Magic
Page 25
“Sorry.”
“Don’t tell me, tell Rachel,” he insisted. “Getting the two of you together is my last hope of getting out of here. I did what I could to help her reconcile with Addie, and that didn’t solve my dilemma. You’ve got to be the key. So stop slacking off and do your duty. I’m fed up with being subtle, holding the doors shut and shoving the two of you together. By the way, I was not amused by your little jujitsu demonstration downstairs.”
“Tae kwon do,” Bryan corrected him with a bland smile.
“Don’t split hairs,” Wimsey snapped. “This facetious manner of yours is damned annoying. “Pon my soul, if I were alive, you’d be giving me a roaring headache. Do make up with the girl and get on with it.”
Bryan arched a brow. “Does coercion count in the good-deeds category these days?”
Wimsey screwed up his mouth in annoyance. “You really are too flip by half. Just wait until you get stuck in an alternate plane of existence. We’ll see how amusing you are then.”
Bryan sighed and put on his most contrite look. He wasn’t in the mood for jocularity. Encountering Wimsey had lifted his spirits, but the fact remained, he was losing Rachel. Their difference of philosophy was a wedge between them, and he could see no way over, under, or around it. The next move had to be hers.
“I’m truly sorry, Wimsey. I’ve done all I can. The rest is up to no one but Rachel.”
“That’s what you think,” the ghost muttered darkly.
A knock sounded at the door. Rachel’s voice floated through. “Bryan? Can I come in?”
“Yes.” At least he would get the satisfaction of seeing her face when he introduced her to Wimsey, he thought with a wry smile. He went on folding clothes as she swung the door open and stepped inside the room.
“Who were you talking to?”
He opened his mouth to tell her as he straightened. His gaze went to Rachel’s reflection in the mirror, then his own, then-Wimsey was gone. A black scowl pulled his brows together. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and grumbled, “Myself.”
“Oh.” Rachel looked confused. “That’s funny. I thought I heard another voice.”
“I do that when I’m talking to myself,” he said irritably. “I make up another voice. It makes the conversation seem so much more realistic.”
“That’s kind of odd.”
“I’m an odd person,” he said curtly, snapping his suitcase shut and reaching for another. “What do you expect?”
“I expect you to give me a straight answer,” Rachel said, more than a little irritated by his nasty mood. She’d come there in contrition, after all. The least he could be was polite.
“Fine,” Bryan said, abandoning his packing. “You want a straight answer? I was talking to a ghost. I was talking to a man who was killed in this house fifty-nine years ago. Archibald Wimsey. He was here, but now you can’t see him, so, as we all know, he must not really exist. He’s just a figment of my overactive, irresponsible imagination.”
Rachel winced. “I’m sorry I called you irresponsible. We have different ways of looking at things, you and I. We have different ways of dealing with problems.”
“But I do deal with them, Rachel. I don’t just brush them off and expect you to clean up the mess.”
“I know,” she mumbled, head down.
“Do you?” he asked sharply.
She looked up at him, nibbling the corner of her lip. “I’m willing to learn,” she said sincerely. “Are you willing to show me?”
Bryan sighed wearily, his wide shoulders sagging in defeat. “I’ve been trying to show you all along.”
Rachel thought back across the memories she had stored up in the past weeks, memories of Bryan intervening when things had been going badly between herself and Addie, of his silly diversionary tactics that had kept her from dwelling on her problems. She thought of the way he had come back to find the gold for her and to trap Porchind and Rasmussen. If it hadn’t been for him, she probably would have sold Drake House to the pair and been glad to get what little she could for the place.
Bryan had looked out for her all along. He was simply so unorthodox in his methods, she hadn’t realized what he was up to. Still, she had fallen in love with him in spite of his eccentricities, in spite of thinking he was just another hopeless dreamer. Now she loved him even more.
