Lessons in Enchantment

by Patricia Rice

  But it was the figure emerging from the shadows behind the pair that held the enrapt attention of the crowd.

  And that’s when Drew finally translated the heavily accented rumbles of the mostly uneducated mob. . . The lady will save them. The witch can fly. She’s come back for us, you’ll see. Don’t be a tumphy, it’s the ghost of the old lady. They’re all witches. . . .Fly, lady, fly!

  And deep down in his heart, Drew knew there could only be one woman who would climb six stories in a collapsing building to save a crying child, one woman people would call witch because she bloody well had haggis for brains.

  “Where are the stairs?” Drew demanded, looking for someone to hold his corner of the impromptu net.

  “No time,” Hugh said, interpreting the demand. “The front stairs are destroyed. The rubble can’t be climbed without risking life and limb. You’d have to go down the alley and around to the courtyard. There’s an outside tower. That had to be how they got up there.”

  Before Drew could debate how quickly he could scramble over the first-floor debris, the crowd roared, and a weight hit the velvet, sending up clouds of dust. His heart nearly stopped.

  He didn’t breathe again until a feminine voice cried from above, “I have Evie. She’s fine. See to Mrs. Tarkington.”

  Drew’s pulse didn’t return to normal until he scanned the floor above and saw the woman had vanished. So had the little girl. How the devil. . . ?

  He returned his attention to lowering—Mrs. Tarkington?—from the draperies. Women in rags and tatters reached for the would-be suicide. They helped her to her feet, clucking and chattering, ignoring the men who had saved her.

  Actually, one turned and spat at his once-shiny boots.

  In shock, Drew simply controlled his breathing and waited for the woman in blue to return with the child.

  “She’ll have to come around the alley there.” Hugh nodded down the street. “You might take the horse down.”

  After that amazing performance, he’d stupidly been expecting her to fly, he supposed. Drew recalled his brains, took the reins back from the portly fellow, and made his way out of the crowd. No one followed. Maybe like him, they were all expecting the lady to magically materialize—or fly in on a broomstick—carrying a child.

  The woman he wanted for wife had made a spectacle of herself. No wonder the damned women were called witches. No normal female. . . No lady. . . No governess. . . would risk life and limb and. . .

  He tried to calm his fury and shock but that was an impossibility. She could have been killed. . .

  He’d kill her himself. He’d tie her in knots and lock her in an attic.

  He didn’t even know it was Phoebe. Yes, he did. He knew it with a deep-down certainty that had no explanation or rationale. Unless she had a doppelganger, that was his thrice-damned governess and future wife endangering life and limb and entertaining a mob. . .

  He was definitely going to murder her with his own hands.

  But his rage took a back seat when he saw her bedraggled figure striding down the filthy dark alley bearing the burden of a child who didn’t seem so small anymore. The woman who had removed the draperies from a crumbling wall had appeared as an omnipotent goddess earlier, but Drew knew her as a tender female who broke as easily as any other.

  Leaving the horse at the entrance, he jumped over fallen stones and trash of the alley until he was close enough to haul the heavy, weeping child over one shoulder, then encompassed Phoebe’s fragile waist with his other arm. She leaned into him, crying inconsolably.

  All he could do was hold her as she shook with sobs.

  He had no experience with weeping women and suicides and children who mumbled incomprehensibly into his neck. He knew machines. Machines could crush, but he’d never endured anything to the immensity of the discomfort he suffered now. Helplessness was not a state he could tolerate for long.

  He had only instinct to guide him as he led her toward the horse. He lifted Phoebe into the saddle, and amazingly, she swiped at her eyes and quit weeping to hold out her hands for the child. Drew handed over the golden-haired, nattering baggage, saw them settled, then thanked the heavens for his well-trained horse since he had to back it out of the rubble-filled alley before he could turn it around.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “My aunts. They’ll know what to do. Mrs. Tarkington is too ill to look after Evie. That’s the reason she was up there. She knows she’s dying, and she had nowhere to go and no one to leave Evie with.” She sounded as if her strength were returning.

