“Popular, but tedious,” Sylvia complained, returning to her chair and her hand sewing. Unlike her older siblings, Sylvia was blond and petite, more like their mother than their father. “I was so hoping for grand parties and elegant gowns and . . .” She let her voice drop off at Celeste’s pointed glare.
“We’re in mourning, and you’re still too young.” And Celeste was too old and too unsuitable, but their father had cheerfully refused to acknowledge that. He had paid for his foolishness with his life and quite possibly the lives of others, but that couldn’t have been predicted. “Your time will come, but first we must earn the funds to find a good lawyer. Be grateful for what we have.” Celeste hunted for her sewing basket.
“Be grateful for a cousin who has appropriated our inheritance?” Trevor asked bitterly. “Or for a half-sister who won’t acknowledge our existence? Or for our father’s unfortunate demise on a miserable ship that nearly took our lives?”
“For being alive with an excellent situation and food in our bellies,” Nana scolded. “You have seen how those back home fare. It will be your duty to help them one of these days. Now study.”
It would be Trev’s duty to save the servants—like Nana’s family—from their cousin’s greed was the admonishment they all heard. Trev paled and dipped his head back to the schoolbook.
Celeste swallowed back tears and picked up her own sewing. If only she’d been born a boy . . . But it would be four more years before Trevor would be of a legal age and could assume their father’s estate. Four years in which their father’s cousin, the Earl of Lansdowne, could sell off all their father’s assets, along with the people who had served their family for decades. Free people, not slaves—although without access to their father’s papers, no one could prove that.
Celeste couldn’t imagine any English court of law giving a woman the right to take care of her family, not any more than she could imagine them giving Nana her freedom if the Earl of Lansdowne chose to challenge it. He’d already usurped their father’s estate by having himself declared head of the family.
Hiring a solicitor was scarcely one small weapon in their puny arsenal.
Hiding for the next four years didn’t seem like a brilliant plan, either, but it was the best she had. It wasn’t all she had, but anything else was built on fairy dust and magic.
Two
Having cleaned the worst of the mud from his boots and brushed off his coat, Erran settled at his sister-in-law’s dinner table knowing no one but he would notice if he sat down in shirt sleeves. Fashionable, his brothers were not, despite their wealth and lengthy aristocratic history. Theo’s eccentric new wife was cut of similar cloth.
Wearing another of her unfashionable peacock-colored gowns, Lady Azenor signaled one of her footman trainees to serve the first course. “Hartley says neither of you had any luck at discerning the whereabouts of the townhouse’s tenants?”
Accustomed to the blunt speaking of his brothers, Erran had no difficulty adjusting to Lady Aster, as she’d asked them to call her. “We’ve only seen servants,” he acknowledged. “As the lease indicates, the tenants are Jamaican, and they’ve brought foreign retainers with them. If I’m to believe half the tales told in the tavern, they have giants and ogres as well. Hartley says the boys throwing mud balls swore the servants are witches.”
Lady Aster immediately lost interest in her soup. “Witches? Why ever would they say that?”
Short, plump, and copper-haired, his sister-in-law might not look much like a witch, but she came from a long line of women who’d once been vilified with that epithet. The women might have a few uncanny talents, but Erran didn’t count them as more than the application of illogical conclusions to scientific principles. Although lately . . . He squirmed uneasily, preferring not to consider his own brush with the Wyrd. “The ruffians were incapable of communicating any story that made sense.”
He glanced at the footman serving his soup. “James?” he asked, diverting his unease by trying to determine if this was the same footman he’d seen here last.
“Smithson,” the servant corrected. He shut up quickly at a frown from the lady, nodded, and moved back to the buffet.
“We’re informal,” his brother Theo said after Erran’s faux pas. “But Aster is trying to train servants for more formal houses. Presumably, elsewhere, they are expected to only occasionally be seen and never heard.”
“Better to train them to suit ourselves.” Erran tasted the soup and approved. “I still need a valet. Pascoe can’t keep a nursemaid. And Dunc will drive those few people he has left insane, so we can use a steady flow of servants at the estate.”
“I’d thought of that,” Theo agreed. With his neckcloth already coming undone and his overlong chestnut hair falling across his brow, he reached across the table for the bread rather than waiting for it to be served. “Aster can train them so Dunc can dismiss them. Some sort of poetic justice. But then we can give them references from the house of a marquess.”
