His Wicked Charm

by Candace Camp

  “It would be folly to deny the power of the Sanctuary,” Lilah agreed. “It could cause a massive amount of destruction. We cannot afford to wait and see what happens.”

  “Alex and I had planned to move into Carmoor tomorrow. But we can still come over here during the day to help look. Or perhaps we should stay longer. It would give us a little added time to look.”

  “I don’t know that it would be enough,” Alex said. “It could take weeks to find it, and even if we do, there’s the problem of the other keys. I’ve been thinking that perhaps we should all move to Carmoor if we can’t locate the keys before Midsummer Day. At least we’d be at some distance.”

  “But we don’t know what it’s going to do. The consequences could be a great deal more than just leveling Barrow House.” Lilah asked, “What if it’s some sort of illness or evil that infects people? We can’t just let the world be exposed to it.”

  “I’ve been thinking, too.” Con spoke up. “There are other ways to open a door. Dynamite, for instance.”

  “Dynamite!” Lilah exclaimed. “You’re going to blow it up? That’s your solution? You’ll bring the house down around our ears.”

  “Not necessarily. Con’s idea just might work.” Alex’s eyes started to gleam. “Blasts can be controlled. That’s rock beneath this house. If you had an expert, he could place it so that most of the damage would be to the door. Some of the wall around the door might crumble, but I don’t think it would harm Barrow House.”

  “Besides—” Con took up the argument “—the Sanctuary isn’t below the house. The tunnel starts there, but I’m sure that the Sanctuary itself lies between the maze and the house. It’s open ground above it. Even if it caved in, it would only damage the lawn, not the house.”

  “But what about this renewal we need to do?”

  “If only the door is blown, you’ll be able to go in and perform whatever ceremony you need. I can’t help but wonder if your aunt is right and three women would be better, but if you’d rather go the route of descendants of the original men, we’ll get Peter. If his father is lurking around here, you know that Peter is, too.”

  “But even if the house doesn’t collapse, it could cave in the Sanctuary,” Lilah pointed out.

  Con shrugged. “Hopefully, if it’s destroyed, that would end the whole thing. The force would be buried where it couldn’t get out. This is just a last-gasp effort anyway. We’ll still look for the key. As Sabrina said, they can continue to come over and help us look.”

  “I’ll track down Dearborn and Peter,” Alex offered. “Twist their arms to make them agree to the ceremony and bring out the other two keys. If nothing else, we know money will work on Niles Dearborn.”

  “What if it is Sir Jasper who has the keys?” Sabrina asked. “He’s in London. Or maybe even Yorkshire.”

  “Then we’ll have to rely on Con’s method.”

  “So...” Con got up and paced about. “Here’s my plan—Alex and Sabrina will go to Carmoor tomorrow as planned and prepare to take in three houseguests. Alex will also hunt down Niles Dearborn and Peter. Lilah and I will go to Wells and get dynamite, as well as an expert to set it off. We’ll continue searching for the key in the meantime, but if we can’t find it, come Midsummer’s Eve, we’re going to blow the door in.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CON’S PLAN HAD not accounted for Lilah awakening the next morning with a pounding headache and a sore throat. The thought of going to Wells—indeed, of doing anything but spending the day in bed—did not appeal to her.

  When she told Con, he said easily, “We’ll stay, then.” He sat down beside her, laying his hand on her forehead.

  “No, that’s good of you to offer. But you should go to Wells without me. We don’t have time to waste. It’s only three days now.”

  Con frowned. “I don’t like the idea of leaving you here alone. Alex and Sabrina had already left when Cuddington told us you were ill, but I could send someone to fetch Sabrina back.”

  “No. Let her enjoy setting up in her own home,” Lilah said. “And I’m not alone. Aunt Vesta is here.” Con’s lifted brow at that statement made her chuckle despite the way she felt. “Really, Cuddington will see to it that I’m all right. She’s bringing me some warm lemon and honey for my throat, and the cook is busy making up some noxious potion for my fever. I’ll just sleep. I’ll probably be feeling much better by the time you return.”

