Merely Magic

by Patricia Rice

  “There is naught I can tell you,” she protested feebly.

  “Tell us what the ghost said!” all the ladies commanded as they closed the door on Lydie’s room and turned to Ninian.

  “Ghosts don’t speak much.” Ninian said with a sigh as Claudia held a shimmering blue-green gown up to her shoulders. She really needed a nap more than another session as a fashion doll. Dealing with ghosts was draining.

  Sarah began unfastening Ninian’s gown and said, “It’s obvious there is some tragic history in this castle that we must right.”

  Amazed that flighty Sarah had laid her finger on the problem, suspecting she did so only out of a fondness for sentimental fiction, Ninian didn’t argue as they stripped off her gown and draped her in pannier hoops. “Perhaps if you have papers in your possession, my lady, you might research the castle’s history.” She pushed the women in the right direction, though she didn’t expect much as a result.

  As they dropped the gown over her head, Ninian stroked the frail damask and ignored the excited chatter. She had her mother’s love of fine fabrics, it seemed. The panniers held the layers of silk off the floor. She still felt like a fashion doll, but the cold draft blowing up her legs beneath the wiring told her she was made of flesh and blood. She didn’t like the way the tickle of the wind reminded her that she was young and restless and a man stood ready to please her anytime she beckoned.

  Where had that thought come from? She couldn’t read the earl’s emotions. She couldn’t know his intent. Perhaps aristocrats bestowed kisses thoughtlessly. He certainly hadn’t seemed as disturbed by their kiss as she had been.

  But somehow, she knew Lord Ives was as aware of her as she was of him.

  “There are journals and ledgers and stacks of dusty books and papers in the library.” Sarah hooked the fastenings of the gown’s bodice with precision while Claudia adjusted the back lacing to fit Ninian’s slimmer waist and fuller bosom.

  “Perhaps, after you’ve discovered the story…” Ninian suggested tentatively, gasping as the lacing pulled tight and the whalebone structure dug in, “you might call me back again. Perhaps then I can understand—”

  “Nonsense.” Sarah stepped back and dusted off her hands as she gazed at her handiwork with approval. “You must stay and give us advice as to where to look…” She waved her hand. “Drogo is likely to leave at anytime, so we must solve this mystery…” Abruptly, she turned to Lydie with a small frown. “Shall we leave the ringlets loose again, or try something more sophisticated?”

  Ninian didn’t know where to begin protesting. She held her hand protectively to her hair and backed away. “I cannot—”

  “She needs jewelry,” Lydie decided. “Her obvious charms draw attention without it, but a little extra adornment never hurt.”

  Ninian’s gaze dropped to the exaggerated plumpness of her breasts above the very narrow square cut of the bodice. “A modesty piece will suffice—”

  Lydie’s laughter cut her off. “Not with that gown. It’s French. Isn’t it wicked? Turn, and let me see how the train falls.”

  Ninian was buried in enough silk to clothe a village, yet she was half naked. “Wicked” wasn’t the half of it. “Obscene” might come close. She shook her head and tried to find the dozen tiny fastenings molding her into this monstrosity.

  Sarah grabbed her hands. “Don’t be silly. It’s perfect, as if it was designed for you. Lydie, you have some paste…?”

  “That’s all I have,” the young woman replied with bitterness. “In the top drawer, Claudia.” She indicated her massive trunk. “I’d thought I’d at least have jewels to sell.”

  “Well, yours wouldn’t be the first family to sell off the family gems,” Sarah drawled. “Perhaps if they’d told you of their precarious financial situation, you wouldn’t have been quite so foolish as to get yourself with child on a man with no wealth.”

  “Would it have been better if she married a man with wealth and had her virginity taken by a beast?” Claudia asked caustically. “At least she’s had some pleasure of it.”

  Ninian’s head spun so with the barrage of information, she forgot her protests as Sarah fastened a gaudy tangle of glittering glass around her neck. She didn’t know the difference between diamond and crystal, but the necklace picked up the colors of the gown and reflected it in a breathtakingly iridescent sparkle.