She put her hands on his solid forearms and looked up at him with her heart in her eyes. “I love you, Bryan. You said you needed me to believe in magic. I believe I love you. I believed that even when I was sure you were the last thing I needed in my life. Isn’t that a kind of magic-believing in something even when you think you shouldn’t?”
“I guess so,” he whispered, lifting a hand to brush at the soft, wild tendrils of spun gold that curled around her face. She was so lovely, and he loved her so much, the thought of leaving her was like cutting out his own heart.
“I do need you in my life, Bryan,” she said, leaning closer. “I need you more than all the gold in California. Please don’t leave me.”
As he stared down at her, his blue eyes misty, there was a strange scraping noise in the hall. It sounded suspiciously like heavy furniture being pushed across the floor. Rachel’s eyes rounded as something bumped against the closed door. She snuggled closer to Bryan, her arms sneaking around his lean waist.
“What was that?” she asked weakly.
Bryan smiled and shook his head. “Just someone trying to make sure I don’t leave you.”
She gave him a puzzled look.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, giving in to the powerful longing. “I don’t have any intention of leaving you for the next hundred years or so.”
Rachel’s spirits soared. “You mean that?”
“I do.”
“What about Hungary and Mr. Huntinglodge?”
“Neither one of them is as important to me as you are. Will you marry me, Rachel?” he asked softly.
“I will,” she whispered, tilting her face up to meet his kiss.
His lips were warm and solid against hers, masculine and welcoming, and trembling just enough to bring a lump to her throat. She melted into his arms, never questioning the sensation of coming home. This was where she belonged. This was where she was safe and warm. This was where she wanted to spend the rest of her days-in the arms of a man who brought magic to her life, who lightened every darkness and put a rainbow in her heart.
“I say, good show.”
Rachel bolted in Bryan’s arms, but he held her fast. He raised his head to shoot the intruder a meaningful look. “No show. Beat it, Wimsey.”
“Wimsey?” Rachel asked, goose bumps pebbling her flesh to the texture of sandpaper.
Bryan nodded, tilting his head in the direction of the mirror that hung above the old dresser. Rachel turned and looked. Her mouth dropped open so hard, it was a wonder it didn’t put a dent in her chest.
There he stood-the figment of her mother’s imagination, the whimsy Bryan had refused to give up on, the ghost she didn’t believe in. His image was slightly translucent. He was handsome and smiling, decked out in formal attire. And he was holding a rose.
Her heart skipped a beat as her gaze fastened on the perfect white bud of the flower. Then her eyes went to the eyes of the man who held it. Wimsey nodded in answer to the questions she couldn’t quite force into words. It had been Wimsey all along.
Now he held the rose out toward her. Rachel turned away from the mirror, twisting in Bryan’s arms to face the apparition that stood by the armoire.
“Thank you,” she whispered, taking the flower by the stem.
“Thank you, my dear,” he murmured in return, his pale eyes shining as he handed her the rose.
Then, in a flash of brilliant white light, he was gone.
“Where did he go?” Rachel asked, never once questioning that he had been there.
“Where he belongs,” Bryan said with a soft smile. “Where he belongs.”
“Then we’re alone?”
/> He nodded.
With a beguiling smile, she wound her arms around his neck. “It seems like now might be a good time for you to start teaching me all about magic.”
“Hmm, yes,” Bryan agreed, his eyes twinkling as he pulled her with him to the bed. They tumbled across the coverlet, laughing and breathless, Rachel’s hair spilling around them like moonlight.
Bryan kissed her cheeks and her eyelids and the corners of her mouth.
“Why don’t we start with making the earth move?” he suggested. “That’s a trick you seem to have a natural aptitude for.”
Rachel grinned and hugged him, loving him with every fiber of her being. He might have been slightly crazy, and he might have been something of a puzzle, but he was all hers, and he would fill her heart with magic every day of her life.
She threaded her fingers through his tawny hair and pulled him down for a long, slow kiss that left him with only one reverent word to say.
“Abracadabra.”
Tami Hoag
***
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