So Enchanting

by Connie Brockway

  “There’s your spectral musician. No shade of Handel, just Mr. Brown’s unwashed feet,” he declared in disgust.

  His pale mustache quivering like an albino rabbit’s whiskers, and his large, soulful eyes narrowing to not-so-soulful slits, Brown sprang up, upending his chair.

  Chaos erupted in the room. The opera singer collapsed in terror, and the other women screamed. Red-faced with outrage and, Grey hoped, chagrin, the gentlemen rose to aid the ladies and confront their deceiver.

  Only Francesca remained motionless. Brown dove, seizing her by the shoulders and dragging her to her feet to use as a shield. She did not resist. She stood flinching in his bruising clasp, her expression contemptuous.

  A red haze filled Grey’s vision. He vaulted the table, jerking Francesca out of Brown’s clutches, and thrust her behind him. Desperate, the spiritualist scuttled away, grabbing a nearby chair and flinging it. Grey knocked it aside, advancing relentlessly.

  “Stay away! Stay away from me!” Brown shrieked, backing up.

  Grey’s right arm shot out, his fist landing squarely on the bastard’s chin, knocking him off his feet and sending him crashing into the wall. Except it wasn’t a wall.

  The sound of shattering glass filled the room, and then Brown was swallowed by the velvet draperies and disappeared. The sound broke the paralysis holding the policemen, and they rushed to join Grey at the newly revealed window, just in time to see Brown pick himself up off the pavement ten feet below and flee across the street.

  “Son of a bitch!” Grey shouted. He was every sort of ass. He should have tackled Brown, let the police tackle Brown, let the others tackle Brown, but because of some misplaced compulsion to beat the bastard senseless he’d allowed him to escape.

  He spun around to glare at Francesca and found she had fallen to the floor and knelt in a pool of delicate batiste, her dark hair falling across her pale face. His curse died on his lips. He wanted only to sweep her up in his arms and take her away from here.

  Madness.

  She wasn’t even looking at him. Her eyelids fluttered like those of a dreamer coming awake from a fantastical nightmare, and she gazed around her uncomprehendingly.

  Then, slowly, she tipped back her head and laughed.

  Chapter 2

  SPIRITUALIST EXPOSED AS FRAUD!

  EXCLUSIVE EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT!

  “Scoundrel!” Lord Greyson’s ringing denunciation followed the escaping villain. But, alas, all efforts to apprehend the fleeing criminal came to naught as Brown made good his escape.

  “He didn’t say scoundrel,” Francesca muttered. He’d said something far worse, something unrepeatable.

  She’d known “Mr. Kidd” posed a threat the moment she’d walked through the door. He’d no more in common with Alphonse’s usual clientele than a bullmastiff did with lapdogs. A tall, powerful-looking fellow, dark complected and black haired, he’d looked like a Spartan entering battle, and just as harsh. Indeed, the only aspect of lightness about him had been his eyes, a unique, clear blue-green framed by banks of black lashes. They held no softness, no compassion, just hard brilliance, like gemstones.

  The newspapers went on to say that he was a newly minted barrister and special investigator attached to the Crown prosecutor. She hadn’t realized Alphonse had been worthy of such exalted attention.

  She went back to reading the newspaper, even though she had read very nearly the same article in several different papers every day since their dramatic exposure ten days ago. But today there was a new bit added:

  Word arrived in this London office late last evening that Alphonse Brown, ne Alfie Pudlik, died yesterday in a railway accident in Paris, where he reportedly fled. Brown’s wife, Francesca, remains in London. The authorities have declined to charge her with any crime, deeming her involvement in her husband’s schemes “undiscoverable.”

  She’d known Alphonse had died, of course. The police had told her. She was surprised she’d actually cried for him. He certainly didn’t deserve her tears. Not after sending his mistress—“M’name’s Dorothy, but Alf calls me his li’l Dot”—to demand Fanny pack his clothing so that she could take them to him.