  Drew had ten thousand questions, but they could wait. He understood desperation.

  He’d strangle Phoebe after they delivered the child.

  “She may be simple, but she’s the happiest, most helpful child you’ll ever know,” Phoebe told her aunts, rocking Evie in her lap. “She’s old enough to learn to help in the kitchen. She’s too pretty to stay with a mother who can no longer protect her.”

  Phoebe knew she didn’t have to explain what she meant. The only occupation for single women in these streets was prostitution. And the kind of men who sought out an ill woman for their perversions wouldn’t hesitate to use a child instead, even one who was obviously simple.

  She felt Andrew stiffen with shock, but it was far too late to worry about what he thought. Had she wanted to be the pleasant little wife he needed, she’d have stayed home today. She was perfectly aware of the tragedies on every corner in this part of town. She could have gone straight home after she left the journal with her aunts earlier, or after she left the university, but no, she’d had to check on her neighbors.

  The question became. . . what was he doing here?

  Evie gabbled happily, crumbled the cake she’d been given, and licked it off her fingers, the past hour of terror forgotten. Phoebe wished she could forget so easily.

  Cousin Olivia had been in the parlor when they’d arrived. She leaned over now to take Evie into her lap. “I’ll take her if no one else will. I. . . knew a child with odd features like Evie’s. Looks are deceptive. He was slow, but he learned to talk and eat properly, and he was the most loving child you’ll ever know. I’ll put a trundle bed in my room.”

  Olivia marched out, letting Evie rub her sticky fingers in her hair.

  Phoebe didn’t know Olivia’s story—they were distant cousins and didn’t know each other well. But it was apparent her aunts understood. They looked sad but didn’t go after her. Her family was known for meddling, but on the whole, they did not tell tales.

  Relieved that she’d found Evie a home, Phoebe breathed easier. She was still shaken by her brush with death, and the thundercloud looming over her rattled her more than she liked. She wanted Andrew to understand. She feared he didn’t and never would.

  “Well, that’s settled then,” Aunt Gertrude said. “Now, have you told your mother that she no longer has a home? Should we prepare a room for her?”

  Phoebe hastily stood up and shook out her filthy skirt. She didn’t want to have this conversation in front of Andrew. Besides, he had some explaining to do.

  “Never doubt that my mother knows everything,” Phoebe replied. “She’s fine with us for the moment. Mr. Lithgow will show her about. I really need to go back and change. I fear I’ve breathed enough pigeon droppings to give me lung fever. I don’t need to be carrying it around on me.”

  Her aunts protested. Andrew didn’t. Still scowling, he offered his arm and escorted her to the street.

  “Why were you here today?” she asked before she lost the courage.

  “I ask myself that often.” Without her permission, he threw her into the saddle, where she had to cling to the horse’s mane and pray she wouldn’t slide straight off again. She’d been too numb while holding Evie to remember how she’d stayed in the saddle earlier.

  The horse’s mind was pleasantly blank, at least.

  “Which means what exactly?” she demanded, uncertain why it mattered.

  “I have an idea for a machin
e that will aid in carrying loads to high places.”

  She couldn’t find a way to argue around that if he meant to put his machine to good use. Rebuilding those houses had to happen.

  As they traveled back to the main road, the professor lifted his hat to them. She’d sought him out at the university earlier. He hadn’t discouraged her aspirations. Now that her mother was well, she might dip into their funds. She could move back here somehow, become a student. . .

  On the corner where Mrs. Mac sold pencils she didn’t know how to use, the old lady lifted her clouded eyes and gray curls to wave as they passed. The morning’s excitement well over, everyone had found their way back to their usual humdrum lives.

  Only Phoebe still vibrated with agitation. And Andrew—Mr. Blair, she probably should call him. He had to understand now why what he wanted was impossible. She couldn’t not be who she was. And people would never forget.

  “You’ve been living with your aunts since your mother left, haven’t you?” he asked, innocuously enough.

