Under Your Spell

by Lois Greiman

  Reeves ignored her attitude, the first-person reference. “Where were you?”

  “Home.”

  “Which is where?”

  She shrugged again. Jasper turned to Ella.

  She shook her head, squinted, remembering the glare. “It was so bright. I couldn’t—”

  “You’re wrong.” Shaleena swaggered toward them, hair gleaming like fire. “Again.”

  “Shaleena,” Jasper warned, but she ignored him.

  “There was only the one lantern,” she said.

  “But it seemed bright to the girl,” Jasper said, facing Ella.

  She thought back. Terror came again, hollow and consuming. “I hate the dark. You know I hate it,” she whispered, and felt her skin crawl, heard the scratchy noises of something nasty and hungry. Something she could not see. Something…

  Fingers tightened on her arm. She turned her gaze sideways, saw Maddy’s worried eyes.

  “Josette.” Her voice was soft. “You are safe.”

  Ella nodded, though it wasn’t true. She wasn’t safe. Never would be.

  “The light of one lantern seemed bright to her?” Reeves asked again.

  Ella locked her knees, searched for courage. “Blinding.”

  “Then we shall assume she was kept in the dark until that point.”

  He was clever that way. Always clever. Thinking. Conniving.

  Ella nodded.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “What?” She tried to marshal her senses, but they were scattered, like swallows in a windstorm.

  “Why does he keep her in the dark? Is it solely because it frightens her?”

  “I don’t…” She paused, thoughts scrambling. “I can’t tell.”

  Shaleena shambled into the kitchen.

  “You said…” He paused, thinking. “‘You know they’ll find me.’ Why did she believe that?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Did she recognize him? Does she know him?”

  Ella’s head was beginning to throb with a precise, piercing cadence. “Maybe. I—”

  “Very helpful,” Shaleena murmured, returning, apple in hand. Its skin was bloodred, matching her lips. “We now know that the child may or may not know her abductor.”

  Jasper’s jaw tightened, but he moved on. “Where were you?”

  She shook her head. She had focused on her abductor, felt the danger there, the evil.

  “I told you it was his home,” Shaleena said, and took a bite of the apple.

  Reeves watched Ella, but she couldn’t say whether the other’s perceptions were correct.

  A drop of juice fell between Shaleena’s breasts. She scraped it off with a forefinger. “A hovel,” she said, and made a face.

  “Where is it?” Reeves asked, facing Shaleena.

  She shrugged, took another bite.

  “How does it look?”

  “I was inside,” she reminded him.

  “What could you see from where you were standing?”

  “The whelp.”

  “She’s unscathed?”

  “Scared.” She smiled grimly. “Not so terrible brave when wrenched from her mother’s arms.” There were times after a session such as this, months sometimes, when the core of their borrowed personalities would not leave them.

  “She’s only a baby,” Darla murmured.

  But Shaleena only tossed her head. Fear had no meaning for her.

  “Was anyone else present?”

  She shrugged, shook her head.

  “Josette?” he asked.

  “I don’t believe so,” she said.

  “What else can you tell me?”

  Ella’s head felt hot. The world shaky. “She doesn’t have much time.”

  He stared at her a moment, then turned his gaze to the others. “Anyone else?”

  “She has a grande heart,” said Faye. She was the youngest of the coven. The youngest and perhaps the most damaged. “She will fight to survive.”

  Shaleena snorted, but Darla agreed.

  “She will fight so long as she has breath.”

  Jasper nodded. “Anyone else?”

  “It is quiet,” Madeline said.

  Ella turned toward her, surprised. Maddy’s gifts did not often run toward psychic abilities. Hers were the earthy sort, the kind made of darkness and stealth.

  “Where she is held,” she intoned. “It is quiet.”

  Ella swallowed, kept her eyes open to the world, to the horror. “Underground.”

  “What?” Reeves asked.

  “At times I smell earth. Hear footsteps.”

  “Overhead?”

  “I’m not certain. Perhaps.”

  “Was this encounter current? Just happening?”