  She did, in fact, spend the morning in bed after Con left, and when she awoke that afternoon, Lilah was feeling enough better that she dressed and went downstairs, thinking that she could at least be useful by searching for the key.

  The house seemed very empty without Con. What would she do when he left? Lilah pushed that thought aside and sat down in the library. She should make up a list, she thought, of places her father might think she would look for a key.

  Unfortunately, Aunt Vesta decided to keep her company. Her chatter was not conducive to thought, and after a time Lilah gave up on the list. Perhaps she had come downstairs too soon. She thought of going back to her room, but it seemed too much effort, so she sat down in one of the comfortable wingback chairs, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. Where would her father have hidden the key? What place did he think was special to her?

  Aunt Vesta, of course, was quite capable of carrying on a conversation by herself. She ranged from her favorite cures for a sore throat to the wonders of the waters at Wiesbaden to Vesta’s own apparently dire case of fever when she was seven. “Father rode into Wells to fetch a better doctor, he was so worried—and he was not the sort of man to fret over every little case of sniffles or cut finger. Not like Virgil. Do you remember how frantic he was whenever you were ill?”

  Lilah murmured noncommittally. Was her aunt right? Had her father worried over her every illness? Had those last years of living apart from him colored her memories?

  “I remember when I had the measles,” Lilah said. “He gave me the dollhouse.” She smiled faintly. “It was supposed to be for my birthday, but he gave it to me early because I was bored with staying in bed.”

  “Virgil was never good at keeping secrets.”

  She had loved that dollhouse. It had been such a pretty, normal house, tidy and square in the Georgian style. Nothing at all like her own crazy, sprawling...

  Lilah’s eyes flew open. “My dollhouse!” She jumped to her feet, startling her aunt.

  “Lilah, dearest, whatever—”

  But Lilah was already gone, running down the hall and up the stairs. She was charged with energy now, the lassitude of illness fleeing in the face of her excitement. How could she not have seen it? Her father’s letter had held a clue only Lilah would know. He hadn’t said Barrow House or my house or our house. His note had read “your house.”

  She hurried to the playroom in her bedroom, shoved aside the chair in front of it and flung open the door. The late-afternoon sun shone in through the dormer window, casting a grid of light across the floor. In the hushed stillness, dolls gazed vacantly forward. Games and toys lined the shelves below them.

  Lilah went to the small table that held a graceful white dollhouse, its bow-windowed front facing forward. The rear wall of the dollhouse was open, revealing the rooms, each decorated with miniature furniture and peopled with the tiny dolls of a family and servants.

  Lilah went down on her knees beside the table. She heard her aunt come in, but she paid no attention to Vesta hovering behind her. The three enclosed sides showed the facade of a foundation at the base of the house, closely flanked by a low ornamental hedge. But along the open back side, there was a space between the table and house.

  Lilah slid her hand under the house, and her fingertips touched smooth velvet. Her heart pounded as she removed a velvet pouch and reached inside to pull out a large gold key. Parallel wavy lines were etched into the head of the key, centered by a dark blue sapphire.<
br />
  Lilah held it higher, studying it. If only Con had been here; he would be so upset to have missed this. The triumph of her discovery was suddenly dampened. She wished she could share it with Con. She shouldn’t have rushed in. She should have waited for him to return.

  “You found it,” Aunt Vesta breathed.

  “Yes.” She cast a glance up at her aunt. Vesta’s eyes were bright, her smile gleeful. Lilah looked back down at the key in her palm. “Now we just need the other two.”

  “Isn’t it fortunate, then, that I have them?” Vesta said.

  Pain slammed into the back of Lilah’s head, and she went tumbling into darkness.

  * * *

  CON RODE TOWARD Barrow House. It was almost dusk, as it had been the first time he saw the place, but now the house looked not so much odd as dearly familiar. His heart warmed inside him. The last few miles had seemed to take forever, so eager was he to get home.

