by Lois Greiman
“Breeding,” she repeated.
“Really Maddy, your language! Mother would turn over in her grave.”
She laughed. “And she’d have no trouble whatsoever with her firstborn planning to give birth out of wedlock?”
“Better that than brewing stinky potions while plotting to topple kings and principalities in the bowels of Lavender House.”
Maddy’s lips were still tilted, but her thoughts seemed far away, “In truth, I think she’d approve,” she mused.
“How can you even guess?” Ella murmured. She had died so young. Well before they were ready to let her go. Before they could subsist on the sparse dribblings of their father’s love. Before they had learned to judge a man’s heart. To stand on their own, to survive.
“I wish you’d come back, Jos.”
“Come back?” she said, and shook her head. Nervous suddenly. Jittery. “It’s you who must leave, Maddy. Before it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?”
Ella drew in a careful breath, trying not to remember. “He won’t protect you, you know.” Her voice had dropped low, though she didn’t know why. She had few servants. There was Winslow, who was, in fact, built like an ox, but was mostly deaf. And Amherst and Cecelia, who were well past the age of listening at keyholes.
“You’re being unfair,” Madeline said.
“He’s got his own agenda, his own plans. He’s obsessed with them, in fact. If circumstances turn against you, he’ll not stand with you.”
“We know that. Have known it all along.”
“Maybe it’s different to know it and to experience it.”
Maddy scowled. “You’re still angry.”
“Angry!” Ella stood, paced, rounding the four-poster. “Of course I’m angry. It was senseless. Stupid.”
“But not his fault.”
She stopped. “No.” She squeezed her hands together, crunching her fingers in her own grip, hurting her knuckles. “The fault was mine. All—”
But Madeline stopped her. She was up in a second, gripping her arms. “You’re wrong. It was no one’s fault.”
“No one’s…” Ella huffed a laugh. “How can you still be so naïve? After all you’ve seen. After all—”
“Very well then, it was Grey’s fault.”
The air left her lungs.
“It wasn’t you, Ella.” Maddy’s grip tightened on her sister’s arms. “You did everything you could.”
“Did I?” She searched her sister’s eyes. Madeline was the compassionate one. The good one. Perhaps Maddy was right. Or perhaps she saw what she wanted to see. What she needed to see to remain sane. To remain happy.
“You did everything,” Maddy repeated slowly.
“And yet she died,” Ella murmured. She shook her head. Remembered. “What if it had been you?”
“It wasn’t.”
“She had so much talent. So much potential.”
“Not as much as you.”
Ella drew a careful breath, steadying herself. Perhaps Madeline was right again. Maddy had inherited the major portion of good sense, of logical practicality, of optimism, while Elegance had received the lion’s share of the magical powers.
She’d give it all up for a buttonhook and a nice pair of dancing slippers.
“Well…” She shrugged and tried a smile, though there was little point. Maddy was her sister. She would know her thoughts. “That’s all in my past. From here on in, it’s parties all the time.”
Maddy smiled, though her own expression was no more convincing. “So who is the potential lover of the moment?”
A dark face from just hours before flashed through Ella’s mind. A lean form sauntered into her thoughts. A low Celtic burr shivered along her memory.
Madeline raised an eyebrow, but Ella set the disturbing images aside before they were dragged out for examination.
“I’m considering Lord Milton,” she said.
“Lord…” Maddy began, then widened her eyes and blinked. “Milton?”
“Yes.”
“The short baron?”
“In truth, Madeline, I really don’t care how tall my child is.”
“The short, paunchy baron who couldn’t string together two coherent words if you spoke them in his mind and moved his lips for him?”
“Now you’re being cruel.”
“Not as cruel as it would be to condemn my lovely niece to being incoherent, bald, and short.”
“It could be a boy.”
“I thought you wanted a daughter.”
“Well, I do.” She smiled a little. “But I’m not a witch, you know. It could be either.”
Maddy grinned and tightened her grip on her sister’s arms.
