Magic and Manners (An Austen Chronicle Book 1)

by CE Murphy

  If only she had clearly heard the words used by the spellcaster! But she had only the idea of them, and a gift of speaking with the wind. She gathered the stillness of the air to her, whispering the memory of motion to it, and, with a great cry, thrust wind upward to shore the struggling spell and hold the coach-and- four safe a little while longer.

  Only a little while: that, she knew as truly as she knew her own name. The wind was not a solid thing upon which a beast could stand. It was strong, terribly strong; it could do impossible things with its strength, could lift a man like a bird or drive a straw through a piece of wood, but those were wild actions, gusts and twists. Wind could not be held, and its updraft would last only as long as her will.

  She was the flighty one, Dina thought, and her magic trembled.

  Captain David Hartnell slid into the water beside her and once more shouted the words of his spell, strengthening Dina’s magic as she had strengthened his, until the horses and carriage, uplifted as if by the hand of God, were able to scramble forward and gain purchase on the shattered remains of the bridge. Once secure upon the ground, they held stock-still, as if afraid the stones beneath their feet would once more betray them; Dina and Hartnell, assured that the horses would not move, turned to one another, Dina torn between profound guilt and equally deep admiration as she gazed into the Captain’s face.

  His colour was poor. More than poor: he seemed nearly green with illness, and perspiration rolled down his face as if he had dunked himself wholly in the river water. He wet his lips, perhaps to speak, and instead pitched forward, insensible, into Dina’s arms.

  (28)

  Mrs Dover, never one to lay blame at her favoured daughter’s feet, stood just within the dressmaker’s door, and, fluttering with dread, whispered, “What has she done? Oh, Lord, what has she done!” as Leopoldina, wet to the waist, walked slowly across Bodton’s town square with Captain Hartnell, drenched entirely, leaning heavily upon her. Red-clad soldiers paced near to them as if willing but not eager to assist. Beyond them all lay the bridge, its ruined centre a gaping and terrible gash to the eye as a coachman urged four matched horses gently off what remained of it.

  What she had done was, of course, self-evident, or at least, the four astonished sisters grouped behind their mother found it to be. The thick summer air reeked of magic, a pungent, bitter scent like burned gunpowder. Elsabeth had never before known magic to smell, but neither had she ever seen such power released. “It could not have been Dina,” she said aloud, half in hope and half in confidence.

  “How could it not?” cried their mother. “And poor Captain Hartnell caught in it, too! Oh, I am a wretched woman to be mother to such daughters! Thank heavens that Ruth is safely engaged! No gentleman would now consider any of you if he had a choice in the matter, but Mr Cox has none!” She chose quite purposefully to misinterpret the look bestowed upon her by her middle daughter, too overwrought with her own calamity to consider the cruelty of her words. “Do not look at me so, Ruth! A gentleman cannot break an engagement, simply cannot, and we are now desperate for your marriage that we may survive as a family!”

  “Mamma,” Elsabeth said softly, and then more sharply, “Mamma!”

  Mrs Dover, taken aback by Elsa’s tone, ceased wailing. “How dare you speak to me in that manner? My only concern is for the welfare of my girls, and—”

  “Captain Hartnell has a gift for magic.”

  To observe Mrs Dover absorbing this information was to observe a sea change: she fell from horror to surprise and into relief so swiftly that the last might have been the only expression ever meant to grace her features. “We are saved!”

  “Mamma,” Rosamund said in genuine concern, “if this is Dina’s doing, you cannot mean to lay it at Captain Hartnell’s feet. It might ruin him.”

  Mrs Dover sniffed. “Nonsense. He is a soldier and, as such, permitted such vile talents if they are useful to his command. It will ruin us, but it could make him.” Her eyes, usually so wide and guileless, narrowed in thought as she examined Elsabeth. “Indeed, as he seems fond of Elsa, it might even make her—”

  “Mamma,” Elsabeth said, exasperated, and left her mother behind to bestow necessary concern upon Dina and Captain Hartnell.