  He had found the explosive and a man experienced in using it. The fellow would be coming down tomorrow with his dynamite to inspect the door in the tunnel, so his trip had been a success. But he had wished the whole time that Lilah was with him. He was eager to share his good news with her, but even more than that, Con wanted to see Lilah.

  Oddly, no groom came running to take his horse. Stranger still, no footman opened the front door, and when Con walked inside, the entryway was empty, the house was eerily silent. A frisson of alarm snaked up Con’s back.

  “Lilah?” He strode down the hallway, his steps quickening at the continued hush. “Lilah, where are you? Ruggins? Mrs. LeClaire?”

  “Con!” As he reached the foot of the staircase, Vesta came running down it, her face panicked. “I didn’t expect you so soon!”

  “Where is everyone? Is Lilah all right?” He had visions of Lilah’s illness turning into pneumonia in the hours he’d been away. “What’s happened?”

  “She’s gone,” Vesta said wildly, wringing her hands. “I sent the servants out looking for her. Come, you must help me.” She latched onto his arm and pulled him toward the back door.

  “What? Gone where?” Con went with her, his alarm burgeoning. “What do you mean? She was sick in bed.”

  “That’s why I’m so worried! We must find her. I fear she’s gone down to the Levels.”

  “The Levels! That’s mad. Why would she go there?”

  “That’s just it. She’s crazed—with fever.”

  “Fever? She’s sicker? I shouldn’t have left. What happened?”

  “I’m not sure. I fear she has something far worse than the sniffles. Wait! Where are you going?” Vesta’s voice rose in agitation as Con pulled his arm from her grasp and started down a different garden path. “We must find her.”

  “I need a light. It’ll be dark soon.” He yanked open the small gardener’s shed and pulled out a lantern, sticking a box of matches in his pocket, as well.

  Vesta, who had been shifting impatiently from one foot to the other, took his arm in an iron grip and propelled him through the garden. Along the way, she described in dramatic detail her niece’s fever spiking and Vesta’s own efforts to bring it down.

  “Did you send for the doctor?” Con asked.

  “That’s when she disappeared! I left the room to send a footman for the doctor, and when I came back, she wasn’t there. It was only a few minutes!”

  “Damn it. I should have been here. Why the devil did I go to Wells?”

  “It wasn’t your fault, dear boy. How could you have known? And I was there to tend to her.”

  Con had his own opinions about the efficacy of Vesta’s care, but he kept them to himself. “But why would Lilah go to the Levels? Are you sure?”

  “She was talking about them earlier. In her fever. She was... She was raving about going to see her nurse.”

  “Her nurse?”

  “Yes, that’s when I realized she was out of her head. The woman died two years ago. Lilah was adamant about seeing her, and of course I told her Nanny was dead, but Lilah insisted she was not. I think she must have gone to find her.” Vesta clung to his arm as they scrambled down the path from the tor to the flatland below.

  Vesta continued to describe her efforts to find Lilah, sending all the servants out to look for Lilah while she combed the house herself. Con did his best to ignore her, searching the landscape in front of him for the faint shimmer in the air that would indicate Lilah’s path. How could he not see it? Her passage had been so clear the other time. Perhaps it was the distraction of Vesta’s constant conversation. Worse, Vesta was slowing him down.

  “Did you send word to Alex?” Con cut into her stream of talk.

  “No. I sent some of the servants toward Carmoor. They’ll find her if she went that way. But she’s on the Levels. I can feel it.”

  “You should go back,” Con told her. “Send a message to Alex.”

  “No, dear boy, I must help you. You don’t know the area. The rhynes and embankments—it’s all so much the same. It’s easy to get lost. And when the evening fog sets in...”

  “I’ll be fine. I have the lantern.” Con stopped and untwined her arm from his. “I need you to go back to the house. Someone should be there in case Lilah returns. Go,” he told her firmly. “It’s almost dark, and the fog is starting to creep in.”

  “If you’re sure...”

  Con turned and strode away before she could pursue the subject. But still he could not make out Lilah’s trail. The numerous short canals made it harder to keep on a course, cutting him off and forcing him to backtrack or wind around between them.