  More importantly, she tried to unscramble the clues of their conversation. Lydie’s child was by a poor man? Not the earl?

  “I should have come to you for the herbs you told me—” Lydie popped her hand over her mouth with an “oops” before Sarah had time to cut her off.

  These women were up to something. Maybe she ought to leave.

  The dinner bell gonged loudly, echoing through the high stone corridors. This time, Ninian didn’t jerk with surprise. Numb from an overabundance of information, her thoughts spinning, she escaped the room under the guidance of both Sarah and Claudia.

  Lord Ives awaited them at the bottom of the stairs. The discreet embroidery of his black coat and gold waistcoat and the expensive quality of his lace cuffs spoke of generations of wealth and aristocracy. Coal-black hair caught in a ribbon gleamed in the lamplight, and even though he was freshly shaved, the shadow of his beard accentuated the stark masculine planes of his jaw. Dark eyes glittered as he studied the bejeweled rainbow descending the stairs.

  “You play their games well, Miss Siddons.” He bowed mockingly and took her hand on his arm as Sarah delicately pushed her in his direction.

  “No, I don’t,” she muttered under her breath.

  He cocked an eyebrow but didn’t inquire further as they reached the linen-bedecked table. Candlelight glimmered against silver, casting light on the storm’s gloom.

  “We have decided to research your castle, Drogo,” Sarah declared cheerfully. “Miss Siddons will interpret for us.”

  “I have no…” Ninian shut up as a footman materialized to pour the wine. Why argue? She’d simply leave before the ladies called for their chocolate in the morning. The rain pounding against the windows warned of the foolishness of leaving tonight.

  “An interesting project, I’m sure.” Lord Ives lifted his wine, sipped, and nodded his approval to the servant. “And if you find nothing of interest, are you prepared to argue with a ghost?”

  He was mocking them, Ninian knew. A man of science, with a toplofty intellectual bent, wouldn’t heed things of the spirit, things that must be taken on belief without material evidence of their existence. It didn’t matter. She could see no answer to the conundrum the ghost presented. Likely, the lady had existed here for centuries. She could exist a few more, until someone wiser interpreted her unspoken plea.

  As Ninian sipped the rich wine, she noticed the earl’s gaze drawn to the immodest exposure of her bosom. A warm flush crept along her skin, and she swallowed a large gulp of the wine. She coughed as fire burned down her throat.

  “Gently, Miss Siddons,” he admonished. “Wine must be sipped, not guzzled. Have you come to any further conclusions about our ghost?”

  She practiced sipping, just to show she knew how. The wine really did affect her body temperature, she noted. She no longer felt the room’s chill. Or perhaps it was the heat of his gaze on her neckline while his finger traced the edge of his glass.

  “Since you do not believe in the ghost’s existence,” she answered tartly, “I cannot think you have any interest in my opinion.”

  “Now, now, Miss Siddons, do not judge dear Drogo so harshly.” Sarah leaned over and patted her hand where it rested on the tablecloth. “He must see to believe, admittedly, but I cannot think him beyond hope. He just needs someone who can make him see through different eyes.”

  Ninian withdrew her hand and clasped it around the crystal stem of her goblet. “I wish you well of that task, my lady.”

  Drogo chuckled. “She has you there
, Sarah. I think you underestimate Miss Siddons’ perspicacity.”

  The footmen refilled his glass as a maid removed the soup course and a third servant presented the vegetable course. Ninian noticed that his lordship was more interested in the quality of his wine than in the food on his plate. The creamed potatoes were rather overspiced, admittedly, but she ate rather than swim in wine.

  It seemed odd that he didn’t shut her from his thoughts as he had the previous night. Why was he staring at her like that? And was that perspiration forming on his forehead in this damp air? His grasp on the goblet seemed oddly tense.

  “The jewels look like something Lydie would wear,” Lord Ives observed as Claudia and Sarah chattered. “They are tantalizing, but they do not really suit you.”

