carvings more elaborate than the embroidery.

  “I’ll do that,” she said hurriedly, taking her best apron from the woman’s hands. She didn’t want anyone touching the herbs and book at the bottom of the bag.

  The woman nodded. “The lady will call for you,” she said, before ambling off.

  With a sigh, Ninian scanned the enormous room. Since the age of ten she’d lived simply, with plain country furniture and lathe and mud daub walls. She hadn’t seen wainscoting and ornate ceilings since London, and she’d never seen tapestries like these. The room would burst with color had age not grayed the threads.

  She started to examine a cloth swarming with trees and white figures, but the carved step beside the downy thickness of the bed distracted her. A bed so tall that one needed a stair to climb into it warned of bitter drafts about the floor. The room had no fireplace. The purpose of the heavy hangings and the thick carpet was evident.

  The image of Lord Ives appeared, imprinted over the reality of the ornate bed. She could see him like some medieval lord in shirtsleeves waiting for his woman to disrobe and join him. She’d never had such thoughts until she’d looked into the earl’s haunting eyes.

  Her gaze dropped to the soft bed, and the air warmed around her. The perfume of roses tickle
d her senses, returning the image of the earl’s dark gaze. Her breasts tingled as if he’d touched them.

  She’d never possessed a sensual awareness of a man’s masculinity until she’d met Lord Ives. Intellectually, she knew how men viewed women and what they did to them when they could. Emotionally and physically, she’d never quite understood why a woman would invite what seemed to her as rather awkward indignities. Now, understanding rippled just beneath her skin.

  She hadn’t come here out of curiosity about ghosts or blighted streams. She’d come to test her powers as a woman and a witch.

  Uncomfortable with that self-discovery since Lord Ives was beyond her limits and she really didn’t think she could chase ghosts, Ninian escaped the scent of roses by slipping into the hall. Arrow slits illuminated the far ends of the corridor, revealing only a row of doors and a worn carpet adorned with miscellaneous tables along the wall. She wondered if the other doors belonged to the women of the household. Perhaps the earl really did keep a seraglio.

  She took the stairs down to the public rooms. The original great hall had evidently been added on to in a helter-skelter pattern she couldn’t discern. She peeked in on a library and a gentleman’s study with billiard table and a ladies’ parlor and a small breakfast room. But the earthier scents of plants and soil drew her onward.

  She halted at the sound of voices from behind a partially open door. Perhaps the hope of female companionship had drawn her here as much as anything else. The earl, she must remember, wanted her abilities as a witch, not a woman. Spirits dropping, she would have hurried past, but one cheerfully ribald feminine voice rang out clearly.

  “Well, it’s a pity I’m in an ‘interesting condition’ or I’d volunteer. Drogo is surely a more thoughtful lover than Charles, although admittedly, he’s not very sympathetic to you, Sarah.”

  Another woman twittered. “When he looks at me from beneath those dark brows of his, I’m fair to fainting. But I fear I am barren,” she finished sadly.