Phoebe bobbed a wary curtsey at the stranger and gestured for Andrew to join them. “Lord Percival, this is my husband, Andrew Blair.”
She’d written her mother of the marriage and her wish not to waste funds on a fancy gathering. Her aunts were waiting to throw a small reception now that her mother had returned. That was more than enough for Phoebe.
She waved her hand under her mother’s nose so she could admire her wedding ring while the men shook hands.
“It is lovely, dear, and if you’re happy, I’m happy.” The countess smiled up at Lord Percival, who had a proprietary arm around her waist. “And before we are swarmed by my sisters and all their relentless infants, let me say that Percy and I have announced our engagement.”
Phoebe stood stunned while Andrew slapped the stranger on his back and congratulated him. Lord Percival continued to smile through the beating.
“I. . . I wish you happy, of course,” Phoebe stuttered. “It’s just so. . .”
Her mother patted her arm. “Sudden, but it’s not really, dear. Percy has spent these past years in France recovering from a near-fatal illness, and we came to know each other well. He is a good man. We thought we’d take you with us when we move into his estate in Sussex, but I see you have found your home here.”
“Sussex? Will that be warm and dry enough for you?” Phoebe asked anxiously.
Andrew ushered them toward the waiting carriage. He kissed Phoebe’s cheek. “Sussex is said to be lovely. Perhaps we could visit when the snow becomes tiresome here.”
Travel. . . Phoebe had given it little thought. She shook her head so the ribbons on her new hat swung. “Now that the university has agreed to let me take classes, I do not mean to miss any. I have a schedule to keep! I feel very grown-up.”
“Well, I’m sure we can work out something, dear.” With the help of her fiancé, the countess climbed into the carriage. “Now may we wash off the dust before we descend on my sisters?”
“You’ll be staying with us, of course,” Andrew said, snapping the reins and setting the carriage in motion. “I’ve arranged to have your trunks delivered. With the children still in Yorkshire, you’ll find we’re a quiet household these days.”
“I was rather hoping to meet the ghost,” the countess said dryly.
Phoebe bounced in her seat and turned around to speak. “Even Andrew believes he felt her, but I think she went home with Mr. Simon. It’s rather romantic, don’t you think? His wife lingers to watch after him and her children?”
“I think I wouldn’t want to be his second wife.” Lady Persephone grimaced.
Phoebe returned to sitting properly to study on how a ghost might affect a relationship. But she could only think of the children and hope they’d be happy having an invisible mother.
Once they reached the house, she wriggled with impatience, but she’d promised to let Andrew handle all mention of finances. And now that her mother had a fiancé who might concern himself in her affairs. . . Phoebe tried not to bite her fingernails.
Her new parrot squawked a greeting as soon as they set foot through the front door. Phoebe ran to his perch, mentally saying hello, until he repeated it with a flourish of feathers. She fed him a bit of dried apple from her pocket and beamed proudly.
Hello, hello, the bird continued squawking, looking for more treats.
Oddly, her mother and Lord Percival declined her offer of tea, asking to go directly upstairs and rest.
Andrew kissed away her disappointment. “Not everyone appreciates watch birds,” he reminded her.
“But I taught Macaw more tricks,” she protested.
“Maybe they’ll appreciate Wolf better. We’ll introduce them later,” he promised.
So she showed her mother to the suite they’d once shared, while Andrew showed Lord Percival to the chamber upstairs near the nursery where Simon had slept. Phoebe preferred not to think of her mother welcoming a stranger into her bed, but Lord Percival was a very elegant stranger, to be sure. She prayed he made her mother happy.
While their guests rested after their journey, Andrew drew her back into their private suite. She didn’t have any instincts for nesting, so she hadn’t changed his very masculine décor except to add her wardrobe and vanity items. She leaned appreciatively against his strength.
“Do we have Lord Percival investigated?” she whispered.
“I’m sure Mr. Lithgow will be happy to do so. He treats your funds as his own, so he’ll not let a gambler empty your account. And your mother seems a very sensible sort. I think she’d know by now if he was after her rather limited funds. Do you need to dress for the evening’s affair? Can I help you?”
The look in his eye was very wicked. The thrill had not grown old. Phoebe turned her back to him so he could work the fastenings of her gown.
Her husband had very skillful fingers and grasped the construction of her garments with a mechanic’s ease.
Later, lying languidly amid the tousled sheets, Phoebe ran a fingernail down Andrew’s broad bare chest, admiring the scattering of masculine hairs adorning sculpted muscles. No statue in any museum could compare with his chiseled musculature. She kissed his nipple, then dodged out of his reach.