  Ella shook her head, uncertain. “I can’t be sure.”

  “That’s because you’ve lost your gift,” Shaleena said, and sauntering to the nearest chair, sat down, knees apart. “Given it away.” She sneered. “The scene happened some time ago.”

  Reeves’s stare was intense. “An hour? A day?”

  Shaleena smiled, just a curling of the lips, a darkening of her otherworldly eyes.

  He turned toward Ella, but who was she to gainsay? She’d been wrong before. People had suffered. Friends had died.

  Reeves scowled. “How much time do we have?”

  “Time?” Shaleena blinked coquettishly. “I am flattered, Jasper. But even I cannot determine the number of our days.”

  “Shaleena,” Madeline reprimanded, but the other rose abruptly.

  “It’s time we move on to other things,” she insisted. “More important things.”

  “What?” Maddy gasped.

  “Surely even this motley gaggle has more burning issues than one tattered child.”

  “This is our mission,” Madeline said. “To help. ’Tis the reason Les Chausettes was begun at the start.”

  “Well, our mission is past.”

  “What?” Reeves asked.

  “She’s gone,” Shaleena said, and sliced the energized air with the edge of her hand.

  Ella felt her skin chill. “No,” she said. Shaleena twisted rapidly toward her. Their gazes clashed. “She can’t be gone,” she whispered.

  “People die,” Shaleena hissed.

  Darla whispered a prayer.

  “You’re wrong,” Ella said, but her voice was weak.

  “Truly?” Shaleena asked. “And what makes you think so? Your stellar past? Tell me, Josette, were you jealous of Sarah’s talents? Was that what began the trouble?”

  A dozen apologies bubbled on Ella’s lips. A dozen excuses welled in her consciousness, but Sarah’s haunted eyes shone like gemstones in her mind. She had failed, and the girl had paid the price. “I’m sorry,” she said simply, and turning silently away, left the house.

  Chapter 15

  Where the hell was she? Drake wondered. He should never have allowed her to leave his carriage on the previous night. Should have followed her into her house. Should have apologized, pleaded, explained.

  But explained what? That he been overcome by her beauty, her charisma? Her inexplicable allure?

  Holy God. He had acted like a crazed beast. In light of his past actions he had no right to so much as touch her hand.

  He glanced about. Dozens of elegantly garbed people sat about playing whist while scores of others danced in pairs. For a moment he had no idea where he was, whose home he had entered, but he had secured an invitation, had come here, hoping to find her. He’d gone to her house, but a serving woman as old as sin had said she was not at home. He had been tempted to sit on her stoop and wait, but supposedly he was a gentleman, not an animal planning to fall on her like a starving hound.

  But the truth was, he could think of little else. She had felt like magic in his hands, in his soul. The moonlight had shafted through the cab’s open window and shone on her rapt expression like sunbeam from—

  “Sir Drake…” He snapped from his reverie, embarrassed by his condition, hard, aching wit
h impatience. “It is very good to see you again.”

  How much of him? He wanted to glance down, to make sure he was unexposed, but he did not.

  “Lady Ballow,” he said, and bowed, remembering now that it was her home they currently occupied.

  She was middle-aged, carefully groomed, and perfectly able to look down her nose at him despite their height difference. “Not dancing this evening?”

  “I fear I am not terribly light on my—” he began, but then he saw her. Like a beacon through the crowd. She was alone, dressed in silken lavender, her hair a chestnut veil down her back, her eyes…

  “Sir Drake…”

  “My apologies.” He turned back to his tormentor. “What did you say?”

  “I was inquiring about your lineage.”

  He glanced to the side. Her face shone like the sun. Her shoulders were all but bare. Her breasts as pale as moonlight above her silken gown. A gown that could so easily be slipped from her slim, lithe form. He clasped his hands in front of him, taut and uncomfortable.

  “Sir Drake.” Lady Ballow’s tone was becoming testy.

  He jerked his thoughts back to their conversation. “My family hails from the green hills of Galway.”

  “Ahh. An Irishman, are you?”