“I worry about you.”
“Me?” Ella said. “Whatever for?”
“It’s unnatural, you avoiding the coven. It’s been nearly two months now since you’ve been to Lavender House. And years that you’ve been living here alone like some…like some nasty old crone.”
“I’m practicing for the future. Besides, the coven survived a couple centuries before I came along. I’m certain Les Chausettes will endure without my esteemed presence for a few more years.” Indeed, perhaps they were safer. She had planned to help Sarah, after all. To teach her to hone her craft, to protect herself, to remain unnoticed in a world that abhorred the inexplicable. But things had gone horribly wrong. She had been noticed. Had been seduced. Not unlike Ella a lifetime before. She should have been able to predict it, to save her, she thought, but Maddy spoke.
“Faye bested Shaleena.”
“What?” Ella turned toward her, drawn from her dark reverie. “Not in hand-to-hand.”
“Yes,” Maddy said, and grinned. Shaleena had been a nettle in their drawers since they had first arrived in London seven long years before. Haughty, beautiful, and as gifted as any, she had lorded it over the two battered waifs from an unknown village near Marseille. “Just last week. Slammed her to the floor. Wouldn’t let her up. I thought Shaleena would die long before she’d admit defeat.”
“Shaleena,” Ella scoffed. “What kind of a foolish name is that anyway?”
“Probably entirely fabricated,” Madeline agreed. “Not at all like Elegance.”
“Watch yourself, or I won’t take you to Lord and Lady Bowles’s soiree.”
“How ever will I survive?” Maddy quipped, but there was worry in her eyes again. Worry and fatigue. Ella could help with that, could brew up a potion that…But she no longer did those things. Normal. She was normal. An everyday widow woman who enjoyed flowers, dancing, and poetry read before a nice fire. A fire over which she could concoct a potion…
“I’m going to sleep,” she said.
“As am I,” Maddy agreed, and pacing to the far side of the bed, flipped back the covers.
“Not in my bed.”
“It’s already warm,” Maddy said, and before Ella could drag her out, she’d bunched the pillow beneath her head and fallen asleep.
Chapter 5
“Lady Redcomb,” said Milton. “You look quite…”
Ella and Madeline smiled in helpful unison, waiting for the little lord to continue, but he seemed to be blocked again.
“Quite…”
“Ravishing,” said Merry May, coming up from behind.
“Yes, quite ravishing.”
“I haven’t seen you in ages.” Today May wore blue. Not a soft powder hue. But a blue so bright it all but hurt the eyes. “Have you been abroad, Lady Redcomb?”
“I do so wish.” Maddy sighed. “How I long to see the sun rise over the River Seine. But I fear travel is unsafe these days. At least until le petit caporal quits his incessant foolishness.”
“Foolishness? Is that what you call the devastation of all of Europe?” May asked.
“Oh please,” Madeline begged piteously. “No politics. Not when I am yet mourning my enforced banishment from Paris’s wondrous chocolate shops.”
Ella watched her sister turn the conv
ersation effortlessly aside. As if she had not a thought in her head but the memory of the sweets served in France’s best cafes.
“I fear there is nowhere like it in all of Britain,” she said. “And I have searched.”
Merry May laughed. “Is that what you have been up to, then, ferreting out the best chocolate houses in our fair kingdom?”
“Nothing so interesting as all of that, I fear,” Madeline said. “’Twas naught but an extended stay in the country. My dearest aunt is aging, and I felt compelled to spend some time with her.”
She rambled amicably on about the country air, the birth of new spring calves, the deplorable roads. But it was all a lie. They had no aunt. No country estate. It mattered little though, for Les Chausettes were taught to weave fabrications from the very moment they set foot inside Lavender House. They were thought of as a cluster of bluestockings, brought together at Lavender House, where they discussed the latest news and literature over blackberry scones. But they were so much more—a cluster of gifted women, some badly bruised by the world, all who were offered a chance to hone their gifts and better their circumstances, who were given orders from some unknown official and expected to conduct their lives as ordered.
