Souls to Heal

by Tilly Wallace

  19

  Alice

  * * *

  Alice rode inland, following the road and Gaffie’s directions. Before long, she spotted a cottage that seemed to have grown out of the surrounding forest. Trees entwined their branches with the thatch roof and wild roses scrambled over the walls. But that wasn’t what drew her eye. It was the riot of plants running from cottage to road that took her breath away. The pages of her botany book were crammed before her.

  Dismounting, she left the horse at the roadside and told Eilidh to stay put. Then she walked up the path, pushing aside plants that sought to claim every piece of ground for themselves. It was only spring and already everything here looked in full bloom.

  A woman emerged from behind a soaring artichoke. “Can I help you?”

  “Yes.” Alice pointed to one plant with a tight cluster of white flowers on a tall stem. “Do you have any valerian root for sale?”

  “Ah. A sister witch are you?” The old woman narrowed her eyes and stared at Alice as though she could see the trace of mage power flowing through her veins.

  “One of little power but with a thirst for knowledge,” Alice replied.

  The woman cackled, and Alice could imagine her toiling over a large pot by a moonlit night and throwing frog’s legs into a bubbling concoction. “That’s the best kind. Being open to learning will get you further than raw power.”

  Alice wished for just enough power to make a bullet move about six inches. “I try to meld my gift with herbs to help others. I have quite a list of things I need, if you can help?”

  “Old Nelly can help you, lass.” She beckoned Alice closer and the two women wandered through the fragrant landscape.

  Alice could have spent all day talking to the old woman. She was a living, breathing textbook with a scattering of outrageous spells to bring revenge down on the head of an unfaithful lover. Not quite the remedy Alice needed—she’d need a tonic to make Ewan her lover first. Not that she would ever want to compel him. If he could not freely love her, what was the point?

  Soon her basket was full, and Nelly even supplied early raspberries and their small leaves for making tea. Alice promised to return as soon as she could, then climbed back onto the horse and waved goodbye.

  At the Dancing Sow she unsaddled the horse and placed her herbs in the cottage. Then she took her basket of raspberries to the bustling kitchen. As Alice donned her apron, Jimmy rose from the table muttering under his breath about man’s business, picked up his jacket and hat from the hook by the door, and walked out.

  Daisy’s face fell when her husband left without so much as a kiss on the cheek or a glance in her direction. Alice’s heart constricted for her friend. Both of them were in a pickle with men. Why was it her gift allowed her to brew a spell for Daisy and Jimmy to find the spark of love, but Alice had no cure for loving an untouchable man?

  “What did you find, love?” Gaffie asked as she picked up the turnspit dog and placed him in his wheel. After a rusty groan from the mechanism, the spit started to rotate as he ran, turning the haunch of meat for supper.

  Gaffie was in a fine mood, and Alice suspected the popularity of her pies had much to do with it. Men were flocking for a slice washed down with a fine French brandy. Strange how barrels of the stuff materialised just when they were needed most. The combination of pie and liquor saw more coins disappearing into Gaffie’s sagging pockets each night.

  “Early raspberries. It will be a much sweeter pie for the men, and let us hope it puts them all in a sweet mood.” She gathered together flour, butter, salt, and water to make the pastry. Her mind formulated and discarded a number of spells as she worked. She also worked on summoning items and managed to make a fork, needed for pricking the pastry, almost move three inches to her hand, but the effort left her exhausted.

  By the time the pies were filled, tops crimped on firmly and dusted with sugar, she had the beginnings of a plan. It took another long hour before most of the work was done to prepare for supper and to ensure there was sufficient food to feed the hungry men who would pile into the tavern once the sky started to darken. Gaffie waved her away for a break, and Alice seized the opportunity to put one part of her plan into effect.

  She checked and double-checked that she had everything needed to perform the arcane ritual she intended to inflict on Daisy. Only then did she set off in search of her fellow barmaid. She found Daisy wiping down tables in the main room.

