Her eyes widened. “Wh-what?”
“Alexis saw her and fell in love on the spot.”
Lucasta sucked in a breath. “Peony told me nothing of this.” She made as if to move for the door.
He put up a hand. “No, don’t confront Peony with it. She hasn’t yet agreed to the marriage. Let them sort it out for themselves. They deserve to draw their own conclusions without your insistent disbelief threatening to destroy their love.”
“I would never—” she began, and stopped. Swallowed. “You’re right, it’s none of my business. They are clearly perfect for one another, regardless of how ridiculously it came about.”
She still didn’t believe. Never in his life had he met such stubbornness.
“Nothing will convince you, not your own experiences, not Peony’s, not a wood that keeps you out or traps you inside, that produces a moonlit glade with a carpet of moss for the consummation of love...”
Her face remained set. Not a muscle twitched. She might as well be a statue.
He couldn’t take it anymore. He stalked to the door and turned.
She was hugging herself now, as if she would fall apart if she let go. But the dark fires in her eyes told him she would never give in while he confronted her. She might never give in at all.
He hated this. Loathed putting the control of his life and his happiness into the hands of another. He would give her a day to think it over, and then leave, never to see her again.
“It’s hard to believe such an intelligent—no, such a brilliant woman—can also be such a pigheaded fool.” He opened the door but paused. “Needless to say, I was a fool, too. I believed that love was enough. That love conquers all.” He shook his head and left.
* * *
Lucasta locked the door behind Elderwood, although she knew full well he wouldn’t return. She opened her window and poured the rest of the tansy and wormwood tisane onto the garden. She sipped her way through a cup of mint and rosemary tea, but it did nothing for her headache. Still shivering, she climbed into bed and curled into a ball, but with nothing to do but think, the pounding merely got worse. Hardly surprising, since her mind had become a battleground where all the armies were losing the war.
Love. Did he mean that he loved her? She’d thought of his feelings for her as merely lust, driven by his fascination with magic.
It didn’t matter. Whatever he might have felt, he despised her now.
Was she really so pigheaded? She’d always considered herself a reasonable woman, if rather more decisive than most. Women weren’t encouraged to think for themselves, but she’d never allowed that to stop her.
He’d called her intelligent. Brilliant. Recalling these few words over and over, a part of her wanted to sing for joy. That had been no veiled insult. He’d said exactly what he thought of her, both the good and the bad. Mostly bad, and to some extent she agreed.
Did he really love her? He’d never said so.
It didn’t matter. He didn’t want her anymore, and even if he did...
She still didn’t believe in magic. There was no proof of it except bizarre experience, and one could always explain that away.
She fell into a restless sleep and woke to sunlight and misery. For the first time since she could remember, she didn’t know what to do. She had to talk to someone. It was probably too late to mend matters—Elderwood now found her disgusting, and he’d spoken of his offer of marriage as a thing of the past—but if she didn’t get all this confusion off her chest, she would go mad.
How ridiculous. She never flew into the boughs over trifles. Over anything. She wasn’t like her superstitious mother, whose grief had led her to madness and death. She would handle this—this emotional crisis, but she wasn’t so pigheaded that she didn’t know when she needed help.
She dressed in a hurry, tiptoed into the empty corridor and tapped on Alexis’s door. He opened it almost immediately but didn’t invite her in.
She wouldn’t have gone in even if she hadn’t known about him and Peony. She could no longer afford to appear to be anything more than an old friend. “Will you walk in the knot garden with me? I need someone to talk to.”
“Of course,” he said, bless him. “Five minutes.”
She was pacing up and down between the boxwood hedges when he arrived. “What’s wrong?” he asked, adding frankly, “You look like the very devil this morning.”
“It’s about Lord Elderwood. He wants to marry me.” She took a swift turn down another of the paths that radiated from the center of the garden. “Wanted to, I should say. He—he seemed quite...” She couldn’t admit to Elderwood’s disgust. “I refused him. We had words, angry ones, and he well-nigh washed his hands of me last night.”
