Merely Magic

by Patricia Rice

Disappointment rippled through her, but she knew it had to be so. All she could hope to earn was his respect. “No, I only want you to know I exist,” she insisted.

  “Oh, I know you exist, all right.” He lifted his long frame from the chair and approached the bed. “But we can take some time to know each other better. Just do not dally too long,” he warned as he stopped beside the bed.

  She didn’t have too long. The child needed to be in Wystan now. But if she wanted to make this marriage work, she would hold out for as long as she could.

  “I am not good at sharing,” she admitted as he hovered over her. He was so large and intimidating and… virile. She didn’t giggle at her aunt’s word now. She need only glance sideways—like so—to see he was thoroughly aroused and hungry for her. She hastily glanced back to her book. “But I will do what I can to hurry the process.”

  “Give me a report each night on that book you’re reading,” he suggested.

  Then, without warning, he leaned over and kissed her forehead, straightened, and walked out.

  The cat meowed in protest at thus being disturbed. Ninian scratched its head sympathetically. She’d never sleep now.

  ***

  “Oh, dear.” Sarah set down her tea cup and stared aghast at the news sheet she was reading. “Twane has filed a crim con suit against Drogo.”

  “A what?” Startled more by the violence of Sarah’s emotions than her words, Ninian glanced up with alarm from the thyme she was potting.

  “Criminal conversation, although adultery is a civil and not a criminal matter and is scarcely about conversation,” she explained, her fury at the article muting as her active mind took charge. “The coward. Any real man would have challenged him to a duel.”

  “A duel?” Ninian asked in horror. She didn’t like it when Sarah’s mind started churning. She understood the power of pure emotion, but the deviousness of Sarah’s convoluted brain eluded her. At the moment, she didn’t like any part of this conversation. “Drogo does not fight duels, does he? I thought him a man of nature, not violence.”

  Sarah sent her an amused look over the top of the news sheet. “He is an Ives, my dear. They fight like rabid dogs even when they aren’t challenged. Which is why, of course, that coward Twane didn’t challenge him.” She uttered a low curse as she returned to perusing the paper.

  It seemed she had as much to learn about her husband as he did about her. Firming the soil around the newly planted thyme, Ninian thought furiously. Duels and swords repulsed her. Adultery on the other hand…

  What could she say? She’d known Drogo lived with three women when she met him. She’d known Claudia was married, even if unhappily. It scarcely made a difference under the laws of God or man if he’d taken Claudia to his bed out of sympathy or a need to prove his virility. That awful man who had interrupted their wedding was in the right.

  She tried to smother an annoying cough.

  “What happens now?” she asked of Sarah, who still glowered at the article.

  “Twane must produce evidence if Drogo disputes the suit. If Twane wins, he can ask for damages that will bankrupt us all.” She sighed and shoved her tea cup aside. “I suppose if Claudia returns home, Twane would drop the suit.”

  “But Lord Twane would kill her, wouldn’t he?” Ninian could tell that from Sarah’s fear and panic, although she did her best to conceal it behind her insouciant behavior.

  Sarah tightened her lips and shot her a sharp look but didn’t respond directly. “I’ll have to consult Claudia’s chart. The stars brought you and Drogo together. Perhaps they’ll tell how to keep Claudia and her husband apart.” She folded up the paper and rose. “You’d best take something for that cough.”

  Ninian watered her plant and worried at her lower lip after Sarah departed. She certainly couldn’t discredit Sarah’s talents, given the eccentricity of her own. But even knowing her own abilities and that of her family, she wouldn’t rely on them to untangle this affair. If such a thing as true magic existed, she’d conjure Lord Twane into a distant ocean. As it was, she only had her wits and her observations to work with, and they told her Drogo was in serious trouble.

  Odd, that despite all his complaints of his brothers’ scrapes, it was Drogo who had created the biggest danger to his family and only because he’d offered shelter to a friend.