  “Alf also says to say you ain’t to consider yerself married to ’im no more ’cause he don’t,” she’d announced. “Says to say he knows it ain’t yer fault, but he can’t abide sharing a bed wid’ you no more, ’counta it gives him the creeping willies, you not bein’ normal-like.”

  Well, at least that had explained the infrequency of Alphonse’s conjugal visits. Even through her humiliation, Francesca had appreciated the irony. Just four short years before, Alphonse had talked her into eloping with him not in spite of her strangeness, but because of it.

  Dot cocked her head, eyeing Francesca from head to toe as she obviously tried to determine just what peculiarity Fanny was hiding beneath her clothing that could keep a man out of a woman’s bed. “Oh, and you ain’t to come after him.”

  “Tell ‘Alf’ he needn’t fret,” Fanny said, and slammed the door in her face.

  Mrs. Brown is still reputed by a number of her husband’s former followers to have occult powers. And, indeed, one might be forgiven for wondering if there is any fact behind the fancy, for surely if the old adage about a woman scorned is valid, the consequences must be doubled when the woman scorned is reputedly a witch. The question must be begged, did a hex end Alfie Pudlik’s life?

  No. It had been the morning train from Orleans. Carefully, Francesca folded the newspaper and set it aside. She supposed she should be flattered. She was accumulating titles at an astonishing rate: confidence artist, oddity, spiritualist, and now witch. And one must not forget to add pauper.

  She looked around the hotel room. She couldn’t stay here long. The Savoy was expensive, but it was the only hotel she knew, and there was no one to suggest another.

  Her parents were dead, having both fallen victims to a tin of tainted beef the year after Fanny had eloped. Her brother, Wesley, had blamed her, claiming they’d been so devastated by her disastrous marriage early that same year that they’d been too weak to combat the poison. But then, Wesley had been blaming her for everything bad that happened ever since The Incident.

  She hadn’t meant for anything bad to happen. There’d been no warning that her rapport with animals could have a dangerous side.

  When she was three years old, the estate deer approached her; at five, wild hare suffered her touch; at ten, birds alit on her outstretched hands. But only when she was feeling some powerful emotion. And initially her family had been charmed by her affinity with wild things, her mother even claiming it was a family trait.

  Until Wesley’s “accident.”

  She’d been twelve, skinny, awkward, neither woman nor girl, but at that uneasy stage in between, oversensitive, overdramatic, and quick to talk back, as she had done at luncheon that day. She didn’t even recall what she’d said that had her father sending her to her room. She just recalled marching out of the house and slamming the front door behind her.

  Later, she learned that Wesley had been sent to retrieve her. He’d gone out the back of the house intending to intercept her at the stable. Wesley and she had never been close. Five years her senior, he was a bit of a snob and a bully who took himself and his position as his father’s heir very seriously. The only value he found in her was as someone to tease.

  Perhaps it was the desire for a spot of revenge over having to interrupt his meal, perhaps sibling rivalry, perhaps a little resentment that as the youngest, Fanny was babied. Whatever the reason, when he spotted her he’d waited in the shadows, and when she passed, he jumped out, shouting.

  Terrified, Fanny screamed like a banshee.

  Wesley laughed.

  He held his sides, hooting and pointing at the tears streaming down her cheeks. She could still recall the fury rushing up in a molten streak. Unable to speak, shaking with anger and impotence, she’d glared at him as he continued laughing and doubling over with hilarity.

&nbs
p; And then, as suddenly as Wesley had leaped from the stable door, a small dog shot from nowhere, snarling ferociously. Another joined it, this one larger, more muscular. Then another. And another. With single-minded intent, the estate dogs, the collies, and the hunting spaniels, the gamekeeper’s mastiffs and the cook’s little ratter, all came together like a pack and attacked her brother.

  He went down shrieking amidst a flurry of snarling, snapping maws and slashing fangs. Fanny’s fury vanished. For three breathless heartbeats she stared, stunned, before she started screaming. At once, as if answering some inner command, the dogs fell back, revealing Wesley where he’d fallen.