“Elderwood...asked you to marry him?”
Hadn’t she already said that? Alexis wasn’t usually so slow on the uptake. “Yes, I know it’s unbelievable, but he has asked me several times now.”
“While he thought you were engaged to me?”
“The first time was before that.”
“I see,” Alexis said, his brows drawing together. “You’d better start at the beginning.”
She couldn’t explain it all. Definitely not her...amorous adventures with Lord Elderwood. “We met briefly three years ago, and almost immediately he asked me to marry him, saying magic had brought us together. You may imagine how little I liked that! I declined his offer, and when he threatened to go to my uncle and ask for my hand, I panicked.”
Alexis now frowned in earnest. “So that’s why you asked to become engaged to me.”
She cringed inside; she was used to frowns, but not from Alexis. “My uncle wanted me off his hands. He was already looking about for a suitable match. He would have tried to force me to marry Lord Elderwood. I simply couldn’t bear it.”
“I understand that, but why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
“You’re upset with me,” she said.
“A little.” Which, where Alexis was concerned, probably meant very much so.
“I was afraid you would agree with my uncle because Elderwood was your friend,” she said. “Wanting to complete my father’s work seemed the perfect excuse.” He continued to frown. “It was worthwhile work. It needed doing.” Somebody had to warn the foolish of the dangers of superstition. Somebody had to prove that magic didn’t exist.
She paced back and forth. “Lord Elderwood renewed his offer more than once when I was in London for the Season.” She halted at his expression. “Please don’t be angry with me, Alexis.”
“All this went on behind my back. You can’t expect me to laugh it off.”
She slumped. “I suppose not.”
“I gather he has now asked you again,” Alexis said. “And you refused once again—not because he lacks intelligence or charm or any of the usual attributes that win a lady’s heart, but rather because of his belief in magic.”
She nodded.
“No wonder he’s been looking so out of curl. He’s used to getting his own way, particularly with women.” Alexis reddened. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
She huffed. “I know all about his reputation. He says it’s due to something magical about him.” She paced away between the hedges and back again. “He sees magic in everything. He says our...mutual attraction is due to magic.” That was as close as she would come to admitting any warm feelings for the Earl of Elderwood. “He interprets getting lost in the wood as magic, and finding one’s way again as more magic. He’s as bad as Peony.” She flushed. “I shouldn’t have said that. Peony has the right to believe what she chooses. She has never tried to force her beliefs on me, and I—” Damn.
“You’ve tried to convince her that she’s mistaken. I know. Everyone has.”
“I felt obliged to do so. My mother caused her own death due to superstition. Surely you understand.” She was pleading now, and she hated it. Elderwood despised her, and now Alexis felt the same. Had she done nothing right?
“I do understand,” A
lexis said. “Nevertheless, Peony and David have the right to interpret the universe as they choose.”
“David. Is that his given name? I didn’t know.” How irrelevant, seeing as she would never have the opportunity to use it.
“At heart, he’s an excellent fellow.” Alexis regarded her gravely. “It seems to me that you and he have a great deal in common. If you expect me to support you in refusing him, I’m sorry, but I can’t. That is something you will have to sort out with him.”
“I don’t know what I want,” she said.
“He fell in love with you three years ago, and he’s still in love with you,” Alexis said. “What does it matter whether he believes it came about through magic? The important question is, do you love him?”
Stunned, she stopped. “I—I don’t know.”
“If you love each other enough, you’ll find a way to deal with the issue of magic.”
She threw up her hands. “Impossible. We’ll never agree.”
“Not if you don’t even try.” Judging by his terse tone, he had lost patience with her. In his polite way, he left her to ponder his advice and strolled along the path, gazing up at the windows of the house. Numbly, she followed. Why had she never thought to ask herself whether she loved Lord Elderwood?