  The husky rasp of his voice and the odd intensity of his gaze seeped through her flesh into her racing blood. Her own skin felt tight and feverish.

  Since she did not believe jewels or this gown or this company suited her, Ninian refrained from replying, couldn’t reply. Her head spun too uncertainly. She was increasingly aware of his attention, of the flickering candlelight, of the steady pour of rain against the roof and windows. Lightning crackled, illuminating the candelabra-adorned table with ghostly illusions, and she had to blink not to see other people and earlier times in this hall.

  She had always been attuned to the world and its essence around her, more so than most people. Usually, she was on the outside, wistfully watching as if she were the audience and all others, actors on a stage.

  Tonight, she felt as if she were actually a part of the performance, at one with the drafts and the flickering candles and the ghosts laughing and drinking at the far expanse of the table beyond the candlelight.

  She tried not to include the imposing man at her side in the world she sensed, but he filled it with his every breath, every movement, as if, in some time or place, they had belonged together. An odd urgency to test that theory swelled within her, but she didn’t know how to act on it.

  Without looking, she knew the moment when the shock of awareness hit him—the moment when he recognized the flow of energy between them. Somehow, she knew he felt the same heated demands pounding through his blood when he set his empty wineglass down and cursed beneath his breath. She didn’t have to turn to see the reason for his curses, because it raced through her own veins, desire dancing in its wake. She didn’t know if she sent out these vibrations or if he did, but they were as real as if he’d touched her and spoken the words aloud.

  “Sarah, I will make you pay for this,” he intoned ominously as he shoved his chair away from the table.

  Ninian stared at the way his long fingers clenched the linen, at the silky dark hairs nearly hidden by the starched white lace falling over his hand. He had strong, sensuous fingers that would appreciate the texture of a woman’s skin, fingers that would instinctively seek the erotic places…

  She blinked in surprise at the path of her thoughts. Never in her entire life had she—

  “Come, Miss Siddons. Let us escape before they poison us further.” The strong brown fingers locked over her helpless white ones.

  Oblivious to the company, she stared at their joined hands. Once again, his heat soaked through her skin, and she watched in fascination, hoping to observe the miracle, as if their flesh might become transparent.

  Amusement laced his voice. “Obviously, you’re not a very good witch, Miss Siddons. Don’t you know protective spells against other witches?”

  Other witches? Knowing she looked an idiot for blinking again, Ninian followed the tug of his hand and rose from her seat, focusing on his face for enlightenment, ignoring the smug smiles of their companions. The sardonic curl of the earl’s lip should have told her something, but she could never read this man as she did others.

  “Sarah has a friend who deals in magic potions. Isn’t that what witches do?”

  She shook her head in denial but didn’t have the words to explain. He didn’t seem to require a response. His heated look said everything as he held her hand trapped in his.

  “I think I like you like this, Miss Siddons,” he observed as she followed him compliantly across the towering hall. “You are usually much too wrapped up in your herbs and ghosts and healing. Being an object of your intense study is a pleasant change.”

  She should be embarrassed that he’d noticed her fascination, but she wasn’t. She didn’t even flinch as his strong arm circled her waist to steady her ascent of the stairs. She had the strangest notion that he craved the closeness as much as she did.

  “Am I drunk?” she inquired soberly.

  He chuckled again, a deep, perversely pleasurable chuckle that rumbled up from his insides and into hers.

  “Victim of your own sorcery, I suspect. Or do you not dispense aphrodisiacs?”

  “Aphrodisiacs work only on the deluded…” she started to say scornfully, then blinked again. He would think she had eye spasms, but she kept seeing things from strange angles. “I’m not deluded,” she said firmly, to reassure herself, though she’d been suffering delusions from the moment she’d met this man.

  “Probably not,” he agreed, steering her down the darkened hallway to her room. “Just feeling the old pull of the moon and the tides like the rest of us mortals.”

  Thunder rolled overhead, but Ninian gave it no notice as she pondered his words. “Are you saying Sarah put something…?” She stumbled over the question as he pushed open her bedroom door, brushing unnecessarily close as he did so. She looked down to see the white of her breasts pressed dangerously near the dark cloth of the earl’s coat, close enough for the lace of his jabot to tickle.