  Except she knew the question was loaded with explosives. She could lie, but she wouldn’t. “I’ve been living in the family flat,” she said—flatly. “Our family has owned it for centuries. I had an ancestor who was once lady-in-waiting for Queen Mary.”

  He digested that as if she’d offered him frog’s legs—edible but foreign to his taste. She pointed out a few buildings from that long ago time—once proud mansions that had deteriorated as old Scotland lost its independence and the palace and fort fell into disrepair.

  “You knew how to unhook those draperies,” he said, almost accusingly, as they reached the bridge.

  “I used to watch the maids remove them to beat out the dust,” she countered. “And I had to climb up them occasionally to rescue my kittens.”

  “That dump was your mother’s home?” he asked, barely able to contain his horror.

  She almost felt sorry for him. She felt sorrier for herself. She might never find another man who almost accepted most of her idiosyncrasies—because he foolishly wanted to believe she was a sheltered, aristocratic lady.

  “It’s my home,” she declared boldly, casting aside any hope of happiness. “We owned the entire flat. It was quite grand, actually, until the walls fell. Evie and her mother lived in a room several floors above. Everyone else rented.”

  “You lived in a tenement that housed the destitute,” he said as if the words were mud in his mouth. “One that was so derelict that the whole damned wall fell off!”

  “Fortunately for you, yes,” she said pertly. “Otherwise, I’d never have met the children and agreed to live in your place.”

  “You’re daughter of an earl!” he roared, causing staid passersby to stop and stare. “You could have died in there! The whole clatty building could have fallen on your reckless head!”

  “Well, it didn’t,” was all she could say to that, because of course, he was perfectly correct—as always when one points out the obvious.

  In defiance, she offered her heart on a dish. “Would it make you any happier if I move back in with my aunts and remove my spectacle-creating self from your presence, or would you prefer that I change my name and pretend I’m not daughter and granddaughter of nobility so you can excuse my behavior?”

  Twenty-three

  Spectacle-creating self? She thought he wanted to change her?

  Of course he wanted to change her—bashing his head against walls was a favorite sport. He should stop and pound his skull against that iron lamppost just to warm up.

  Drew didn’t know how to contain his rage and confusion. The last harrowing hour had imperiled every notion he’d ever conceived of delicate females, the nobility, and propriety.

  He’d spent these last years learning how to behave in polite society so he might get ahead in the world and provide for his family.

  And Lady Damned Phoebe was throwing all his notions of respectable behavior arse over ears. He’d be reduced to sputtering in Gaelic shortly.

  He needed to put his world back to rights, return order out of chaos, or his brain would implode.

  As they crossed the bridge from the old town to the new one, Drew studied a prim young lady strolling by, gleaming curls adorned by a piece of fluff like Phoebe’s. Except this elegant creature wore skirts that billowed and swung in the breeze above neat ankles encased in lacy pantalets above her shiny shoes. She wore neat kid gloves and a frilled shawl and cast him a sideways glance that once would have caused him to tip his hat. That was how a lady should look and behave.

  Interested only in comparing the stranger to the woman he was determined to marry, Drew grunted in dismissal of the flirtation. Lady Phoebe was freezing him out, not responding further, rightfully so, he supposed. He might explode if she made one word of excuse for nearly killing herself.

  He led his horse past the fashionable establishments on Prince’s Street, with Lady Phoebe’s tattered, filthy skirt blowing in his face.

  She’d ruined more of her wardrobe. No wonder the damned fool woman always went about in tatters. “How filthy were those stairs you climbed?”

  “As filthy as you expect, I wager,” she said, still sounding like an irritated princess, but apparently unsurprised by the direction of his thoughts. “They’ve been well used this week. It appears everything that could be cut up and hauled down has been. The neighbors will have expensive firewood this winter. Most of our furniture was cherry and mahogany.”

  He could swear he almost heard the sorrow behind her brittle words. He’d never had fine furniture or been attached to material things, but he had an old pocketknife his father had given him that he’d hate to lose. Magnify that by a few thousand. . .