  She took the cloth from Daisy’s hand and dropped it back in the bucket. “You are coming with me.”

  “I have work to do,” Daisy said.

  “It will wait for an hour, and then I will help you catch up.” Alice pulled Daisy towards the back door.

  “Mrs McGaffin will be ever so mad if the chores aren’t done.” Daisy chewed her bottom lip and her gaze went to the closed kitchen door.

  Alice paused for a moment, wondering about the nature of Daisy’s relationship with her mother-in-law. Then she discarded that thought as a problem for another day. Today’s challenge was reigniting the flame of love in Daisy and Jimmy’s marriage.

  “An hour is all I ask. I want to start to weave a spell around you to make you irresistible to Jimmy. We are performing powerful magic and it might take several days before it reaches its full effect.” Alice winked and hoped her friend would comply.

  Daisy’s eyes widened and her mouth made an o-shape. “You promise to help afterwards with my chores?”

  An easy promise to make—Alice wouldn’t leave her friend to work on her own. “Of course. Four hands will easily have this place tidy by tonight.”

  Out the back and across the courtyard, Alice led a nervous Daisy. “I’ve never dabbled in spell work before. We’re not going to kill chickens or something like that, are we?”

  “No chickens will be harmed.” Possibly a few lice might drown, but they needed to go. Ewan would laugh. His fastidiousness had brushed off on Alice, and she found her body longed for a bath if she went longer than a week between them.

  Alice drew Daisy into the cottage and shut the door behind them. Eilidh had scampered in and took her spot by the fire. In front of it, with fragrant steam rising from the surface, was the tin bath.

  “A bath?” Daisy glanced at Alice as though she had gone stark raving mad.

  Alice knew mad and had been that way for many months—bathing was not an act of insanity, despite what some folk thought.

  “There are fragrant oils in the water that will scent your skin. Then we will wash your hair with a secret formulation my mother handed down to me.” There were herbs swirling in the water that would adhere to Daisy’s skin and help the finding spell Alice would cast. But the only secret to what she planned to use on Daisy’s hair was that it contained soap.

  Daisy still kept a suspicious eye on the bath.

  “I am not very powerful, and finding Jimmy’s love will take time. Think of this as the first step.” Alice intended to work on Daisy’s features while she bathed. She couldn’t alter them much, not like she did with Ewan. But she could enhance what nature had given the other woman. She could add lustre to her hair and a sparkle to her eye. A light spell would improve her skin, highlight her cheek bones, and plump out her lips.

  “Do I have to take all my clothes off?” Daisy stared at the water as though she suspected it would rise up and plot to drown her.

  “That is the most effective way to bathe, and the spell will work better if it has direct contact with your skin.” Alice started on the buttons of Daisy’s dress.

  “This does feel ever so . . . forbidden,” Daisy whispered.

  “Because that is what frightened men would have us believe. They tell us such things are dark or forbidden because they do not understand a woman’s power and they do not want us to wield any,” Alice said as she helped Daisy from the dirty dress.

  Alice shook her head over the garment. Such a shame to make Daisy put it back on when clean. Perhaps tomorrow they could undertake laundry.

  Da
isy laughed, a nervous sound, as her gaze darted around the room. “It’s not evil is it? Casting spells?”

  Alice remembered sitting at her mother’s feet while she spun stories of their ancestors. How ignorant men would burn mage-blooded women as witches while bowing and scraping to men who were mages. Being feared or revered was based solely on gender. “No. Once men thought women with mage-blood were evil and they called us witches. Now we are more enlightened. It is not the spell that is good or evil, but the person’s intent. We are finding your love, and that is a noble cause.”

  Despite the fact that mages and their offspring had walked the Earth for thousands of years, many people were still uncomfortable with things they couldn’t see or touch. It made it easier for them to sleep at night if they dismissed practitioners of magic as witches and shunned women’s abilities as ungodly.

