So Enchanting
Connie Brockway
Amber House Books
Contents
So Enchanting by Connie Brockway
Praise for So Enchanting
Books by Connie Brockway
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Books by Connie Brockway
About the Author
As You Desire
So Enchanting
by Connie Brockway
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The cynic and the enchantress…
* * *
Lord Greyson Sheffield does not believe in magic or love. He has devoted his life to exposing frauds who scam innocents by preying on their hunger to believe. Only one woman ever tempted him to surrender his cynicism—Francesca Walcott, the stunning young beauty who took society by storm with her supernatural skills. But Grey is forced to bare her secrets as well, shattering her world and forcing her to flee London forever.
* * *
When Grey travels to the Scottish Highlands to investigate reports of a young witch in the eccentric village of Little Firkin, he is stunned to discover the girl’s sensible companion is none other than the same Francesca Walcott who so enchanted him all those years ago. Francesca is now a ravishing woman fully equipped to challenge his scorn with her beguiling wit.
* * *
The stern yet striking nobleman has haunted Francesca’s dreams for years. Determined to protect both her young companion and the one secret Grey must never discover, Fanny does her best to resist his undeniable charms. But as passion sparks and danger swirls around them, they both discover that no one can resist the most powerful enchantment of all—the magic of true love…
Praise for So Enchanting and Connie Brockway
* * *
“Exceptionally entertaining characters, a wildly original plot, and delicious humorous writing.”—Chicago Tribune
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“With its deliciously clever writing and captivating plot, this wicked romance will cast a bewitching spell.”—Booklist
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“If it’s smart, sexy, and impossible to put down, it’s a book by Connie Brockway!”—Christina Dodd, New York Times bestselling author
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“If you’re looking for passion, tenderness, wit, and warmth, you need look no further. Connie Brockway is simply the best.”—Teresa Medeiros, New York Times bestselling author
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“Connie Brockway’s work belongs on every reader’s shelf!”—Romantic Times
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“Connie Brockway delivers romance with strength, wit, and intelligence.”—Tami Hoag, New York Times bestselling author
Amber House Books by Connie Brockway
The Golden Season
So Enchanting
As You Desire
A Dangerous Man
The Bridal Season
Bridal Favors
One Bride Too Many
Lassie, Go Home
Copyright Info
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No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
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Copyright © 2019 by Connie Brockway. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-943505-49-4
Cover design by Control Freak Productions
Cover Photo © Period Images
Cover Background © Dm_Cherry (Used via license of Shutterstock.com)
Published by Amber House Books, LLC
http://www.amberhousebooks.com
* * *
For more information, contact [email protected]
Chapter 1
Mayfair, London
1892
When exactly had the mediums of London gotten together and decided that the afterworld reeked of sandalwood? Lord Greyson Sheffield wondered, taking a sniff of the séance parlor. Because obviously they had, for in every one of the séances Grey had attended—and he’d attended many—the sickly-sweet stench inevitably preceded the resident spiritualist’s declaration that he’d made contact with the hereafter.
And sure enough, right on cue, Alphonse Brown’s eyes widened with childlike wonder.
In appearance, Brown was typical of male mediums: pasty complexioned, with white-blond hair, a thin, downy mustache, and a slight build. His only remarkable features were his large, heavy-lidded eyes, nearly imbecilic with guilelessness. Grey had been told by several females who’d met the man that he was a comely youth, even though he suspected Brown was close to his own age of thirty-two years. To Grey, he’d looked like a dim-witted adolescent.
But then, Grey doubted two males could have looked more unalike than he and Brown. He was well aware that the combination of his swarthy complexion, the asymmetry of his features achieved by dint of a nose broken in a past altercation, and his perpetually beard-shadowed jaw only augmented his resemblance to a Welsh physical laborer. His burly physique didn’t refute the similarity, either.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and frankly muscular, all assets he’d used to his advantage in the ring, where he’d been his regiment’s boxing champion for three years running. Happily, those days were done; he’d always disliked being hit. Currently his situation demanded he present a more refined persona to the world, since presenting a refined appearance was out of the question. As the son of a marquess, it was not too great a feat to pull off.
“I sense we are going to meet with success tonight,” the medium now said aloud to the small group gathered in the dark room. “Can you not smell the perfume of the Other Side? Your loved ones are near.”
