“Not necessary.” Lady Eleanor reached for the bellpull. “I’ll go tomorrow. No point in delaying.”
“I’ll set the sale in motion. Hemmings has been asking for years to buy that land.”
“I hate giving in to that old reprobate,” Lady Eleanor said, but without heat. “He’ll leer at me every time he sees me, as if he knows all our business.”
“Do try not to let him bother you, Mother. Rosefield Hall is two centuries older than that hovel of his, and Seabeck…”
“I know,” she said. Her offhand manner didn’t fool him. The pretense that she didn’t care was her protection. “Even without the High Point parcel, Seabeck is twice the size of his estate.”
“And twice as productive.”
“Is it? Excellent. Well done, Rosefield.”
She was gone a moment later, sweeping out of the room with her customary regal bearing, leaving her son blinking at the unaccustomed praise.
James went to his study to write to Hemmings after luncheon, but when he stood beside the window, watching the foals kick up their heels in the autumn sunshine, he felt an irresistible urge to be out of doors. One more day would make no difference, he told himself. A good gallop with Seastar might help to drive the taste of failure from his mouth.
The brisk, bright air agreed with the horse, too, it seemed. As James mounted, Seastar sidestepped and swished his tail in his eagerness. James held him in until he was sure his muscles were warm enough, which was no small feat. When he thought it was safe, he let Seastar canter, then gallop.
James hadn’t intended to ride to High Point, but Seastar’s liveliness commanded all his attention, and he hardly realized they were on that road until they were halfway there. He wasn’t sure which of them had made the choice, but he gave in to it. He let Seastar gallop out his coltish energy, then slowed him to a steady trot as they wound along the cliffs.
He hadn’t ridden in this direction since the day he had proposed marriage to Annis Allington. As the three ancient boulders of High Point came into view, he felt a wrench of nostalgia for the day he and she had spent here, though it had ended in such humiliation.
He slid from the saddle and dropped Seastar’s reins to let him crop the sparse yellow grass around the wind-stunted trees. James recalled laying out the picnic and remembered Annis’s unabashed enthusiasm over the food. Not for her the dainty appetites of the well-bred English girls he knew. She had an appetite for life in general. She loved horses, and flowers, and birds. She was intensely interested in plants, especially herbs. She had such a vital presence in his mind that it seemed impossible she was not standing beside him.
They had made their peace after his ill-fated proposal. They had become friends in the aftermath of his illness, and in the generosity of Rosefield Hall as she dealt with her stepmother’s sickness. She had exclaimed over the little parting gift he had given her, a daguerreotype of Seastar, which she promised to show to her stableman. In return she had left him a novel she finished on the voyage to Liverpool, for him to read while he recuperated. They had said farewell as friends.
He longed for another chance with her, but the moment had come and gone.
He walked up to the peak of the cliff and stood looking down at the strand beneath. The gulls cried overhead, and the waves murmured below, all the sweet things he loved about this spot. All the things he was going to lose.
Of course he could still come here. Hemmings wouldn’t mind, but it would be a painful reminder of how low Seabeck had sunk, selling off land that had belonged to the family since the Wars of the Roses.
James stood still, his hands in the pockets of his jacket, his overlong forelock lifting in the wind. He closed his eyes and breathed the salty air, hoping it might soothe his injured spirit.
When it hit him, his eyes flew open. He froze in place, staring unseeing out to sea.
What was this? It didn’t feel like anything he had experienced before. It was more than an idea. It was a conviction. A compulsion. It came to him fully formed, inarguable and irresistible. His blood sang with it, and his body tingled all over.
He was going to New York. He was going to see Annis without the distractions of maternal pressures and weird illnesses and bizarre nightmares. He was going to try one more time, because if he didn’t, he would never be able to forget her.
He felt a swell of confidence. It was the right thing to do. It was the perfect thing to do.
He knew it.