  “Or maybe Mr. Bennett sold access to the stairs. He should have locked them.” There was the bitterness he’d expected.

  He could have ordered the stairs locked and the building protected, had it occurred to him that anyone cared one iota about the stinking, crumbling pile of rocks. It hadn’t. He was responsible for leaving that rat trap open for a woman to throw herself off.

  And Lady Phoebe owned a flat in that building—one she didn’t know he owned. That was a conundrum he’d ponder when his head wasn’t on fire.

  He reined in his horse outside a shop he’d passed a thousand times on his walks to meetings. Tying the reins to a hitching post, he lifted Lady Phoebe from the saddle.

  Taken aback, she didn’t protest, just grabbed his shoulders to steady herself. Drew enjoyed that gesture a little too much.

  By all rights he should be hauling her home and yelling sense into her. Except he’d seen her weep and shake even as she was accomplishing the most impossible, illogical feats. He was still furious, but he’d found a more practical outlet for his temper. He shoved open the dressmaker’s door. A little bell tinkled over his head. Phoebe tried to yank from his grasp and retreat, but he wasn’t having any of it.

  Holding the lady’s arm firmly, Drew glared at the women behind the counter. “Do you have anything made up the lady can wear today? She’s had a bit of an accident.”

  “I cannot go shopping like this,” Phoebe practically hissed, trying to swing back to the door.

  He refused to release her. “Something simple, like she’s wearing, so she can hide in plain sight and fly off roofs without showing her underpinnings.”

  Phoebe smacked him, but Drew had suffered worse spider bites. He glared down at her. “Unless you say what you want, I’ll choose your clothes myself.”

  “The gray, in the window,” Phoebe said in irritation, unable to cope with one more shock on top of another. “Now, may we go?”

  She was not only heartbroken and shaken to the core, but she was filthy and felt like one of the beggars Andrew so obviously despised. Her hair was all about her shoulders. Her shoes were worn thin and so was her underwear. These clerks were accustomed to dealing with wealthy women garbed in fine silks and jewels who probably bathed in milk and perfume before arriving here. She had never been so humiliated in a
ll her life.

  “Not the gray,” Mr. Blasted Arrogant commanded. “Bright blue, like she has on, or a nice green. Better yet, yellow.”

  “Yellow is impossible,” she cried, knowing the ridiculousness of this argument but unable to help herself. “I’d have it filthy before noon. I do not intend to sit in a parlor with my feet on a cushion all day!”

  One of the younger clerks timidly stepped out from behind the counter to the shelf of fabrics. “We have a lovely brown and gold merino that would hide dust. You could have a yellow bodice and cover it with a brown jacket if the need arises. It’s all the fashion to dress a gown up or down and use two colors.”

  She pulled out a bolt of striped material of sumptuous merino that all but glittered in the sunlight through the window. Phoebe longed to stroke the fabric to see if it was as soft as it looked.

  “She’ll take that. What do you have ready in blue?” Bloody Arrogant demanded.

  “Perhaps milady would be more comfortable if she freshened herself in our wash room?” the young clerk said with just a hint of defiance.

  Phoebe started to like the girl. Glaring over her shoulder at her tormentor, she punched his arm until he gave in and released her. Head high, she followed the girl back to a private room with a wash basin where she could at least rub the grime off and restore some of her hair to pins.

  While she was at it, she took off her filthy shoes and stockings and threw them in the trash. She was fairly certain people had been using the tenement’s outside tower as a privy. Lord Knows-it-all would have a real paroxysm if he knew that.

  Outside the washroom, a bevy of young girls awaited her with pins and fabric and stacks of ready-made garments. They’d included chemises and pantalets and all those things she did not normally concern herself over because no one else ever saw them.

  What she needed was shoes. Striding barefoot back to the front room, Phoebe pointed at her feet. “If you truly wish to be useful, my boots need replacing. Do you have a magic shoemaker in mind?”