Dangerous Magic

by Alix Rickloff

  He drew her hand away, but smiles still crinkled the corners of his eyes. “I knew it. You are jealous.” Before she could defend herself, he held up a hand. “I won’t make you admit it. But it’s nice to know.”

  He smelled of ale, his face flushed with more than heat from the fire. He looked down at her, his shrewd gaze piercing her thoughts. But he’d already seen too much. She cupped his cheek, loving the hard angles of his face, the shadow of stubble roughing his chin. “It’s impossible, Rafe. For more reasons than fit on my two hands together. Let’s be leaving it at that.”

  A harshness settled over his features, and he shrugged out of his jacket. “Then enough banter. Get in bed. Let’s get to it.”

  She stepped back, knowing what he tried. But it wouldn’t work. She wouldn’t let him escape into anger so easily. And she certainly wasn’t going to go to bed with him in this kind of mood. “I’m needing a walk before I retire. Like you, I feel closed in at times. I need to breathe free beyond this house. These people.” She took his hand. “Come.”

  “Like that?”

  She’d already changed into a dressing gown and slippers. She shrugged. “It’s late. No one will see.”

  “Far be it from me to talk of social niceties when we’ve already broken every rule of proper decorum and then some.”

  She smiled, taking his hand. “Let’s end this evening better than we started it, hmm?”

  The hill sloped away to the river. Behind them, the forest whispered. The trees scratched and murmured in the wind. An owl called and was echoed by another in the woods across the water. The moon tonight wasn’t full, but waned to half, its thin light just enough to pierce the gloom. To silver the grass. The river. Gwenyth’s hair.

  She sat with her clasped arms encircling her drawn-up knees as she watched the slide of the current. He lay back, his gaze moving between Gwenyth, the midnight blue of the sky and the hard, teardrop points of the stars. But always settling back on her.

  “What do you see in your future?” he asked, his voice loud in the still of the night. “Besides your lover’s death, what lies beyond your horizon?”

  The silence stretched out until he thought she wouldn’t answer. Finally, she turned to him. “I don’t know and don’t want to. My child. My work. These will be enough.”

  “I thought I knew my future. Thought I had it mapped and charted. Every circumstance planned for. Nothing left to chance.”

  “And then?”

  “You may not admit it, but I think you know.”

  She looked away, shoulders hunched as if she protected herself, and did not speak again.

  “You asked once about the scars on my body that don’t show,” he said. “The marks I carry that never leave me. No matter how fast I run or how far I travel from those days, I can’t close my eyes that it doesn’t haunt me.”

  She remained silent, but he knew she listened.

  “I rotted in a cell for three hellish months with air as fetid and sour as death. By the end of it, my own stench sickened me.”

  He closed his eyes. The memories pulling him back to the wallowing dory. To the frigates, their bows lined with marines. To his bound hands, raw and bleeding, as he hung from the grate. “Every breath I took was an agony,” emotion choked his words, “and even the breeze upon my back was like the blast from a furnace.” He took a shuddering breath. Steadied himself. Continued. “The pain became a living, breathing thing, devouring me from the inside out before it broke me.”

  He opened his eyes, but the images lingered. And with them came the oppressive despair, the wild panic, the heartrending grief. Every feeling as raw as if he’d just suffered them.

  A fish jumped. A nightingale called. But still lost in the past, he heard only the relentless drum beat, his own strangled weeping.

  “I didn’t do what they’d accused me of. That made it so much worse. I protested. Then I fought. But in the end, nothing changed. They offered me hanging as an alternative. And I’d have taken it gladly. But Father,” he spat the word, “he took even that choice away from me. I was to be punished—with living.”

  The heavens turned overhead, the shadows lengthening before beginning to fade. The stars burned like the lightning flecks in Gwenyth’s eyes.

  “Why do you tell me this?”

  “You once told me you’d never steal my thoughts, so I’m giving them to you.” He rolled up on one elbow, trying to see her face in the darkness, the gilded curve of her cheek. “Because I can’t forget a past. You can’t forget a future. But if we hold too tight to these, we may just lose the present.”

  Her head dropped into the shelter of her upraised knees.

