One Touch of Magic

by Amanda McCabe

  Praise for the Romances of Amanda McCabe

  “Flawlessly crafted historical romance.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “An enthralling spell of tender romance with a hint of danger, set against the glittering backdrop of Regency London.”

  —Diane Farr

  “[A] terrific book that kept me engrossed the entire time! A real winner.”

  —Huntress Book Reviews

  “Amanda McCabe has been delighting readers since her debut, and this sweetly engaging tale doesn’t disappoint. She has a talent for bringing ordinary characters into soft focus and making us want the best for them.”

  —Romantic Times

  “An extremely talented new voice.”

  —Romantic Reviews Today

  “McCabe is a welcome addition to the ranks of Regency authors. She creates well-developed characters, both primary and secondary. She re-creates the world of Regency society with a sure hand. She provides a sweet and moving romance.”

  —The Romance Reader

  SIGNET ECLIPSE

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  Published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. One Touch of Magic was previously published in Signet editions.

  First Signet Eclipse Printing, September 2009

  One Touch of Magic copyright © Ammanda McCabe, 2003

  All rights reserved

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  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  With love to my family,

  Mom, Dad, and Sean

  (and Gilbert, Diana, and Victoria, too!)

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Prologue

  The Legend of Thora’s Treasure

  And now, if you will gather around me, I will tell the story of Thora’s Treasure. There is Viking silver and jewels of great worth. There is true love, love that transcends all time; there is deepest, most bitter loss.

  You can see the treasure. But if any person whose heart is not pure removes this treasure, or any part of it, he will be struck from the earth and his name forgotten for all eternity.

  The treasure can only belong to Thora’s true heir—to the one it waits for.

  “And now we commit the body of the Lord’s servant Sir John Iverson to the earth, and we commend his soul to Thee. Amen.”

  Sarah, Lady Iverson, barely heard the vicar’s voice. It seemed to come to her from a very long way away, as if in a dream—or a nightmare.

  She stared through the black tulle of her veil at her husband’s coffin placed across the drawing room. She felt oddly numb. Surely she should feel something? John had been her husband, her dearest friend, her mentor. He had taught her all about history, about how to dig in the earth to find ancient secrets. She should feel such deep grief. Not just this distance, this chill unreality. This . . . numbness. It was so very much like those odd dreams she had been having ever since they started working on the Viking village. She saw the village come to life around her, but she was apart from it all. Just an observer.

  But perhaps the grief would come later, when she was alone. Perhaps this numbness was God’s way of keeping her from breaking down in sobs in front of everyone.

  The vicar ceased speaking, and Sarah automatically murmured “Amen” along with everyone else. She watched as the men stepped forward to prepare to carry John’s coffin from the house to the waiting grave in the churchyard. Still, she could not feel that he was gone. Surely he would wake her up from this dream at any moment, and tell her to quit lazing abed, as they had excavating to do.

  She closed her eyes tightly. Wake up, she thought. Wake up.

  A hand touched her arm, and she opened her eyes. It was not John, of course; it was her best friend, Mrs. Phoebe Seward.

  It was so odd to see Phoebe in black, Sarah thought distractedly. Ordinarily, she was dressed in the brightest colors of the rainbow.

  Phoebe’s pretty, usually merry face was somber as she leaned forward and whispered, “Do you want to say good-bye, Sally?”

  “Oh, yes. Of course.” Sarah stepped up to the coffin, and laid her hand on the smooth wood.

  The chill of it, even through her black glove, at last broke into her numbness, and she knew this was no dream. It was reality. John was gone, and she was alone.

  A sob broke from her, and she pressed her hand to her mouth. Phoebe’s grip tightened on Sarah’s arm, and she led her away from the coffin back to the settee, as the men carried John out. Sarah’s mother, Lady Bellweather, her two younger sisters, Mary Ann and Kitty, and John’s friend, Mr. Neville Hamilton, waited for Sarah to be settled, then sat down around her.

  Sarah was glad of their familiar company
, glad to not be alone.

  Until her mother started talking.