In her herbarium in the Dakota, Harriet stood back, smiling. Her ametrine still glowed, dark-purple threads throbbing through the yellow-and-violet crystal, fading gently as its energy was expended. The pungent smoke from the herbs she had burned—dried rosemary and Saint-John’s-wort, to ease inner struggles, wild carrot and bishop’s wort for calmness and understanding—wafted up to dissipate against the high ceiling.
Beside the candle and her amulet rested a strand of Annis’s dark hair, retrieved from the apron she wore during their sessions together. There was also a pressed field rose, plucked from the Seabeck woods, to represent James, Marquess of Rosefield.
It was very early in New York, dawn not yet breaking over the park. Grace was still sleeping, and Harriet assumed Annis was, too. She estimated the time in Dorset to be just after one in the afternoon.
This rite—this cantrip—was her secret. Annis would have objected out of pride, and James—James still had no idea of the forces that had been at work on him.
Harriet would never compel the young people together, not as Frances had tried to do. She had created no philter, no potion, and certainly no manikins. The strand of hair, the pressed field rose, were merely tokens, symbols of Annis and James.
She had sent her intention, the most innocent of all intentions, out into the world. It was her wish and her prayer that, if the two would be happy together, they would find each other again. She used her rite to invite James to America. If he no longer thought of Annis, if his feelings had been created only by the maleficia, he would decline. He wouldn’t even know he was doing it.
But if, as she suspected, he had fallen in love—if, like Annis, he was treasuring the small tokens they had given each other—he would come. If Annis’s name came to his lips often, as his did to hers, if he thought of her when he looked at his Andalusians, as she thought of him when she looked at Black Satin, then he would come.
Love was its own kind of magic. It needed no help from witchcraft. It required only opportunity.
She touched the pressed flower with her fingers and murmured one more time, as if she were whispering in someone’s ear,
Don’t delay.
Come today.
Harriet was certain Annis would be overjoyed to see James again. She was certain, also, that the marquess would accept her magical invitation. As her rite ended, in that powerful moment when the stone shimmered and the smoke curled around her and the electric tingle of magic flowed through her body, she knew.
40
Annis
Annis rode Black Satin every day during the cool, bright
days of autumn.
She spoiled him so much that Robbie scolded her, warning her that too many treats would not help the stallion’s health, and that too much indulgence would ruin the exacting training routine they had always employed.
“No need to make up for the harm,” Robbie said. “He’s forgotten it, even if you haven’t.”
Robbie was wrong, though Annis didn’t try to explain that to him. She sensed the horse’s need to see her every day, as if their enforced separation, ending in his being taken away from his home, had really hurt him. She thought he must be like a child who couldn’t understand why a parent had abandoned him and didn’t trust in that parent’s return.
She had known from the moment of his homecoming how distressed he had been.
She had been waiting in the breakfast room, where a window gave a view of the drive and the stableyard at the corner of the house. She saw Neufeld’s stableman ride up on a thick-le
gged cart horse, with Bits and Sally on halter leads. Gentle Sally followed the cart horse in her customary docile fashion, although her neck was stretched to its limit as she tried to keep up on her short legs. Bits, however, was anything but docile. His head was high, and even from the window Annis could see how he jerked the halter lead so hard she feared he would dislocate the stableman’s shoulder. Bits stamped and sidestepped, blowing spittle and switching his tail.
It must have seemed to the stableman like bad temper, but Annis knew better. Anxiety and fear were making her beloved horse behave in such a way. One of his best qualities, which brought many mares to him, was his easy disposition, but only if Annis was there to manage him. He would not, in the end, have pleased Mr. Neufeld or his customers.
She flew from the breakfast room and cut across the shrubbery to the stableyard. She slowed as she approached the party, not wanting to startle the horses, but she called out, “Bits! Bits, easy, easy. I’m here. It’s all right now. I’m here.”
He whirled, finally succeeding in ripping the halter lead from the stableman’s hand. He stood for a moment, trembling, staring, then trotted toward her with a strong, high step. The stableman cried, “Miss, have a care!”