  There were days when Alice remembered all too much of her time in Bedlam. Other mage-blooded women shared her cell because people couldn’t comprehend what they did. Like the woman declared mad because the ghosts of her dead children tugged at her skirts, and her husband didn’t want to answer awkward questions about what happened to them.

  Alice averted her gaze as Daisy stepped into the bath and then sat down with her knees pulled to her chest. Alice pulled a chair within Daisy’s reach and set down a steaming mug. “That’s raspberry leaf tea. My mother always said it was good for a woman on the inside.”

  “Do you think the spell will be strong enough to really make Jimmy want me?” Daisy asked with a wistful tone as she laid her cheek on her knee.

  Alice picked up the jug she would use to wash Daisy’s hair and thought about her next words. She had faith the spell would work for Daisy and Jimmy, but she couldn’t cast one to make Ewan love her. Such was the curse of being mage-blooded, the gift could be used for others but not for your own benefit.

  She wondered what it would take to breach the wall that surrounded Ewan’s heart. Why did he think he couldn’t love? Given he thought her delicate, he probably just said it to assuage her feelings, thinking she couldn’t bear to hear the truth.

  “I am sure it will work. The problem is not such a big one. Jimmy does love you, but sometimes men get lost in their problems and forget to see what is in front of them. The spell will simply remind him why he married you. What was it like, when you first met and he wooed you?” She wet Daisy’s hair and then picked up the soap to work into her scalp.

  “He was ever so sweet. I worked in the dairy and he used to turn up clutching handfuls of daisies—that’s my name, you see.”

  As Alice washed and rinsed Daisy’s hair (and washed and rinsed it again), Daisy told the story of a bumbling lummox who had courted a simple dairymaid. From her tale, it seemed they had genuine affection for each other, but lost their way after Jimmy and his father went off to war and only one returned. Alice suspected he paid more attention to his mother to make up for her loss, and in the process neglected his wife.

  A simple enchantment was all this relationship needed.

  “What about you and Sean, how did you meet?” Daisy sipped her tea as Alice rinsed her off for the last time.

  What to tell? She had never been particularly adept at lying and needed to stay as close to the truth as possible. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Oh, yes. Is it terribly scandalous?” Daisy turned to stare at her with wide eyes.

  “Not really, but there are parts of my history I would rather others didn’t know.”

  Her torture at Hoth’s hands and her time in Bedlam were truths only a select few would ever know. But Daisy could hear an abridged version.

  “I was born and raised in a small village in Somerset. It was just my mother and me, and I used to help her brew remedies and spells for the villagers who came to our door. Then she died when I was seventeen. I could have continued as village healer, but I wanted excitement. Instead, I travelled to London to seek my fortune.” That part of her narrative was entirely true.

  Daisy finished her tea and placed the empty mug back on the chair. “I thought only lads undertook mad journeys like that. I can’t imagine going to London all on my own.”

  Alice hadn’t thought it mad at the time. She had trodden the road full of wild hope, expectations, and gilded dreams. “In my youth, I was told I was a pretty thing, and on my first day in London, I was approached in the street by a very well-known madam.”

  Daisy gasped. “You never went into whoring, did you?”

  Alice winked. “In a way. The madam ran a very high-class establishment, the sort aristocrats paid dearly to visit. She trained me to be a courtesan. We were educated, taught social graces and how to treat a man as though he were a king.”

  “Is that where you meet your man?” Daisy’s hands tightened on the edge of the bath as though Alice’s story was gripping.

  She remembered seeing the dashing lieutenant at soirees and dreaming of such a man to sweep her off her feet. There was no need for Daisy to hear of the man who shredded her soul. Only one man mattered now, the one who protected her and held her close at night. “Yes. Sean was in London with a few of his fellow soldiers. We met, and my life has been entwined with his ever since.”

  A faraway look descended over Daisy’s face. “And then he went off to war and was injured.”

  “Yes. A horse rolled on him. But I would love him injured or whole, makes no difference to me.” She kept quiet that he was a lycanthrope. Given the Highland Wolves were the only shifters in the army, it would give away his true identity to reveal that detail.

