Cursed: A Spellbound Regency Novel

by Lucy Leroux

  It was the truth, but not the whole truth. Being close to her, even for a little while, was the only thing he had to look forward to in the difficult days to come.

  Isobel wrapped her arms around her waist before walking to the table. She started to eat mechanically, eyes forward and distant. He sat in the corner, pretending to read a book while she finished. When she was done, he presented her with a package.

  “I sent out for this. I wasn't sure you would have one with you,” he said, opening the brown wrapping and pushing it toward her. “That dress can't be comfortable to sleep in,” he added, nodding at the thick skirts of her widow's garb.

  The gift was a nightgown, short-sleeved but modest with a high neckline, made of thick warm flannel.

  “I also requested an extra blanket, so you can keep all the bedding to yourself,” he said as Isobel fingered the fine cloth of the nightgown.

  “I had a nightgown in my bag. It was on the carriage.”

  He nodded. “I'm sorry we misplaced your belongings. I have already sent word that it should be returned, and promised a sizable reward. It's possible it is already waiting downstairs. Would you like me to check with the innkeeper?”

  Looking away again, she sat on the bed. “It can wait until tomorrow. This one will be warmer in any case.”

  “All right then. I'll wait outside while you change,” he said, slipping out of the door and into the cold hallway to wait.

  A door on his right opened, and Ottavio peered out at him with a frown. Matteo glared back at him.

  Apparently, his father had ordered his minder to stay vigilant, despite having found Isobel. He stood in the hallway for a few more minutes before turning to tap on the door to let her know he was coming back inside.

  ****

  Isobel undressed as quickly as she could. Fortunately, she'd had the foresight to buy stays and a dress with fastenings in the front, but the dress had many buttons.

  She had just thrown the flannel nightgown on and was hastily climbing into the bed when there was a tap at the door and Matteo came back inside.

  Embarrassed, she pulled the covers up to her chin, but the expression of dawning horror on his face stopped her.

  “Your arms!” he rasped.

  Isobel looked down at them, confused.

  “What's wrong?” she asked stupidly, belatedly realizing the bruises on her arms were visible in the short-sleeved gown.

  They were a dark black and blue, and quite startling against the pale cream of her skin.

  “Did I do that? I did—didn’t I?” Matteo's confusion was palpable. He was shaking his head. “I don't understand.”

  She stared at him, uncertain what to say. Eventually she took pity on him. “What don't you understand?”

  “I don't do that!” he said, horrified. “I've never done that. I don't hurt them. They just die.”

  Isobel narrowed her eyes at him. “Your father said that too. That all you have to do is touch a victim, and they fall down dead.”

  He nodded emphatically. “That's what happens.”

  She cocked her head at him. “How can you be sure? You've already said you don't remember the events during...one of your spells.”

  Matteo collapsed in the chair and scrubbed his hands over his face harshly. “I told you. I've seen them after, once my memory clears. There wasn't a mark on them,” he whispered.

  “And were they dressed?”

  His face turned fiery red. “Yes, they were. Although at first they were brought in their nightclothes or in a state of undress. My father assumed I would want them that way. But it wasn't about that. Once he realized the truth, he never bothered again.” His voice sounded like sandpaper.

  She pursed her lips and nodded, stifling the rush of anger she felt for those helpless men and women to focus on what he'd said. The details were consistent with the count's story. And while she believed his father would have lied to her, she didn't think Matteo would. He already believed the worst of himself.

  “What you describe. The way things happen—it wasn't the same for me.”

  “I hurt you.”

  She nodded again.

  “Badly?”

  Gripping the covers tightly, she considered her answer carefully. “You hurt me some, but that was not your goal. You, or rather the thing inside you, wanted something else.”

  He didn't say anything for a long time. “You've always been different,” he finally whispered, wiping at his face with a quick movement. Raising his head, his burning eyes met hers. “I'll make this right. I'll marry you.”

  Isobel's mouth dropped open. She cleared her tight throat. “There is no need. You didn't succeed in dishonoring me. I stopped you.”

  His face showed no reaction. “But I did try to...to...rape you.”

  Isobel stared down at her hands on the white coverlet. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  She stared at him in disbelief. How the bloody hell did he expect her to answer that?

  Matteo flushed. “I meant, why would I do that with you and not any of the others? Does it know about you? About your magic?”

  She frowned at him. “I don't see how, but even if it did, why would that make a difference?”

  He threw up his hands. “Yet another thing I don't know. I'm drowning in my own ignorance. Maybe your magic doesn't signify. Maybe it's just about you.”

  “What about me?”

  “It knows I want you.”

  It was said simply, with no prevarication or embarrassment. Isobel could feel the heat in her cheeks as he stared at her, waiting for her reaction.

  “And because you want me, it might want me as well?”

  He shrugged helplessly. “Whatever the reason is, I'm sorry.” He grabbed the spare blanket the maid had brought up earlier. “I'll let you sleep now,” he said quietly, stretching out on the floor near the hearth.

  It was far enough across the room that she could see him from the bed.