Erran knew they made light of a tragic situation. His all-powerful older brother had been blinded in an accident that had been no accident, as they had discovered when Aster had overheard their neighbor’s son and a band of hired rogues. The son had fled the country, and there was no one to give evidence or identify the hirelings—not that convicting anyone would give the marquess back his sight.
Erran ground his teeth, sipped his soup, and contemplated how to move the newly-blind marquess into his city home, where Duncan might recover part of his former authority—and possibly restore Erran’s reputation.
The alternative was Erran forfeiting his education to become a tinker. And Dunc could lose his brilliant mind cooped up inside four walls, refusing to emerge from his misery.
“If we can retrieve the townhouse from the tenants, we’ll be able to employ even more of my aunt’s workhouse rescues.” Aster glanced inquiringly at Erran. “Does the place appear to be in good condition? Will it be worth converting the ground floor for Ashford’s use?”
Erran knew she wasn’t rubbing in his failure. Aster was too oblivious to reality for that, so he merely shrugged and posed another possibility. “Hard to say what’s been done on the interior. The tenants—wherever they are—aren’t complaining about leaking roofs anyway. The location is what Dunc needs—only a few blocks from Parliament. Perhaps we could lease another place in the area.”
The lady glared at him. “It is that house he needs. Astro-geographically, it’s ideal since he was born there. There are strong power points running through that lot. If anything could cure him, it will be that house.”
There were dozens of reasons the marquess needed the family London town home, but power points—whatever they were—weren’t high on Erran’s list. Dunc needed to return to Parliament for his own sanity. The vote on the next prime minister would affect the entire reform movement, including the labor laws and other bills crucial to their family and to the entire country. As Marquess of Ashford, Duncan had influence and responsibility the rest of the family could only aspire to.
As a newly blind man, Ashford refused to leave his chambers. He had ceded his responsibilities to his heir, a reluctant Theo—who was more scientist than politician. Erran accepted that Duncan needed familiar surroundings just to tackle each day, but leaving him to rot in his room wasn’t healthy for anyone.
“Perhaps you should take me over to the town house,” Aster suggested. “I could talk to the women in the area. Surely there are neighbors who gossip? We need to find out where the tenants have gone.”
“Or you could set up as a Gypsy woman on the corner and offer to read their fortunes,” Theo suggested wickedly.
Aster frowned thoughtfully, as if she were actually considering his suggestion. “It’s an expensive neighborhood, but my aunts know everyone. I could obtain an introduction to the neighbors and hold one of my parties. I won’t really read their fortunes, of course, but with their birth dates, I can tell them about their sun signs. People talk at parties. I
f the tenants have gone to Scotland for the hunting season, perhaps someone will have an address.”
Considering the mysterious cloaked visage he’d observed for that one brief moment—and the flying mud balls in the mews and the insults he’d heard in the tavern—Erran didn’t believe Aster would have much luck questioning the neighbors.
He’d have to find another way in—if only for their tenants’ protection.
***
“Old-fashioned and dirty.” The Honorable Emilia McDowell sniffed in distaste as she, Lady Aster, and Erran walked down the street beyond St. James Square to study the Ives’ London home. Wealthy and attractive, as Lady Aster’s relations often were, Miss McDowell was also independent enough to decline the offer of Erran’s arm. With her thick black hair and pale complexion, she looked the part of witch that the riotously-colored, cheerful Lady Aster did not.
“Ives House is one of the wider lots, with a yard in the rear,” Erran explained. “There should be sufficient space on the ground floor for Duncan’s chambers, and there may even be room for expansion in back.”
“Only if you remove the tenants,” Lady Aster pointed out pragmatically, studying a chart she’d removed from the capacious bag she always carried with her. “This is even a more auspicious location than I’d realized. It should enhance Ashford’s already copious powers.”
“To the point of healing him?” Miss McDowell asked with interest.
Erran noted she didn’t ask what powers, like any sensible person. The women talked in a language all their own. Dunc’s power was in his wealth and authority. The house’s location had little to do with that except as a display of his heritage.
“One never knows about healing. Perhaps if you have herbs that will work for him and grew them here . . .” Aster sighed. “The herbs would be more powerful, too, but asking plants to heal blindness does not seem realistic.”
Miss McDowell studied the four-story stone exterior. “It is a very plain structure, not a pilaster or column in sight. But I do feel energy emanating from it. I wonder if it has an herb garden?”
