Uncertain Magic

by Laura Kinsale

  My sister! Mr. Webster’s mind howled. I’ll kill you! But he kept his mouth closed in front of the servants. His eyes flicked to Roddy and registered a gentlewoman’s dress, but his thoughts were all on Faelan’s perfidy. He mastered his voice and said harshly, “For your presence at the house called Pelham Cottage these four nights past.”

  “I’m afraid that you’re misinformed.”

  Mr. Webster shook off the coachman’s hands. “And you’re unspeakable vermin.” He spat on the step below Faelan’s boots. “Come down, Iveragh, and let me spit in your face if you’re afraid to meet me honorably.”

  An unearthly silence filled the courtyard, and suddenly the young fire-eater was frightened of what he had done. He thrust his chin out and looked up at Faelan, defiance and terror quivering on his lips.

  “Mr. Webster,” Faelan murmured, “I’ll not murder a promising gentleman such as yourself for the sake of your lying whore of a sister.”

  Mr. Webster lunged forward, but the coachman was there to hold him before he took a full step. “You—” He almost choked on his emotion, and then screamed, “You filthy, blackguarding fiend!” He drew a sobbing breath and gasped, “The law will give me redress in this!”

  Faelan moved for the first time, descending the steps and jerking Webster’s chin up with a black-gloved hand as the younger man stood pinned in the coachman’s burly grip. “I daresay it might, if you cared to place your sister’s name on a level with mine.” When Faelan’s hand came away there were red marks of pressure on Mr. Webster’s smooth cheeks. “I advise you to resist the temptation. Your sister is lying to you, my friend. I have any number of witnesses who can testify that I was in Hampshire until yesterday noon.”

  Webster half stumbled as the coachman let him go. For a moment he almost threw himself at his adversary’s throat. But pride and a sudden doubt saved him from another useless defiance. She told me; she named you—conniving, slimy son of a bitch—witnesses! And Ellen—A vision of his sister displayed to public ridicule in the courts and in the press made bile rise in his throat.

  He drew himself up. Somewhere in the frenzy of hate and defeat he found the only recourse left to him: a gentleman’s weapons. He slid a look of pure loathing from Faelan’s boots to his face, and then settled that contemptuous gaze deliberately on the hand that had touched him.

  “Permit me to take leave, then.” His lip curled with venomous hauteur. “I wish to return home and bathe.”

  Chapter 12

  Faelan sat slumped in silence, his extended leg swaying slightly with the roll of the carriage. He had not said a word for four hours. They were nearing Gravesend; Roddy knew so because the coachman, perched on the box and sharing a rug with Martha—who was hogging it—was thinking warm thoughts of mulled ale and a meat pasty.

  Roddy hated the silence inside the vehicle. She hated the way Faelan had changed, from the laughing devil of the morning to this grim remoteness. There was a violence to the set of his mouth, a vacant and haunted look in his eyes that frightened her.

  This morning it had been easy to be sure of him. He had seemed so much the man she loved. The man she wanted him to be.

  But now…

  She watched him from the corner of her eye, phrasing and rephrasing empty words of comfort—words mocked by the questions that burned through her mind.

  Ellen had lied, she had made it all up.

  But I know that she didn’t.

  He was in Hampshire. He has witnesses.

  But she had a note from him.

  “My Darling,” that note had said, “My Darling little girl.”

  Oh, God, he is not mad. I would rather he was lying.

  But she looked at him, silent and dark and unmoving, and saw again the inhuman tension that marked his mouth and eyes.

  She remembered what he had done once for her in a dim-lit, rocking carriage, and she reached out her hand and touched his. He turned his head at the move, looking down at where her glove overlay his own. For a moment, she thought he would pull away, but then his large hand shifted. He gripped her fingers in a fierce and awkward squeeze.

  She returned the pressure of his hand. “I believe you.” She spoke just loud enough to be heard above the sound of the wheels.

  He smiled, bitterly. “Believe me? Believe what?”

  “You never went to Ellen Webster. You were with me last night. You were in Hampshire before that. And if you have friends there who can prove—”

  “Witnesses?” His laugh was short. “If you believe that, you’re as easy as young Webster. I can’t produce any witnesses, my dear.”