  “He fainted,” the former said to Elsa as she approached. “I caught him, but—”

  “She is my saviour, as I was once hers,” Hartnell agreed in a voice much fainter than his usual robust tones. “Indeed, had she not come into the river after me—”

  Elsabeth saw the sharpness of Dina’s glance toward the captain, and at once surmised the truth that he hid with his phrasing. Grateful for the falsehood he engendered, she did not press him on the point, nor interrupt as he concluded, “I should have drowned without a doubt. I am trained in the art of magical combat, but I have never done two such dramatic castings back to back. I fear I badly misjudged my own strength. Miss Elsabeth, I owe your family everything.”

  “It seems the people of Bodton owe you, Captain Hartnell. I cannot imagine what spooked the horses—” At this comment, Elsa noted the guilt that darkened Leopoldina’s eyes, and bit back a curse that surely would have shocked all who heard it. “But I fear lives would have been lost if you had not acted as swiftly as you did.”

  Hartnell offered a sweet, if pained, smile. “I do not believe the town will thank me for making a ruin of their bridge. I can only hope that my superiors will allow the army to make redress by reconstructing it, else I fear the town will be some time in waiting, for I am not a stonemason, and will not be able to work swiftly on my own.”

  “Surely, you could use magic.” Dina’s cheeks flushed as though the very idea thrilled her, but Hartnell’s weary smile in response slew what hope had been birthed in her gaze.

  “I’m afraid that my skills lie solely in the art of destruction, Miss Dina. We few military men who have magical talent are not often encouraged to build, when there are so many who know the practical arts of such activities. And now that my shame is publicly known, I am certain that your mother will permit you to have no more to do with me.” Hartnell heaved himself upright, although he looked as though Dina’s support was much missed as he drew a ragged breath. “So, let me take my leave of you as gently as I may. Miss Dina, we are even: a life for a life, so the balance is made. I will be ever grateful for your presence in my life. Miss Elsabeth, thank you for your friendship; I wish that it might have been more.”

  Elsabeth, moved to sudden tears, stepped forward to clasp Hartnell’s hand. “I cannot believe this will be the end of our acquaintance, Captain Hartnell; there is too much left unsaid between us. And,” she added on a wryer note, “you have perhaps forgotten what you know of my mother, if you believe a little display of magic might turn her away from you. But come: you are not well, and must be looked after. Surely, there is a physician amongst the regiment who is schooled in how to ease the weariness of a soldier who has fought with magic?”

  A strangeness came over Hartnell’s expression. He glanced from Elsabeth to Dina with a cunning query in his gaze, though it faded so swiftly that Elsabeth might have imagined it. He spoke with as much gentle humility as he ever had, and if she had thought there was slyness in his eyes before, it was drowned now by fondness. “You are easier with my shame than I might expect, and perhaps I might someday be permitted to know why. But for now, you are right: I find myself somewhat weaker on my feet than a man of my modest years might wish to admit, and the doctor will know best how to revive me. Take Miss Dina home and see her warm and dry again, will you not? I am indebted, and should hate for her to become ill...” As he reached the end of his speech, Hartnell’s words grew slower, as though thought was increasingly difficult to marshal. Nearly as one, Elsabeth came forward to take her sister and several men of the regiment stepped forth to collect Hartnell, and the Dovers’ last glimpse of him for some time to come was his unsteady step as he was escorted away.

  (29)

  Captain Hartnell’s departure may have been t
he last the Dovers saw of him for some time, but it was not, by any means, the last he was heard of. The story of his deed—or misdeed, depending on the speaker—flew through the town of Bodton with the unflaggable speed of gossip; by evening, there was not a soul within the town’s borders who did not know that Hartnell had worked that most military of activities, magic.

  With such stories to be spread, it was inevitable that distant memories of other magical workings should come to mind. Many harkened back to the War for the Colonies, where His Majesty’s army had faced not only the reprobate French soldiers, who were known for their enthusiastic embrace of magic, but the strange and powerful sorcery of the savage American natives, which came as naturally to them as breathing. Indeed, it was commonly thought that it had been the League of Iroquois who had pressured the colonies into declaring independence, upon pain of their own intimate and exquisite deaths; since the War had been lost, colonists had been allowed to settle only in the numbers and locations permitted by the League in New England, and nowhere at all in the southern territories. Western expansion, never as aggressive as desired, had met an uncrossable barrier at the Ohiyo and Misiziibi rivers; even today, old soldiers remembered bullets and men alike rebounding while birds and beasts roamed freely.