  Lady Bellweather smoothed her heavily jet-beaded cloak over her capacious bosom, and said, “Well, Sarah. You know how I hate to say I told you so, but I knew when you married Sir John it would end badly. He was so much older than you, and always mucking about in the dirt digging up old things. He was rich, to be sure, but not suitable for a pretty, young girl. Now here you are, a widow at twenty-two.” Lady Bellweather sighed deeply, setting the black feathers in her bonnet to trembling.

  Sarah stared at her mother in shock. She had certainly heard her make some tactless remarks before—Lady Bellweather was not known in her circles for finesse and tact. But this—this was beyond endurance. Sarah pressed her handkerchief hard against her mouth, so hard that she tasted blood, so she would not say something very rude indeed. Words no lady ever spoke to her mother. She owed John the respect of not making a family scene on today of all days.

  Sarah’s sister Mary Ann looked at their mother with wide, shocked dark eyes. “Mama! Sarah is grief-stricken. She loved Sir John. How can you say such things?”

  Lady Bellweather had the grace to look at least a bit ashamed. She smoothed her cloak again, and said in a quieter voice, “I am sorry, Sarah. But you know that I must speak as I find. Sir John was a good man, but not the most suitable of husbands for a young girl.”

  Sarah looked away, out over the drawing room. The very chairs and tables were well known to her, since she had lived in this house with her husband for over four years, but she did not see them. Her anger at her mother’s words ebbed away, leaving her just tired and sad.

  It was true that there had been no passion in her marriage with John. He had been thirty years her senior, a famous scholar and antiquarian, and still devoted to the memory of his late first wife. But there had been fondness, and a shared love for his last project—the excavation of a Viking village on an estate near York.

  Sarah smiled as she remembered their work. That village was John’s legacy to her, and she would finish the work as her final gift to him.

  She looked over at where Neville Hamilton sat, his sunburned face, nearly as red as his hair, pensive and sad. She knew that Neville, her husband’s friend and colleague, who had been assisting them with the village, expected her to give the work over to him now. He—and everyone else—expected her to go off to Bath or Brighton, and live as a rich young widow until she remarried.

  Well, they could expect all they wanted. That sort of life was not for her. It never had been, and never would be. She was going to finish excavating the village, and write a monograph on their findings there.

  And then—she would find a new project and start all over again.

  “Please, sir. A coin for a wounded soldier.”

  Major Miles Rutledge stopped abruptly in his hurrying tracks to stare down at the man who sat on the pavement, carefully balanced on a low stool. The thin, dirty hand that held out a battered tin cup shook slightly; a crudely carved cane lay on the ground beside him.

  Pinned to his tattered coat was a brightly shining Waterloo medal.

  Miles had seen dozens of such men in just the three days since he had arrived in London to spend what was left of the Season with his mother. There was no work for them at all; the economy was in such poor straits that there could not possibly be incomes for so many returning soldiers. They had served so bravely, had risked their very lives for their country, only to come home and watch their families starve, while they stood by helpless. Beggary was rampant.

  Miles felt anger, white hot and futile, well up inside him, as it had so very often in these last few days. He had become accustomed to taking care of the men in his regiment while on the Peninsula. Here, he felt a helpless rage. He gave them coins and food, listened to their stories, gave them advice whenever he could. That was not nearly enough. It did not make their lives better. He sat awake at night, feeling guilty for all the advantages he enjoyed, for his family’s more-than-comfortable situation, when good men were hungry.

  There had to be more he could do.

  As he stepped closer to put a coin in the cup, the man looked up. He was quite startlingly young, and thin faced. His bloodshot eyes widened as he saw Miles’s uniform.

  “So you’re an officer in the Forty-first Foot,” he said.

  “Not for much longer,” Miles answered. He dropped the coin with a clatter—it had obviously not been a good day, for the cup was nearly empty. Then he knelt down beside the man, uncaring of his greatcoat that swept into the dust and rubbish of the pavement. “I am resigning my commission. It’s time for a civilian life.”

  The man laughed bitterly. “Aye, well, the civilian life isn’t all they said it would be. I’m Lieutenant Patrick O’Riley, as was, of the Twenty-first. Your regiment did some brave fighting at Talavera.”

  “As did yours.” For one moment, Miles allowed himself to remember that day, the smoke and mud and blood, the stink of death. It had been hell on earth, and this man had also faced it.