  She bit her lip hard on that thought and snapped a twig of the thyme. The fragrance woke her to where she was and what she was doing. Carefully, she carried the pot to the back garden and set it in a sunny spot between one of Ewen’s preposterous inventions and what was apparently an attempt by Joseph to create a large scale model of—as usual, she studied the weathered paint and wooden columns trying to decide—a Parthenon play house?

  It wasn’t her place to go to Drogo and ask him about his problems, but it wasn’t in her nature to ignore danger either.

  A healer in an Ives’ household needed far more than herbal lore.

  ***

  “Your solicitor seems concerned about some large expenditures you have ordered.” Drogo dropped into the man-size upholstered wing chair beside Ninian’s bed, then glanced down to discover what the devil he was sitting on. He didn’t remember a chair his size in the delicate boudoir he’d assigned to Ninian. These uncontrollable changes in his environment kept him perpetually off balance.

  “How I spend my funds is of no concern to my solicitor or to you. If he continues appealing to you, I shall most certainly find another man of business.”

  Another woman might have sounded angry. Ninian merely stated facts. The idea of a woman controlling her own funds made Drogo decidedly uneasy, but the trust was drawn up so only Malcolm women had any authority over it. If whatever Ninian was doing had passed the scrutiny of the intimidating Duchess of Mainwaring, he couldn’t question it.

  “Why don’t you and your aunts use the funds for Wystan?” he asked out of curiosity.

  “We can’t. The trust agreement specifically denies it. There’s a legend in our storybook about a Malcolm who…”

  He hastily waved away another of her involved wives’ tales.

  “I can recommend another solicitor if you prefer, or your aunts might wish to name one of their own. This one merely seeks to impress me with his conscientiousness. How are you coming with your translation of the diary?”

  He hadn’t come in here to argue over money. He didn’t want to admit he’d entered Ninian’s chambers to court his wife either, but he couldn’t put any other face on it. He’d gone four damned months without a woman, then indulged in one of the most sensual nights of his life, and he damned well didn’t like sleeping in a cold bed again. He would simply take a few nights to study the situation, develop a plan of action, and put it in motion when the time was right.

  Knowing that instead of being repelled by his less than extraordinary looks, his wife enjoyed the same passionate attraction for him as he did for her, gave him patience to suffer a few nights longer. He certainly didn’t have to worry that she wanted his money.

  He need only worry about her sanity, he reminded himself grimly.

  “The handwriting is more difficult to translate than the language,” Ninian complained. “My ancestress had a penchant for loops and swirls and strange circles and did not always use the best of pen nibs.”

  “Rather like Sarah.”

  She shot him a questioning look, then apparently recognizing his humor, smiled tentatively. It seemed she had as much difficulty knowing what to make of him as he did of her. That reassured him. Stretching out his legs toward the fire and trying not to stare too hard at the tempting thrust of her breasts against the thin nightshift, Drogo crossed his arms across his chest and prepared to be entertained.

  “I do not know my history very well, but I looked up this date and the diary apparently begins during Cromwell’s reign.” She gently turned a brittle page. “The signature in the fro
ntispiece is that of a Ceridwen Malcolm Ives.”

  “Ceridwen? That’s Welsh, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but until recently, my family has always drawn on strong Celtic names. If I had more education, I could possibly understand the connections in some of our old books and trace them back through history, but I can only make assumptions based on general reading.” She coughed and covered her mouth to smother it.

  “I should think your family would wish their daughters formally educated.” It certainly didn’t seem as if any man had ever stopped them, Drogo reflected cynically. He frowned at the cough. It seemed to be lingering. Perhaps he should call a physician… Ninian would have none of it.

  “Remember where we live.” She cleared her throat before continuing. “Wystan has no teachers. The cottage has a limited library, and that contains mostly handwritten herbals and the miscellaneous scribblings of our ancestors. We’re a family who learns best by trial and error. It’s not as if anyone can teach us to deal with our talents.”