It must have looked as if Black Satin were going to trample her, but he stopped when his feet were just inches from her own. He blew a noisy breath and lowered his head as she put up her arms. He pressed his warm forehead to her chest, and she hugged him to her, shedding two hot tears of relief. When she pulled back to look into his deep dark eyes, she thought that if horses could cry, he would be weeping, too.
The stableman dismounted and stood, clearly mystified by this display. He shuffled his feet and fiddled with his stained cloth cap until Annis turned to him.
“Thank you for bringing Black Satin home,” she said. “And Sally. I’ll take them now.” She picked up the end of Bits’s dragging lead and held out her hand for Sally’s.
He handed it to her with some reluctance. “Miss, I’m supposed to take the payment back. For the horses, I mean.”
“Oh yes, of course. There’s a check for you. I forgot to bring it out.” She stroked Bits’s cheek. “Let me just stable these two, and I’ll be right back.”
Belatedly Robbie appeared, hurrying across the stableyard. “Here, Miss Annis. I’ll take ’em.”
Annis handed the two leads to Robbie, but not before planting an unabashed kiss on Bits’s wide, smooth cheek. Neufeld’s stableman gasped at such behavior with a breeding stallion. Robbie only chuckled.
Annis had worried that when the effects of their cantrip wore off, her father would be angry at having been manipulated into buying back the two horses, but he wasn’t. He shrugged and said, “It wasn’t that much money, and now I don’t have to fork over a big dowry.”
“I wasn’t aware you objected to paying my dowry.”
“Your stepmother gave me no peace until I agreed to it. That’s all over now.”
Frances herself made no comment. She continued mute and unresponsive.
Velma had transferred all her devotion to Frances. She seemed content to be the one to feed her, bathe her, dress and undress her. Annis, seeing this, ordered a cot moved into Frances’s room so Velma could sleep when Frances did. Velma brought all her few belongings and stowed them in a wardrobe Frances no longer used. Annis was touched to see the cut-glass swan candleholder resting on a little stool beside her cot. It held a candle that had never been burned. It was as pristine as the day she had bought it in the shop near the strega’s.
Once, when Annis asked Velma if she wanted to continue her unrelenting care of Frances, the maid said simply, “Mrs. Frances needs me. You never did.”
It was true. Annis had never wanted a lady’s maid and was content to be free of Velma’s anxieties and clumsy ministrations. Still, she felt Velma deserved better pay for her constant attention to Frances, and risked angering her father to ask for it.
“I suppose I’ll have to pay the girl more,” he said. “It seems I’m a widower again, but still with the responsibility of supporting a wife.”
“Have you been to see her, Papa? Even one time?” They had been home for weeks.
“What’s the point?” he growled and refused to discuss it again.
As the sultry summer melted into a cooler autumn, Annis divided her time between riding Black Satin and helping Robbie in the stables and her work with Aunt Harriet at the Dakota. The doorman of the Dakota scowled at first over a young lady arriving alone and going up the corner staircase to Miss Bishop’s apartment, but in time he became accustomed to it. Now when she hurried in, flushed and bright eyed from the walk from Riverside Drive, he tipped his cap, greeted her by name, and gestured to the staircase as if he were one of her own servants. If she had a basket with her, he sometimes asked if she needed help carrying it up the stairs. When she departed, he tipped his cap again and wished her a good afternoon.
She loved working with Aunt Harriet. It was good work, more practical than magical. She was thrilled the day she was allowed to compound a tincture all by herself, for a patient named Dora Schuyler, who suffered from painful menses. Annis took careful notes for the book of remedies she was steadily filling, writing down the elements of the tincture—cramp bark, poppy flowers, cohosh and burdock root. She learned the technique of macerating the tincture in alcohol and wrote down the proportions before she placed everything in a jar.
It had to sit for two weeks. Harriet had made an appointment by mail with the patient to come for the remedy, and she allowed Annis to be present as she handed the medicine to Mrs. Schuyler, who was a well-dressed, fragile-looking woman.
