Must Be Magic

by Patricia Rice

  The pain reflected in her assertion caught him by surprise. He couldn’t think of any woman less like fluff than this one. “I’ve never heard of a Malcolm who doesn’t have some weird power,” he said gruffly, before he could reconsider.

  She smacked his arm. Definitely not the right thing to say, he guessed.

  “I have an excellent nose for scent. That’s my talent, and it’s not weird. French perfumers are much sought after for that ability.” She propped herself on her elbow, black curls falling over her bare shoulders and breasts. She ran her fingers up and down his shirt, dismissing the subject with deliberate seduction.

  He might rouse to the seduction, but his mind had gripped an anomaly and clung to it like a dog to a bone.

  “You created a scent for Lord John and saw a vision of what lies behind his genial expression,” Dunstan pointed out with inexorable certainty. “Your soap follows me around like a pet puppy. What truth did it reveal to you?”

  Her fingers stilled, and she stared at him in the candlelight. Her eyes weren’t the fair blue of her sisters’ but a deep blue that appeared nearly black in this light. Velvet lashes ringed them, and he had the wild notion that she should always dress in velvet. It suited her, rich and sensuous, crushable and lovely.

  “My soap makes you smell desirable?” she asked mockingly.

  “Maybe its scent duplicates my fear and prejudice.” He answered his own question, following the path of his logic. “I was afraid I’d killed Celia, afraid all the world rejected me, and I hated society for it.”

  “My soap exposed your fears and prejudices?” she scoffed. “And that’s why you came here tonight? Because you no longer fear you killed Celia? My, my, that soap must be tremendously good to convince a mighty Ives he’s not a fool.”

  Dunstan laughed aloud at her backhanded insult, but he heard her self-doubt, and the vulnerability behind it. Since his own doubts ran rampant, he had no experience in how to reassure her. “I think more experimentation may be called for,” he answered, attempting to think while she wreaked havoc with her manicured fingers. “But it is entirely out of character for Lord John to lose his temper with a woman he wishes to court.”

  Releasing him from torment, Leila fell back against the pillow and stared at the canopy. “Men do stupid things. Just look at you. I’m lying here at your disposal, and all you do is talk.”

  He chuckled and leaned over and kissed her jawline, relishing her quiver of desire.

  She responded by tugging his shirt out of his breeches and running her hands beneath it. He must either roll out of bed now, or give in to the lady’s demands.

  Respect their differences, she had asked of him that morning after they’d made love, and he’d told her to go away. Her suggestion didn’t sound so foolish now. Plants required both sun and rain to grow. It took both man and woman to make joyous love. Perhaps it took an agronomist and a witch to find Celia’s murderer or to discover the source of her Malcolm power. Two sides of the coin to make one whole.

  She was courageous and strong and independent. She believed in him. He need only believe in himself, and she was his for the taking.

  With a woman like this to encourage him, he could do no less.

  Heart rising to his throat, self-doubt threatening to engulf him, Dunstan quit fighting the magnetic pull between them.

  “Tell me,” he whispered, nibbling her ear. “Does the seed we planted grow yet? Shall we expect a harvest after Christmastide?” He placed a hand low on her abdomen to tell her he wasn’t talking about gardens.

  Dunstan’s arousal pressed against Leila’s hip, his kisses whispered promises she willingly accepted. Why did he not simply take her instead of asking questions for which she had no answers?

  Impatiently, she ran her fingers over the firm muscles of his chest, but a small stirring of panic lodged in her heart as she counted the days. She couldn’t be pregnant, not in one try, not after all the years of failure. But he was an Ives and she was a Malcolm . . .

  Defiantly, she ran her hands down his abdomen and lower, pressing her fingers to the thick shaft straining at his buttons. She smiled at his muttered curses. “I prefer to tend that field myself,” she answered sweetly. And she wanted it plowed. Now. She squeezed and elicited another curse.

  “It only matters in how I take you,” he muttered. “I would not risk getting you with child if we escaped the first time.”