  She was moving through the crowd. “Aye.”

  “Well…if you marry wisely you can yet hope to overcome your heritage.”

  He could see her from the corner of his eye. She was smiling that smile that made his hands go damp and his tongue stutter. “I can but hope.”

  “Indeed, my own lineage is not so lofty as one might assume. My mother was naught but a merchant’s daughter. Yet the viscount, my dear, departed father, declared, ‘She shall be my bride for she is as beautiful as the morning.’”

  He turned his attention toward the lady. She had an ungodly long nose and close-set eyes.

  He wondered vaguely if it was his duty to say something complimentary, but then Ella laughed, siphoning off his attention. She was speaking to the man with the perfect nose. Sutter.

  “My father was a homely man,” said Lady Ballow.

  Ella laughed again. Drake felt his gut clench. But maybe it was neither love nor lust. Maybe it was uncertainty. After all, he knew so little of her. Who was she? How was she connected to Sarah? What had happened to her after the play? And why, for heaven’s sake, hadn’t he concentrated on that instead of on her breasts, her skin, the smell…

  Good God, he was throbbing. What had happened to his control? To his good sense?

  “Winny,” another woman greeted, joining them. “Sir Drake.” He turned his attention toward the newcomer. He had no idea what her name was, but she was tall and broad, with a pair of peacock feathers erupting from her hair at unlikely angles. “Not with Lady Lanshire this evening?”

  He felt restless and frustrated. “Is there a reason I should be?” he rumbled.

  “Certainly not.” She shrugged. “I but saw you mount a carriage together after Shakespeare’s Hamlet is all. I thought perhaps you were a pair.”

  No. They weren’t a pair. In fact, she’d not said a word to him since the previous night, since he’d held her and kissed her and…But no. Her reticence was not the reason they weren’t a couple, he reminded himself. ’Twas because he couldn’t trust her.

  “She was feeling unwell,” he said. “I but wanted to make certain she got home safely.”

  She was dancing now. God, she moved like an angel, as if she floated on clouds, as if she were magic itself.

  “Sir Drake?”

  He forced himself to turn back to the conversation at hand. To resist grinding his teeth. What did he care if she danced? Everyone danced. Even he danced…if she was in the room.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said.

  “I said, I hope all came out well in the end.”

  She’d felt like heaven. “Yes. She was just a bit light-headed.”

  “Ahh, well she’s such a slim thing. Slight as a willow. Perhaps if she had a bit more flesh like Lady Ballow and myself she would not have that problem.”

  They laughed. He smiled obligingly. The conversation moved on to wagers and horses and things he could not possibly have cared less about while a woman like Elegance was in the world.

  The first strains of a waltz echoed through the ballroom. He saw her again, with a new man now. He stifled his scowl. Her current partner was not tall, but he was commanding. Self-possessed, self-assured. They moved in easy unison, as if they had spent some time together. Who was he? They spun about. His sculpted face showed no emotion, but hers…Something sparked in her eyes. Drake felt himself tense.

  “They dance well together, don’t they?” said Lady Ballow.

  He tightened his hands to fists. The music seemed to pound in his head.

  “Would you care to know his name?” Lady Ballow asked.

  Good God. Was he so obvious? “Who?” he asked.

  They smiled pityingly. “Her current partner,” said Peacock Feathers.

  He felt a sliver of pain slice him at the term. Partner. What did that mean exactly? Had she shared a carriage with this man? Did he, even now, hope to take her there again? “Yes,” he said.

  “That, my dear sir, is Lord Gallo.”

  “His father was a member of the House of Lords.”

  A peer of the realm, then. Not some mongrel whose title had been bestowed on him because he was too slow at tossing his captain into the brine.

  “But Gallo doesn’t involve himself in politics. Does he, Winny?”

  “Oh heavens no. He spends much too much time gadding about for that. Amsterdam, Madrid.”

  “I believe he spent some time in Copenhagen.”

