The Magic Between Us

by Tammy Falkner

  “Please don’t,” Marcus cried.

  His mother plopped back into the chair and laughed. “If you’re certain.” She heaved a sigh. “I didn’t get to be your mother for a long time, Marcus. So, let me be one now.” She leaned forward, her weight on her elbows, as though she wanted them to listen closely. “The ton can go to the devil,” she said.

  Then she got up and started for the door. Finally, Cecelia might have a moment alone with Marcus.

  “Thank you, Mother,” Marcus said.

  Mr. Hewitt appeared in the doorway just as Lady Ramsdale was leaving. “Mr. Hewitt,” she cried. “I’m so glad I found you. I have an emergency with my rosebushes, and I was wondering if I could prevail upon you to help me.”

  “Well, I…” he started, but he didn’t get to finish, because Lady Ramsdale just threaded her arm through his and led him away, chattering like a magpie all the way.

  “I think your mother just gave us permission to… you know.”

  “I don’t want to talk about my mother,” Marcus groaned, and he took Cecelia’s face in his hands. His lips touched hers, his tongue licking over and into her mouth. Cecelia’s breath rushed from her body, and she found it difficult to get it back. “I need you,” he said. “Your father caught me in the corridor last night when I was trying to come to see you.”

  “I thought I heard a commotion out there,” she said. “What happened?”

  “He threatened to chop off my head. And my manhood.” Marcus shivered dramatically. “And I believed him.”

  “He likes you.”

  “He might like me, Cece, but he loves you. We became good friends through his recovery, but I’ll never surpass you in his heart. He’d sooner kill me than allow me to harm you.” He looked into her eyes. “Or bed you.”

  Marcus glanced toward the door. “How long do you think we have before they come back?” He grinned, his eyes twinkling.

  “Not long enough for what you want to do,” she said, laughing.

  “At this point, I don’t think it would take me very long.”

  “I vaguely remember it not taking you very long that first time. In fact,” she held up a finger, and he stopped her by kissing the tip of it.

  “Don’t remind me,” he groaned.

  She leaned closer to him. “I like that I can do that to you,” she said quietly. Then she licked her lips.

  “Don’t do that,” he ground out.

  “Do what?” she asked, but a grin tugged at her lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She inched her hand toward the fall of his trousers.

  “Don’t touch me,” he warned. “If you do, that same thing might happen again.”

  He reached down and began to ruck her gown up in his fist, raising it higher and higher. The servant had vacated the room when she and Marcus had started kissing, thank goodness, because she wasn’t about to stop Marcus. When he had her gown gathered in his fist, he bent down, his breath heavy against her neck as he breathed, “Open up for me.”

  His hand slid up the inside of her thigh. “Please touch me,” she begged, reaching for his shoulder to steady herself.

  His hand was almost to the center of her, which was throbbing and aching for him, when loud laughter from the corridor made him jerk back, pull her skirt down, and sit up. He filled his mouth with egg, and she reached for her teacup, but her hand was too shaky to lift it.

  “I don’t know if I can wait a fortnight,” he growled.

  “Oh, I am sure they’re in the breakfast room,” his mother said loudly. “They have a servant with them, so I’m not worried,” she went on to reassure Cecelia’s father, he supposed. The servant entered through the rear door and positioned himself beside the sideboard. He looked like he wanted to grin. But he composed himself.

  “I do love your mother,” Cecelia said.

  “She’s very good at what she does,” Marcus said with a laugh.

  If he wanted her nearly as much as she wanted him, he was sorely in need of attention. “I could sneak out tonight and come to you,” Cecelia said.

  “He’ll hear you,” Marcus grumbled.

  Cecelia heaved a sigh. They were doomed to wait a fortnight.

  ***

  If Marcus got any harder, he would never be able to get up from the table. Even the servant shot him a sympathetic glance.

  His mother made some more noise, and Marcus moved his chair back from Cecelia’s so that their legs weren’t touching beneath the table. To suit her father, he really should go sit on the other side of the table, but he couldn’t get up right now if he wanted to.

  “I think your mother is choking to death in the corridor,” Cecelia laughed.

  “She’s giving us fair warning,” Marcus said, rolling his eyes.

  “If she hadn’t, they’d have walked in while your hand was up my dress,” she whispered, her face coloring prettily. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to kiss her until they were both naked and breathless and he was inside her.

  “Bloody hell,” he groaned to himself.

  “Might I suggest thinking about the ice sculptures your mother will buy for the wedding dinner, Mr. Thorne?” the servant said.

  He motioned the servant forward. “Take Miss Hewitt’s plate over to the other side of the table, would you?” he grunted.

  “Yes, Mr. Thorne,” the footman said with a smile.

  Cecelia grumbled, but she went. The footman arranged her plate across from Marcus, and that was when her father and his mother walked back into the room.

  “I’m so sorry,” his mother was saying. “I thought the roses needed some attention, but the gardener must have gotten to it before we got there. I regret wasting your time.”

  “No harm done,” Mr. Hewitt said. He narrowed his eyes at Marcus. “Everything going well, Marcus?” he asked.

