The Arrangement (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 10)

by Christine Pope

  But now he had sent a note to her? For one frenzied moment, she thought of taking the note from Josie and thrusting it into the fire, unread. That would be utterly melodramatic, however, and silly to boot. Lorena told herself that she was a grown woman of nearly thirty, and certainly not someone to act in such a foolish manner.

  “Please, give it to me,” she said.

  Josie stepped forward with alacrity and placed the note in her mistress’ hand. Almost glad she had an audience as she read the missive, because then she would have to behave like the mature woman she was, Lorena unfolded the note.

  She had never seen Jeremiah’s writing before, of course, but she knew it had to be his — bold and strong and heavily slanted, definitely not schoolbook copperplate.

  Mrs. Simms, I believe we parted on a sour note. If you would do me the very great honor of meeting with me at my home this evening, I will attempt to explain myself.

  Your servant,

  Jeremiah Wilcox

  It was a very proper note — all except his entreaty for her to go to his house. Such things simply weren’t done. Never mind that he must have a maid and a cook and most likely a nanny for his young son. A dinner party, with others in attendance…of course. But to go alone, when it would only be the two of them?

  Unthinkable.

  Except….

  How could she not go? He had said he wished to explain himself. Perhaps Emma had spoken to him, had let him know that his actions were hurtful.

  Lorena knew if she did not go to meet him, she would forever wonder exactly what he had meant to say to her.

  She cleared her throat. “Josie, get out my black silk dinner dress.”

  “The one I’ve already packed?”

  “Yes, as I don’t believe I have another one with me. Now, Josie!”

  The girl blinked and then scrambled to get the gown out of its trunk. Good thing the dress hadn’t been packed away for so long that it would be irretrievably wrinkled. At least, Lorena hoped it wouldn’t. No matter what happened, she wanted to look her best.

  It did not take so very long to get out of the day gown she wore and into the dinner dress. No time to redo her hair, so the heavy braided coil at the back of her head would have to do. But she did pause to put on her earrings and necklace of onyx and gold and pearls, and allowed Josie to slip a comb of carved tortoiseshell into her hair.

  “My evening cloak, please,” Lorena said, and Josie handed it to her.

  “Are you going down for dinner after all, ma’am? Because I will need to let the kitchen know.”

  “Tell them I will not be dining here at all,” Lorena replied. “I am going out.”

  “Out?” Josie repeated, clearly looking perplexed.

  Lorena didn’t dare reveal her true destination. It was not like her to be mysterious, but better to say nothing than to let her maid know that she was going to a man’s house for dinner, alone. “Yes, out,” she said, her tone far sharper than it normally would have been when addressing her maid. She’d always believed in courtesy to everyone, whether servant or millionaire, but right then her nerves had gotten the better of her. “And that is all you need to know. Just make sure everything is ready for me to depart on the afternoon train tomorrow.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” a clearly cowed Josie replied.

  A pang of guilt stabbed Lorena. Unfortunately, she couldn’t stop to explain herself without giving far too much away. There were some matters that must be kept private. “Thank you, Josie,” she said quietly, then pulled on her evening cloak and headed out.

  Several curious glances were sent her way as she sailed past the restaurant and down the front steps of the hotel, but Lorena made sure to keep her chin up while at the same time avoiding eye contact with anyone. She couldn’t prevent any passersby from noting where she was headed, but she wanted to make sure she looked confident and utterly untroubled by the scandalous nature of her mission.

  To her relief, on this quiet Monday evening, Leroux Street appeared deserted enough. Lights glowed from the five houses that belonged to the Wilcox family, but no one seemed to be about. Lorena took a deep breath as she laid her hand on the gate latch at Jeremiah’s house, then lifted it and made herself walk down the flagstone path. Fallen leaves crunched under her feet and rustled beneath the train of her gown, but she paid them no mind. She knew she had to keep focused on the doorway ahead, on the faint yellow light from the oil lamps within.