  She felt her heart drop in her chest.

  He released her hand and turned away to the window. “I went into Hampshire…anonymously, shall we call it that? It was a business convenience. I was interested in the auction of a particular lot of breeding stock, and—” The line of his mouth deepened. “To put it politely, there are those who won’t deal with the Devil Earl.”

  She felt a surge of wifely indignation. “Won’t even sell you cattle?”

  “I fear not.” His winter-blue gaze slid toward her. He said softly, “You see, I killed the consignor’s son.”

  Roddy stared at her hand, still resting on the seat between them.

  “You needn’t worry for your husband, my love,” he said with cold irony. “I shan’t be forced to flee the country. It was a long time ago, and neither the seconds nor the doctor have ever talked. My reputation is of some effect in these matters.”

  The carriage jolted over a rut. Roddy shifted and grabbed the strap, seeking that small stability in a world that seemed to have lost all balance.

  “But you were in Hampshire,” she said doggedly. “You know that.”

  “Does it exonerate me?” His look mocked her. “Yes—of course. If you’ve been to this Pelham House, it must be in the city. Therefore I must be certain I haven’t been there recently.”

  She dropped her eyelashes in discomfort.

  “I’m greatly relieved,” he said dryly. “I’m sure I haven’t a broomstick fast enough to carry me between Salisbury and London in the space of a night. But then, perhaps I only imagined I was in Salisbury. One can have such odd fancies sometimes.”

  She frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous. If you were there, you were there.”

  “Ah. While at the same time Miss Webster dallied somewhere in London with a man she mistook for me.”

  Roddy pretended to look out her window, not wanting him to see the doubt in her eyes. She knew—oh, she knew—that Ellen Webster would never have mistaken another man for Faelan. “She just thought you would come,” Roddy said sharply. “She had that silly note, and she thought…” Roddy waved her hand helplessly, lost between what she knew of Ellen’s thoughts and what flew in the face of all logic. And the note, the note itself— “Can you recognize my handwriting?” Faelan said suddenly.

  Roddy jumped, caught out in her own speculation. She gripped her hands together in her lap and shrugged. “I doubt it,” she lied. “I haven’t seen it often.”

  “Did you see the note?”

  F.S. burned before her eyes, the telltale slash and curve of letters like none other, and no figment of Ellen Webster’s imagining. “No,” Roddy said. “I didn’t see it.”

  He was silent a moment, and then said in a different voice, “So you think she was lying?”

  Anything, anything to keep from facing the alternatives.

  “Yes,” she said with feeling. “I’m certain of it.”

  She felt his eyes on her. To refuse to meet that look was to admit her doubt. She thought of him the night before, standing amidst the glittering remains of the mirror, his body taut with a perilous vibrancy, like a thread stretched within a hairsbreadth of its strength. Against that floated better memories: his laughter, precious in its rarity, and his kisses, just as priceless in their abundance.

  She could doubt him and lose him for certain. Or she could go on hoping.

  The choice was so simple t
hat it surprised her. She lifted her eyes and smiled into his, a fierce smile, made of loyalty and determination in place of pleasure.

  He did not answer it at first. Then the carriage rolled again, leaning her toward him and away. He caught her as she swayed and drew her hard against him. His arms curved around her shoulders and under her breasts, crushing her back into his chest as he bent over and buried his face in the curve of her throat. He said nothing, only held her until the tightness of his embrace made foggy insensibility hover at the edges of her vision. She said his name, faintly, and gasped a quick breath when his hold loosened.

  He moved back, pulling her with him into the corner of the rocking coach, so that she sat in his arms, her spine braced against his chest as he took her hands in his and locked their fingers together. They sat so for a long time, not speaking. Finally he pulled one hand away a little and caressed her skin above her glove.

  “Roddy,” he said softly. “Do you know why I refused Webster’s challenge today?”

  She wet her lips. Please, she thought. Please don’t say because he was right.

  “Don’t you?” he repeated.

  She shook her head.

  He wrapped his hand around hers and squeezed. “Because, cailin sidhe—I didn’t want to get shot.”

