Raven Witch

by Cach, Lisa

  “Ah. That’s all right, then. Where be your aunt? I haven’t seen her about.”

  “She, er…” She could not come up with a lie that would suit. She should have thought of this. Daniel would not be the only one wondering why Theresa had disappeared of late.

  “It’s the death of old George, I imagine,” Daniel filled in. “We all knew—well, we didn’t expect she’d want to come back here much after that. It was surprised I was, that one day she did come.”

  “She was fond of the old baron.”

  “And he of her. Or so I hear, and that’s just gossip.” He gave her a long look, one that said as plain as spoken words that he knew she had taken over with Nathaniel the role they all thought Theresa had held with old George.

  Valerian excused herself and escaped to the greenhouse, her cheeks flaming. It was obvious that Daniel did not approve of her behavior, and it surprised her. She had thought no one here cared a whit for her virtue or lack thereof, as long as she stayed away from their own sons and husbands. Daniel looked as if he cared about her behavior for her own sake.

  She set to work with petty resentments churning in her gut. It’s not his or anyone else’s affair what I do, she grouched silently, carefully scoring a seed pod. They could have found me a husband, if it mattered so much with whom I slept. Behind those thoughts, though, was the memory of her mother, who had chosen to marry and had intended that her daughter do the same. But her mother had intended her to grow up with both her parents, as well, and that had not happened.

  For a moment she wanted to blame Aunt Theresa for her easy fall from virtue, and just as quickly banished the thought. Her aunt and her mother had been cut from different cloth, but both had loved her without reservation, and done their best for her. She was old enough to take responsibility for her own decisions, and to deal with the consequences.

  Milky resin was already beginning to bead along the scores on the poppy pods, and Valerian moved on to tend to other flora. The sun slipped from behind a cloud, heating the room, creating a steamy warmth rich with the scent of earth and greenery. Valerian hummed softly under her breath as she worked, loving the feel of dirt in her hands, and imagined herself on some far away isle in the Indies, tending tropical flowers in her plantation garden.

  Her reverie was gradually interrupted by the sound of female voices approaching. She looked up in time to see two women go past outside the glass wall in front of her, their bright dresses turned to shimmering watercolor by the sunlight and waved panes. They settled on a bench near the garden entrance to the greenhouse, and even as she told herself she should not, Valerian found herself moving slowly to that end of the building, where she might be able to listen in on their conversation.

  “I can’t imagine that he will remain here past the summer,” one of the women said, her voice high and cultured and, Valerian thought, quite smug.

  “But his family, the scandal—”

  “Pish, Beth. What scandal? A trollop drowns herself, and it’s a scandal? No, they’ll have him back, and be glad of it, too. And they will most especially welcome a wife.”

  “Kate! Has he—” Beth seemed unable to voice the stunning thought, but at last managed. “Has he spoken to you?” Valerian hung on the answer as much as Beth.

  “La, well, not precisely,” Kate said.

  Valerian gave a fierce nod of her head. Of course he had not!

  “But I have a strong sense it is in his mind,” Kate continued. “And would we not make a fine match?”

  Valerian shook her head in denial.

  “Certainly my own parents would approve, for all that they think him a bit too fast.”

  “I can only pray they never learn you are here now,” Beth said. “Christopher is not the most scrupulous of chaperones, nor protective of brothers.”

  “He is a gift,” Kate said, laughing, then turned her head and caught a glimpse of Valerian through the glass. “I say, Beth! We have a little spy upon us!”

  Valerian winced in dismay at being caught, and tried to slink away back down the aisle.

  Kate moved more quickly than Valerian would have thought a woman in such a voluminous gown could, coming around to the entrance to the greenhouse, Beth stumbling after.

  Valerian ducked her head and dipped a curtsy. Perhaps if she put on an adequate display of servitude, they would the more quickly abandon her. “Mistress,” she said to her muddy shoes, “I was tending to the plants. I was not eavesdropping.”

  “Look at me, girl.”

