Jack was generous with his money. That didn’t surprise Abby. It was his emotions that he was wary of expending.
Rose Cottage was everything Judith had said. Most of the furnishings had been left in place and the rooms had been cleaned so that the house was welcoming. As they explored the ground floor, Abby said, “These southern windows let in wonderful light. It will be a happy house. The rooms are also well laid out. You can put an entrance in the new wing for patients, and have your privacy in the older part of the cottage.”
“That’s a good idea.” Their explorations brought them back to the kitchen. Judith lit the coals that waited on the hearth. “Shall I make tea? I brought some with me, and Mrs. Harris’s kettle and teapot are still here.”
“That will be nice.” Abby settled into one of the plain wooden chairs. “We can drink to your new home. That is, if there isn’t another buyer interested?”
Judith shook her head. “No, I’ve spoken with her son. The cottage is worth more than most people around here can afford, so I’m the only one seriously interested. We’ve agreed on a fair price if I decide to go ahead, and it’s within the range Lord Frayne allowed. I was sure this was the right house, but I wanted someone else to see it and tell me I was right.”
Abby laughed. “I’m happy to perform my part in the process. It’s the perfect place for you, Judith. The energy is wonderful.”
Judith took the chair on the opposite side of the scrubbed deal table. “Now that we’ve taken care of my new cottage, how about you? Are you enjoying more of marriage than merely refurbishing Hill House?” Her eyes were twinkling.
Abby blushed. “Jack lost a great deal of blood.”
She didn’t need to say more since Judith was also a healer. “No wonder he’s keen on recovering as quickly as possible,” her friend said mischievously. “Are you comfortable with each other? You seemed on good terms at the wedding and after.”
Glad to have someone to confide in, Abby said, “We got on well at first, until he showed some signs of magical ability. He found the idea so upsetting that he has withdrawn. He’s perfectly polite, but distant. I knew that he wasn’t fond of wizardry, but I didn’t expect his feelings to run so deep. The thought that he might have power of his own repels him.”
Judith frowned. “Have you done a little gentle mental exploring? As his wife, you have the right to do so if there is cause.”
“He has an anti-magic charm branded into his shoulder. For the healing, he gave me permission to treat him. He didn’t rescind that until he started to see energy patterns last week. Now he’s like a brick wall.” Except for the energy she sent him. That went through his barriers with no trouble.
“Do you want me to take a look at this?” Judith asked.
Abby nodded gratefully. “Please. I haven’t the clarity to do it myself.”
Judith closed her eyes and her expression smoothed out as she mentally explored the energy around Jack and Abby. When the water in the kettle began to boil, Abby quietly made the tea, not wanting to disturb her friend.
Judith’s eyes opened. “I can’t get too close because of the anti-magic spell, but I sense a kind of stony knot in the midst of what is generally an open personality. Is it possible that someone spelled him to make him hate the thought of magic? Hatred beyond what most men of his class feel, I mean.”
Abby frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that. You may be right. He’s so easygoing in most ways. He even seemed to be coming to terms with my magic. But he’s almost like another person when the subject of his own potential for magic comes up. Now that you mention it, the difference from his usual personality seems unnatural. Do you think the spell was cast on him when he was at school? It would explain why Stonebridge Academy is so successful at purging their students of a desire to work magic.”
“One wonders if the parents would approve of magic being used on their sons when the idea is to turn the lads away from such wickedness,” Judith said tartly.
“Great lords don’t mind hiring wizards when there are benefits,” Abby pointed out. “The way they hire tailors and stewards and laborers.”
The two of them shared an ironic glance. Even the most disdainful of aristocrats was willing to use wizards when they wanted magical results. That didn’t mean they’d allow wizards into their drawing rooms. “The school might have bespelled him,” Abby said. “Or his family might have had it done. I wish I could look more closely, but unless he grants me permission, it will be difficult. I don’t want to use brute force to blast my way through the anti-magic spell.”
“It wouldn’t incline him to trust you,” Judith agreed. “Give it some time. If his innate power is stirring, he’ll start changing on his own. And he’ll need you there if his power comes in a rush.”
Abby suppressed a sigh. No one had said this marriage would be easy. She sipped her tea and reminded herself that it was early days yet. She would make no major assaults on her husband’s mind and spirit.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t use an old-fashioned nonmagical approach. It was time to nag him.
Jack stepped into his front hall and looked around with pleasure. Every day the house looked better, and now he thought the hall was complete. Though Abby had shown him the tapestries she’d found upstairs, he hadn’t realized what a warm glow of color they would bring to a room that had been too large and drafty for comfort. Now the hall offered the welcome he had always wanted to find in Hill House. Abby had talents beyond healing.
He swung into the room on his crutches, tired from his long ride but no longer aching in every muscle. Each day he became stronger. All that was required was pushing himself just short of the point where he would drop.
Halfway across the room, he changed course. Perhaps it was time to switch from crutches to a cane.
In the corner of the hall, a tall ceramic urn from Greece held the collection of canes they’d found in the attic. He stuffed his crutches into the urn and pulled out the cane that had caught his attention the week before. Holding it in his right hand, he took a cautious step. Though his leg ached, it wasn’t the acute pain that had made him fear snapping the unhealed bones. Now, he guessed, the bones were almost whole again.