  But others recalled tales from closer to home. No self-respecting person, regardless of class, would admit to being plagued with power, not unless it was in service to the Crown and reluctantly sanctioned by necessity. There had been burnings, even so recently as Cromwell, when women were suspected of witchery, and men had been pressed into taking the king’s shilling. It was not done, not at all, save by savages, but, in the wake of Hartnell’s display, some began to recall the unlikely fine weather that had graced the Dover marriage some twenty-five years earlier. Others spoke of the Dover garden, reputed to go unriddled by rabbits, and of the surprising softness of their staff’s hands, as if they had less need of plunging them into boiling water for washing dishes or clothes. After a day or two, those lucky—or luckless—servants began to find themselves crowded at the butcher, as if they might be intimidated into speaking, or cosied up to at the pub, as if they might be liquored into talk. Neither was to succeed, and, within five days, it was agreed that their silence was as condemning as their speech would have been.

  Before a week was out, most of Bodton had managed to recall at least one, and perhaps several, incidents that they had personally witnessed: cats coming when called, cows failing to give milk, a spell of sunshine while the Dovers shopped in town when it had rained consistently for days; a laugh on the wind when no one was to be seen, and certainly half the town had seen Leopoldina Dover go into the river and try something before Hartnell crashed into the water. Indeed, it was agreed that the horses bolting like that, with no clear cause, was suspicious itself when a Dover was about, although the gentleman whose team had been beleaguered was himself certain it had been only a dreadful cloud of flies, and it was impossible to say whether he was more relieved that his horses had been stopped before trampling anyone, or that the beautiful creatures had been saved from certain destruction as the bridge collapsed. He did not care to pursue it; it had been too uncomfortably close a brush with magic for a man of his stature, and the sooner it was put out of mind, the better.

  Bodton’s gossips were deeply disappointed in this show of practicality; had the gentleman cared to, his pursuit of the matter might have unearthed certainty in the matter of Dover magic. But where certainty could not be had, gossip would do, and the enthusiasm with which incidents of Dover magic were recalled might have awakened a certain suspicion in the heart of an unbiased observer. Sadly for the Dovers, no such being existed in Bodton in the days following Hartnell’s display of power.

  It was therefore inevitable that whispers would reach Newsbury Manor, and nestle in the ear of one Fitzgerald Archer.

  Hartnell’s part in this was, of course, no surprise to him; indeed, had he in some way been able to trace the source of these rumours back to Hartnell himself, Archer would have rested easy, confident that a reprobate was doing nothing more than trying to pass off his own actions as belonging to someone else. But it was widely—wholly—agreed that Hartnell had acted heroically, confessing his embarrassing secret to the world at large because to do otherwise would allow tragedy to strike. He had not, in the days of his recovery, made any attempt to deny his magic; had, in fact, gotten off his sick bed to plead with the town council that he be allowed to help in reconstructing the bridge. The council, charmed, had sent him back to bed, and the people of Bodton turned out to watch the army rebuild the bridge in a good humour; all condemnation for its destruction was filtering squarely down to sit upon the shoulders of the Dover family, and Leopoldina Dover in particular.

  Archer himself was not loath to believe that the youngest Dover girl was magic-ridden; magic could go no further in emphasising his disapproval of her than her general nature already had. Similarly with the mother, although, through quiet investigation, he determined that it was Mr Dover who was commonly accepted to be the magician, and that Mrs Dover had married him in spite of it. The two eldest daughters, it was held in both wide belief and in Archer’s own, were unlikely to be actual magicians themselves; their behaviour had never suggested it, and it was clear that the spectacled middle daughter who disapproved of everything could not possibly be magically inclined herself. The second youngest was conceded to follow in her younger sister’s wake and therefore presumed to have magic herself, but, in truth, none of that mattered. If a single one of them practiced magic—and it appeared unquestionable that Mr Dover himself was suspected of it—then the family as a whole was tainted.