  “All right,” she whispered, wondering how in the world she was going to sleep with Matteo in the same room. Or any man for that matter.

  As it turned out, her fears and concerns weren't enough. The stress and long flight from Ford had depleted her reserves, and not even her instinct for self-preservation was enough to keep her awake.

  Her sleep was devoid of dreams.

  Chapter 14

  Sounds in the hall woke Isobel early. There was a minute of confusion before the events of the previous day came back to her. She sat up abruptly.

  Matteo was still on the floor, one arm thrown over his face. She relaxed slightly, then hurried to get dressed before he woke up. Once she was decent, she crept up to the sleeping man.

  Mouth pursed, she examined what she could see of his face. His color looked fine. Tentatively, she bent down and pressed her fingers to his hand. He was still warm, but he was stirring now, his breathing changing. Hastily she withdrew a few steps until the back of her legs struck the bed.

  Matteo's arm fell, and he turned toward her. For a moment, he smiled at her as if he was confused and then his expression sobered.

  “Bongiorno,” he rasped in a hoarse morning voice, sitting up with stiff movements. “Have you called for breakfast?”

  “No. Not yet,” she said, sitting on the bed. “Are we staying here today?”

  Matteo shook his head. “My father mentioned leaving this morning.”

  “To go where?”

  “He mentioned going home to Santa Fiora.”

  Italy! Her stomach clenched. How would she get away from them in a foreign country? Her Italian was passable, but even if she managed to hang onto her widow's disguise she would never be able to blend in long enough to escape. And though she knew the essentials of the language, her accent was terrible.

  The chances of getting a second opportunity are remote, she told herself. Not with the guards watching her as well as Matteo now. There would have to be another way.

&nbs
p; I'm going to have to try and cure him.

  But she couldn't do that alone. She needed her grandmother Helen's help.

  “We can't. Not yet,” she said. “I have to go home first, to Carrbridge, in the Highlands.”

  His brow creased. “Why?”

  “My grandmother left me her books when she died. She knew my mother could never bring herself to destroy them, no matter what she said about magic. And my father was a very literary man who loved books. Grandmother knew they would be safe with him. They're hidden near our home—our former home, I mean.”

  His attention was caught. “And these are books on magic? On curses like mine?”

  “Some deal with healing. They include recipes for tonics and poultices. But some of them do deal with spellcraft—I don't know how many. I also have no idea if they mention anything like what is happening to you.”

  Matteo stood and began to pace. “You said your education ended when you were a young girl.”

  “Just after I turned twelve.”

  “So you never had the opportunity to study these books?”

  She shook her head. “For the most part they were too advanced for me. All that I learned, my grandmother taught me herself. But she was teaching me to be a scrupulous record keeper. Grandmother always said keeping careful records was one of the most important skills a witch could learn.”

  “And so she wrote her spells down,” he said, his tone making it clear that it wasn't a question.

  “She wrote everything down. As did her mother before her and her mother before that. There are a number of volumes.”

  Matteo stopped pacing, his eyes bright for the first time. “We must go get them. This is too important an opportunity to disregard. Are they really so many books?”

  Isobel gave a tiny nod. “They fill two large trunks at least, although they might not all be related to magic. There would be books on the natural world, herbology, and animal husbandry as well.”

  He blinked. “Animal husbandry?”

  “My grandmother raised swine.”

  “Swine?”

  “Yes.”

  “For food?”

  She flushed slightly. “Yes. And because she enjoyed their company.”

  His cough sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “I see,” he said with a carefully composed expression.

  “They're very intelligent.” She sniffed.

  “Pigs?”

  “Yes.”

  His features smoothed. “I've never noticed. I should pay more attention when visiting our livestock farm. I'm going to go find my father and tell him about the change in plans. I'm certain he'll want to leave without delay.”

  He hurried out of the room.

  ****

  The Conte had reluctantly agreed to a detour to the Highlands.

  Isobel had never traveled in a carriage so fine, but its well-sprung wheels and deeply cushioned benches were no match for the muddy and pitted roads that stood between them and their destination. Especially when it began to rain again.

  When the roads became nearly impassable as the weather deteriorated, the old man's temper went with it. Glaring at Isobel from his corner of the coach, he would shift restlessly and loudly. The volume of his sighs would increase if she was in any danger of nodding off.

  Matteo did his best to keep his father's spirits up in the beginning but eventually gave up the effort. Instead, he would ask Isobel detailed questions about her life.

  He didn't just want to know about her childhood, or the training she'd received at her grandmother's knee. He also wanted to know about her life after that, about her parents and time in service.

  Despite her suspicion of him, she couldn’t help but find his curiosity oddly sweet. Nevertheless, she kept her answers brief when in the presence of the count. Aldo didn’t need to know anything about her. But it was harder to maintain her distance when she and Matteo were alone.

  She could feel her own confusion around him. Matteo was so earnest and eager. It wasn't childlike in the least, but his manner struck her as that of an innocent, a youth with little experience of the world. Which was ridiculous. He was a wealthy lord in Italy, with all the privileges and freedoms money could buy. There was no way he hadn't experienced at least some of the same excesses of life that occupied the ton in London.