  There she went again. Drogo squeezed his fingers together to prevent scoffing at her idea of “talent.” “You must have many gardening books then. You have a green thumb when it comes to plants.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she ignored his observation. “Ceridwen apparently also had a talent with plants. In these first few pages, she seems very young, but she is talking about potting her kitchen herbs for the winter.”

  Drogo wrinkled his nose in distaste. “If that’s all she has to write about, you’ll not learn much from there. I’d thought I’d given you something more interesting.”

  “Her name is Malcolm Ives, and the Ives was added in different ink, as if added at a later date. I should think it will be very interesting to know how a Malcolm and an Ives came to marry.”

  Drogo had an uneasy feeling it might be far better if she did not know how they fared, but it was too late to think of that now. He did not know of a single happy marriage on his family tree, including Dunstan’s, from the looks of it. He watched her warily. “You will not try comparing what you learn in there to us, will you? I can assure you, I am nothing like my ancestors.”

  She closed the book, crossed her hands neatly on the cover, then finally lifted her eyes to his. She took his breath away when she looked at him like that. How had he thought her a simpleton? She delved straight into his soul with that look. And stirred far lower portions than his soul.

  “Is that because you have no bastards or because you have not tried?” she asked.

  Damn the woman. Every time he started to relax in her company, she hit him with another brickbat. He scowled and rose from the chair. “I would have no bastards because I would have had the decency to marry any woman who bore my child, as you are well aware. Heal that cough, or I shall call a physician, whether you like it or not.”

  Muttering, he slammed out of her cheery room into the cold damp of his own. Why the devil could women never leave well enough alone?

  Twenty-three

  “Ninian, you are a saint!”

  Grimacing at the irony of Sarah’s declaration, Ninian tested the forehead of the child in her lap. The fever was almost gone, she decided, as Sarah’s toddler snuggled closer. Just a cold, then.

  The babe in her womb stirred, and Ninian basked in the love of the moment—a peaceful child sleeping in her arms, and a new one growing beneath her heart. The contentment they offered insulated her against the buffeting of Sarah’s emotion. If it hadn’t been for the man who’d put this child inside her, she would no doubt be quite happy.

  But the desperate desire for her husband’s acceptance left her with a constant hollow ache she saw no means of assuaging.

  “I only gave her a little willow water and sang her to sleep,” Ninian answered complacently. She could use herbs to heal. She wished she could use her Gift for sensing emotion for something equally useful.

  “That’s not what I’m talking about, although I must say you’re a candidate for sainthood for nursing cranky children as well.” She pulled a letter from the inside pocket of her gown. “Claudia writes that you have offered her and her sister passage to Paris and a home with some of your relatives. Why did you not tell me? It solves everything.”

  Ninian wrinkled her nose at this praise and gently returned her patient to her bed. The toddler stirred sleepily in protest, but she stroked her brow and whispered a few words, and the child slept again.

  Fighting a cough that might wake the child, she rose and smoothed her wrinkled gown over the increasing bulge of her belly. It was well into October, the baby was due in early February, and she hadn’t made any progress in convincing her husband she must return to Wystan, with or without him. She’d regaled him with tales from her ancestor’s diary until she’d reached the part where Ceridwen had flooded the valley in an excess of zeal to please her new husband. Drogo had laughed at the foolishness of anyone believing they could control rain, and she’d diverted him with discussing means of clearing the burn rather than read him the part that came after.

  Ceridwen had given birth to a girl, and her Ives husband had disavowed it, claiming no Ives had ever fathered a girl. He’d set her aside in the cottage Ninian assumed was the one her grandmother called home. She was afraid to read further. It definitely didn’t sound like the kind of material that would sway Drogo’s intent. And it verified at least one of the legends in her storybook.