  “Think on it, Gwenyth.”

  Chapter 17

  The assembly rooms stood at the corner of Carrisbridge’s market square. A fountain danced in the light spilling from the long windows of the hall. Flambeaux flickered and smoked, throwing wicked shadows across the men and women passing in and out of the building. Rafe and Edmund had driven into town earlier, leaving the women to arrive separately. The ten-mile trip to Carrisbridge in his elder brother’s company had been proof again of just what the span of years had wrought. Complete strangers would have found more in common than Edmund and he had managed.

  Rafe caught himself clutching the wrapped jeweler’s box in his pocket as if it were a touchstone. He’d seen the trinket in a shop window and instantly pictured it upon Gwenyth. It wasn’t the extravagance of the silver-beaded gown, but it would be beautiful against the creamy rose of her skin. He hoped he could get her alone long enough to present it to her, though watching the crowds moving up the stairs into the hall, he wondered if there would be space to breathe, much less speak privately.

  Rafe felt a bewildering sense of disquiet. Had thirteen years really passed since he last stepped from a carriage to the strains of Haydn and the hum of flirtatious conversation? Nothing seemed to have changed but the faces. Young gallants still jostled each other as they arrived, their voices loud and full of laughter. Older gentlemen, sedate in knee breeches and clocked stockings, still accompanied their wives and daughters up the wide steps. Only tonight, their eyes glided over the Brampton coat of arms upon the carriage door before settling upon Rafe where he stood alone in the shadow of the horses, awaiting the arrival of the women.

  Rafe knew it was his presence here, and not surprise at the elegant barouche or the liveried coachman attending to the sleek pair of matched blacks, that caused the sidelong looks and muffled whispers. The Flemings, though comfortable in the highest circles, spent most of their time in the country.

  His father had hated London Society and spent as little time in Town as possible, going up only when he had business in Parliament. It all had something to do with his grandfather, dead before he was born, but what that something might have been Rafe never cared enough to learn. As a child, he’d been wild for the freedom of the forest and then later the sea, and by the time he was old enough to be trusted with such closely held information, he’d been disowned, cut from the family like a cancer.

  Brampton seemed cast in the same mold as their father, never straying far from Bodliam unless urgent business beckoned. This left the wild jungles of London to Rafe’s brother, Derek. Derek had been destined, as the second son, for the Church. But it had always been he with the wildest plots and the craziest schemes. It seemed laughable that fiery, scape-grace Derek Fleming ended as the country vicar and Rafe became one of the infamous Gentlemen, but life had a way of following its own course, despite one’s best efforts. The trick was to not fight it but to let it sweep one along without being pulled under.

  Dangerous but crucial in Rafe’s line of work.

  He corrected himself. Former line of work.

  He gave an absent thought as to what his brother might say when he confronted him. If his childhood was anything to go by, it wouldn’t be a reunion of slaps upon the back. More like a fist to the jaw.

  The buzz of curiosity in the air grew as the crowds thickened,
and he was recognized by more and more.

  “…the third boy, you remember that episode? He attacked his captain with a drawn blade…almost killed him…”

  Rafe felt the hairs rise upon the back of his neck. His stomach twisted.

  Even now, their whispers conjured the scene he came upon in the small room of the dockside tavern, Captain Lovejoy bent over a boy who lay crying and thrashing beneath the captain’s naked body. Repulsed and horrified, Rafe cried out, causing Lovejoy to pause in his incessant angry thrusting. The man turned his head, and Rafe’s heart froze at the glaze of power and lust suffusing the captain’s red-veined features.

  “Leave, lieutenant, and we’ll say no more,” he said from between lips twisted in pleasure. “You saw nothing. I was never here.”

  The boy, Rafe recognized him as one of the ship’s young cadets, moaned and stretched out one skinny arm toward the head of the iron bed, his face pressed into the pillow to muffle his crying and hide his humiliation. Rafe hesitated.

  “Lieutenant Fleming, I said you are relieved. Go.”

  Rafe’s jaw hardened with rage. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and pulling his dagger from its sheath, he…

  “Ranulf? What on earth are you doing standing here?” Honoria stood within the circle of the flambeaux, the diamonds around her neck and dangling from each ear flashing in the torches’ glow. “We thought you’d have secured us seats already but here we find you dawdling about by the curb like any jack-nobody.”