When Mrs. Schuyler had paid her fee and departed, Annis said, “Mrs. Schuyler seems terribly sad. Is that because of her pain?”
“In a way,” Harriet said. “She is sad, and there’s little we can do to help her with that.”
“She doesn’t seem to mind the cost of her remedy.”
“No. Money is not one of her concerns. I don’t hesitate to charge a full price for my patients who can afford it. It helps subsidize my patients who can’t.”
“You’ve seen Mrs. Schuyler before.”
“I have, but on principle I can’t speak to you about it. I will teach you, though, in time, and without mentioning names, how we help women who come to us with a certain problem.”
Harriet wielded knowledge and experience and wisdom in her herbarium in equal measures. Annis watched her chop and dice and pound, her face intent, her steady instructions so full of information Annis had to rush to write everything down. It hardly seemed possible, watching Harriet go about the quotidian work of an herbalist, that she had once watched her great-aunt wield a magic so powerful she had literally lifted from the ground.
Only two things marred Annis’s contentment. One was, of course, Frances’s failure to recover from the effects of the maleficia. Harriet asked, each time Annis appeared, if there was any change. There never was. Annis worried that Harriet blamed herself, but when she tried to talk about it, Harriet put up her hand and said, “Frances brought this on herself. I only wish it would not cost her whole life.” She turned away, muttering under her breath, “Such a waste.”
The second thing was one Annis never spoke of to anyone. She thought that if she didn’t talk about it, in time she wouldn’t think about it. Even better, she hoped, she would stop dreaming of it. Of him. Of James.
It was embarrassing, really. She had been so adamant, both with him and with Lady Eleanor, that she had no interest in marriage. She knew her rejection had hurt him, and she hoped his feelings had been soothed by her care for him after the crisis. She never told him what had really happened the night Frances magicked him. She knew he didn’t remember any of it and would be aghast if he did. She didn’t want that. It would only hurt him further.
But she thought about him all the time. She couldn’t help it.
When she went to the stables, she imagined the foals Black Satin would throw with Dancer or Breeze. When
she walked from Riverside Drive to Harriet’s apartment, she thought how simple and elegant Rosefield Hall was, compared with the ostentation of the Dakota. When she and Harriet foraged in the park, she remembered with a pang of nostalgia the riches of the woods and fields of Seabeck. She had placed the daguerreotype of Seastar on her dressing table, and each time it caught her eye she pictured James’s lanky figure, easy in the saddle at the trot and the canter, less comfortable in formal clothes. She remembered his disapproving expression as he looked down on her in Regent’s Park, offended by the American girl with no manners. She recalled his stiff proposal and his pain at her refusal.
She supposed she would never know if he might have come to like her for herself. If his feelings had been left unaffected by the maleficia, would he have changed his mind? She doubted it. His first reactions to her, before Frances magicked him, were no doubt his true feelings. They had parted on friendly terms, but he had not tried to stop her from leaving. No doubt by now, healed from the effects of the maleficia, he had forgotten her completely. Perhaps he had met a more suitable bride and was even now planning his marriage. She tried to pretend to herself she wouldn’t mind that, but without much success. The truth was that she minded very much indeed.
She had sent a formal letter of thanks to Lady Eleanor and James for their hospitality and kindness in the face of Frances’s illness. A brief note came to Allington House a month later, asking after Frances and wishing Annis well. Lady Eleanor had signed it. There was nothing from James.
She still had the manikins. She had carried them home in the bottom of her jewel case, then wrapped them in an old chemise and tucked them beneath a pile of winter nightdresses. Twice she took them out, laid them on her dressing table, and gazed at them.
They were supposed to be destroyed by the one who had made them, Harriet had said. One day soon, Annis told herself, she would take Frances’s hands in hers and guide them in destroying the manikin that represented herself, tear off the fluff of hair, wipe away that strangely red mouth.
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