Uncertain Magic

by Laura Kinsale

  “Please don’t be angry!” She was half frightened by the way his palm tightened over the fragile crystal. “I can’t expect you to change your—your way of life, I know! But I thought that if you realized…if I made you aware…that I would perfectly understand and approve if you should…prefer to go elsewhere for…your pleasure…” Her voice trailed off in mortification.

  He did not say anything. He only stood rigid for an excruciatingly long moment before his fingers curled around the glass. With movements that were more stilted than his usual easy grace, he poured himself another drink from the decanter on the table. He took a swallow, and turned to her. “I am to go elsewhere,” he repeated coolly. “I collect I am also expected to extend to you the same…permission?”

  Roddy blinked in shock. “No, my lord. I wouldn’t—”

  “No,” he agreed, with dangerous mildness. “You wouldn’t, my dear. That I assure you.” He finished the drink in another swallow and took a step toward Roddy. She flinched back a little, afraid of how her body might betray her if he chose to exercise his lethal magic. He stopped, his blue eyes quick to catch the tiny movement. “I beg your pardon. I misunderstood. I am to go elsewhere and leave you in peace.”

  “Yes!” Roddy came to her feet. God, how she hated this—how she wanted him to hold her and stroke her hair and kiss her until she could not stand. But there was Liza. There was Liza, waiting for him. Roddy turned her back. “Leave me in peace!”

  There was silence behind her. And then: “For how long?”

  Forever. Never. Oh, now, she thought helplessly. Love me now. She opened her mouth, but no words came out past the knot in her throat.

  “Second thoughts, little girl?” he asked bitterly. “Have your regrets caught up with you this afternoon?”

  She flinched at the sneer in his voice, not knowing how to answer.

  The silence stretched, dark and painful. After a long time, he asked harshly, “Are you thinking of divorce?”

  Roddy gripped the arm of the chair and shook her head.

  “Good,” he said softly. She heard his footsteps, long strides toward the door. He stopped, halfway there, and looked back at her.

  “Good,” he said again, out of the shadows. “Because I warn you, my love. You may talk of peace, but I’ll hold you by force before I’ll let our marriage be dissolved.”

  She lay awake all night listening for the carriage, but if it came or went in the court below her window, she did not hear, or feel any stirring among the servants through her gift. Alone in the great, cold bed—alone for the first time since she had left her home—she stared at a shaft of moonlight between the bed-curtains as it drifted across the other pillow.

  Regrets. She had a hundred of them. A hundred thousand. Regrets tumbled around in her head and lay next to her on the bed and piled chin-deep against the windowpane watching for a carriage.

  “Did your regrets catch up with you this afternoon?” a demon-voice whispered through her waking dreams. “Regrets,” the walls answered as she twisted and turned and tangled in the bedclothes. “Your regrets. This afternoon.” The night echoed with the words. “This afternoon. This afternoon.”

  She knotted the pillow and buried her face in it.

  What did he mean by that?

  Liza. He might have thought Roddy knew the truth, that Liza was his mistress and he meant to keep her. He might have meant that Roddy had been warned. “Say you won’t marry me…” It had been her choice, for better or for worse. And now her regrets had caught up with her.

  But he had been so angry. Since that moment she had turned in Geoffrey’s arms— Roddy sat bolt upright in the bed.

  Geoffrey.

  A crystallized vision burst in her mind, of that moment when the Duke of Stratton had reached for her and Faelan had moved to stop him. The same look—it had been the same look on his face: a primeval rage, come and gone in an instant, too quick for Roddy in her inexperience to see. But the duke had caught it, and known it for what it was.

  Roddy struggled out of the bed, pushing back the curtains to find the first chilly light of dawn in the room. She dressed by herself in her country clothes—flannel undergarments, a warm woolen calash, and sturdy wooden pattens over her shoes. The house servants were just awake and beginning to stir, but when she reached the stable she found the horses all fed and the undergrooms already at work slapping the circulation into their charges’ coats with braided wisps of straw.