A rumble of excited murmurs met this remark, followed by the usual round of barely voiced hopes, wet-eyed self-remonstrations, and eager questions, all of which Brown answered with vague assurances. The wealthy industrialist nodded emphatically, while a renowned M.P., recently knighted, swallowed convulsively, and his wife dabbed at her eyes. Next to Grey, a plump opera singer sucked in enough air to sing an aria, while on his other side an ancient German stared sadly at the ceiling above, waiting patiently for a glimpse of his lost love. There was only one empty chair at the table, that being directly across from where Brown sat, on the other side of the opera singer.
“The scent of the divine,” the opera singer whispered raptly.
Mo
re likely a smudge pot. The only mystery was how Brown had introduced the scent into the room. Thick velvet draperies covered the walls from ceiling to floor, the only openings being the door through which they’d entered, another in the small cabinet in the corner of the room, and the small, unlit fireplace that Grey had surreptitiously examined while they waited for their host’s arrival. The smell came from none of these sources.
“Mr. Kidd, you look dubious,” Brown said, and Grey cursed himself. Spiritualists were successful because they read their quarry’s every expression and word and designed their responses accordingly. And Brown was very, very successful.
“No. Just distracted,” he said. It had taken him weeks to secure an invitation to this sitting. Brown was cautious. He invited only true believers, and only very wealthy believers. Grey had arranged an introduction to Brown by posing as a recently immigrated and immensely rich widower. “I don’t dare hope too much,” he added.
His answer must have succeeded in reassuring Brown, for he reached across the table and patted Grey’s hand consolingly. Grey tensed as he fought to keep his face immobile.
He’d gotten very good at forgetting the events that had led him into his career as a special prosecutor for the Lord Chief Justice, exposing frauds and confidence tricksters, but every now and then the past awoke and ripped his heart anew before he kicked it back into submission. Just now, when Brown had patted his hand, Grey had been a boy again, quivering with impotent rage as his father fawned over a smug, sweating little toad of a man who’d hinted that he might be able to contact the marquess’s long-dead daughter—Grey’s half-sister, Johanna. Grey had stood at his father’s side, humiliated and impotent. The toad had noted Grey’s revulsion and patted his hand in just such a manner, his hard eyes mocking him as he’d simpered, “Now, don’t you worry, lad. I’ll find your dear sister for your dad. No matter how long it takes.”
It had taken two years, a huge portion of his family’s heirlooms, and most of his father’s unentailed properties. After his father’s death, the recovery of each penny and every artifact had become Grey’s raison d’être.
That, along with the complete annihilation of the toad.
But Grey hadn’t stopped there. He found he enjoyed being the predator in this game, chasing his quarry to ground, dragging them into a court of law, where he exposed them as gimcrack charlatans, destroying their reputations and their livelihoods.
“Let us begin,” the spiritualist now said, bringing Grey back to the moment.
Grey watched, interested. Brown rose and headed toward a cabinet in the back of the room. Though Grey had seen spirit cabinets before, he’d never seen a male simulate the effect. Generally, a female medium would enter the cabinet and forthwith fall into a “trance.” Only in this state could she conjure up the “spirit guide,” who would appear on the other side of the room. Should anyone open the door to the cabinet during the manifestation, however, not only would the spirit vanish, but the medium’s very life would be imperiled. Or at least her credibility. Because inevitably the spirit was simply the medium herself, who, after circumnavigating the room through a hidden hallway, flounced about in the dark room in a bedsheet and a wig.
Grey hoped to God Brown didn’t don a wig. Even a medium should draw the line somewhere.
But Brown simply opened the door, whispered something within, and turned with a tremulous smile. “My wife, Francesca.”
A sylph entered the room. A creature of moonlight and shadows, wary, a hint of trepidation in the cant of her brows and the angle of her chin. That was his first impression of Francesca Brown, not of her beauty—he barely noted it at first—but of the isolation that surrounded her like an aura, a detachment that suggested she did not share the same air with mortal men.
He shook his head, troubled by such uncharacteristic fancifulness. She was young, perhaps not yet twenty, and luminous. There was no other word for it. Her eyes glowed like polished onyx. The sheen of the gaslight glistened on her flesh and caught in the inky coils of unbound hair that rippled down her back and around her breasts in a parody of innocence that verged on the indecent. Her gown of semi-transparent batiste revealed just enough of the figure beneath to ensure that the attention of every man in the room was focused on it rather than on Brown.