Still, his right leg wasn’t quite ready for this much strain. He pulled a second long cane from the urn and tried walking with one in each hand. He was pleased to find that using the canes together gave him support he needed, while making him feel more agile and less disabled. Another piece of progress!
He took a last look around the hall. His wife had created the warmest home he’d ever known, and he was doing his best to avoid her. Staying busy or asleep, or inviting friends for dinner every night, couldn’t keep them apart forever. Sooner or later, he would have to come to terms with her and the magic that had invaded his life.
Let it be later.
As she did each night, Abby quietly opened the connecting door to Jack’s room to say good night. A lantern turned low cast a dim light over the bed where he drew deep, regular breaths. Was he asleep? She had her doubts.
She crossed to the bed and bent to kiss his cheek. His taut skin shivered slightly, but his eyes didn’t open. She had a sudden powerful desire to drag her cowardly husband from the bed and dump him on the drafty floor. But that might damage him.
After a moment’s thought, she smiled wickedly and slid her hand under the covers to tickle the sole of his left foot, with her cold, cold fingers.
Chapter XVI
Jack swore and almost jumped out of his skin when icy fingers tickled the arch of his left foot. So much for pretending he was asleep.
He pushed himself up in the bed, wondering if he was up to a serious conversation with his wife. Probably not, but he didn’t know when it would be any easier. “Your hands are cold.”
“That’s not surprising in early February.” She wrapped her robe tightly around her lushly curved figure and perched on the end of the bed. The faint light revealed her expression as calm but implacable. “Are we goin
g to spend the rest of our lives avoiding each other? If so, the sooner we move to separate residences the better. You’re ready for London, I think. Go without me. I’d much rather stay here than go to town with a husband who won’t talk about anything more personal than furniture.”
The prospect of going up to town alone presented one small, cowardly instant of relief. Life would be much simpler if he didn’t have to explain a wizardly wife.
But much greater were his regret and shame. He liked having Abby nearby, even though he’d been keeping his distance.
And in the midst of a serious discussion, he was having trouble not thinking about the night they had shared in this bed, and how warm and sensually responsive she had been. If he leaned forward…
Focus. He needed to overcome his cowardice and talk to his wife. “I don’t want to go to London by myself. I want to go with you.” He grimaced. “I’ve been behaving badly. The problem isn’t you, it’s me.”
“Of course it’s you,” she said, unimpressed by his willingness to take the blame. “We were getting on rather well, I thought, until you kissed me and sensed the energy flow around us. You have magic, but the merest suggestion of that sent you running like a fox fleeing a pack of hounds. I don’t know how long you can hide from this side of your nature, but not much longer, I suspect.”
“No!” You have magic. Just hearing the words made his stomach knot. “I’m no wizard. Once I had some interest in such matters, as boys do. Perhaps I even have a little power, since you claim to have used it during the healing. But I lost all interest in magic at school. I want nothing to do with it.”
“Lost interest or were bespelled?” Her expression was grave and perhaps pitying. “Your reaction to the thought of having power is so fierce, so different from your usual temperament, that I have to wonder if a spell was cast to make you hate your magical nature. Did Stonebridge cast such spells to ensure that its students would walk the path their parents chose for them?” She paused for emphasis. “If so, do you want to live your life controlled by what others wanted for you?”
Panic washed through him, flooding his common sense. Panic so great that underneath, the small part of him that was still rational wondered at its intensity. Abby had said nothing that should frighten him—unless she was right and someone had tied knots in his mind.
He managed to choke out, “You’re only guessing that someone put a spell on me. You can’t know for sure. I bear the strongest anti-magic spell known on my own flesh.”
Abby’s dark brows arched. “There is no spell strong enough to block a wizard of my strength for long if I truly wanted to break through, but I have not done so. It would be very bad manners.”
And a betrayal so great as to end any chance they might have had at a real marriage. Thank God she was wise enough to know this, or their marriage was already doomed.
But he wanted a real marriage, and despite his fear, he wondered if she might be right about the spell. “If I were to grant you permission to explore my mind, how do I know that you won’t plant a spell of your own?”
Her full lips tightened. “You would have to trust me. I suppose that is asking too much, given that we are still more strangers than not. But there is another way. You can explore your own mind. Now that I’ve told you that you might be the victim of a suppression spell, you might be able to find it on your own.”
He frowned. Though he would rather not have his mind invaded, he doubted that he would find anything there that he hadn’t noticed for the last twenty years. “Even if I could find evidence of a suppression spell, what could I do about it?”
“It is an offense against nature for a spell to block a person’s deepest self,” she said slowly. “Even the most powerful wizard has trouble creating a suppression spell that can last indefinitely. I doubt you could have been controlled in that way if you hadn’t been a boy when the spell was laid on you. You grew up not realizing that a vital aspect of your spirit had been suppressed. Now you are a man. If you look inward and find such an unnatural barrier, you might be able to break it down. Or if you give me permission, I could help you do so.”