  Miles shook his head to try to clear it of the horrible images, and stared out at the busy London street. People bustled about, going on their business, not even seeing the men sitting there. Sometimes, a well-dressed gentleman or lady would eye his officer’s uniform with puzzlement, or frown as if they knew him from somewhere, but they, too, were quick to pass.

  “What did you do before you went into the Army, Lieutenant O’Riley?” he asked.

  “I lived and worked on my uncle’s farm in Ireland, and was very good at it, if I say so myself. I would have gone back there after the war, but there was a quarrel with my cousins, who own the land now.” Lieutenant O’Riley eyed Miles speculatively. “You wouldn’t happen to have a farm, would you, sir?”

  Miles laughed. “I fear not! My father was a younger brother, before his death last year, and had only a very small estate. It’s mostly given over to raising horses.”

  Then he thought of something. His uncle, Lord Ransome, had a vast estate, with much farmland lying fallow. There had to be many jobs there, and he, Miles, was his bachelor uncle’s heir. . . .

  A great wave of self-disgust broke over him. It was all his mother chatted about, him inheriting Ransome Hall, but he could not wish for anyone’s death to bring him good fortune. Even though he and his uncle were not close—Lord Ransome was a dedicated scholar and antiquarian, something that military Miles could not fully appreciate—he liked the old man. And what he did with his land was his own business.

  Miles just had to find some other way of helping these poor, gallant men.

  Chapter One

  One Year Later

  “Death! Destruction! Betrayal!” Phoebe Seward gasped melodramatically, twirled about in a flare of bright yellow silk skirts, and fell back onto a settee, one hand pressed to her brow. “The curse is upon me!”

  Sarah laughed helplessly, and pushed aside the piles of books and papers on her desk. Who could concentrate on studies when Phoebe was about? “Oh, Phoebe, do stop,” she gasped.

  Phoebe peeked at her from beneath her hand. “Aren’t you just the tiniest bit worried about the curse, Sally?”

  “Not a bit! Except that it has scared some of my more superstitious workers away. Thora’s Treasure, and its accompanying curse, is just a legend. All places like this have them. That site in Ireland John and I worked on supposedly had leprechauns guarding it! I never saw hide nor hair of the little men, though.”

  Phoebe lounged back on the settee, stretching her legs out on the brocade cushions. “What about the cave-in at the cellar of the old leather-worker’s shop?”

  Sarah shook her head. “That was merely some of the aforementioned superstitious workers trying to frighten me away. Some of them believe that if I leave, and the village is covered up again, Thora will not be tempted to smite anyone. But I will not be frightened away by such nonsense. This work is far too important, and we have learned so much from it already.” Sarah picked up one of her sketches from the vil
lage, a plan of the great-room of a house. “There is much still to be found, I am sure.”

  “Such as treasure?”

  “Such as burials, and goldsmiths’ shops, and bakers!”

  Phoebe sighed. “I have always said you have no romance in your soul, Sally Bellweather.”

  Sarah laughed. “Perhaps not. You have enough romance for both of us! You and my sister Mary Ann. And I have better things to worry about than curses.”

  Phoebe leaned forward, her golden hair falling back over her shoulder. “Has something happened that you have not told me about? Something to cause you worry?”

  “The new marquis is coming to Ransome Hall. I had a letter last week from his attorney.”

  “Oh, no! Does he want you to leave?”

  Sarah shook her head. “Not at present. But he will want to meet with me to . . .” She dug about in her papers until she found the letter, and read a bit of it aloud. “To discuss my future tenancy of the property.”

  The paper trembled in her hand. The Viking village was located on a corner of the estate owned by the Marquis of Ransome. The old marquis had been a friend of Sir John’s, and had gladly let them do what they liked on it, had even rented them this house, an old hunting box. He had continued the arrangement with Sarah after John’s death, but now the marquis himself had died, nearly a month before.

  Sarah knew nothing of the new Lord Ransome, except that he was the old marquis’s nephew, and a military man only lately returned to England after valiant service on the Peninsula and at Waterloo.

  She feared a military gentleman might have no patience with her work, with the scholarly nature of it, and the fact that it was a female who led the project. She had tried not to think of it these past few days, tried to just enjoy Phoebe’s visit, but it was always at the back of her mind. She had hoped Lord Ransome would stay away for a good long while.