  Well, I had my hand up your daughter’s skirt and you almost caught me, but aside from that… “Wonderfully,” Marcus said. “Did you sleep well?”

  Mr. Hewitt arched a brow at Marcus. “Aside from a disruption or two.”

  Marcus nodded.

  “I hope we won’t have the same interruptions tonight,” Mr. Hewitt warned.

  Marcus heaved a sigh. “Certainly not.”

  Marcus would go mad before he got to hold Cecelia in his arms again.

  “Certainly not,” Mr. Hewitt repeated.

  His mother broke into their head-butting. “Cecelia, I thought you and I might be able to go shopping today.” Her eyes sparkled at Cecelia. His mother was up to something. He just didn’t know what.

  “Of course,” Cecelia said. “When do you want to go?”

  “Claire and Sophia are coming. We can go when they get here.” She winked at Cecelia.

  Cecelia looked up at Marcus, a question in her eyes.

  ***

  Cecelia wasn’t at all certain what was going on, but something was. Lady Ramsdale came to collect her, and they climbed into the carriage. “Where are we going?” Cecelia asked as she settled back against the squabs.

  “We’re going shopping,” Lady Ramsdale chirped. She looked at Claire and Sophia and raised her brow. “You’re going to see Marcus.”

  “What? I don’t know what you mean.”

  Claire pushed back the curtain that covered the window, and there stood a painting. It was a beautiful painting of a small meadow. A tree stood in the corner, and a small stream meandered across the field. A blanket lay nestled in the tall grass with a basket of food beside it. “Marcus is waiting for you in there,” she said.

  “He is? How did you?” Cecelia sputtered.

  “Dear God,” Lady Ramsdale said, throwing her head back. “If I have to wait a fortnight for you and Marcus to spend time together, it’s going to be like talking to a bear. A big one. One that will bite my head off at every turn.”

  “H
e’s not that bad,” Cecelia groused. He kind of was. Or she could imagine he would be. And she was dying to see him alone. She’d missed him so.

  “Why are you really doing this?” she asked.

  Lady Ramsdale wiped beneath her eyes. “I remember what it’s like to be young and in love. Embrace it, Cecelia.”

  Sophia and Claire looked on sympathetically. Then Claire gave her a nudge. “He’s waiting for you.”

  “We can’t give you very long,” Lady Ramsdale warned. “So spend your time wisely. We’ll collect you in four hours. Then I have to deliver you back to your father.” She looked out, her eyes dreamy. “You can take a long walk by the stream. You can sit beneath the shade of that tree. You can talk for four whole hours.” She grinned.

  “Or you can just make love for four hours,” Sophia said, her voice bland. “Though it’s rather wretched sounding, and it makes me want to cast up my accounts. So, if that’s what you’re doing, I don’t want to know about it when you come back.”

  “As if they would do anything else,” Claire said, sarcasm heavy in her voice.

  “This is a bit awkward,” Cecelia said, hanging her head.

  “He loves you. You love him. Enjoy your time together. Because you’re not likely to get any more.”

  Claire held out her hand, and Cecelia dropped to her knees, ready to crawl into the painting.

  Twenty

  Marcus jerked his watch fob from his pocket and looked down at it. It had been three quarters of an hour since he’d entered the painting. With his blasted luck, he would be stuck there for the rest of his life. It would probably serve him right. But when his mother had presented him with the opportunity to spend some time with Cecelia after having been away from her for a whole month, he’d jumped at the chance.

  Her father had probably figured out their plot and foiled it. But then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cecelia climb into the painting. Claire poked her head in long enough to wave at him and yell, “Four hours, Marcus! And please don’t be naked when I come back!”

  Marcus reached down and helped Cecelia to her feet. “What is this place?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “It’s one of Claire’s paintings. It’s not a real place. You can tell by the walls.”

  “There are walls?” she asked, walking toward the edge. She sank her hand into where the painting ended, and her hand disappeared through the fog. “The walls are fictitious.”

  “All of this is,” he said.

  “That’s some talent Claire has. How did she end up with it anyway?” Cecelia asked.

  Marcus looked at her and bit his lower lip. “That’s an amusing story.”

  He took her hand in his and walked with her to the blanket beneath the willow tree. The sky was blue and the clouds puffy and billowy, and the stream lent a low rushing noise to the background. “Tell it to me,” she said as she sat down.

  He sat beside her and straightened one leg before him, while keeping the other one up. He drew her to lean against his leg so that she reclined in front of him, and he tangled his fingers with hers. “It all started with Sophia.”

  “Sophia can walk into paintings too?” Cecelia asked.

  “No, Sophia is entranced by music. It’s how she met the Duke of Robinsworth. She was at a house party his mother threw when she heard music in the night. She was entranced by it, and it drew her to his chambers. They spent a lot of time together over the piano, and she couldn’t resist his songs.”

  “I didn’t know the duke played,” Cecelia said.

  “He doesn’t do it often. But Sophia says he used to do it when he was feeling melancholy. He had a piano in his chambers.”

  “That’s an odd thing to have in one’s chambers,” Cecelia mused.