“If you want me to look like a lady tonight, I need to bathe and start dressing.” She was making him teach her all the words for what they did in bed. She felt jolly well rogered at the moment and feared her aunts would know it the moment they saw her.
Andrew climbed from the sheets, and she admired his physique a little more, until he noticed and headed for her. Phoebe squealed and ran for the washroom.
“Do I have to call you Lady Phoebe all evening?” he asked, reaching around her for a washcloth.
“When I am dressed like a lady, of course,” she said primly. “And I shall call you Mr. Blair. And we will giggle over the punch.”
He pinched her backside and kissed her ear. “Then we’ll end up shocking that house full of children and teachers. Let us pour your mother full of champagne and present her with our ideas and hope she approves.”
“Or Lord Percival approves,” she said anxiously as he left her to her ablutions.
“If he can hold his own in that house full of women, he’s smart enough to understand. We will hope he’s not counting on riches.”
Phoebe loved sharing a home with Andrew. He understood so well.
At her aunts’ house, all the teachers and distant cousins were waiting in the front parlor to greet them. They’d transformed the School of Malcolms into a bridal boudoir of white lace, netting, flowers, and potted trees. If she’d been Cousin Max in this sea of femininity, she’d have run away too. His prolonged absence was the only sorrow hovering over the celebrations.
Phoebe admired the traditional Malcolm addition of forestry and hugged both of her aunts.
“We are so happy for you, dear,” Lady Agnes cried. Her gray curls were caught up in a white feathered confection, and her sparkling earrings suited a ballroom. “We knew you were never meant to be a teacher. You and your pets would absolutely ruin our lessons. I’m so glad Mr. Blair worked as well as we hoped.”
“Do not try this marriage ploy on Olivia,” Phoebe warned with a laugh. “She has enough on her hands with Evie. Andrew’s cousin still has a wife haunting him. Leave Olivia with his children in York, please.”
“We shall see.” Agatha patted Phoebe’s shoulder and turned toward her sister. “Now that Persephone is finally seeing sense, perhaps she’ll let go of that medieval dungeon she buried herself in. I shall speak with her.”
Phoebe blinked as her usually rattle-pated aunt swept off to greet the countess.
Andrew circled her waist and watched as her aunts cornered her mother and her new fiancé. “I like your family, but I think I’ll stay well away from them when I can.”
“It’s difficult to know if they’re meddling like normal people or using whatever psychic gifts they possess.”
“Psychic?” he asked.
“I read the word i
n an article about mediums. The author coined it from the Greek psykhikos, meaning of the soul, spirit, or mind, I believe. It seems very suited to who we are. I’m not sure if my aunts and my mother are mind readers or simply understand the human soul, but they are quite frightening in what they know sometimes.”
Lord Percival joined them, looking puzzled. “The ladies are having an argument about a dungeon. I think there are a few things I have not learned about my intended.”
Andrew laughed. “Just accept that every day is a mystery, and you’ll do fine.”
Phoebe pinched his arm through his coat sleeve, knowing he didn’t feel it. “Every day should contain a little surprise. Has my mother spoken to you about the lien she has on the building Mr. Blair is purchasing? I’ve tried to persuade her that we don’t need to buy a flat, and the consortium could pay the lien on the tenement in monthly installments, if she’d like.”
“That is the dungeon of which they speak?” he asked, lifting a graying eyebrow. “Your aunts seem to think it should be given to you as a wedding gift. I don’t think a dungeon is very appropriate.”
Laughing, Phoebe leaned over and kissed his cheek. “It is a perfect gift! Please persuade her to do so.”
She turned and flung herself into her husband’s arms. “Can we truly buy the workshop then? And once it’s fixed up, Hugh can have his own office near the construction. And I can have a place close to the university for studying. And if you’re there working. . .”
Andrew swung her off her feet in front of all her family and company. “I shall ask rent for your studio and your pets and demand payment in lewd ways.” He nibbled her ear until she shrieked, laughed, and escaped—nearly running into her mother.
The countess frowned at them in disapproval. “You wish to exchange our family home for a barn?”
“Mr. Lithgow said he’d obtain a mortgage so we can make payments on the property. The alternative is to make payments directly to you to repay the lien, but it’s not possible to obtain a mortgage on a lien,” Andrew explained.
Aunt Gertrude sailed up, her overly-black tresses stacked precariously beneath a white fascinator. “It is not a barn, Persephone,” she scolded her younger sister. “It was built by our great-grandfather for his wife. Her baking was often called sorcery, but she produced enough bread to feed the hungry during years of deprivation. And he used the other half to train students of animal husbandry. The students lived upstairs. It is a Malcolm property and should be preserved as such.”