  The flutter of panic spread deeper, but she wouldn’t give in to it. She might be a poor excuse for a Malcolm, but she could deal with whatever this Ives chose to give her. Her fingers pried at his breeches buttons, and this time he didn’t halt her. He groaned when she finally gripped his heavy flesh, and a thrill of triumph excited her. She might be a failure at many things, but not in seduction.

  “I’ll take the risk,” she murmured, pushing his shirt up to kiss the broad, lightly furred chest looming over her.

  “I’ll not.” He rolled off, leaving a cold draft where he’d warmed her just seconds before.

  She would have gone for his jugular except she could see he was tugging off his shirt and sitting on the bed’s edge, yanking off his boots. Her insides clenched in anticipation. Powerful muscles rippled across Dunstan’s back as he stood to remove his breeches, and she wished she had more candles when he faced her. She’d known he was a large man, but her breath caught in her throat at his impressive size.

  She wanted to cry in protest when he slipped a sheath over all that potent flesh, but it would have been a foolish objection. Instead, she reached up and tied the silken strings. He had Griffith and didn’t need children of her, just the pleasure she offered. She could accept that.

  His kiss, when it came, removed any regret.

  “You’re the most fascinating woman I’ve ever met,” he murmured against her lips, pushing the velvet robe from her shoulders. “You should wear blue more often. It suits you as well as red.” He possessed her mouth with his tongue, forestalling any protest.

  Leila couldn’t have spoken had she wanted. She drank in the soul-satisfying nourishment of his kiss while his talented fingers cupped and tantalized and caressed until she nearly burst with anticipation. She dug her fingers into his strong upper arms, but Dunstan merely positioned his weight over her and continued to leisurely explore her mouth, filling her lungs with his breath while his hands mastered her in other ways.

  Pushing her bodice aside, he deepened his kiss. With his fingers plying the aching peaks of her breasts, Leila moaned in submission. She traced her hands over his chest, sought to return the pleasure, but he was well beyond her command. He parted her legs with his knees, and she could not have stopped him had she tried. She didn’t try.

  “I don’t think I can share you with another man as I did Celia,” he murmured, releasing her mouth and trailing feathery kisses across her cheek. “Tell me I’m the only man you need.”

  It frightened her to think in such terms, of being possessed solely by one man again. She was her own woman now. He had no right—

  “Tell me and mean it.” He bent and licked her nipple, and she arched upward. She could feel the brush of his arousal where she needed him, but he merely slid back and forth, searing but not satisfying.

  She ignored his demands and wrapped her legs around his waist. He was stronger and held back, poised at the brink but no closer. “Leila,” he warned, “say it now, or we’ll both lose. I know you’re not Celia, but I cannot share you.”

  The thin edge of control in his voice shattered her will. To be desired so intensely by this man was well worth whatever she gave up. That he needed only her promise to trust her said more than she dared hope. She knew he would not ask had he not decided to stay with her and help her. Joy and relief added to the intensity of her desire. “I could never want another,” she agreed, with terrifying honesty. “Please.”

  “Ah, Leila . . .” He kissed her and whispered, “Thank you,” so quietly that Leila wasn’t at all certain she’d heard him.

  Withou
t warning, Dunstan lifted her so he could remove the gown tangled around her waist. Taking a rosy nipple in his mouth, he positioned himself between her legs. She whimpered, but not in protest. The refined lady arched her hips in womanly demand, and he was lost in the warm cream of soft curves and her scent of roses and cinnamon.

  Her musical cry pleased his ears as he gripped her thighs and sheathed himself in the passage moistened by his earlier lovemaking. He nearly passed out from the rush of blood as her inner muscles tightened around him. Clinging to his restraint, he deepened his invasion until she bucked and writhed and wept beneath him. He knew that by taking possession of her like this, he bent her to his will. Power was a dangerous thing. They would both be better off recognizing their limits now.

  “You had best not use your spells on me,” he murmured, pressing a kiss into the curve of her jaw and throat.

  “They’re not spells,” she protested breathlessly.