He did trust Abby, he realized. More than he trusted Colonel Stark, who had wielded discipline at the Stonebridge Academy with such unholy satisfaction. But…“I don’t want someone else poking around inside my mind. Even you.”
“I understand.” Her voice was gentle. “Are you sufficiently offended by what was done to you that you will look for yourself?”
Even the thought of probing his mind for alien magic caused another spike of panic. Which meant, he realized, that he had no choice but to look inward, no matter how painful the process. “More than sufficiently offended. But how does one study one’s own mind?”
“Imagine some kind of scene,” she replied. “Perhaps a place you know and find comfortable. A meadow, a familiar house, perhaps how you imagine life would be if you were a fish under the sea.”
“A fish?” he asked, temporarily sidetracked.
She smiled. “What you choose is only a metaphor. Move through the scene in your imagination, and if something feels wrong, look closer.”
That seemed simple enough. What to imagine?
For some reason, his thoughts went to a beech wood on the estate of a friend he’d visited several times in the Cotswold. Beeches didn’t grow in Yorkshire, and he had been fascinated by the dense canopy of leaves that blocked most sunlight. Because of the deep shade, few plants grew and the floor beneath the beeches was layered with a thick, yielding carpet of fallen leaves.
The peace and mystery of the beech wood had made a lasting impression. Sometimes he’d dreamed of it in Spain, on the eve of battle. Closing his eyes, he imagined himself among the massive trees. All was as he remembered, at first. If the beech wood represented his mind, he was comfortable in it. And he walked without pain, without crutches or canes.
Then he felt a tug of wrongness. Frowning, he followed the feeling. The majestic trees gave way to crooked saplings that were jammed together unhealthily. The trunks were as close as fence railings—as if they had been designed to conceal.
Wondering if a spell might be hidden in this dark corner of his beech wood, he forced his way between the crooked saplings, shouldering trunks aside by sheer force when necessary. He would not have been able to make his way through real trees, but his imaginary world had the qualities of a dream even though he was awake.
The farther he penetrated into the rank, unhealthy woods, the colder the air, the harder it was to breathe, and the greater his fear. By now it was clear that Abby was right. The fear was artificial, created by something outside himself. That didn’t mean that he didn’t feel looming terror, but he refused to let himself be affected by it.
Impatient at his lack of progress, he swung his arm and knocked all the trees in front of him to one side. They fell with splintering crashes to reveal a pair of iron doors set into a steep hillside. The doors were circular, as if concealing the mouth of a cave. He recognized deep wrongness. With sudden fierce certainty, he knew that this portal was the source of the blind panic that throbbed through him like a mortal injury, urging him to flee for the sake of his sanity.
Clenching his teeth against the panic, he studied the pattern embossed on the doors. The design was elusive, an ever-shifting matrix of shadows and sinuous lines, mysterious and seductive.
Dizzily he recognized that the pattern was sucking him down like a whirlpool. As he fell into the design, he sensed horrors waiting on the other side of the door.
Swearing, he shook his head and looked away, knowing that if he continued to look into the pattern he would lose all will and determination.
Abby. The mere thought of her steadied him. As the vertigo faded, he realized that if he’d ever accidentally found these doors, that sorcerous pattern would have pulled him down into paralysis. Perhaps he had been here over and over, and each time the memories had been wiped from his mind.
But this time he had been warned, and he would n
ot lose himself to a wizard’s spell. Not here, not in the middle of his own soul.
Eyes averted, he reached out and flattened his left palm on the iron door. The jangling energy was deeply unpleasant, but he forced himself to maintain the contact while he analyzed what messages the door held.
This door—this spell—had been cast at Stonebridge, he realized, and by none other than Colonel Stark himself, with the assistance of his second in command. The old devil had set up a school to suppress wizardry while being a wizard himself!
Deep in the metal, he felt an echo of the colonel’s torment. Magically gifted, the man had grown up loathing himself. Ironically, the one way he had been free to use his magic was as a tool to cripple the power of the young boys placed in his care.
Jack could almost feel sorry for him. Almost, but not quite.
Are you sufficiently offended? Abby had sent him into the darkness of his own mind to seek wrongness, and he had found it. Was she also right that he might be able to destroy the spell himself because his magical nature yearned to be free? What would be strong enough to break down these iron doors?
Anger. Deliberately he reached deep into himself to find rage.
He had learned early to let go of anger because it did him no good, but now he collected all the suppressed furies of his life. He harvested the baffled misery of the times his father beat him for no reason. The rage engraved on his soul by the cold menace of Stonebridge Academy, and the torments inflicted by the most twisted of the prefects. The anguish of a small boy being punished unjustly, and his towering rage when he’d cursed God for allowing good men to die meaninglessly.
When he had gathered his life’s burden of fury and outrage, he laid both hands on the doors and let his emotions blaze through his palms like Greek fire. The doors exploded, white-hot shards flying in all directions.
He barely noticed the shattered fragments of the spell because they were trivial compared to the energy that blasted loose from the bonds that had trapped it so long. He staggered back under the cascading power, feeling as if his skin was being seared away.
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