Lie. Lie well and lie often. For the lives of the others may well depend on your ability to deceive, Jasper Reeves had said.
In fact, their entire identities were untruths. Their titles had been mysteriously bestowed on them by means Ella refused to contemplate. Their histories were a sham, their very appearances were products of hard work and clever deception. From the moment the sisters had sailed into English waters, they had become someone else. Someone different, until their very essence was left behind, lost in the dark annals of their past. Indeed, in the eyes of the ton they were not even sisters, for Reeves had no desire for any to make the connection between the ragged urchins he had wrenched from the screaming maw of Marseille.
No, they would not return to France no matter how splendid the chocolate, Ella thought, and steadied the tremor in her hands.
“Hello.”
She turned at the sound of an almost familiar voice, only to find a handsome, well-groomed young man standing before her. It took a moment to recognize him as Edward Shellum, for he looked entirely different upright. His silver-shot waistcoat was adorned with purple buttons and topped with a snowy white cravat. His frock coat was long, his breeches fashionably snug, and though it was clear he had imbibed, he was not so drunk as he had been the previous night, as evidenced by his apparent consciousness.
“Good evening,” Ella said, and shutting out dark, hovering thoughts, kept her tone carefully vague. She had been rather hoping she would never again have to face Shellum, but luck was a fickle friend.
Merry May cocked a brow. “You two are acquainted?”
Ella gritted her teeth against this bad fortune and smiled. No good could come of the truth, but she would feel her way carefully. “I believe we are. Mr. Shellum, isn’t it?”
He looked a bit bemused, but covered himself with some aplomb. More evidence that he was not yet pickled. But the night was still young. “Yes. Yes, you look quite familiar, but lawks!” He bowed and managed to keep from falling face-first onto the floorboards. “My deepest apologies. I cannot quite seem to remember where.”
She smiled. All hail to strong spirits.
“I believe I had the pleasure of meeting you some months past,” she said. “On St. Martin’s Lane, wasn’t it? You were ordering buttons, I believe.” Messrs. William and Sons were known for their unique, if ridiculously expensive, fasteners. She was willing to bet, by his ostentatious vest, that he was one of their patrons. “These are particularly appealing,” she said, gazing at the row of buttons that ran down his flat chest. “Amethyst, aren’t they?”
“Why yes.” He glanced down. “Aren’t they all the crack?”
“They’re quite lovely.”
“And what of the waistcoat?” He fondled the garment lovingly. “My father thought I was spending the bustle a bit too freely, but I found the fabric irresistible.”
Ella deciphered as best she could. “I’m certain they’re well worth the money. You look quite marvelous. Don’t you think, Lady Redcomb?”
“Absolutely,” agreed Maddy, but gave her sister an odd glance from the corner of her soul.
“You met while shopping?” May asked.
“Where all good things happen,” Ella said, sticking to her story and studiously avoiding the tale of the night before. Chances were good Mr. Shellum had been as drunk as an Irishman while shopping on St. Martin’s at one time or another. No reason to believe he would remember every encounter. “It was a lovely day. You do recall, don’t you, Mr. Shellum? You were wearing your black Hessians.” Every gentleman worth his snuff owned a pair of black Hessians.
“My…Oh yes, lovely boots. Very nice. I was fairly flush in the pockets then and could not pass them up. Though they pinched a bit in the toe. And I was never quite sure of the—”
Ella tried to focus on the inane chatter. If her luck held, he would assume the woman he met on the previous night was someone else entirely. After all, she had not been so foolish as to give him her name. But in that instant, her attention was snared by another. She turned to the left.
Drake’s gaze caught her like a hapless hare. His hair shone darkly in the gas lamplight, and his eyes…She felt her breath leave her throat, felt her composure crumble. Shifting her attention back to Shellum, she tried to look enraptured, but Drake was already heading toward her, strides long and sure, eyes like a raptor’s. She could feel his approach in her itchy palms but did her best to ignore it, nodding attentively at the meandering tale of cravats and kid gloves.