  His thumb rubbed the place where they were joined, and she protested no more.

  Unable to hold back as her muscles gripped him, he withdrew slightly, and plunged again. Her shuddering cry of pleasure was his undoing. With a few short strokes, he drove her to screams of joy. As she quaked beneath him, Dunstan released all the hunger and need in a prolonged explosion of ecstasy.

  It was simple, really, Dunstan decided as he collapsed into Leila’s welcoming embrace. He was in control so long as he did what she wanted.

  Seventeen

  “I am not a free man, Lily,” Dunstan repeated, fastening his shirt in the feeble light of a candle lit from the guttering flame of the last one. “I have a son who deserves my attention, and you have a reputation to uphold. I cannot stay with you.”

  Sitting up against her pillows, Leila pulled a sheet over her breasts as if that gesture could hide the stabbing pain of his departure. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes as she watched him prepare to leave her. She’d thought he understood. How could he abandon her like this? The bed was already turning cold where he’d lain beside her. Hadn’t what they’d just done and said meant anything to him? She hid a tear by lifting the pillow still containing his heady scent and burying her face in it.

  “You called me Lily,” she murmured, focusing on the one thing she might settle between them. “Does that mean you prefer to think of me that way, and not as a viscountess?”

  Dunstan unexpectedly placed one knee on the bed, cupped her jaw with his big brown hand, and stroked her cheek as gently as if she were a child. As she peered from her pillow, he offered a wry, self-deprecating smile that charmed her. “Lady Lily,” he corrected, “both lady and beautiful flower. But I need to think of you as my employer now, if I’m to do this right.”

  “Do what right?” she whispered in confusion. How could he act as if she mattered to him and yet still leave her alone?

  He pressed a kiss to her forehead and stood up again, returning to dressing, speaking as if he were her estate agent, and she were behind her desk. “I’ll give orders to have your garden repaired and reassure your tenants that you, not Staines, are in charge, but I must leave for London as soon as possible.”

  “You would go without me?” she asked incredulously, finally grasping what was happening.

  Dunstan drew on his breeches and tucked in his shirt. “You may go or stay, as you wish. I have no say in the matter. I’m just telling you I’ll be going to London, and I must take Griffith with me. I’ll no longer neglect him.”

  Leila flung off the sheet in a rage as she fully understood why the infuriating man meant to abandon her. Now the damned man had decided to clear his name! Why the devil hadn’t he said so? Or asked for her help?

  Heaven forbid an Ives should ask a Malcolm for anything.

  How the devil did people get through each day while driven up and down by these insane currents of emotion?

  “What do you intend to do,” she asked in impatience, “parade through ballrooms demanding to know who killed your wife? Hold them at bay with explosives until someone admits his guilt?”

  She hunted for her robe amid the covers, noting with satisfaction that Dunstan’s hands had halted over his buttons. Defiantly, she swung her naked posterior practically in his face.

  “I have no idea what I’ll do,” he admitted. “I’ll just do what needs to be done.”

  “Ha! You can’t hide the smell of fear, Dunstan Ives. The idea of London terrifies you. You’ll be lost without me.”

  She pulled on her robe and tied it closed before turning around at Dunstan’s unusual silence. He stared at her, his breeches still partially unfastened. “What?” she demanded. “Do I have feathers in my hair? It’s not as if I rise from bed in perfect elegance, you know.”

  “The smell of fear?” he asked with a degree of care.

  She gestured impatiently and sought her brush on the vanity table. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Yours is merely a fear of ignorance. Now Lord John . . .” She shuddered as she attempted to restore order to her curls. “The man simply reeks of hostility when he’s upset.”

  “What else do you smell on me?” Dunstan asked, returning to fastening his breeches.

  Leila smiled at his reflection in the mirror. “Do you seek compliments, sir? What do I get in return? Will you tell me my eyes are as dark as midnight?”

  “Leila,” he answered, coming up behind her and removing the brush from her fingers, “don’t tease. I’ve not the patience for it. Tell me what you smell on me, good or bad.”