  She smiled good morning at the head coachman, and complimented him on a well-run stable. “Quite as excellent as my father’s,” she said generously, and defused his astonishment at finding the new young mistress unannounced in the stableyard at dawn by engaging in a detailed description of how her parent’s famous operation began each day.

  By degrees, she led him into a discussion of the daily routine of the Banain House stable, and finally found an unobjectionable place to insert a question about which horses were used when the carriage went out after dark on such a chilly night as last.

  She did not even have to use her gift to interpret his ready answer.

  “Oh, that’d be Dogs and old Charlie, m’lady. They go on great guns in the cold. Blest if the two of ’em warn’t disappointed when the House sent round last night to say that His Lordship wudn’t a-going out after all like Mr. Minshall ’ud thought. They gets an extra measure of oats if they go in the dark, and they do know it, m’lady. Animals is smarter than some people thinks, as you needs must know, ma’am, bein’ so familiar with Mr. Delamore’s stable an’ all.”

  Roddy blinked at the beefy coachman. Faelan changed his mind. He didn’t go to Blandford Street.

  And he was jealous of Geoffrey.

  “Without a doubt,” Roddy agreed joyously. “Without a shadow of a doubt, Mr. Carter. I’d better go back inside now. Good morning to you.”

  The great entrance hall was empty when she slipped off her pattens and tiptoed in. At the far end, the door to the library stood partly open, and through her talent the soft voices of the two people inside were clear in her head.

  “’Twere here when I come in, mum!” a young and anxious maid was saying. “I fetched you, mum, on the quick—I didn’t do it, on my grave! I never done nothing but opened the door and went to trim the candles, and I saw it then, mum. I come right away to find you!”

  “Fetch a broom, then!” It was the housekeeper, flustered and trying to hide it. “’Tis plain you didn’t break the thing. But for pity’s sake, clean it up and have it out of here.”

  “Yes, mum.” The maid scurried for the door. “Yes, mum.”

  Roddy drew back into the wide doorframe of the drawing room as the housekeeper and the maid came out in the hall and disappeared in silent servant fashion behind the curving stairs.

  After they had left, Roddy set the wooden clogs down and moved toward the library door. She did not want to. She knew what she would find; what the two servants had seen that had put them into such a flutter of dismay. She went halfway into the room and stopped, her eyes fastened on the white marble hearth and the cold ashes within.

  Shards of broken crystal covered the stone, flashing prisms of color in the red light of the rising sun. Across the dark wood of the mantel, a vicious scar showed raw and pale above the broken neck of the decanter that had struck it.

  But worse, far worse, was what lay smashed among the dead coals.

  Her music box.

  “M’lady,” said a horrified voice. The young maid hurried into the room with her pail and broom. “Oh, m’lady, I beg your pardon, but I didn’t do it. Mrs. Clarke, she kin tell you, m’lady.”

  Roddy slowly tore her eyes away. “Of course you didn’t do it.”

  The maid stared at Roddy, and then ducked and began to sweep vigorously at the broken pieces. The girl knew she was not supposed to speak to the young mistress unless spoken to, but in her fright her mouth would not be still. “I’ll have it gone in an instant, m’lady. ’Twere a terrible accident His Lordship had,” she expla
ined breathlessly, stooping to retrieve the music box. “A terrible, terrible accident—”

  “I’ll take that,” Roddy said, holding out her hand.

  The maid looked up. “Oh, my lady,” she said in a stricken whisper. “It is yours?”

  Roddy did not answer. She did not have to. The girl laid the charred and broken remains of the music box reverently in Roddy’s hands.

  “I’m sorry, m’lady.” The maid’s voice was soft and miserable. “I’m so sorry. Such a pretty box…” She raised her eyes, and they were glittering with tears. “I’m sure it were an accident, m’lady. His Lordship—he wouldn’t…oh, mum—such a pretty, pretty box.”

  “Yes,” Roddy said.

  And they both knew it had not been an accident.

  The maid finished her task hurriedly. With a quick, anxious curtsy, she scuffled away toward the door. Halfway there, a frightened “Oh!” escaped her, and she dropped into another panicked curtsy, clattering her pail loudly on the floor. “Beg pardon. Beg pardon, m’lord,” she squeaked, and slid out and away into the nether regions of domestic safety.