  But if he had, he didn’t seem touched by it.

  Isobel could feel her determination to keep the young lord at bay waning every day. She tried to hold onto her resentment and distrust, but it was difficult when he was being so kind and solicitous.

  At every stop, Matteo would do anything and everything to ensure her comfort. He made the coach stop in Edinburgh long enough to buy her a warmer cloak, despite the count's vociferous complaints. When they would change horses on the road, he would make sure she ate and drank her fill before they continued and would order hot bricks wrapped in flannel for her feet and hands before they departed.

  The first few times he forgot to ask for additional bricks for his father, an oversight the Conte let him know displeased him in blistering Italian as soon as they left the coaching inn.

  Isobel had tried to hand over her second brick to the man, but Matteo grew agitated, claiming that she needed to be at her best when they arrived in Carrbridge to take possession of her library. His logic silenced the count's complaints, but he still glared and sulked openly. At the next inn, Aldo ordered his own bricks.

  She was going mad cooped up in the carriage all day, but it was the nights that filled her with tension.

  Every night, the coach would stop at the best inn available. They would eat a relatively silent meal and then she and Matteo would be shown upstairs to the same chamber.

  Once inside the room, Matteo would give her privacy to change by turning his back if there was no screen available. Then he would make a pallet on the floor and stretch out. She knew he had to be sore and uncomfortable after being in the coach all day, but he never complained. He seemed content to talk with her from his prone position on the floor, his hands behind his head.

  Outside of the count's oppressive company, Isobel answered more of Matteo's questions in greater detail and in turn he would tell her stories, mostly about his childhood—especially the months spent on the shores of the Lago di Bolsena at one of their country estates.

  He also described the famous sights of his homeland, interweaving what he knew of their history to entertain her. Though she was often tired when she heard them, his anecdotes blended in her mind until the image of the Tuscan countryside solidified and became real—a place of heated beauty and a noble, if somewhat frenzied, history.

  In time she grew bold enough to make some inquiries of her own. Envious of the freedom his sex and wealth afforded him she asked him about his travels. Pleased to have found a subject of interest to her, he spoke of the crumbling Colosseum in Rome and the ancient sites of Greece, as if he would show them to her someday.

  And every night he would promise to do whatever he could to ensure her safety and future happiness until she almost started to believe him.

  Though it was impossible to bar the two of them inside their chamber without suspicion, Nino and Ottavio were always nearby. If the adjoining room wasn't available, then they slept on the floor in the hallway. The Conte had made no effort to excuse such behavior to people he considered inferior, but Matteo always made it a point to chat with the innkeeper in his lyrically accented English.

  He passed off the guards as a necessary circumstance due to a mysterious incident at a lower quality inn. The details of his story were purposely vague, but they would always sympathize, especially when he implied that her safety was the real issue—the safety of his bride.

  Isobel was always given strange looks when Matteo introduced her as his wife. She knew he was just trying to protect her reputation, but her choice of disguise bothered the staff and other visitors. Her clothes were suited to deep mourning, and Matteo's excuse that it was on his m
other's account didn't seem to convince everyone when he wasn’t also in black.

  Occasionally she heard whispers. Some gossiped about the oddities of the Italian people, while others questioned her and whether or not she might have remarried without observing the proper mourning period. No one had yet guessed that she wasn't married at all, at least not out loud. A few might have suspected, however, given the way the count's expression soured whenever Matteo introduced her as his bride.

  Her strange surreal existence continued until they finally entered her home county. The sights became familiar despite the fact they were still several dozen miles from her home. Apprehension filled her as they stopped at a posting inn near Ellan Wood. Though the innkeepers and the locals who frequented the tavern wouldn't know her face, they would have been familiar with her father's name. And Matteo wasn't keeping her identity a secret.

  Soon they would be in Carrbridge, surrounded by the people who had shunned her and the other women in her family. And day-by-day, the darkness inside of Matteo grew just a tiny bit more.

  Chapter 15

  Despite the dreadful weather, the majesty and sweeping vistas of the Highlands took Matteo's breath away. It was an unforgiving landscape, most unlike the warm and welcoming peaks and valleys of his home. But there was a rugged and imposing beauty to this place that spoke volumes about the character and fortitude of its inhabitants. It made a great deal of sense that this was Isobel's birthplace.

  He had expected her to exhibit some growing excitement about seeing her home after such a long absence. Instead, she grew quiet and pale. Her hands were still on her lap, but she betrayed her tension with the way she gripped them together tightly.

  Matteo felt guilty for a whole new reason. Isobel had probably never expected to see this place again. The dark and unpleasant memories of her and her grandmother's treatment at the hands of the more ignorant locals coupled with the loss of both her parents surely made this homecoming difficult, to say the least.

  And there was another problem. Isobel was still known here. A maid at the last inn had recognized her. Apparently, his witch possessed the distinctive features and coloring of the women in her family.