  Valerian raised her face and met the full force of a slap. She gasped, her hand going to her cheek.

  “‘Tis bad enough to spy, but you lie as well.”

  Valerian barely heard the words. Rage such as she had never known boiled up within her. She dropped her hand and met Kate’s eyes straight on, putting the full force of her anger in her gaze. She bared her teeth, only vaguely aware that a purely animal growl rumbled from her throat.

  Beth grabbed Kate’s arm, trying to pull her away, but Kate stood frozen, her face draining of color at the ferocity of Valerian’s response, so unexpected from a servant. Very faintly, she began to shake.

  Valerian wanted to slap her, to spit on her, to drag her dirty hands down her face and over her pristine bodice, and knew even as she wished it, even as her eyes told Kate that she would tear her to shreds, that she would not. She was better than that.

  Like a dog who is not willing to make good on his threat, she was now stuck wondering how to end the confrontation. She stepped forward, purposefully increasing the volume of her growls, and Kate showed her first hint of good sense and stepped back. Step by step Valerian intimidated her out of the greenhouse, helped along by Beth’s hand on Kate’s arm.

  She was about to slam shut the door when the worst happened. Both Paul and Nathaniel appeared behind the two women.

  “Thank heavens!” Beth cried, dropping Kate’s arm and grasping now onto the baron’s. “This horrid creature, stop her, she is completely mad—”

  Valerian dropped her growl and turned her narrowed eyes on Nathaniel.

  Nathaniel patted Beth’s hand where it clung to his jacket and interrupted her hysterical babble. “She looks to be completely in control of herself. I am certain you were in no danger.”

  Kate turned to him at that, regaining her boldness at the arrival of a champion. “She is a lying little sneak, and dared to threaten me when I caught her at it. You must dismiss her immediately.”

  “That would be a trifle difficult, as she is not a member of my staff.”

  Valerian glared at him. Why did he not go along with the assumption that she was a servant? She had told him that she did not want to meet his friends! He could not mean to reveal their relationship, especially not here, not like this.

  “You have had the good fortune, Kate,” Nathaniel continued, “of making the acquaintance of the local healer.” Valerian exhaled in relief, although the feeling vanished when Paul added his own comments.

  “And the resident witch,” Paul said. “You should count yourself lucky if all she did was threaten you. She could have done much worse, you may rely upon it.”

  Both women made the hand symbol for defense against the evil eye. Valerian rolled her eyes, stepped back, and shut the greenhouse door in their faces.

  There was an immediate babble of female voices, overlaid with the deep, patronizing tones of men trying to soothe and calm. She stomped down the greenhouse to the hand pump and washed her hands, then set to work scraping the now-black resin from the poppy pods.

  Moments later Valerian heard Nathaniel not so gently direct Paul to return the ladies to the house. The door opened, and his measured footsteps approached where she worked, her back to him. She scraped the knife-load of resin off into a vial. “You could have gone along with what she first thought,” she said without turning.

  “And that would have been better?”

  He put his hand on the small of her back, the heavy, comforting weight of it going straight
to her gut. She turned, breaking the contact.

  “Why did you come here and risk a confrontation?” he asked. “You said you would not.”

  She made a gesture towards the plants, not meeting his eyes. “I had to.”

  His hand nudged her chin up so she had to look at him, then his fingers brushed lightly over her cheek where Kate had slapped her. She was undone by the compassion she saw there.

  “I did lie to her, you know,” she said. “I was eavesdropping, and quite intentionally.”

  “And I suppose you threatened her, too.”

  “I wanted to rip her eyes out even before she caught me spying.”

  “Why?”

  A simple question, and such an ugly answer. “Because! Because I was jealous.”

  That drew a laugh from him, but her glare quickly stopped it. Or at least stopped any audible chuckles. His eyes danced most suspiciously.

  “I am not as good-natured about your guests as I led you to believe,” she said. “I’m not just jealous of her, scrawny little Kate in her garish dresses. I am jealous of the lot of them, of the time you spend in their company. I wish none of them had ever come!” There. Now she had done it. Aunt Theresa’s good advice all thrown to the devil.