  When she knocked, the door opened within a few seconds. Lorena couldn’t help blinking in surprise, because Jeremiah Wilcox himself gazed down at her, and not the maidservant she had been expecting.

  “Please come in, Mrs. Simms,” he said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Wilcox,” she said calmly, as if she made this sort of unorthodox visit every day.

  Inside, all was warmth and welcome, from the lamps that glowed from their sconces on the walls, to the fireplace she could see crackling away in the sitting room off to the left. Indeed, that was where Jeremiah directed her, saying, “I thought we might speak in here first. The cook has left us a light repast — butternut squash soup and cold chicken — but I believe that some of the things I need to say to you would do better without the complications of serving a meal.”

  “Of course,” Lorena replied, although her mind already had begun to churn away at the possible meaning of his words. And that comment about the cook leaving the meal ready for them? It had begun to seem as if he had dismissed his servants for the evening, so the two of them might be entirely alone.

  She was not quite sure what to think of that. Yes, privacy was a thing to be desired, she supposed, but she could not help but feel somewhat uneasy. Uneasy about exactly what, she couldn’t quite determine. Was it worry over what people might say, should it be discovered that she’d spent the evening alone with Jeremiah Wilcox…or was she more concerned as to whether she could trust herself around him?

  As she followed him into the sitting room, she could not help but direct a quick glance upward, wondering if Jeremiah’s son and his nanny had also been dispensed with, or whether she would have that slightest of chaperones.

  “Jacob is at his Aunt Emma’s,” Jeremiah said, correctly interpreting that furtive look. “I thought it better. He…has a tendency to overhear things he shouldn’t.”

  Meaning, Lorena supposed, that he had a habit of eavesdropping. She wasn’t even sure she could blame him for that. It must have been hard for him, a child alone in this large house, even if he did spend a good deal of time with his cousins.

  “I see,” she said, her tone as neutral as she could make it.

  To her surprise, Jeremiah smiled then, that quick flash of an expression which transformed his somewhat saturnine features into a thing of remarkable beauty. “I am not quite sure you do, but I hope to remedy that situation. Some claret?” he added, gesturing toward a cut-crystal decanter and a set of matching wine goblets.

  Perhaps that was not the best of ideas, but then again, the wine might help to settle her nerves. “Thank you, Mr. Wilcox.”

  “Jeremiah,” he said immediately. “I do not quite like the idea of us having to be so formal with one another, not when….” The words trailed off then, and Lorena glimpsed an almost imperceptible lift of his shoulders.

  Not when we’ve shared a kiss? she thought then, although she did not voice the words aloud. At any rate, she was glad enough to abandon the formalities. It seemed silly to follow such conventions when clearly there was nothing conventional at all about their dealings with one another.

  “Of course, Jeremiah,” she said. “That would be much more pleasant.”

  “Good.” Finished with pouring the wine, he handed one of the crystal goblets to her. She murmured her thanks, and he continued, “I want to apologize for my actions earlier. However, I also wish to explain why I behaved in such a way.”

  She inclined her head, her heart beginning to beat more quickly. If he had wished to completely abandon their connection, he could have let things lie,
could have allowed her to get on the train and disappear from his life forever. That he had asked her to come here, and had opened the discussion with an apology…well, Lorena found herself far more hopeful than she had been an hour earlier.

  “Of course,” she said again, and he nodded.

  “I must preface what I am about to tell you with something of a disclaimer. There are matters I wish to discuss that will sound incredible to you. I know you to be a sensible and intelligent woman, Lorena, and so I fear you may not believe me. But everything I have to say is the utter truth. I would not lie to you. Never that.”

  He paused there, and went to sit down on the settee which faced hers. Lorena watched him, her mouth suddenly dry. What on earth was he planning to divulge? That his four dead wives were not enough, and that he had a fifth locked up in the attic, like Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre?

  Somehow she managed to say calmly, “I know you would not tell me a falsehood, Jeremiah. So please…let me know what is on your mind.”