  “It solves little.” She sighed and slipped away from the child’s bed. “Claudia will never be able to marry. I’m not at all certain her sister will be able to, even should she desire it. Their family has no dowry to offer without Lord Twane’s help.”

  “They’re alive,” Sarah said defiantly. “Twane cannot reach them. And even should he continue his suit against Drogo, it will not win him a right to Claudia. And he will have to hire liars as witnesses to prove his suit.”

  Ninian arched her eyebrows. “Would he?”

  Sarah looked at her in surprise. “You do not really think Drogo bedded Claudia, do you? She practically threw herself at him, and he brushed her off like an annoying gnat. You are the only woman who’s caught and held his attention in years.”

  Held his attention? Stirred his lust, mayhap, but not his attention.

  “Even that simpleton last year who told him she carried his child didn’t hold his interest, except for the possibility of the babe,” Sarah continued. “Drogo built his hopes up enough to build a nursery, and then had them dashed when another man came forward and warned him of the treachery.”

  No wonder the poor man took everything he heard with a grain of salt. Shaking her head, Ninian left Sarah in the nursery. If she believed Sarah’s assertion that Drogo hadn’t bedded Claudia…

  She gasped in surprise as her husband materialized before her. Drogo caught her arm and steadied her as she rocked backward. The concern in his deep-set eyes had the power to captivate. Somehow, she had to escape this bond between them. The life of their child depended on it.

  “I must speak with you,” he said gravely.

  He seldom spoke with her during the day. The last time had been the day he’d taken her to the lecture on Naturalism in the Study of Our Waterways. The professor had proclaimed the Thames a travesty of filth and a danger to humanity and had never once named another river or waterway in all of England. It had been a serious disappointment, and neither of them had learned anything from it. Drogo had not invited her to attend any other lectures since, and she did not blame him—especially after her disappointment at the lack of information to aid the burn, she’d publicly declared the professor a fraud concerned only with obtaining money for his experiments.

  Her heart pattered a little faster at her husband’s seriousness as she followed him into the sitting room between their chambers. The fire was always lit now that the damp of autumn had set in.

  “How is your cough?” he asked, easing her onto the settee before the
fire. His gaze dropped to the burden she carried as it always did when they met.

  “It will go away when I return to Wystan,” Ninian assured him. She assumed her growing ungainliness had lessened his desire, but she had seen no evidence that he’d strayed elsewhere. With another man, she might have read his guilt. With this one, she had to rely on the confidence of his brothers. She thought she might feel their guilt or shame if they knew Drogo had taken up with other women.

  “Then it will go away once we leave London for Ives,” he said confidently.

  “There is something wrong?” she asked when he did not immediately explain the reason for this attention. The other was an old argument, one she must win, but not this moment.

  He paced before the fire, hands behind his back, hair neatly tied in a queue—an intimidating figure of a man, but one who had shown her kindness, even if of the absent-minded sort.

  “Your aunts have invited Dunstan and his wife to a house party.”

  She waited, but he didn’t seem to think further explanation necessary. She could find no reason why this should disturb him. No wonder Ives and Malcolms did not get along. They didn’t know how to talk to each other. Their minds didn’t work the same.

  “My uncles enjoyed Dunstan’s theories on farming. We were invited also, if you’ll remember. I see nothing wrong in that.”

  He swung around and glared down on her. “Dunstan grew up on a very small farm. He never saw London or society until he entered Oxford after he came of age and my mother no longer had control of him. She wanted him to be a vicar, like her brother, and saw no reason he should learn the ways of aristocracy.”

  He didn’t say more, as if he’d said enough. Ninian struggled to find the path of his logic. “Your mother doesn’t want him to associate with dukes?” Everything to do with this mysterious man she called husband was a puzzle. She searched his expression to see if she’d guessed right.

  He rubbed his wide brow and looked away. “Dunstan is more comfortable in barns than in mansions. If he accepts the invitation, it is for the sake of his wife, not himself.”