  Sophia and Cecily stood just beyond his mother, both paying him little mind as they greeted friends and acquaintances. But Gwenyth watched him with a look of sympathy, her deep gray eyes like two dark pools in her pale face. He held out an arm to her, but it was Honoria who took it.

  “So sweet of you to favor your poor mother with such gallantry.” She tucked her hand against his side and glanced up at him with anxious eyes. “You just don’t know how proud and happy I am to have you here tonight. I have my family together again. And now all I want is their happiness so I can die at peace.”

  Rafe rolled his eyes at his mother’s dramatics as they ascended the steps. “I hope that occurrence is quite a few years away.”

  Honoria nodded at an older gentleman and his much younger wife before turning back and sighing. “One can never be sure with such a fickle thing as death. And my health has never been secure, you know that.”

  Rafe threw a glance back at Gwenyth, but she remained waiting at the bottom of the stairs with Sophia and Cecily, and didn’t notice.

  “You know,” Honoria continued, waving to a silver-haired matron with two daughters in tow, “I’m so glad you allowed me to keep Miss Killigrew with me on the drive here. Sophia has been feeling quite unwell the past few days and spends her time moping and pining. I shall be happy when her confinement is over and she is back to her old self. And your sister…well, need I say more? As flighty as a butterfly. They’re both enough to send an old woman to her sickbed.”

  “I hope the time in Miss Killigrew’s company has left you more confident of my choice in a bride.”

  Honoria’s fingers tightened clawlike upon his arm. “Oh, I shouldn’t think the opinions of one old woman would matter much to you. You always were one for going your own way when it suited you.”

  Rafe felt the familiar tug of guilt and duty. After so long, she could still make him feel a petulant child of ten. “My independent nature never restrained you before. As I recall, you quite enjoyed giving me your opinions on anything and everything.”

  Honoria pursed her lips and frowned, ignoring the note of warning in his voice. “I can’t say I’ve had enough time to form a perfect idea of her character, but from what I have seen I find her a queer young woman, far too quiet…too still. She watches us all with those sly, clever eyes of hers. I sometimes get the feeling she is the one judging us. I don’t like it, and I won’t have some fisherman’s daughter parading about in my home as if she were a queen.” Her lips quivered beneath Rafe’s stern visage. “Oh, Ranulf. I only want to see you happy.”

  Rafe gritted his teeth as he reined in his temper. This was his mother. She may be an interfering broody hen, but she had his best interests at heart. He almost thought to tell her the truth about Gwenyth’s presence, but her next words killed any ideas of confession he might have harbored.

  “Anabel Woodville is such a dear. She has a small jointure from her late husband’s estate.” Honoria’s voice held a tremor of excitement. “She’s barely thirty. And she dotes on you still. It’s obvious she’d welcome your suit if you gave her any encouragement.”

  Rafe halted halfway up the steps, dropping his mother’s arm. He ignored the annoyed glances of the men and women elbowing around them. “Does she dote upon me or my wallet? Is there a difference in her eyes?”

  His mother threw a cold look down the steps to where Gwenyth stood. “What do you think Miss Killigrew wants if not your wealth and the power it brings? Better by far to marry a woman of your own station and upbringing.”

  Rafe swallowed his anger, managing to bite back the cruel words on the edge of his tongue. But when he did answer, his words were clipped, but civil. “Better by far to marry where there is trust.”

  Honoria huffed her dismissal of such a petty notion. “With a woman like Lady Woodville there is a communion of background and a similarity in understanding and ambition. Something on which to build trust. With Miss Killigrew, what do you have beyond a beautiful face?”

  Rafe’s eyes sought out the golden crown of Gwenyth’s hair. She remained at Sophia’s side, a flame beside his sister-in-law’s dusky coloring. She must have felt his gaze settle upon her. She glanced up at him, her face kissed by the glow of the torches, her lips slightly parted. Caught in the breeze, silver strands of hair escaped their confining combs and blew across her cheeks.

