A Certain Magic

by Mary Balogh

  “Oh,” Cassandra Borden said suddenly, “what was that?” She had stopped walking and was staring down one of the narrow, darkened paths to their left.

  “What was what?” he asked. But even as he did so, she pulled her arm free of his and darted down the path.

  What the devil? Piers stood still for a moment, not sure whether he should call ahead to the others to wait or pursue his companion before he lost her among the trees. It was a very dark path. He chose the latter course.

  She stopped a short distance down the path and looked carefully about her. “Where did it go?” she asked.

  “Where did what go?” He took her arm in a firm grasp.

  “The kitten,” she said. “A little lost, frightened kitten. Did you not see it?”

  “No, I did not,” he said. “It was doubtless a stray, Miss Borden. We had better return to the main path. I fear it is going to start raining soon. We should find the carriages without delay. The fireworks will have to wait until another night, I’m afraid.”

  “But we cannot abandon it,” she said, sounding on the verge of tears. “Poor little lost kitten. I would not be able to sleep tonight for thinking of it out here, starving and alone.”

  Oh Lord, Piers thought, how did one explain to a sensitive young girl that looking for a kitten in Vauxhall Gardens was rather like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack? And how did one explain that one did not wish to be alone with her for too long for fear of compromising her and putting oneself into an awkward position? He could imagine what some members of their party were already thinking about the fact that he had slunk down a darkened path with her.

  “We must look farther,” she said. “Just a little farther along, sir.”

  Well, perhaps twenty steps farther, he thought weakly, following her deeper into darkness.

  “We must turn back now,” he said gently a couple of minutes later, “Probably by this time the kitten has found its owner and is curled snugly on someone’s lap.” The trees were roaring above their heads.

  “Oh,” she said. She sounded on the verge of tears. “If only I could believe that were true. But we must do as you say. It is the only sensible thing to do.”

  She gazed about her one last time as she turned back toward him. But her arm stiffened in his, and she pointed eagerly along another path altogether.

  “There it is,” she said. “We are almost up to it, poor frightened little thing. Stay, kitty.” And she advanced slowly along the path, one arm stretched out before her.

  Piers addressed a speaking glance to the sky above their heads and followed her. That kitten must be a particularly senseless creature, he thought a minute or so later.

  It certainly seemed to have no interest in being taken to safety. Indeed, he had not himself glimpsed the animal and was beginning to have uncharitable thoughts about its very existence, if he did not know that Miss Borden was a timid young girl, he would be suspecting some trick.

  She paused when they came within sight of one of the rustic shelters where people who could not afford one of the boxes, or people who wished to dine tête-à-tête, very often took their supper. But of the kitten there was still no sign.

  “Oh,” she said regretfully, turning back to him, “I am afraid we have lost him. He did not realize we had come to his rescue. “

  She was looking full up at him. He could see that in the sudden illumination of a flash of lightning. The next moment she was in his arms.

  “Oh,” she said, her voice panic-stricken, “there is a storm.”

  “It is not overhead yet,” he said. “But wet must hurry back.”

  Even as he spoke, a large drop of rain splashed onto his face, and the thunder rumbled in the distance.

  “Oh, no,” she said, clinging to him, “It is raining and the storm is close. We cannot go all that way in this. I am so frightened of storms.”

  “I will keep my arm about you,” he said soothingly, “and we will move as fast as we can. You will be quite safe.”

  That was the moment when the heavens decided to open. He set an arm about her shoulders and rushed with her toward the shelter.

  And there they were stuck, he thought, until the storm passed. Perhaps an hour, if he were lucky. Longer if he were not. Though length of time was really immaterial. However it turned out, he would be away from the group with Miss Borden for a considerable length of time. Indeed, it was probable that if the rest of them had turned back in time, they were already at the carriages and going home, leaving his carriage for his own and Miss Borden’s use.

  However he looked at it, the bottom line was the same. He was going to have to offer for the girl.

  “Oh,” she said, clinging to him and hiding her face against him as he seated them both on a bench that was away from the pelting rain. Another flash of lightning lit up the sky. “I am so very frightened. And so c-cold.”

  He unbuttoned his coat and drew her inside it with him. He wrapped his arms firmly about her and rocked her. He made soothing noises into her hair.

  Devil take it!

  And then somehow her face was raised to his, and he kissed her soft lips, very much as he would a frightened child. Except that she moaned and clung to him, and he was forced to deepen the kiss.

  “I feel safe here with you,” she said several minutes later, curled up on his lap where he had lifted her, her head burrowed into the warm spot between his neck and shoulder.

  “You are safe,” he said soothingly. “I have you safe.”

  The thunder crashed around them.

  Had that kitten existed? he wondered.