  Faelan stood in the hall just outside the library door, looking over his shoulder, frozen in the motion of pulling on his gloves.

  In the slanted light of dawn he might have been a vision: an illusion of heaven and hell, perfect and beautiful and macabre in his dark cloak and his eyes like ice burning.

  His gaze was fixed on her hands. Her fingers closed on the broken box in sudden protectiveness, as if he might stride across the room and snatch it away from her and fling it back into the fireplace again.

  “My lady,” he said, lifting his eyes with a faint, grim smile. “Perhaps in the future, you’ll remember your belongings when you retire.”

  He raised his gloved hand in half-salute and was gone, leaving behind only the booming echo of the great front door.

  Roddy pressed the box closer, not caring that it had been cracked and broken beyond repair. She would keep it, as she’d promised. Forever.

  Because if he was human and not marble; if his heart and his mind were flesh and blood—then he said hurtful things because he was hurting.

  And he hurt now because she had the power to wound him.

  Chapter 8

  She kept repeating it to herself.

  He’s jealous. He’s only jealous.

  He didn’t go to Liza.

  But neither did he come home. Not until long, long after darkness had fallen and the city lay in heavy sleep. In the distance a watchman called three o’clock, and as Roddy sat in the library in the chair Faelan had used the night before, she could only stare into the fire and imagine a small carved box among the flames.

  She had sent Minshall and Jane to bed, but the little maid, Martha, insisted on sitting up to keep the fire as long as the young mistress was awake and waiting for her lord. Roddy could not have borne Jane, or more particularly Minshall, who had his notions of where His Lordship might be, but Martha was too innocent—or ignorant—to suspect that Faelan had gone after all to his paramour. Poor Martha dozed off in her corner dreaming of robbers and cutthroats. Between the two opinions, Roddy was not entirely sure she didn’t wish for Martha to be right. Faelan, Roddy was certain, could handle any number of mere criminals.

  A woman like Liza he could handle only too well.

  At half past three, she felt the first touch of movement amid the sleeping streets. The horses in the stable stirred, and then the sound of metal shoes rang in the empty court. Martha snuffled and sat up with a start, looking at Roddy with round eyes.

  “Go to bed now,” Roddy said softly. “He’s come.”

  Martha jumped up and added a log to the fire, relief and reluctance warring in her mind. Soft voices drifted from outside in the quiet, and then came the sound of booted feet on the stone steps. The maid hesitated at the library door, then took hold of all her courage and drew herself up, like a rabbit preparing to defend her single nestling from the approaching fox. “It may be I ought to stay, m’lady,” she said, in a voice that shook with the enormity of her own rashness. “Beg pardon, ma’am, beg pardon, but…His Lordship’s temper—”

  “Go on,” Roddy said. She smiled as best she could manage. “I shall be quite all right.”

  Martha’s resolve failed her at the sound of the front door opening. She bobbed and gasped, “Yes, m’lady,” and fled.

  Roddy stood waiting alone by the fire.

  She felt no steadier than Martha. Roddy hardly even knew why she had waited up for him. If it had been in some tenuous hope that she could somehow make things back into what they had been, that dream vanished the moment he appeared in the doorway.

  He stood there, the same cloaked and unfathomable image she had seen in the dawn. Only this time—this time he did not raise his hand to her and pass on. Instead, he stepped over the threshold and pulled the door softly shut behind him.

  It took all of Roddy’s self-control not to take a step backward away from him.

  It was Liza’s Faelan that Roddy saw. Black night and flame. Hellfire and ice. When he smiled at her, she went cold to the tips of her fingers.

  But somewhere, deep, there was an answering flame in her. She would not have run from him if she could have made her feet move.

  “Waiting?” he murmured.

  Roddy swallowed. She nodded.

  “I’m here,” he said softly.

  It was an invitation and an order…a vortex that dragged her down into the blue depths of his eyes.

  “Where have you been?” she whispered.

  “Visiting.” His gaze held hers. “A friend.”

  Liza.

  Roddy looked at the floor.