  “He’s a bloody duke. He can have whatever he wants.”

  “So what does the music have to do with the paintings?”

  He took a deep breath. This was difficult to explain. “It appears as though Mother and Father left a token with each of their fae children so that we could recognize them later in life. For Sophia, she was entranced by music. And the purpose was so that she would recognize the song of a loved one.”

  “And she recognized the duke?”

  Cecelia ran a finger down the center of his chest and stole his attention. “What were we talking about?” he asked.

  She laughed. “Sophia recognized the duke as someone who loved her.”

  “Oh, yes. He was the one. The tokens have backfired, apparently. Because by the time Sophia’s token began to work, the duke was in love with her, so it was his song that entranced her. She recognized him as the one who loved her, and then they fell in love, and the rest is history.”

  She mulled it over in her mind, the crease between her brows growing deeper. “Wait, so you’re saying that the token was so that she could find her parents, your parents, but she found the duke instead? Because he was the one who loved her and it was his song she recognized?”

  “Exactly. Mother is a singer, and she thought it would be her song. But the duke fell in love with her before she found Mother and Father.”

  “But what about Claire and the paintings? Is that her token? The fact that she can paint?”

  “Father is an artist,” he went on to explain. This really was very convoluted. “They left Claire with a magical paintbrush, and when she has the paintbrush in her hand, she can walk into any painting of her choice. If it’s a real place, she’s in that place, like when we went to Paris and to the land of the fae. And if it’s not a real place, then she goes to a place like this.” He held up his hands, indicating the picturesque little field and the tree.

  “I still don’t understand,” Cecelia said. “What does her walking into paintings have to do with your parents?”

  Marcus heaved a sigh. “They left her with a painting of a tiny door that Grandmother kept in the attic. Over the door it said ‘Sweet Home’ in Latin. When Claire was angry one day, she went to the attic, found the painting, the paintbrush, and the door, and she went through it, hoping to escape Mother and Father’s presence in the land of the fae. She didn’t yet like them at that point.”

  “And?” Cecelia prompted.

  “When she went through the painting, she tumbled directly into Lord Phineas’s bedchamber, because he was ‘home’ for her. He was mad for her, and she was already increasing, so this all made sense at the time.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said. “Did you get a token, too?”

  “I did.” He nodded.

  She elbowed him in the belly. “Tell me what it is. Don’t leave me in suspense.”

  “First, I need to tell you what we’ve come to know about the tokens,” he said. He brushed a lock of hair back from her face. “We learned that the tokens represent home. When we were younger, that home might have been with our parents. But since our tokens took effect later, they pointed us to homes of a different sort. They took us all to the home in our hearts. The ones we love.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his compass. “This used to point me home when I went on missions. It always did. I would leave home, and I could always find a portal by using my compass. It never failed me. Until I left you. And I found you again. The night you appeared at the ball where we were all introduced to society, I opened my compass and it pointed to you.”

  “I’m home for you?” she asked, sitting up, the sweetest of smiles on her face.

  “Wherever you are is home. Here, there, the land of the fae… We could be on the moon and it would be home for me as long as you’re there.”

  “But does that mean each of you were fated to fall in love with one specific person?” She didn’t appear happy. Not at all.

  He rushed on to say, “No, it doesn’t work like that.”

  “Are you certain? Because that doesn’t sound very fair if that’s the case.”

 
“No, no.” He’d bungled this royally. “We were all in love already when our tokens took effect. I love you, Cece. The only one who doesn’t know it is you. The universe already knows.” He jiggled the compass at her. “The magic knows. The world knows. You need to know.” He took her face in his hands and looked into her eyes.

  “But it’s almost like none of you had free will.”

  He threw up his hands. “It’s not like that at all.”

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “The tokens point to who we love, you ninny.” He tweaked her nose. “They are merely further proof that we are with the people we’re supposed to be with. I’m supposed to be with you for the rest of my life. You’re home for me.”

  She lay back, her head on his thigh. Usually, their positions were reversed. But he rather liked this, too. He began to pull the pins from her hair, dropping them one by one to lie beside him on the blanket. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I want to touch you all over. And I’m starting at the top,” he said with a chuckle.

  “What if I wasn’t the one, Marcus?” she asked. “What if your compass pointed to someone else one day?”

  “My compass will never point to anyone else, Cece. Ever.”

  “But what if someday it magically does?”

  “Then I will bash the blasted thing into oblivion. Because I know my heart better than any compass ever could.”

  “Hmm…” she said.

  “Stop thinking,” he urged. “The tokens are just further proof. They have nothing to do with how I love you or why I love you or how long I’ll love you.”

  “How do you love me?” she asked with a giggle. She looked up at the clouds with a smile on her face rather than looking at him.

  “Desperately and completely,” he said.

  “Why do you love me?” she asked, her smile even bigger than before.

  “Because you’re home for me.”

  Her smile softened. “How long will you love me?” she asked.

  “Forever and a day.”

  She was quiet, and he could tell she was thinking. He nudged her head with his knee, brushing her hair back from her face with gentle fingers. “What are you thinking about?”