  So he was holding his future bride. Very soft and warm and shapely. A soft, eager mouth that had offered to open for him if he had accepted the invitation. A tender heart. The mother of his children. Except that for all the shapeliness and warm eagerness, he could not picture himself making love to the girl. She was a child herself. Too young to have children of her own. They would probably kill her.

  He would end up killing her, as he had killed Harriet. And loving her just as little.

  He held her close against him and rocked her soothingly. And he stared unseeingly into the darkness, which was lit every few seconds by lightning.

  He wondered what Alice was doing.

  ***

  Alice and the others had turned back almost as soon as Cassandra and Piers had left the main path. The absence of the one couple was noted immediately, and Lady Margam was instantly worried, but Mr. Bosley just laughed in his genial way and said that the naughty puss had merely stepped off the path for a minute at the insistence of her beau and would be back with them before they knew it.

  “This is certainly the place for young love to thrive, do you not agree, Mrs. Penhallow?” he said.

  But when they returned to the box and there was still no sign of the missing couple either there or coming up behind them, Mr. Bosley insisted that they hurry to the carriages without further delay, as most other people were doing.

  “Doubtless they have gone straight there instead of coming here first,” he said, taking Alice’s arm within his again.

  But the truants were not at the carriages, either, and the rain was beginning to fall. There had been one flash of lightning and its following rumble of thunder already.

  “You must go and look for them, brother,” Lady Margam said.

  But Mr. Bosley shouted with laughter. “I could search for hours, Lucinda,” he said, “and then not be thanked when I came up to them.” He shook his head. “Young love! I shall have something to say to young Cassie tomorrow, you may be bound, and to Mr. Westhaven, too. Forcing my hand in this way! It is almost enough to put me out of humor.”

  Except that he did not look at all out of humor, Alice thought. She was sick with worry. Somehow, she was sure, that girl had contrived to draw Piers away and keep him away. And now, unless they appeared immediately—and even perhaps then—the girl would be hopelessly compromised and Piers trapped into a marriage he had decided he did not wa
nt.

  He was to return to Westhaven Park the next day.

  “You will come in my carriage, if you will, ma’am,” Mr. King was saying to her as the rain began to come down in earnest. “I have Miss Carpenter and her brother with me, too.”

  “It would by my pleasure, ma’am,” Mr. Bosley said one moment later, but Alice climbed quickly into Mr. King’s carriage out of the rain.

  “Bosley will convey Miss Marks and Lansing home,” Mr. King was explaining to Jarvis. “Westhaven’s carriage will be left for his and Miss Borden’s use.”

  Alice did not notice the grin Jarvis and Mr. King exchanged. She was peering anxiously through the window. But there was no sign of either Piers or Cassandra Borden as the carriages drew away.

  ***

  Piers dismissed his carriage before it reached St. James’s Street. The roads and pavements were still very wet and the air chilly and damp, though the rain had stopped some time before and there were even some stars in the sky. It would have been far more comfortable to ride, he supposed, but he could not do it. He could not go home and to bed.

  Where would he go instead? To one of his clubs? But he did not feel like making conversation or playing cards or getting drunk. For the moment all he felt like doing was walking. And if some footpad decided that he was a likely target for attack, then God help the poor man. He would be delighted to tear him limb from limb.

  He had taken Miss Borden home once the storm had eased—more than an hour after they had taken refuge in the shelter at Vauxhall Gardens. Her mother had taken her tearfully into her arms. Bosley had greeted him like a long-lost son, with smiles and joviality, and offered him a glass of something to warm him.

  But he had declined and excused himself after assuring the uncle that he would return in the morning, if he might.

  If he might! Doubtless the whole of the fishy fortune would be put to use to hire professional murderers if he failed to put in an appearance and make his offer.

  And now he was getting his just desserts for all the amusement he had derived from Bosley’s character. The more he thought of it, the more he was convinced that somehow Bosley had put Miss Borden up to luring him away as she had, just before the storm broke. The timing had been quite perfect.

  It must have been Bosley. Miss Borden would never have thought of that for herself. He felt angry with the man. How could he have taken such a risk with his niece’s virtue in order to net a husband for her? What if his victim had turned out to be an unscrupulous man? He could, if he wished, have enjoyed the girl for more than an hour there at the gardens, without much fear of interruption. Such was her innocence, he did not believe she would have even put up any resistance.

  Well, he was done for now. Leg-shackled. A tenant-for-life. All the rest of the clichés. And perhaps it was just as well. He had cheerfully agreed only a few weeks before that it was time he married again and added a few hopeful infants to the human race. It had seemed the right thing to do. His mother would be pleased. And he supposed that he could not do much better than Cassandra Borden. She was very young and very pretty and doubtless biddable.

  He might as well do the thing quickly. Make his offer the next day. Marry the girl before the end of the Season. Doubtless Bosley would think nothing but St. George’s with half the ton in attendance to be good enough for his niece. He could take her into the country even before the Season was quite over, and live at Westhaven for as long as he wished.