  Roddy frowned, defeated by that simplicity. She turned a little, just enough to give his lips access to her ear. “Has that never stopped you before?” she whispered.

  His low laughter kissed her skin with warmth. “No. That’s the irony of a duel, little girl. The man who cares the least for living has the steadiest hand.”

  They sat with Geoffrey in a private parlor in the White Lion. Mary had been banished, and Faelan stretched out in a chair with a brandy cupped between his hands. Geoffrey drummed on a marble tabletop, glaring meaningfully at Roddy, his fingerprints marring the polish that gleamed in the late-afternoon sun.

  Roddy stood up, a move which pleased Geoffrey, and positioned herself firmly in front of her husband, a move which did not have the same lightening effect on Cashel’s mood.

  “My lord,” she informed Faelan with regal politeness, “you may wish to know that I intend to be placed in complete possession of any and all facts concerning smuggling and other acts of treason which might affect your health and well-being.” She took a deep breath at the end of this speech, which she had been memorizing an hour since, and added, “I am not leaving.”

  A faint, familiar twitch played at the corner of Faelan’s mouth. The light from the high, small window made a reddish halo around his cropped black hair. “Then you shall stay. By all means, let us have no secrets between us.”

  “Here now,” Geoffrey protested. “I won’t have Roddy involved in this.”

  Faelan raised his dark brows and fixed his friend with a look which Roddy dearly wished she might learn to emulate. “Your concern does you credit, I’m sure. But the sentiment is a bit belated, don’t you think, Geoff?”

  Geoffrey frowned, as much at the unexpected sight of Roddy laying her hand trustingly across her husband’s shoulder as at the pointed rebuff. Geoffrey stared at them a moment while Faelan drew Roddy against him, and then a slow smile touched Lord Cashel’s classical features.

  “This is a cozy picture,” he said. “I should have known you’d talk her out of the sulks.”

  Roddy lifted her own eyebrows, trying to glare him into submission as Faelan had. She had even less success. Though Geoffrey looked away, his smile turned into a grin.

  “Down, poppet. You could kill at thirty paces with those eyes.”

  “Which is likely more than you can do with your smuggled muskets,” Faelan said. “Are you going to tell me your woes, my friend, or shall we sit here all night discussing our female companions?”

  A brief, provocative vision of Geoffrey’s latest chambermaid flashed into the other man’s mind at the words. Roddy blushed, disturbed by the easy way in which Geoffrey could forget his high-minded love for his wife at the mere recollection of a tempting tavern wench. But Roddy had begun lately to develop a new insight into her old friend. Geoffrey did not forget Mary, exactly. It was more as if his feelings for his wife existed on some different and separate plane from the urges of his body. He loved Mary as he would love a work of art or a graceful sonnet—in that ethereal realm of reason and philosophy where Roddy, grounded in emotion and human passion, had never been able to follow him.

  Modest, perfect Mary was worthy of such spiritual love, but Roddy found herself wondering how the two of them had managed to conceive an heir.

  “Poppet,” Geoffrey said, in a last effort to be rid of her, “I know Mary’d like your company. She’s been…restless, you understand—cooped up here at an inn for two weeks.”

  This polite reference to Mary’s condition was calculated to appeal to Roddy’s feminine instincts, instincts which Geoffrey grossly overestimated. She was saved from a tart answer by Faelan’s arm tightening around her waist.

  “She’ll stay,” he said. “I want her here.” He drew a frayed footstool up with his toe and crossed his booted ankles comfortably. “Get on with it, Robespierre. The revolution won’t wait all day.”

  Geoffrey took that shaft with an equanimity that surprised Roddy. She would never have been so rash as to ridicule Lord Cashel’s political ideals. He only shrugged, giving up on evicting Roddy in the face of Faelan’s stated desire, and launched into a detailed explanation of the situation.

  It was much as Roddy had told Faelan before. The guns were hidden in the great house at Iveragh, and the road out of the isolated estate blocked by the militia. Geoffrey had received even worse word since—his stricken lieutenant had died, and the rebels were without local leadership. Rumors of the guns were already spreading, and the army was showing signs of dangerous curiosity. A simple murder of the archeologically minded parson in Ballybrack would no longer be enough to protect the secret.