  Webber, Archer concluded, had to be saved from himself before he made a dreadful mistake. Rosamund Dover’s attractive qualities could in no way make up for the risk of magic-bearing heirs. And yet, he could not quite bring himself to tell Webber the truth about Rosamund. Not for Webber’s sake, he found, but for his own: should Julia Webber learn of the Dovers’ unfortunate talent, he would be obliged to endure endless sniping regarding Elsabeth Dover, and would be expected to endure with good humour or remorse.

  It was not, Archer told himself firmly, that he wished to defend Miss Elsabeth or that he had become infatuated with an entirely unsuitable female; it was merely that he was not a man who endured much of anything in good humour or remorse, and was inclined to save himself the exasperation of trying. Julia already did not approve of any match made with a country family, particularly one of comparatively little means, as the Dovers were; it was easy enough to draw her into a confidence one afternoon, murmuring that he thought it best they return to London before the weather turned poorly. Julia, who did not socialise in Bodton and who had heard none of the rumours, was eager to seize upon any opportunity to leave quickly, but mentioned a certain grim concern that her brother would want to stay on in hopes of encountering Miss Dover once again.

  “Allow me to deal with Robert,” Archer said, and, that very evening, took it upon himself to note aloud that Miss Dover had refused all invitations to Newsbury for almost two weeks now.

  Webber, who had observed this unhappy fact himself, drooped into a chair. “Not since that dreadful incident with the bridge,” he agreed. “I should think a gentlewoman like herself must be afraid to leave the house with such brigandly magics going on, but if she will not answer our invitations, it seems impolite to thrust ourselves upon her in her own home. I am at a loss, Archer. What am I to do? She is the fairest and sweetest lady I have ever met.”

  “Robert,” Archer said as gently as he knew how, “has it occurred to you that perhaps the lady’s affections are not as intense as your own? That perhaps she has ceased accepting your invitations because she does not wish to encourage you?”

  “Poppycock.” Webber spoke with the bluster of a man afraid. “Nonsense, Archer, she is the very soul of gentility and I am sure she...I was sure she...You cannot be right, Archer. You simply cannot be right.”

  “She is ch
arming and sweet,” Archer agreed, “but has she made any protestations of love, Webber? Can you be sure of her?”

  “Love! Are you mad, man? Of course she hasn’t! A gentle, reserved woman of her stature would surely never speak of love to a man who has not spoken of it to her! And yet, I believe I had seen it in her eyes, Archer, in the soft and accepting way she looked at me...”

  “But she has not answered your invitations,” Archer said, and, judging the job done, offered to pour brandy, which Webber glumly accepted.

  (30)

  It was true Rosamund had not accepted any Newsbury invitations in some time, for after the incident with the bridge, she had taken very ill with worry over Leopoldina and the family as a whole. Mr Cox had, thank heavens, already departed, putting Ruth’s marriage and happiness less at risk than had he been in Bodton to hear the rumours regarding the Dover family.

  “Rumours,” Elsabeth had said tartly, “that he ought to take no heed of anyway, being the same blood, however diluted, as Papa, and therefore as likely to burgeon with magic of his own as any one of us might be,” a statement which had done much to revive Rosamund, who could not help but be amused at the idea of pompous Mr Cox wielding magic in any wise. Even so, as her health improved, her worries about what might have been heard at Newsbury Manor increased, until nerves prevented her from accepting the invitations she so dearly wished to. Elsabeth, less tartly this time, had pointed out that the invitations would not continue to come if they considered Rosamund a pariah, but that they might well cease if she did not soon respond positively.

  This was a calamity that had not occurred to Rosamund. Armed with its potential, she resolved to joyfully agree to the next invitation, and, having so decided, seemed a little stronger for it. Ruth, who had softened quite considerably since her engagement, agreed to read a novel to Rosamund, so pleased she was at her recovery. For a few days, the family were all most diverted by Ruth’s reading, for it proved that when she was not determined to be sour, she commanded an impressive performance skill that made listening to her a delight instead of a chore.