  By this time next year he would probably be a father. He would like that, at least. Yes, he would like that.

  Provided he did not kill her in the process. His footsteps increased in pace.

  Perhaps he would take her to meet his mother tomorrow afternoon. Mama would like her, as she had liked Harriet. Another family member to bully. Poor Miss Borden. He would have to be sure to sit next to her to give her the support she would need to see her through the meeting.

  And where the deuce was he going? He stopped walking and looked about him, frowning. What the devil was he doing on Cavendish Square? And what time was it? He looked about him almost as if he expected to see the sun rising over the eastern horizon. It must be all of midnight.

  Allie. Was that where he was going? As usual? Feel depressed, feel troubled about something, and run to Web and Allie. They would make him feel better.

  Piers strolled onward in self-disgust until he stopped before the Penhallow house. Without even realizing it, he had come running to her. Poor Allie. She was doubtless disgusted by his disappearance at Vauxhall. She would be less than thankful to have him unburden all his woes on her shoulders at this hour of the night.

  He was going to have to learn to live without her. He had become far too dependent on their friendship over the years. It had been all right, he supposed, while Web was still alive. But not now. There would be all sorts of people who would misunderstand their relationship. A close friendship between a man and a woman was too suspect a relationship to many people. Especially now that he was to take a bride again.

  Bosley had seen it already. He had made every effort to keep him and Allie apart that evening.

  Piers stood on the pavement, looking up to the lighted windows of Alice’s private apartments, and fought the temptation to climb the steps and knock on the door.

  ***

  Alice had dismissed her maid for the night. She had undressed and brushed out her hair. But she was not ready for bed yet. She would not be able to sleep. She put on a robe over her nightgown and took a book into her sitting room.

  But she could not concentrate on that, either, she realized after more than five minutes had passed and she had not turned a single page. She closed the book and tossed it onto a table with some impatience.

  She had her own life to lead. And now it was her own again, now that Phoebe was past the stage of even being able to pretend to weakness. She was free again. She certainly did not need to take anyone else’s burdens on her shoulders.

  Certainly not Piers’. He was a man of mature years, perfectly capable of organizing and living his own life. Except that there had always been a vulnerability about Piers, a strange innocence despite the detached, ironic view of the world he liked to take. He had been led into a trap, and he probably did not even know it.

  He would have no choice but to marry the girl. Alice had thought of all the possible ways out of the situation that he might have, but there were none. Somehow the girl had trapped him alone with her in Vauxhall Gardens for the duration of the storm. There were several people who knew about it. Piers would have no choice.

  And she did not believe that Mr. Bosley would allow him to forget it. She shuddered a little. Piers had always seemed so amused by Mr. Bosley, and she had been inclined to share that amusement at the start of the evening. She no longer did so.

  Piers had been picked out from the start as an eligible husband for Cassandra Borden, and he had not had a chance from that moment on. Mr. Bosley and Miss Borden were a pair of connivers worthy of each other. She did not know which was the more responsible for what had happened that evening, but she did not doubt that both were quite ready to make the most of its success.

  Poor Piers. He probably did not even suspect that he had been had. And he had been so close to doing what he really wanted to do and really ought to do—going back to Westhaven Park.

  Alice got to her feet and paced the sitting room restlessly. She must shake it from her mind, Piers was her friend. That was all. There was no other tie that bound them. He was not her concern. And since there was nothing she could do to extract him from the predicament in which he found himself, there was no point in giving herself a sleepless night over it.

  She must go to bed. She needed to be fresh in the morning. She was to begin her own journey home during the afternoon. Home. Bath. She longed for it and dreaded it. Longed for the peace and predictability of her life there. Dreaded putting behind her the life and excitement that the past few weeks had brought her. The Tower. Astley’s. The visit to Lady Ney
land. Somerset House. The Egyptian Hall. Piers.

  Piers. Perhaps she would never see him again. And she was not sure that she would want to see him once he was married to Cassandra Borden. The girl would lead him a merry dance, she feared. Not that it was any of her concern. It was not her concern at all. She must go to bed and put it from her.

  She wandered restlessly to the window and put back one curtain so that she could gaze down upon the square. It was lit up by moonlight now, the only sign of the storm the puddles of water on the street. How the storm had played into the girl’s hands!

  There was a man standing in the street below. Alice took a hasty step back and let the curtain fall over the window again. But she recognized him even as she did so, and she stepped forward once more and lifted the curtain.

  It was Piers. He raised a hand in greeting as she gazed down at him.

  She hesitated for only a moment before picking up a candle from the mantel and running quietly down the stairs and across the hallway to slide the bolts back from the door. Her heart pounded and she bit down on her lower lip, feeling for all the world like an escaping prisoner afraid of waking the guards.

  But the bolts slid back without noise, and she pulled the door open.