  She frowned at his tone but shrugged. “You smell of the same scents as the soap I created for you. You smell of the earth, and sunshine, of confidence and power. And of desire,” she added wickedly. “Your desire is more powerful than that of most men. Now, you must return the favor. What am I?”

  “A witch,” he said deliberately, holding a strand of hair in one hand, and gently tugging the brush through it with the other. “You terrify me. All I can see are your striking looks. I sense your arrogance and some instinct I cannot define or understand, but I can’t smell fear, Leila.”

  “That’s because I’m not afraid.” She took the brush back and pulled it more rapidly through her hair.

  “People can’t smell fear, Leila,” he said softly, gripping her shoulders, forcing her to look up at their reflections. “I can’t smell desire, even if I know you feel it.”

  “Don’t be foolish.” She glared at the reflection of his shirt, wishing he were a shorter man so she could see his expression in the mirror. “How would you know when I feel lust unless you smell it?” Something in the way he gripped her shoulders warned her that this conversation was important to him. She stiffened and turned to read his face. Surprise and something less identifiable floated in the air between them.

  He’d tied his hair back in its queue, emphasizing the squareness of his beard-stubbled jaw. His open shirt revealed a strong brown throat and an enticing mat of dark curls that her fingers itched to touch. Rather than looking piratical, he looked fascinated—by her.

  Dunstan’s lips curled up at one corner. His whole demeanor changed when he smiled, creating a bone-melting charm. Her heart lurched beneath that look, and she wished they could tear off their clothes and return to bed. He wished it too. She could smell it. She eyed him suspiciously.

  “I know you feel desire,” he said, “because I see it in your eyes and in the way your lips grow wet and inviting and in other ways I can’t specify. But I can’t smell desire any more than I can smell fear.”

  “Well, I always knew Ives were peculiar creatures.” She turned back to the mirror, but the brush lay limp in her hand. Whatever the scent that he gave off now, it made her uneasy.

  He chuckled and ran his hands up and down the velvet arms of her robe. “Not as peculiar as Malcolms, my dear. Tell your mother sometime that you smell fear and desire; see what she says.”

  Her family accepted eccentricity without a second thought. Caught up in their London whirl, they took Leila’s social graces for granted and paid little
heed to the subtleties of character and emotion she discerned. Only Dunstan had done that.

  People truly didn’t smell fear? She simply couldn’t conceive of it. She’d known the scent from a very early age. She’d learned to recognize scents from her mother’s pomanders, hadn’t she? The candle recipe that stimulated desire was one of her mother’s most popular scents. Surely people smelled the lust in it.

  “You’re being ridiculous.” Her uneasiness didn’t disappear, but Leila fought it. “If you don’t want me to go to London with you, just say so. Don’t make fun of me.”

  “I daresay I’ll poke fun at you as often as you do me, but this isn’t one of those times. I’m quite serious, Lily. Other people don’t smell fear or lust, or earth or sunshine. If we hold soil to our noses, we smell dirt, but I don’t think that’s what you meant, was it?”

  “No, of course not.” Growing irritable, she slapped the brush back on the table. “Dirt smells like dirt. Some smells good, some smells musty, or whatever, but it’s dirt. Smelling of earth isn’t the same. It’s . . . it’s . . .” She struggled to define exactly what she meant by earth. It represented all the good, solid things of this world, life and fertility and . . . the language lacked the right words.

  “It’s something you smell that others do not.” Dunstan leaned over and placed a blood-tingling kiss on her cheek. “Let us respect our differences, as you said, and learn from each other.”

  “We disagree on everything,” she reminded him. “How will we do that?”

  “I have no idea, but it certainly won’t be boring,” he answered, caressing her cheek. “Believe in what your nose tells you, Leila. Your family can do what others cannot because they believe in things others call foolish. Trust your instincts.”

  He released her to finish dressing. Leila clung to the warmth left by his hands as long as she could. Desire seeped through her veins, and in its wake came a powerful need to explore.