  “That, or alcohol and excess stimulation have released our inhibitions, freeing us to act on our rather fundamental attraction to each other.”

  Attraction. He was attracted to her. The knowledge shivered down her spine, but her mind was too muddled to define its true meaning. She didn’t think it was alcohol or aphrodisiacs burning through them, but she didn’t know enough to explain the uncanny bond, the seemingly natural need to be with him.

  To just once feel close to a man, this man.

  The hand at her waist slid higher, pressing her closer. She was aware of dark eyes piercing the privacy of her heart, pinning it as it thumped, but she couldn’t look beyond the lace at his throat to verify her awareness. “I see,” she murmured foolishly.

  “Come, Miss Siddons, it is no more than the throbbing excitement of a night beneath the full moon in a lover’s arms. We may choose to indulge or not, as we please. It’s rather pleasant having one’s inhibitions removed, is it not?”

  Somehow, he had her beside the high bed, with the door closed behind them. Ninian refrained from blinking again as she realized someone had lit candles all around the room and drawn the window draperies open on the electrifying flashes of lightning outside. The bed hangings were drawn open, too, revealing a bed turned down in open invitation. She wasn’t too drugged or stunned to understand the precipice she was walking now. She could feel the edge crumbling as clearly as she could feel the carpet beneath her feet.

  She had been lured to this castle for a purpose.

  The brief revelation dissipated the instant Ninian lifted her eyes to Lord Ives. The dark reflective pools she looked into revealed her future more clearly than a crystal ball, if she could believe what she saw staring back at her—raw hunger, heady passion, and the uncertainty of loneliness.

  She required the breezes of human emotion to function. He had nothing but lust to offer.

  “We do not have to do this, you know,” he reminded her, even as his dark head bent and his lips whispered over her cheek. “We can thwart the ladies’ joke, say good night, and you can be on your way in the morning.”

  She could, but she already knew she would not. Logic had fled her wits, but instinct poured through her fingertips. She caressed the rich sati
n of his waistcoat, felt the tense hardness of the muscles beneath as he held himself still. She’d yearned for this sort of closeness all her life. Yearned for it, imagined it, questioned its existence. She could not deny her need to know—to take one step beyond the narrow world she knew.

  “I am not beautiful,” she murmured senselessly.

  “That is like saying the moon has no charm,” he scoffed, threading his fingers through her hair.

  Shivering, Ninian wrapped her arms around the earl’s broad shoulders and basked in the warmth and power of his hunger as he caught her against him. She’d never known a man’s dominance, never walked in a man’s world. What could it hurt to try just once?

  Her grandmother’s warnings fled with her wits. As Lord Ives drew her into his embrace, his wool coat wrapped her cold flesh in heat.

  The flick of his tongue against her innocent lips tumbled all remaining barriers, plunging her into the depths of paradise.

  Nine

  Brain fogged with Sarah’s damned liquor and the perfume of the moon maiden’s roses, Drogo descended swiftly from the logic of his mind into the passions of his body. Lovemaking had become too clinical for him these last years. The joy and exuberance of youth had faded with the cynicism of experience. Ninian’s innocent kiss welcomed him to the excitement of his first time again.

  Ninian. A saint, not a witch. Smiling at the odd path of his muddled thoughts, he drove his fingers deep into her hair and drank joy and wonder from the melting of her lips. He experienced her excitement as well as his own, arousing his senses doubly, heightening his desire with unprecedented speed.

  Urgently, he demanded more, until her mouth opened beneath his, taking his tongue as if it were a holy wafer and not the possessive claim it was. Perhaps she considered lovemaking as a religious experience. In this case, she could be right. The sweetness of her breath breathed life into his soul. He wanted to inhale her. His grip tightened at her waist, pressing her breasts into his coat, until his breathing matched hers, their hearts pounded together, and the clothing between them was unnatural.