She hesitated as she came toward the table, her gaze sweeping over the sitters, catching on him before quickly passing on. Had he imagined it? She took her seat at the table without looking at her husband.
She shouldn’t be here. The thought appeared out of nowhere with visceral certainty. I need to get her out of here.
He frowned, astonished and disturbed, first, because she was another’s man’s wife—though more likely she was his mistress—and second, because it was his self-appointed task to hunt her type, not to…get them out of here.
She was a fake, a sham. Everything about her had been artfully orchestrated for the purpose of deceit. He’d witnessed similar performances hundreds of times. Why, during Madame Blavatsky’s séances, the “apparition” of a bawdy harem girl bounced from one delighted gentleman’s lap to the next—a conjuration for which Blavatsky was handsomely compensated.
There was nothing unique about Francesca Brown. Except how she looked, how she moved, the midnight hue of her hair and the limitless depths of her eyes, the fullness of her lips and the exquisite sheen of her flesh. His body tightened in response, his reaction primal and uncomfortable.
“Too bright! Too…bright!” At the sound of Brown’s groan, Grey’s head snapped around.
The medium had taken his seat at the table and Grey hadn’t even noticed, confirming his suspicions regarding Francesca’s role as a diversion. Now Brown’s eyes rolled back in his head. “The spirits cannot…find their way!”
The industrialist leaped to his feet and turned down the sconce, plunging the room into utter darkness.
Grey peered through the murk, trying to find Francesca, angered by his fascination, unable to help himself. He had just made her out, a slender shape dissolving into the darkness, when a sudden swirling pressure filled the room. He tried to pull his hands away, but the opera singer and the German held on with viselike strength.
“Angel wings,” Brown whispered reverentially, and as quickly as the sound had arrived, it was gone.
Grey ground his teeth in frustration. He’d been caught off guard. Preoccupied with libidinous thoughts of Francesca Brown, he’d been unable to bring his full faculties to the task of identifying what sort of chicanery was going on. It was this specific effect that had won Brown his fame. Angel wings, the brush of a loved one’s hand, the tug on a skirt—the witnesses Grey had interviewed claimed it could not have been possible for Brown or his wife to manufacture the effect from their positions at the table without the use of magic or the presence of a spirit.
Of course, they were wrong. There was no such thing as magic, and the world wasn’t harboring ghosts. There were no mysteries, simply answers that had yet to be discovered.
Another memory sprang forth unbidden. He’d been seventeen, forced to endure yet another séance. This one would be different, his father had promised. This woman was authentic.
He could still see his father’s expression as he watched a face “materialize” above a table in a dimly lit back room. It had been nothing but a plaster mask covered with luminescent paint and dropped from a box hidden in the ceiling. It was so pitiful, and yet his father had whispered, “Johanna.” His father, someone he had once so admired and loved, had been reduced in that moment to a gullible buffoon.
Grey wished they’d just come one night and taken everything from him, every bit of silver, every family treasure, every stick of furniture and deed of ownership, every penny, painting, and promissory note, rather than take, as they had, that one thing no amount of effort on his part could ever replace: his respect for his father.
Grimly, Grey focused his attention on Brown, determined not to be distracted again. There followed the usual round of thumps, raps
, and sighs, after which began a series of ear-offending twangs and off-key peeps. (Why had no one ever wondered why the entire population of the hereafter did not count amongst their members one passable musician?)
Francesca did not speak. She did not move. She did not, as far as Grey could determine, add anything to the proceedings besides her presence, which, he allowed, was addition enough.
Finally, after Brown had declared in a voice rife with wonder that the shriek of an ill-tuned violin was the spirit of Handel come to serenade them, Grey could stand it no more.
Jerking free his hands, he bounded to his feet and flung open the door to the séance parlor, flooding the room with light and exposing to view the five burly policemen he’d arranged to be waiting without. Then, as the séance party gaped, blinked, and gasped, he ripped the damask cloth from the table, revealing Brown’s unclad right foot braced against a miniature violin, whilst the hoary toes of his left curled about a little bow. The trapdoor where he’d secreted his props still lay open beneath his chair.
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