  Then why the hell wasn’t he there now, Drake wondered. But in that moment the dance ended. Ella turned, granting Drake a glimpse of her face. Her eyes were wide, her face pale. Why? Was she unhappy? Pained? Afraid?

  Unexpected emotion sluiced through him like a hot tide.

  He had to go to her, to be with her. A hundred reasons for his departure splashed through his mind, but he couldn’t seem to formulate any of them. “Excuse me,” he rumbled, and waded through the crowd. He kept his gaze on her face. What was she feeling? Anger? Worry? No. Neither. Not quite. Yet there was something. Something not just right. But in a moment he was standing before her. Close enough to smell her earthy scent, to touch her if he could no longer resist.

  “Lady Lanshire,” he said, and bowed. He tried to make his tone light, as if he had just happened to be wandering past. As if he were just another of the gay throng who had come for a dance and a game of chance, but he could not seem to look away, to so much as glance at the man by her side.

  She gave him the briefest smile. “Sir Drake. How are you faring this evening?”

  He tried to read her expression. But she gave little away, and that fact above all others grated at him. He wanted nothing more than to learn the truth. To drag it into the open. To learn what she thought, how she felt, who she was. The deepest, truest part of her. To apologize. To explain. To tell her he wasn’t an animal. Not usually. But maybe that would be a lie.

  “I am well,” he said. Was he glaring? He should quit glaring. “And you?”

  “Quite well,” she said. Her tone was as light as the air, as if their lovemaking on the previous night had meant nothing at all. As if she were not existing only to do it again. “Have you met Lord Gallo?”

  Drake turned toward her partner, made some innocuous gesture. They shook hands.

  “Good evening,” he said, and found he wanted nothing more than to take the other by his well-tailored coat front and heave him from the room. “Might you be Italian?” He forced himself to make small talk. To be civilized. To refrain from violence.

  “Spanish by origin, actually.”

  “Oh?” He wouldn’t have cared less if the cool little bastard had traveled directly from the moon. But if he had made Ella unhappy, he would gladly tear him limb from limb. “Where in Spain?”

/>   “Near Malaga, not far from the Aboran Sea. And what of you?”

  “Irish,” he said, forgetting for a moment to be civil.

  “And what brings you to London?”

  “The Sea Witch,” he said, and found he had run out of niceties. “Lady Lanshire, I was wondering if I might have a word.”

  Her eyes were very large. “I fear Lord Gallo has requested the next dance.”

  She turned to her would-be partner. Their gazes met, and then he bowed ever so slightly.

  “It’s quite all right,” he said. “I shall be certain to insist on a dance at a later date.” Another shallow bow. “Lady Lanshire. Sir Drake.” And with that he turned away.

  Drake scowled after him. What kind of man would give her up so easily? Who was he? Why was there no passion in his face when he looked at her? Indeed, how could he even force himself to walk away when she was within sight, within reach?

  “How is your leg?”

  Drake brought his attention to her words with some difficulty. “What?”

  “Your leg,” she said. “I hope it is healing well.”

  “Oh.” What the hell was wrong with Gallo? Did he not see the magic in her? The magic that was her? “It does not hamper me.”

  “So I remember,” she said, and smiling, turned away to stroll into the crowd.

  He followed her, remembering too. He was throbbing again, but not his thigh. Her mere presence drove him mad.

  “In regard to last night—” he said.

  “I hope you weren’t planning another tiresome apology,” she said, speaking over her nearly bare shoulder.

  He had been. He was. “It was wrong of me to…” he began, but it had felt so ungodly right. “To take advantage of you.”

  She paused and smiled the smallest degree, her blush-red lips just curling up at the corners. “That’s not quite how I remember it.”

  “How do you remember it?” His voice sounded raspy, desperate. God help him, he didn’t understand the ways of the ton.

  Her eyes shone, but she turned away. “Quite fondly. Still…” She wandered off. He followed, heart pounding with hope. “I fear I mustn’t do it again.”

  Not again. No. Next time he would find a bed, spend the night in poetry and music. Spend a lifetime kissing every hollow, caressing every hillock. “And why is that, lass?”