  “Do you love him so terribly much?” Daisy asked.

  That was what pained Alice so. She would patch together her heart and give it to Ewan, but he had pushed aside her love. She wiped the back of her hand across her face. She hadn’t even noticed the tears falling down her cheek. “Sometimes love is uneven. Perhaps that is the curse of women, that we love far more than we are ever loved in return.”

  Daisy took Alice’s hand. “You’re wrong. I’ve seen how he looks at you. That man’s love for you is so vast it would span the ocean.”

  A stone fell through Alice’s empty torso. If only that were true. Ewan was simply a far better actor than her. They needed these people to believe they were a married couple, and it seemed he had convinced those who watched them.

  “Perhaps,” Alice whispered.

  Daisy stepped out of the bath, and they towelled her body and hair dry before she put on her dirty clothes once again. Then Alice set to combing her hair and plaiting it into a thick tail that hung down her back. As Alice fussed with Daisy’s hair, she wove a simple enhancement over the woman’s features.

  “Jimmy loves you, too, Daisy. I think he is trying to help his mother through her loss.” Alice surveyed her handiwork. The bath and spell combined wrought a transformation over Daisy. Her long hair had its lustre restored, there was a glow about her cheeks, and her eyes twinkled.

  “In case the spell needs a little more help, take this token and place it under your pillow tonight.” Alice handed her a tiny cloth pouch.

  “What is in it?” Daisy’s hand hesitated over the diminutive parcel.

  “Some herbs to aid his memory, that is all. The scent should remind him of his love for you.” Alice also planned to add a little extra spice to Jimmy’s ale when he turned up this evening. Sometimes a love spell needed a good prod to get it working.

  Daisy took the pouch and tucked it into her pocket. “Now, shall we finish cleaning down the tables and preparing dinner for all the lads? I suspect they’ll be hungry when they return this evening.”

  Arm in arm, the two women walked back across the yard. As they took their cloths and set to work, Alice pondered her relationship with Ewan. How sad that their deception was so convincing that she believed herself the loving bride of an ordinary injured soldier. Instead of moping, she should she cherish the days or weeks they had before them, and prepare for a life without him.

  This mission was a test. Was the broken
and shattered woman capable of moving amongst people again? On the surface, it would appear she could. Ewan had prepared her well and taught her how to master the fear and pain that overwhelmed. But now she wanted a different type of lesson from him.

  Alice wanted to remember the touch of a man.

  She wanted to learn of pleasure.

  20

  Ewan

  * * *

  Ewan had become the thing he feared the most—a bureaucrat. Or was it a bookkeeper? He wasn’t sure where the line was drawn between the two, and in his mind they merged into one crooked-backed, pasty-faced, emaciated scribe. An Unnatural creature with a dour wardrobe and the ability to drain the vitality from the world around him. He’d rather lie trapped under a dead horse than spend his life scribbling numbers onto paper and only wearing black.

  When he was sixteen, his brother the baron offered him a choice: the army or university. Ewan thought if he were going to spend his life taking orders from someone else, he’d rather do it with a weapon in his hand, not a quill. It also helped that women swooned over cavalry officers. No one gushed over the appearance of an accountant or lawyer.

  As it transpired, life in the army suited him, especially once he caught the attention of his superior officers looking for men to undertake covert missions. The brotherhood he found with his fellow soldiers was augmented when he took the bite and became one of the Highland Wolves. He trusted his pack with his life, and his brother lycanthropes had his back in any fight.

  Now, his pack had shrunk to Alice and her terrier, and the thought of relying on them if anything went wrong made his blood run cold. The woman was untested and the dog was easily swayed by a meaty titbit.

  For the second time in his life, he would be grateful if Alick bounded into view as his great red furred wolf with saliva dripping from his fangs. Instead, Ewan pushed thoughts of rescue aside and tried to concentrate on his battle with a column of numbers.