  He lay on his side, bloodied and sobbing, his clothing shredded, in ten short seconds having acquired scars that would last his lifetime and an injury to his Achilles tendon that would cause him to limp for the rest of his days.

  Fanny could not stop screaming. The dogs began to howl. In their stalls, the horses thrashed and kicked. Rats and mice streamed out of the barn in a panicked frenzy. Birds hurled themselves into the manor’s windows, falling dead to the ground in little mounds.

  Her parents came running.

  Her life changed after that. The dogs, of course, were all destroyed, adding to her guilt and grief. Fear became her daily companion. How had it happened? What had she done? What if it happened again? What if next time it didn’t stop?

  The day marked the end of the garrulous, exuberant child she’d been and the beginning of the solitary creature she’d become. Her parents reassured her that they didn’t blame her, as did her older sister, Jeanne—at least, for a while—but afterward there was always a certain watchfulness in their eyes.

  Wesley made no mystery about his bitterness. Five years later, when Jeanne was to make her debut, he vehemently opposed Francesca’s coming with the family to London. The scenarios he described had been so vividly appalling that Jeanne, always easily swayed by Wesley, had begged Fanny to ask to be left behind.

  Fanny had been happy to oblige. She had no more desire to risk an “episode” than did anyone else in her family. It hadn’t taken much to convince her parents to leave her with an elderly cousin that season.

  It had all worked out well enough. Jeanne had met the baronet she later married. In fact, just yesterday Fanny had received a letter from her sister, the first communication since their parents’ deaths three years ago. Jeanne had read about Alphonse in the penny press and sent a hundred pounds, along with a plea to keep silent on the matter of their relationship.

  In a fit of prideful indignation, Francesca had sent the money back—in retrospect a vainglorious gesture, because before he’d decamped, Alphonse had emptied their bank account.

  Luckily, Alphonse had a taste for extravagance. The furnishings, the paintings, and the silver in their apartment had fetched a decent price from the reseller she’d summoned the day after the police raid. But that money wouldn’t last long. Where would she go then?

  A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts. She opened it to find an older gentleman standing outside with his hat in his hands, exposing a bald dome tonsured by a fringe of fading red hair. His ruddy complexion was blistered and freckled, the effects of prolonged sun exposure on fair skin, and he held his thin body rigidly erect. A military man, then, and, judging by the state of his skin, likely once posted in the East.

  “Don’t recognize me, do you?” he said.

  She launched into her now familiar speech. “If you’ve come to demand I return the money my husband defrauded you of, I am afraid I cannot help you. He withdrew every cent from our bank account and took it to Paris with him, and now he is dead and I do not know where the money is.”

  She suspected Dot did, but Francesca hadn’t the wherewithal to pursue the suspicion. “If I should ever receive any portion of it, I shall make whatever restitution is possible. If you could leave me your card and the amount—”

  “You misunderstand,” the gentleman interrupted. “I am Colonel Chase. Your family’s estate in Surrey borders my own.”

  “Oh? Oh. Yes, of course.” She looked closer, recognizing him now. The years had not treated him kindly.

  She recalled him as a hearty, robust, red-haired fellow who’d married late, taking his wife to the fort in India where he’d been posted and where she’d died young. There had been a child, too…

  “I was wondering if I might have a few minutes of your time.”

  Oh, dear. She regarded him sadly. “I cannot contact the deceased for you, Colonel. Surely you’ve read the papers? It was all a hoax.”

  “Oh, no. I know,” he said, worrying his hat between his gloved hands. “It’s nothing like that, I assure you. If I could persuade you to accompany me, I have secured a table on the terrace of the hotel’s restaurant overlooking the park.”

  He stepped aside hopefully. She hesitated, marshaling her courage. She couldn’t hide in her hotel room forever. She took his proffered arm, allowing him to escort her down the grand staircase into the Savoy’s lobby. As she descended the stairs, the murmuring of those scattered about sipping coffee and chatting faded to whispers.