“I have an ancestor who taught animal husbandry?” Phoebe asked in disbelief. “Why has no one ever told me of this?”
Lady Persephone opened her mouth to object, but her older sister spoke right over her. “Because he was a Jacobite, of course. He would have been arrested had anyone known who he was. They lived quietly in the shadow of the palace, helping where they could. It’s silly to hide that fact after all these years.”
“I want to teach animal husbandry to women! I shall follow in the shoes of my ancestor and start my own rebellion,” Phoebe crowed. “I’ll be on my home ground again!”
Andrew hugged her. Her mother rolled her eyes and glared at her sister. “This is why we did not tell her. Whatever happens is on your head, Gertrude.” She turned back to Andrew. “And yours, sir. I will gift my share of the lien to the two of you as a wedding present, but you will set aside Phoebe’s half for your children. I will have our solicitor draw up the agreement.”
Phoebe broke away from her husband to swallow up her mother in an embrace. “Thank you, thank you, and you will not regret this. We can have an entire chain of Schools for Malcolms.”
Her husband lifted her away and whispered in her ear, “Your first students will be our children, mo chridhe. Now come away and have some punch before you shock the other teachers anymore.”
Smiling so hard she thought surely she’d shatter, Phoebe covered his face in kisses, then turned to the other startled young women who formed her aunts’ school. “We will educate the world, ladies, see if we don’t!”
One of the younger ones cheered. Before long, the others joined in, and the champagne flowed.
Once the party was in full swing, Phoebe took her husband by the hand and led him out into the chilly evening, where she covered his square jaw in kisses. “I love it when you speak Gaelic to me. And I love that you like to touch me. And can we not wear fancy clothes when we’re in our barn?”
He chuckled and ran his hand over her breast and waist. “You have to ask? Let’s take you home and out of all these ridiculous fripperies so I know there’s a real woman under them.”
“And you can learn how I work and together we’ll improve each other like your pterotype,” she said in satisfaction, dragging him toward the carriage.
He laughed, and the pigeons flew up from their roosts with her joy.
Lessons in Enchantment Characters
Andrew Blair: Inventor and engineer
Lady Phoebe Malcolm Duncan: daughter of late earl of Drumsmoore
Lady Persephone, Countess of Drumsmoore: Phoebe’s widowed mother; younger sister of Agnes and Gertrude
Hugh Morgan: Andrew’s partner; accountant
Simon Blair: Andrew’s cousin; mine owner, industrialist
Letitia Blair: Simon’s deceased wife, mother of his children
Enoch Blair: six-year-old son of Simon Blair
Catherine and Clare Blair: four-year-old twin daughters of Simon Blair
Lady Agnes: Phoebe’s aunt; part owner of School of Malcolms
Lady Gertrude: Phoebe’s oldest aunt; part owner of School of Malcolms
Earl of Drumsmoore: Phoebe’s Uncle Albert
Mrs. Dalrymple: Drew’s neighbor
Miss Dahlia Higginbotham: niece of Mrs. Dalrymple
Thomas Lithgow, Esquire: Phoebe’s family solicitor
Merry: one of Phoebe’s many younger cousins
Olivia: another of Phoebe’s distant cousins, widow
Rose: Drew’s ex fiancée
Bennett: Phoebe’s landlord
Abby: Drew’s maid
Henry: Drew’s new stableboy
Dougie: Drew’s new footman, young lad good with fists
Gareth Glengarry—Dalrymple’s political aide
John Wilkes, Baron: Simon’s mine owning neighbor
Lord Percival: Lady Persephone’s suitor
Cousin Max: Lady Agnes’s son who disappeared in Africa
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Lessons In Enchantment
Patricia Rice
Copyright ©2019 Patricia Rice
First Publication: Book View Café March 24, 2020
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This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entir
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About the Author
With several million books in print and New York Times and USA Today's bestseller lists under her belt, former CPA Patricia Rice is one of romance's hottest authors. Her emotionally-charged contemporary and historical romances have won numerous awards, including the RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice and Career Achievement Awards. Her books have been honored as Romance Writers of America RITA® finalists in the historical, regency and contemporary categories.
A firm believer in happily-ever-after, Patricia Rice is married to her high school sweetheart and has two children. A native of Kentucky and New York, a past resident of North Carolina and Missouri, she currently resides in Southern California, and now does accounting only for herself.
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