  “All this time you have claimed to have spent deworming children and dosing coughs, you truly were mooning over my absence, then?”

  “Well, not precisely. Worms must be dealt with, but it was you I thought of while I did it.”

  His kiss was as sudden as the slap had been, but a hundred times more gentle. One moment she was debasing herself with a display of neediness and jealousy, and the next she was being held tight in his arms.

  Just as suddenly he pushed her away, although holding her steady by her shoulders. “We can’t do this here.”

  Valerian blinked around her at the glass walls. No, not the best of locations for a tryst. “I didn’t want to make you feel guilty for spending time with your friends,” she said, back on what had become a safer topic.

  He looked at her quizzically. “My guilt or lack thereof is my own responsibility. You cannot make me feel it if I do not agree it is warranted.”

  She thought a moment, thinking it sounded like something Aunt Theresa would say. “I believe that makes a certain sense,” she admitted, then moved forward in his arms until she could lean her cheek against his chest and hear his heart beating beneath her ear. “You know, I thought this would all be much easier than it is,” she said.

  “All what?” he asked into her hair.

  “Having a lover. I want you to see the best of me, and yet somehow it is the petty and insecure part that comes out. I grow selfish of you. I want more of you than you can give. I have all the generosity and reason of a two-year-old where you are concerned.”

  “Perhaps it would have been better if I had never noticed you, and left you to your worms and boils, if this is causing you such misery.”

  She shook her head in fierce denial. She could not explain to him the importance of this joyful torture. It was life to her, when all else was turning to death. “I would not trade this for the world.” Aunt Theresa’s cautions not to press him for commitments or declarations came back to her at that admission, which she knew to be too much, too soon. “It’s a marvelous chance to learn about men, after all,” she said to cover herself.

  “I hope I don’t discover you poised with dissecting knife in hand above my helpless body some night.”

  “Rest assured, I would drug you first. You wouldn’t feel a thing.”

  “All in the name of science,” he said, and did not resist when she pulled away.

  “Of course. And now, dear sir, I truly must finish my work here. I have no desire to stay and risk another meeting with the charming Kate.” Which was only partly the truth. She had been away from Aunt Theresa all morning and it was time she got back, much as she wanted to stay in his arms come Kate or Paul or Hades himself.

  “Would you like a chance to meet her on equal ground?”

  “A duel? Nathaniel, how delightful of you to suggest it. Do you think I’d do better with swords or pistols?”

  He smiled. “We are to have a masked ball. The gentry of the entire district is to be invited. I thought you might enjoy attending, as a pirate with both sword and pistols if you wish.” He raised a brow at her. “You could tell yourself it was purely an educational experience. I know you are above such motives as revenge, curiosity, or hedonistic pleasure. Not that I believe there is much pleasure to be found at a ball, but it has been my experience that women feel differently.”

  “I truly do not want another confrontation with her,” Valerian said more seriously.

  “Your face will be concealed, my dear. No one will know who you are. You can disappear before the unmasking.”

  Her instincts told her it was a bad idea. She would be stepping beyond her station to attend and opening herself to all manner of ridicule if discovered.

  But if she went, she could show Kate that Nathaniel preferred another’s company, could drive out any illusions the woman had that he could want to marry her.

  And perhaps there would never be another chance to attend such a party. For all that she had always claimed to have no desire to live that sort of life, honesty compelled her to admit she was curious. For a moment, her head was filled with candles and music and swirling colors. She saw herself with her hair piled high, a black mask concealing her features, moving amongst the lot of them as if she belonged. And perhaps she could, for one night.

  She smiled up at him. “It sounds splendid.”

  “I don’t know what he was thinking,” Valerian said, and dropped heavily into the chair by the fire. “I don’t know what I was thinking, to have agreed to go.”