Perhaps because he had never spoken of love, or perhaps just because of the magic. All she’d thought was how to avoid him. How to prove that he was wrong.
She hadn’t succeeded. All she’d learned in three years was that one couldn’t prove anything either way. So much work for nothing. It was enough to make her weep.
Except that she despised fear and weakness and weeping, so she didn’t indulge in them.
Alex broke into her dazed thoughts. “Which is the haunted room?”
Distractedly, she showed him, and they went indoors to breakfast. David—too late, she’d begun to think of him by his given name, as if she knew him well—offered her nothing but a cold bow. Peony looked as cheerless as Lucasta felt, but Alexis seemed confident enough, and why not? No girl in her right mind would refuse to marry him.
The men rode away to tour the estate and view a hunter that was for sale. Maybe Lucasta couldn’t prove that magic didn’t exist...but perhaps if she could find the mossy glade where she and David had made love, she would feel a little less unnerved. She dressed in a warm gown and sturdy boots and made a systematic search of the wood, starting where she thought they must have lain and radiating outward. Hours later, she had covered half the wood and found nothing but the occasional patch of moss, and very little open space to lie down and indulge in passionate lovemaking.
She tramped grimly back to the Priory, wondering if she’d imagined the mossy glade or failed to notice a likely clearing. Maybe she hadn’t searched far enough. Perhaps, whilst in the heat of passion, one didn’t notice such inconveniences as pebbles and twigs digging into one’s back.
Perhaps she was making excuses, but she still couldn’t allow herself to believe.
She arrived home to find the vicar’s wife and daughter taking tea with Peony and Aunt Edna. A pang of remorse struck her at abandoning Peony, because she’d promised to support her at the social occasions her shy cousin so disliked. After indulging in tedious speculation about Lord Elderwood and coy questions about when Lucasta would finally marry Sir Alexis, they left at last.
Then the squire’s family came to dinner. Alexis caused a furor by asking to spend the night in the haunted room, at which David laughed so hard she thought he might asphyxiate himself.
Her heart leaped watching him laugh. When had she fallen in love with him? She wrenched her gaze away.
What was the use of loving him when they could never agree? And besides that, he hadn’t said a word to her and showed no sign of wanting to. Did disgust override love, just like that?
* * *
Alexis duly retired to the haunted room. David didn’t fear for him; Alexis was made of sterner stuff than most men. Not only that, Peony loved him, so the ghosts and bogies might take that into consideration. Or might not.He didn’t particularly care.
That morning, he’d watched as Lucasta paced in the knot garden, no doubt discussing him with Alexis. It didn’t seem to have done any good. She hadn’t spoken to him or even looked at him today.
He didn’t blame her. He’d tried to force her to become something she wasn’t, and then he’d been brutally unkind, but he wasn’t as unfeeling as he’d appeared. An unmarried gentlewoman couldn’t help but view a pregnancy with horror.
Slowly, he packed his belongings. He would invent an excuse and leave early in the morning. That was rude, but he didn’t care. For Lucasta’s sake as much as his own, he should make himself scarce.
He would have Alexis keep an eye on her. Oh, hell—she would go to Alexis for help regardless. It irked him unbearably that, even if carrying his child, she would turn to Alexis instead. He couldn’t force her to marry him, but he could rightfully insist on supporting her and the child, if it came down to that. But for now, he should just...go away. As she’d asked him to do.
He buckled his valise. Outside, the wind had risen to a rattle and a howl. That might be due to magic and might not, but doubtless Alexis had more excitement than he’d bargained for upstairs. David put on his boots and a long coat, and went outdoors for a walk.
* * *
After a few miserably wakeful hours, Lucasta donned a wrapper over her nightdress and put on her slippers. She stomped on what was left of her pride, tiptoed down the dark corridor to David’s bedchamber and knocked. And knocked again, but got no response. She rapped harder. Still nothing.
To hell with propriety. She opened the door.