  Faelan listened to that, and more, in silence. Roddy tried to keep her expression controlled, hiding her horror at Geoffrey’s matter-of-fact talk of killing. As easily as he violated his marital vows, he seemed to have forgotten that the parson in Ballybrack was a human being, with hopes and dreams and loved ones, instead of just a negative numeral in the great equation of liberty.

  Geoffrey finished, and no one spoke for a long moment. Faelan took an idle sip of his brandy. “You’ve been landing in Saint Finian’s Bay?”

  “Aye. You know the spot.”

  “As does half the loyal militia, I’m sure.” He smiled down into his glass and shook his head. “You may be about to catapult us all to freedom with rhetoric, Geoff, but you’re a damned poor hand at reality. Did you never think to appoint a second in command?”

  In Geoffrey’s response to that comment, Roddy saw a glimpse of the strange camaraderie that made these two disparate men friends. Instead of the affront Roddy had expected, Geoffrey sighed and said, “God knows, you’re right about reality. Morley was second. I was to be there myself, if this blasted militia situation hadn’t developed. I suppose I should have appointed a third and a fourth, and a fifth as well, and you don’t have to say it—I damn well know you would have, and I wish you’d have handled the whole thing as I asked you in the first place.”

  “You flatter me,” Faelan said mildly. “And I thought I was only good for raking stables.”

  “Planting potatoes, I think it was.” Geoffrey grinned, unashamed, exerting his charm as easily as he breathed. Roddy was amazed to see her husband smile back—a slow, deep smile that lit his eyes and changed his face.

  “What would I be,” he said softly, “without you to rescue, my friend?”

  Geoffrey shrugged, hearing only Faelan’s cynical humor where Roddy heard much more. I’ve loved three things I can remember, Faelan had said…and one of them was Geoffrey.

  She bowed her head and closed her fingers on her husband’s shoulder, feeling the smooth texture of living muscle beneath his coat. It frightened her, to see that light in his eyes, to watc
h the unreserved curve of his lips. She knew what love meant to him now. She could lose him, to the ideals of a man who thought nothing of murdering an innocent parson in Ballybrack.

  “We’ll need a ship,” Faelan said, the smile vanishing as he turned to business. “Contact the O’Connells at Derrynane this time—tell them you’ll be wanting to land a small orchestra there…just a harp and a few violins. Four white horses of impressive size and high action, the worse-tempered the better. A score of the most elegant rebels or Frenchmen you can scrape together, and a dance partner for each one. Full ball dress for the dancers,” he added tonelessly. “Preferably a quarter century out of style. Wigs and powder and all the paste jewelry you can muster.”

  Roddy and Geoffrey stared at him, both convinced he had lost his senses.

  He met their incredulous looks with a particularly demonic grin. “Have I ever failed you, Geoff?”

  Geoffrey, having created the muddle, kept his questions to himself and shook his head.

  “November Eve.” Faelan stood up, kicking the stool back into its earlier position. The corner of the rug flipped back under one mahogany leg, revealing a clean, smooth spot in the dented floor. “Have the horses concealed at Cahirciveen before dark; the musicians and dancers and the guncarts—manned and ready to load—at the great house at quarter till midnight. Your guns will be past Blackwater Bridge by morning.” He turned to Roddy and offered his arm. “I’ve ordered dinner for eight. Will you and Mary join us here?”

  “Certainly.” Geoffrey was miffed at the glaring lack of any explanation for Faelan’s weird requests, but he was chary of his friend’s uncertain temper. That Faelan could save the guns Geoffrey never doubted, and he had no desire to jeopardize the commitment by crossing Faelan’s mood. Let him have his fun, Geoffrey thought. And get back to his damned potatoes.

  Roddy hung back a little as Faelan started for the door. “My lord,” she said. “I’ll join you in a moment, if you please.”

  He paused, looked at her and then at Geoffrey. The warm grip on her arm loosened. “Of course,” he said, in a chillingly neutral voice. Before she could make up an excuse—a word with Mary, or some other reason to linger alone with Geoffrey—her husband had opened the door and shut it behind him.