  “I’m not certain that this is a good idea,” Theresa said from the opposite chair, a blanket up over her legs. Her stout health had deteriorated to gauntness, and her skin was taking on a yellow tone, but she seemed happiest trying to take part in day-to-day life, so Valerian had ceased encouraging her to stay in bed.

  “You’re the one who kept saying I should have the chance to go to balls and parties. I had thought you would take his side in this.”

  “I didn’t mean for you to sneak in by disguise, as if you were a secret to be hidden.”

  “It is a fancy-dress ball.”

  Theresa snorted. “You know what I mean.”

  Valerian picked at the end of her braid. “I confess, I’m curious. I have after all never been to a ball before.” She looked up at her aunt, and saw her wry smile. “You’re not going to say ‘I told you so,’ are you? I couldn’t stand it if you did.”

  “Certainly not. I have more restraint than that.”

  Valerian narrowed her eyes at her aunt, hearing the faint whisper of smothered laughter. “But perhaps I will not go. I have nothing to wear.”

  “That, at least, I may be able to help you with. Go pull the chest from beneath my bed.”

  “Your special box?”

  Valerian went to the bed and knelt on the hard floor, peering under the bed at the shadows and dark shapes. At last she located the long, low wooden chest, and dragged it forth by the tarnished brass handle on the end. Theresa got up and slowly made her way over to the bed, sitting down on its edge with an audible sigh.

  “There now, open it up,” she said. “There are other things in there you should see as well.”

  Valerian lifted the lid, and was overwhelmed by the scent of the herbs used to keep moths away. She had only seen Theresa open the box a few times before, to place inside keepsakes that might perish if kept loose in the cottage. A few of Charmaine’s baby clothes were inside, as well as a drawing of Valerian’s mother, Emmeline.

  At Theresa’s instruction she lifted these out, as well as a small bundle of letters, one of Valerian’s first carved animals, and several other items. It was soon apparent that the chest had two compartments, and Valerian lifted out the wooden tray to reveal what lay beneath.

  “Good
god!” Valerian swore, gazing at what was revealed.

  “You would make a fine forest maiden in that. Or perhaps a druidic priestess or elven queen.”

  Valerian reached out a hand to gently touch the emerald silk gown folded and half-crushed from its long stay in the bottom of the chest. Jet beads picked out a pattern of trailing ivy across the bodice, narrowing down to the waist. She lifted the gown from the box and saw that one tendril of ivy continued down the front of the gown, then widened like spilled water to splash around the hem.

  “It was the dress I wore the night your mother and I fled London, the night our own mother was killed,” Theresa explained. “I was never certain why I kept it.” She took one of the creases of silk between her fingers. “It will need a good airing, that’s for certain. And the attentions of an iron.”

  “Are you certain you want me to wear this?”

  Theresa raised an expressive eyebrow at her. “Do you think I am saving it for a party invitation myself? Now, being a masquerade, we might baste a bit of real ivy over the hem—”

  “Gracious, no! I can hardly see fit to wear the gown, much less destroy it with sewn-on vines.”

  Theresa shrugged. “Then I suppose we could twine the ivy in your hair. And a mask, we will have to make a mask. But that can wait for the moment. Here now, lay the gown over the table. There is something more I need to show you.”

  Valerian did as bid, and returned to the trunk. Two velvet pouches sat in bottom corners of the trunk. She knelt down and lifted the nearest, feeling the unmistakable clink of coins. Her eyes were wide as she handed the bag up to Theresa.

  “This is what is left of the gold your mother and I took that night, from the hiding place at our home.” She opened the drawstring and poured the coins into her lap, one coin sliding off to thunk on the floor. “There is enough here for you to establish yourself in another town, if the need ever arises. You can disappear as thoroughly as your mother and I did.”

  “It has lasted all these years?”

  “The bag was considerably fuller when I started. I purchased the cottage and furnishings, and when times have been hard I have dipped into it. But beyond that, there has not been much in Greyfriars worth spending it upon, compared to saving it to save our lives, if necessary.”