  Another pause as he took his own crystal goblet of claret and allowed himself a mouthful. Only that one swallow, though, before he set down the goblet again and gazed across the space that separated them, his eyes dark, sorrowful. “I wished to create some distance between us, Lorena, because I suffer from a curse, and I did not want you caught up in it.”

  “‘A curse’?” she repeated. “Forgive me, Jeremiah, but….”

  “I know it sounds mad. Why do you think I prefaced this discussion by saying that I knew this would all seem incredible to you? But I swear upon everything I hold dear, the curse is real. It is what took my last two wives. And I knew it would take you, too, if I allowed us to grow any closer than we already had.”

  She began to shake her head, but he forestalled her, going on to say,

  “My late wife Nizhoni — she was of the Navajo, who call themselves the Diné. A proud, passionate woman. I fear that she had a difficult time living in my world, and when she fell ill…when it became clear that nothing any of us could do would save her….” Jeremiah stopped then, mouth twisting. His hands clenched on the knees of his fine wool trousers. “She died cursing me. Of course I was troubled that she passed from this world in such torment, but I did not think anything more of it than that. Time moved on, and I married again. And she died when we had been married a little more than a year. A sad thing, but again, I did not believe Letty’s passing was anything more than bad luck. Until I married for the fourth time, and she died as well, this time only a few months after we were married. Carrying my child, as was Letty.”

  “I am very sorry about that,” Lorena said quietly. “But I still do not see how it could have been anything other than bad luck. I have…I have suffered my own share of ill fortune, and I know all too well how it can drive one to believe there must be other forces at work, rather than merely unfortunate circumstances.”

  “Emma told me of your losses,” Jeremiah replied, and Lorena could not help but cringe inwardly, although she held herself calm enough on the settee, her back straight, several inches away from the settee’s cushions, as she’d been taught. Although she had known there was a good chance Emma would tell Jeremiah of what had happened, of the carriage accident that had cost Lorena both her husband and the child she carried, she hated the idea that Jeremiah Wilcox would now see her as something lesser, a woman who couldn’t even fulfill the one duty which she’d been told all her life was her destiny on this earth.

  “Emma was very kind,” Lorena said, as neutrally as she could. She reached for her goblet of claret and sipped, wishing then that it was permissible for a lady to take large swallows of the stuff, to drink and drink until she forgot.

  “Yes, she is,” Jeremiah agreed. “But the reason I know that Nizhoni’s curse is not a figment of my imagination is because she was a powerful witch, someone with the capability to make such a thing a reality.”

  “A — a witch?” Oh, this was truly insane. Yes, he had said there were matters he needed to divulge, ones that would sound impossible, but was he actually asking her to believe his late wife was a witch? True, men had called both former and present wives such names, and worse, but Lorena did not think Jeremiah was speaking of that particular kind of witch.

  He smiled grimly, as if he had somehow managed to guess what she was thinking. “You do not believe me. It is understandable — I had a feeling you might not. But it is true…just as it is true that I come from a family of witches and warlocks myself.”

  Was this some sort of a test? Was he telling her these outrageous stories, merely to see how she would react? “Jeremiah, surely you cannot expect me to believe such a thing!”

  “I do expect you to. Indeed, I have just told you a secret that my clan has kept hidden for generations. You see, we do not know each other so very well, but I trust you to keep a confidence. I have an instinct about people. Perhaps it is another of my gifts.”

  “Your gifts as a warlock,” she said, her voice flat.

  “Yes.” A corner of his mouth lifted. “Perhaps a demonstration will help.”

  He made a small, strange gesture with his right hand — fore- and middle fingers flicking toward the hearth. At once, the two taper candles in their enameled brass holders came to life, the flames straight and proud, not moving at all, even though Lorena could feel the cold draft coming in from the foyer.

  Somehow, she managed to speak. “A simple parlor trick,” she said. “How do I know that you didn’t have special candles placed there, ones that would burst into flame after a certain amount of time has elapsed?”