“Lady Lanshire,” Drake said quietly from beside her. For a moment she actually considered ignoring him, but of course that would never do. Especially since Shellum’s soliloquy had stopped. His brows raised in question.
“Sir Drake,” she said, turning slightly.
“You’re recovered, I hope.”
Dammit! She should have told the truth from the start, but dark thoughts of France had shaken her good sense. “Of course. Never better.”
“Why would she not be?” May asked, but Shellum was already bursting into the conversation.
“Fiend seize it! You were there, sir.”
Drake turned toward him with slow consideration, dark eyes giving nothing away.
“In Miss Anglican’s garden,” Shellum said, but with a little less certainty.
“In my—” May began.
“After I bested those demmed Bristol men.”
“Bristol men?” Milton said, scurrying into the conversation.
“There was a strawchipper.” Shellum shifted his bauble-bright gaze uncertainly to Ella. “She was set upon in the garden. But I saved her. Quite heroically, I might add.”
“You saved her?” May asked.
“Why yes.” His brows dipped a little in thought. “Though I admit things were a mite befogged. It was quite dark. And I may have been half sprung.”
“Who was she?” May asked.
“What?”
“Whoever did you save?”
Ella cursed in silence.
“I thought…” Shellum paused, scowled. “In truth, I’m not quite certain. It was all a bit blurry what with the fisticuffs and whatnot.”
“There was a fight?”
“I planted a facer on the largest of the mob and they set to.”
“You fought for some lady’s honor?” Milton piped in.
“Well…” Shellum puffed a little. “One can hardly allow the riffraff of the street to molest our ladies fair. What?”
“Indeed not,” Milton said.
“Who was this lady?” May asked.
“Well…that’s…” Shellum paused. “It was bloody dark, as I’ve said, but…” He turned toward Drake. “My apologies.” He bowed. Almost steady. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. I am Edward Shellum.”
Int
roductions were made all around.
“Sir Drake,” Shellum said. “Correct me if I’m befogged yet again, but you were…were you not, in the garden last night?”
Drake never so much as shifted his gaze to Ella, but nodded solemnly. “A very impressive display of manliness.”
Sarcasm. Ella ground her teeth. She should have simply told the others of her attack-in-the-garden debacle immediately. Should have stumbled back into Merry May’s house, breathless and distraught, instead of whiling away her time with some dark stranger who could spill the story later on. Henceforth everything she did would seem suspect. After all, what kind of woman would not have mentioned such a fright at the time of the incident? Who but a carefully trained government witch who—
“Your roses are quite spectacular, Miss Anglican,” Drake said.
Ella turned toward him, brows lowered. What the hell was he doing? Why hadn’t he spouted the tale?
“Thank you,” said May, “but it seems there were thieves on the grounds.”
He didn’t shift his eyes from May. “So I am told, but in truth, I fear I came a bit late to the excitement.”
“But there was a lady there,” May said.
“Yes.” He nodded, sounding uncertain. “I believe there was.”
“Who was she?” asked May and Milton in unison, but he was already shaking his head.
“It was quite dark and…befogging, as Mr. Shellum here has said. And I’m new to the city. I fear I didn’t ascertain her name.”
“’Tis the same with me,” Shellum said. “But I believe she looked rather—”
“Shaken,” Drake said. “As you can well expect. She went straight home after the incident.”
“Of course she would,” Maddy said, speaking for the first time.
“Can you describe her?” May asked.
“The mist was beginning to thicken and I had no wish to intrude on her privacy, but she was wearing a light-colored gown, I believe. Don’t you agree, Mr. Shellum?”
“Well…yes.” He scowled judiciously. “Yes. Quite light.”
What the devil was he playing at? Ella wondered. Should she tell the truth even now before circumstances worsened, or should she continue with this ridiculous charade?