  “I have your permission, have I not?” The words were gentle. Horrible. He made a careless motion of his hand, as if beckoning a servant. Come here, that meant, and like a servant she obeyed, moving out of the warm ring of firelight into the shadow.

  A trace of cold night air hung about him, a faint breath of smoke. She had expected perfume—Liza’s perfume—but instead there was something else…something familiar. A sudden and disparate memory of the fields at home in Yorkshire leaped into her mind.

  She forgot it in the next moment.

  He held out his hand, palm downward. “Lady Iveragh,” he murmured. “Will you help me with my gloves?”

  She wet her lips. This was punishment, she knew. There was banked anger in that steady hand, in every cool and controlled move he made.

  She reached out, and worked the black leather off his long fingers. She looked down at them and felt tears prick her eyes as she thought of where he had been, whom he had been with. His hands were so beautiful, so strong and perfect. Why did it have to be this way? Why couldn’t he be hers alone?

  He curled the glove in his fingers and brushed her cheek with the soft kidskin. “Your Ladyship,” he murmured mockingly. “Did you miss me today?”

  “Yes.” It was barely audible.

  His hand slid downward, his thumb tracing her throat. “In the absence of other company.” The light chill of his touch warmed as it rested against her skin. He raised her chin slowly with his fist. “‘Poppet,’” he said, repeating Geoffrey’s endearment with a trace of derision. Faelan stared down into her eyes, direct—the only one who ever did so. “Gods, the man must be blind.”

  He drew the black leather slowly upward, shaping her brows, her mouth and jaw. Her heart began to pound in anticipation. She tried to remember her pride. She tried. She did not have to let him touch her like this, not when he kept a mistress who would do the same. As his wife, she had only to allow him his rights if he demanded them. She should be cold, for the sake of her sanity. She should be stone.

  But instead, she was all melting heat and weakness.

  He saw it. He smiled, as a wolf would smile at its cornered quarry. “Can you bear this?” he asked as the glove fell carelessly from his fingers. His hands slipped beneath her shawl. He cupped her breast with his bared palm and caressed the swelling tip
beneath the fabric of her gown, bending to her, pressing his mouth to the tender place below her ear. “Can you suffer my touch?” he whispered harshly.

  Roddy tried to speak, but her body was aching for his familiar torture. The sound came out a reluctant moan.

  His other hand slid around her hip. She heard his breath quicken, a warmth in her ear. “You lied,” he sneered softly. “You lied when you said you don’t want this.”

  She turned her face into his neck, trying to dam the words. Yes. Yes, I lied! Her mouth opened against his skin, defying her will, and she pressed hard to stop her lips from speaking.

  “Roddy,” he groaned as her teeth scored his skin. His grip on her tightened convulsively. He tasted male and smoky, and smelled of outside: of winter grass and frost. Cold and clean, no lingering trace of the city or Liza upon him. He pulled Roddy closer, between his hard thighs, crushed her against him with a strength he had never used before. “Tell me.” He dragged her head back. “Show me how much you dislike what I do.”

  Roddy’s throat closed as she stared up at him. His eyes were dark, his mouth still curved in that slight, awful smile. Fell he looked: fell and wild, and fit to murder anyone. If there was pain behind his words, she could not hear it. There was only the sudden pain of his lips claiming hers, sweet and brutal, an ache that sparked fire and flamed down her spine.

  It was hopeless. It no longer belonged to her, this body that arched in pagan answer to his touch. Murder or mistress—she did not care. Only Faelan mattered. Only his heat and his mystery, and the demon-blue glitter of his eyes.

  His mouth moved on hers with a punishing demand. The gentleness she had known before from him had vanished. He dragged her down with him to his knees, moving with ruthless ease to tear away her shawl and loosen her dress.

  The muslin gown was easy: a ribbon here, an eyelet there, and his hands and his mouth had access to all of her. She felt the chill of night air on her skin, and shuddered with more than the cold as he pushed her down beneath him. The cloak swept around them, a black river of cloth. With his dark-gloved hand, he shoved the loose hair back from her temple and forced her chin up, bruising her lips with another kiss.