  Dark fell quickly, and wisps of fog came slithering in, obscuring the landscape. He stopped to light the lantern. The more he walked, the more doubt gnawed at him. Had she really come this way? Perhaps the fog covered up the glimmer.

  Something rustled behind him, and he whirled, peering into the dark. “Lilah? Hello? Lilah? Can you hear me?”

  There was nothing but silence. He started on. The fog was growing thicker, covering the ground so that it seemed he was walking through snow. It would be easy to stumble into a rhyne. He could hear one now, but he was unsure of its location. His steps slowed.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of motion, and he began to turn. A dark figure ran at him, swinging a thick branch. He froze in astonishment. “Vesta!”

  The branch slammed into his temple, and he staggered backward, stunned. She swung again, knocking him into the water.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  LILAH’S HEAD ACHED. She was lost in a dull haze somewhere between sleep and consciousness, unable to open her eyes. She reached up to touch her head, and strangely her arms seemed stuck together.

  “There, there.” Something wet and cool touched her forehead, then her cheek. “Time to wake up now.”

  “Aunt Vesta,” she mumbled.

  Memories trickled back in through haze. Aunt Vesta. The key. Her eyes flew open.

  “There you are,” Aunt Vesta said and patted her cheek. “I feared I had struck you too hard. And I wasn’t sure about that dose of laudanum. I had to put you to sleep so I could prepare, but I thought I might have given you too much. You know I would never want to hurt you.”

  Laudanum. More vague memories came to Lilah—someone holding her nose and pouring liquid into her mouth. The bitter taste was still on her tongue. Lilah raised her head, and the world tilted. She lay back down. Her hands, she realized, were tied. “Why?” The word came out in no more than a whisper.

  “It isn’t as if I wanted to,” her aunt answered plaintively. “But I can’t let you close the Sanctuary. You must see that. It isn’t as if I was going to take all the energy. I was willing to share it with you. I even offered for the three of us to share it—Sabrina added a bit to the power, and she was always such a biddable girl. It would have worked out well. But you were so unreasonable.” She s
cowled. “I don’t know why you’ve always had to be so stubborn.”

  Lilah’s head whirled. Where was Con? Wells. Yes, he’d gone to Wells. “Why—you didn’t have to give me laudanum.”

  “But I did, child. I had to do everything on the spur of the moment. I couldn’t really plan because I had no idea when you would find the key. I was beginning to think you never would. I finally had to leave that silly letter for you to find—thank goodness you figured it out.”

  “The letter—what? It was you?” Astonishment, mingled with anger, brought Lilah more fully awake. “You stole my letter?”

  “It wasn’t stealing, dear. The man gave it to me. Really, I think it was very sloppy of him, handing it over to me just because I was your aunt. And telling me to give it to you—as if it were my job. It was his responsibility, but that’s just like a man. Even my brother, who was really a very nice man, took advantage of me. You can see that, can’t you? He shoved all the responsibility of raising you onto me so he could sit around mooning over his dead wife. It wasn’t fair at all.”

  “But why didn’t you just give me the letter?”

  “I couldn’t turn it over to you! You wouldn’t have believed it for a second. I knew what must be in the letter. I’d been searching and searching for a year for that blasted key and couldn’t find it. So I opened it—very carefully, you see, so I could give it to you if it wasn’t instructions about the Sanctuary. But all those terrible things Virgil said! I knew they weren’t true. Virgil was always the most pessimistic man. And he didn’t even say where he had put the key. It was the most nonsensical letter. But thank goodness I didn’t throw it away.”

  “You left it so we’d suspect Jasper.”

  “As if that stupid man would know what to do with the key.” Vesta snorted. “But when you told me you suspected him, it was perfect. I’d been trying to think of a way to show it to you. I realized that you might know what Virgil was talking about. Of course, I couldn’t just hand it over. You would have been so irritated that I’d opened it. But then—there it was, the perfect opportunity. Things so often work out that way.” She smiled in a self-satisfied way. “Just as it did today. It was fate working, you getting sick, that nice young boy out of the house...”