  “You don’t know,” he replied. “Although I do recall you saying earlier that you knew I would not lie to you. But in a way, you are right — that was a simple parlor trick, the smallest and meanest of my powers. I do have many more.”

  And in the next instant, Lorena found herself floating up off the settee, watching with unbelieving eyes as it grew smaller while she approached the ceiling. A frightened little cry escaped her throat, although she didn’t remember even uttering the sound.

  It was the oddest sensation — hanging like that with apparently nothing to hold her up, as if the air itself had suddenly become dense enough to bear her weight. She grasped her skirts and petticoats, attempting to make sure that they wouldn’t take it into their minds to float up around her as well, although, as far as she could tell, the heavy fabric was still behaving according to the laws of gravity.

  “Put me down!” she cried, suddenly furious that Jeremiah had put her in such an unladylike position.

  “Ah,” he responded, looking up at her with an ironic tilt to one black eyebrow. “So now you do believe that I am a warlock?”

  “You are certainly something out of the ordinary,” she said. “And you have proved your point. So I would appreciate it if you would let me down.”

  “Of course.” He waved one hand, and she descended to the carpeted floor, setting down so gently that she barely felt her feet touch the Persian rug.

  Now that she was back on terra firma, Lorena could allow herself to think about what had just happened to her. Jeremiah Wilcox had sent her eight feet up into the air with only a simple motion of one hand. Such a thing wasn’t possible — couldn’t be possible — and yet there it was.

  She put one hand on the arm of the settee and guided herself back down onto its surface. Right then, her knees shook so badly, she wasn’t sure she could trust them to hold her up. “You’re — ”

  “Yes,” he said, watching her closely. His eyes were so deep and dark, she thought she might drown in them. “I am a warlock. As are my brothers.”

  “And — and Emma?”

  “Is a witch. A good one,” he added hastily. “A healer.”

  The room wanted to spin around her. Lorena dug her fingers into the silk damask of the settee’s cushions and told herself she absolutely would not faint. Not in front of Jeremiah Wilcox.

  Who apparently was a warlock.

  For some reason, she thought then of how his
lips had pressed against hers, how her body and soul had come alive in a way they hadn’t been since Walter died. She had kissed Jeremiah and wanted more.

  Was that desire real, or merely some sort of spell he had cast on her?

  He seemed to notice her worry, her hesitation, because he got up from his own seat and came to kneel on the floor in front of her. Without asking her permission, he wrapped his fingers around her cold ones. A shiver went through her, but she didn’t dare pull her hands away.

  She didn’t want to. She liked him touching her, even as shocked and frightened as she was right then.

  “This,” he said, gently squeezing her hands. “This is real, Lorena. Nothing has passed between us that wasn’t real, that isn’t what a man and a woman might feel for one another. You must know that. I would never — I would never use my powers in such a way.”

  She gazed into his intent dark eyes, with their frame of heavy brows and thick lashes. “No,” she said shakily. “I suppose you wouldn’t much need to, would you, Jeremiah? Four wives, and it wouldn’t take that much of an effort to add a fifth, would it?”

  His lips pressed together. “I will never marry again.”

  There it was. So it seemed she was only a distraction, someone he might romance and let go. Did he think she was a safer bet because she was a widow, and therefore had given up her supposed innocence many years earlier?

  “Thank you for being so clear,” she said, not bothering to temper the sharp tone of her voice. “Is that your standard practice? To inform a woman beforehand that you intend to seduce her, so she cannot say afterward that she did not see it coming?”

  “‘Seduce’?” he repeated. His lashes dropped to veil his eyes for a moment, and then he gave her such a piercing look that she wished she had the courage to pull her hands from his. “I am afraid you do not understand, Lorena. I cannot marry again. To make a woman my wife is to doom her to an early death. I realize that now. Indeed, merely carrying my child might be enough to bring down the curse, whether there is a marriage certificate involved or no. Why do you think I tried to walk away from you? I could not take that risk with a woman I held in such high esteem. You certainly did not deserve such a fate.”