  An urge came over him to run back down the stairs, grab her by the hand and drag her away from here. Not back to the house, but far away, miles from the increasingly oppressive atmosphere of Bodliam. He’d known it would be difficult to return. He’d been a ghost for too long.

  Honoria noted the track of his gaze. “She’s not of your world, Ranulf.”

  He dropped his eyes and turned to complete his climb up the stairs. Music mingled with laughter and conversation. The tread of dancers floated through the open doors. Every day he spent in Gwenyth’s company and every night he spent in her bed taunted him with what-ifs. He shook the thoughts from his mind as a dog shakes off water. Pushed his traitorous feelings to the dark corners of his mind.

  He wouldn’t betray his purpose, not now. Not after thirteen years of plotting and planning. But even so, he couldn’t stop from voicing his unbidden thought.

  “Perhaps it’s you, Mother, who is not of my world. Have you ever thought of that?”

  Gwenyth stood at one end of the crowded assembly rooms, hands demurely linked in front of her, as she surveyed her surroundings. The columned hall echoed with the crowds of people dancing, chatting or strolling up and down the floor, hoping to see or be seen. Above the main ballroom ran a gallery, where the orchestra played a lively country dance. Crystal chandeliers bathed the men and women below in a rich glow of candlelight, creating a magical world of swirling color.

  She listened as the Dowager, seated upon a bench surrounded by a small gathering of friends and acquaintances, recounted once again the events of Rafe’s homecoming, complete with weeping and swooning, though Gwenyth was unsure just which of the participants was supposed to have ended up tear-stained and prostrate.

  As if surveying stormy seas ahead, the subject of this highly embellished tale stood off to one side, hands behind his back, dark brows slanted over eyes scanning the moving crowds.

  Whispers swirled around Gwenyth like dry leaves. “…such masculine good looks…frighteningly stern…a fortune of five thousand a year…heard it was ten…”

  Despite the praise, unease lingered in their shuttered glances and worried smiles. Witho
ut understanding it, they sensed his ruthless nature beneath the polished exterior. He was one of them—but not. A gentleman in appearance, but something more—something sinister.

  Gwenyth, alone of anyone here, understood what she felt and why. The hair lying crisp against his collar that curled so soft between her fingers. The broad shoulders and chiseled body that warmed her bed at night. And the long-fingered hands that could bring her to climax with a rake’s silken strokes. Sinister—indeed.

  She cursed herself for the worst sort of weakling. Had it been only a week ago she vowed to the darkness beyond her bed that Rafe Fleming would ensnare her no further? She’d prayed to anyone or anything listening to give her the strength to resist her growing need for his touch, the urge she had to fall into his strong arms and never leave. But it took only one long look at him to realize that prayers were not enough. To fight the temptation, she must put him out of her reach forever.

  Luckily, he looked to be in no mood to play the doting fiancée. Instead, as Gwenyth watched, he bowed over the hand of a young woman in an elaborate salmon-pink gown, her stays and her neckline combining to reveal the creamy flesh of her breasts.

  The woman admired Rafe from beneath demurely lowered lids, her mouth puckered in a moue of delight. Despite the weakening of her powers, Gwenyth felt the woman’s eagerness and excitement like a high round note. It shimmered up her spine and slipped into her head, revealing the young lady’s hopes as well as a few thoughts to make Gwenyth flush anew. The ideas some people came up with to pleasure themselves. Well, the woman was uninhibited. Gwenyth supposed that was a mark in her favor where Rafe was concerned.

  Rafe escorted the young lady out onto the floor, to join the sets forming for a dance. Gwenyth watched them go, curbing a stab of jealousy. Instead, she put all her energy toward the Sight, and the readings that would free her from this growing torture.

  The timing of the ball couldn’t have been worse. Like a receding wave, the Sight diminished and became harder to control. She’d have to delve deep within herself to tap into the power, and expend even more energy bending it to her will. Both tasks she’d very little experience with. Normally, she allowed the Sight to run untamed within her, drawing on it when she had cause, but otherwise leaving it to ebb and flow without notice. Nonetheless, she’d made a promise to Rafe, and she knew she couldn’t afford to wait for the Sight to well again.