  “Witch, they’re saying now.”

  “Just a trumped-up actress.”

  “Can’t imagine the hotel would like knowing how she earned the money she pays her bill with.”

  “Earned? You mean stole.”

  “I wonder if she’s a witch.”

  And then they were on the terrace under a bright April sun, alone except for another intrepid pair braving the chill of the morning in order to find some privacy. Colonel Chase ordered coffee and biscuits and, as soon they’d been delivered, began speaking.

  She might not remember much about him, he said, but he remembered her quite well, especially those things that set her apart from everyone. In fact, that was why he’d come. He’d seen her picture in the newspaper and recognized her.

  “I have come here to speak to you about my daughter, my Amelie. She is like you. She is”—he looked around and bent over the table, lowering his voice—“touched by magic.”

  Chapter 3

  Like her? Touched by magic? Francesca sank back in her chair, amazed.

  For the next hour, she listened to Colonel Chase recount the facts of his daughter’s life. Motherless since she was a toddler, Amelie had been raised in India until a few years ago, when the colonel had retired from the military, returning to England so that Amelie might become “a proper lady.” Until recently their lives in England had been unremarkable. But this winter, around the time of Amelie’s eleventh birthday, strange events had begun to occur in her vicinity: pictures flew from the walls, vases tipped over, and cutlery slid from its place setting.

  Unfortunately, many of these incidents had taken place in the public eye. Rumors had begun to spread. Invitations had dropped off. Far worse, a sect of religious fanatics had denounced Amelie as being possessed by a demon, saying her father had sold her soul to the devil for the fortune with which he’d returned from India.

  Colonel Chase, the recipient of many medals for courage, had been shaken to his core by an anonymous letter exhorting him to rid his house of the witch inhabiting it. Other letters had followed, the threats in them escalating.

  “The last said that it is a sin to suffer a witch to live,” he said.

  “But you don’t really think your daughter is in danger?”

  His answer was unnecessary. His broad hand shook as he reached for his cup of coffee and took a sip. He returned it to its saucer before replying. “My dear, twenty years ago I would have said no. But that was before I witnessed firsthand what a mob is capable of when lashed into a frenzy of fear.”

  His gaze focused on the view across the river. “There was a girl who some villagers suspected had put a curse on their cattle.” He shuddered. “She did not survive the mob.”

  “But that was in India,” Fanny protested. “This is England. We are civilized here.”

  He shook his head adamantly. “There is no civilized place. Some ven
eers are just thicker than others. But they are all veneers. Beneath them lurks a mob waiting for an excuse to erupt into savagery.

  “London is run amok with rumors of witchcraft and devil worship, exacerbated by the Whitechapel murders and that monster that dubbed himself ‘the Ripper.’ So, yes, I do think Amelie is in danger. I have gone to the police, but they either can or will do nothing.”

  He stopped, his jaw bunching with ill-controlled emotion. “Well, I can do something. I refuse to take chances with her life. That’s why I’m sending her to Scotland as soon as possible.”

  He leaned forward. “I have a hunting lodge in the Highlands, in as remote a location as one could find, surrounded by mountains and bordered by a river. The only population nearby is a tiny hamlet so small and isolated, one would immediately recognize a stranger. It is my intention to live there until I am confident there is no threat to Amelie here.”

  Fanny wasn’t certain how to reply. “But why should you wish to tell me your plans?”

  His gaze lifted to meet hers. “I was hoping that you would come with us. I came to offer you a situation.”

  He’d caught her completely off guard. “A situation? As what?”

  “Well, officially as Amelie’s governess, I suppose.”

  “But I—I haven’t any qualifications as a governess,” she stammered, nonplussed. She had no qualifications as anything, for that matter.

  “Nonsense, Mrs. Brown,” the colonel said.

  “I prefer Mrs. Walcott, please.” It was her mother’s maiden name, and as there was no one left on that side of the family to protest her use of it, and she refused to use Alphonse Brown’s, she’d adopted it as her own.