He wasn’t there. Even if she hadn’t already sensed the room’s emptiness, the moonlight shining in the window made it perfectly clear. No banyan and slippers by the bed, no nightshirt lying ready. His brushes and comb no longer graced the dressing table. She glanced about and spied his valise by the door, buckled shut, ready to go.
Was he leaving now?
Aghast, she ran down the front stairs, but the house was utterly silent, as it should be at this hour, and the door bolted as usual. She lit a candle from the lamp that always burned near the door and hastened to the kitchen, as that door led to the stables. It, too, was barred.
That left the side door, the one leading to the orchard and the wood. It was unlocked. Had he gone to the Enchanted Meadow?
Shivering in the night wind, she rounded the herb garden. Clouds covered the moon, hiding the path. She found the orchard gate, lifted her skirts and hurried through the ranks of trees, heedless of branches clawing at her face. Twice she tripped on roots that had never been in the path before, barely catching herself. The third time she fell flat on her face.
If even the orchard wanted to hinder her, she wouldn’t have a chance of getting through the wood to the meadow.
That was foolishness. It was a wood like any other, and if it wasn’t, it should let her in, because she loved David Elderwood. She must, or she wouldn’t be so miserable at the thought that he no longer loved her, and so distraught at the prospect of never seeing him again.
No pathway opened into the wood, but she fought her way through the undergrowth, stumbling over fallen logs, cursing at the brambles, hissing when she lurched into a holly. It began to rain, slowly at first and then in a downpour that sluiced down her neck and bosom. Still she pressed on. She would get to the meadow. She would find it because she loved him.
She struggled through rain and wind and a wall of trees, refusing to believe the wood had malignant intentions toward her.”It shouldn’t matter,” she shouted. “I shouldn’t have to believe in magic. I should only have to love him.”
* * *
His walk cut short by the rain, David had reached the side door when her cry came to him on the wind. He traversed the orchard at a run and spied her not twenty feet into the wood. “Love should be enough,” she cried, striking at branches before her when a step to the side would have a
voided them. Her voice was a bitter tremble. “Let me go to him. Let me through.”
“Lucasta?”
She turned with a gasp of relief. “Oh, thank God.” She hurried toward him, clumsy in her haste. What had she just said about love? For a hopeful moment, he thought she would cast herself on his chest.
But no, she stopped a few yards short, cloaked in darkness and slicing rain.
Tentatively, aching to hold her, he said, “You were looking for me?”
“I had to speak to you,” she said. “To—to apologize before you leave.”
Good Lord, she wore nothing but her nightclothes. She had run out to find him without even getting dressed. “About what?”
“For accusing you of rape. That was unpardonable.” She took a quivering breath. All at once the rain slowed and the wind dropped. “For being so prejudiced against your belief in magic that I ignored your many excellent qualities.”
He blew out a breath. “I should like to apologize, as well. Believe it or not, I appreciate the difficulties you would face if you found yourself increasing. I know you would not willingly kill a child.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I poured the rest of the tisane out the window.”
Because of him? Astonished, he said, “My offer of marriage remains open, Lucasta.”
“Thank you, David,” she said, “but I—I don’t know what to do.”
He held out his hands to her. “Shall we discuss it?”
She went to him then, shutting her eyes as he closed his arms about her. She was wet and shivering. Blood trickled from a scrape on her cheek. “Dear heart,” he said, “you’re bleeding.” He wiped the blood away with his thumb and kissed her there.
“The branches,” she said. “They seemed to attack me. I thought you would be in the Enchanted Meadow, but I couldn’t find my way through the wood.” She paused, but because he loved her, he refrained from telling her magic was at work again. “I barely made it through the orchard.” She shivered harder, and he held his peace. “But...”
“But what?”
“But I can’t attribute it to magic. Even if I wanted to, I don’t dare. I’m too afraid.”
Bewitched by His Kiss (May Day Mischief) Page 5