Well aware that Lady Aster was attempting to match him with her wealthy but unconventional cousin, Erran attempted not to scoff at their idiocies. He wasn’t ready for a wife, but at the rate he was headed, he might need her wealth. Without the career he’d been trained for, he was existing on his allowance and his brother’s goodwill. Neither were sufficient to afford rooms, much less an office and a clerk.
Gardens, however, he could answer to. “There is a large yard in the rear with plenty of room for a garden. I believe one of the greats grew herbs.”
“The Malcolm connection,” Lady Aster reminded him. “Your great-grandmother was a brilliant Malcolm herbalist and healer. You said the tenants are Jamaican. We have ancestors who lived in the Caribbean. Perhaps we should research your tenants. They may have been drawn to this house for the same reasons we are—the earth energies beneath it.”
“The chances of someone from Jamaica both knowing the house and being from the same family as ours are about as good as curing Duncan.” Unable to contain his skepticism any longer, Erran spoke more sharply than he’d intended and regretted it instantly. His normally smiling sister-in-law cast him a narrowed look that did not bode well for future peace.
Pretending oblivion, he studied the mansion’s tall windows. Every one of them had the draperies drawn. “There’s a better chance that they’re vampire monsters who never come out in day. That place has to be darker than Hades with all the windows covered.”
The women laughed and returned to discussing nonsensities. Disgruntled, Erran studied the busy street. Expensive bays pulling crested carriages trotted past gas light posts. Inside the carriages sat ladies sporting their wealth with the feathers and finery of the latest fashions. The vehicles stopped at columned mansions to be greeted by liveried footmen or rattled on to the more fashionable shops in Mayfair. Despite its age, the area was still respectable.
The pedestrians pushing and shoving along the cobblestones were mostly men in top hats, foreign ambassadors and their staff at this time of year. In another few weeks, the aristocratic residents might return for the parliamentary session that had just been called to replace the prime minister, and the streets would be even more crowded.
Urchins still swept street corners. In the evenings, prostitutes would hug the walls of the taverns. Tailors had shops just around the corner, convenient for the government staffs that passed to and fro who had need of mending, new coats, or orders for uniforms.
Erran thought the neighborhood safe enough for a blind marquess—but not if ruffians were attacking servants. The whole incident bothered him, but he could not quite put his finger on why.
He escorted the ladies to the entrance of the old house, where they insisted on sending their footman up the stone stairs to rap despite the lack of knocker. When no one answered, as usual, Erran led them down the street to the house of one of their acquaintances, where they would begin the business of gossip.
Leaving them with a promise to return in an hour, Erran excused himself from the company. Out of all the foolishness the women had spouted, he’d found one gem—he should have researched their tenant more thoroughly. A man who could pay the exorbitant lease on a house like this for the next five years should be a man known in the business community.
Erran didn’t possess enough wealth to traverse the rarified clubs where affluent industrialists discussed business, or even the clubs designated for the sons of aristocrats. That put him at a disadvantage for researching their tenant.
Rendered useless by his weird courtroom encounter—and the embarrassing aftermath—he’d been avoiding his usual clubs lately. Wielding a silver tongue, or vibrating inanimate objects, wasn’t how he wanted to win his cases—or influence friends.
Unfortunately, if he meant to help Duncan, he would have to return to his clubs for information. The temptation to test his Wyrd Theory was great, but every moral fiber in his body resisted.
Reaching his club, Erran sighed as his path crossed that of one of his inveterate gambler friends.
“I have a pony on you marrying into your sister-in-law’s witchy family before year’s end,” the gambler cried in delight at seeing Erran.
Well, at least he didn’t need magical persuasion to counter that idiocy. Pounding his companion on the back, Erran climbed the stairs. “And I have a pony that says you’re a horse’s arse.”
Maybe if he was rude enough, he would restore his reputation.
***
Stacking neatly folded shirts into a box, Celeste called, “Is the coast clear?”
“No one at the front,” Trevor answered from the drawing room.
“I haven’t seen anyone in the mews,” Sylvia announced from her bedchamber at the back of the house. “Perhaps the gentleman scared off the ruffians.”
“The gentleman has been making inquiries about the neighborhood,” Jamar intoned in his deep bass with only a hint of wryness as he shrugged on his frock coat. “I will escort you.”
Celeste cast him a concerned gaze. Jamar was nearly seven feet tall and very black, more African than Jamaican. He had not met with politeness in these months in London. As Nana said, people feared what they did not know, and unfortunately, they acted very badly when afraid.
“It won’t be dark for another hour. I should be safe enough just walking down the street,” Celeste argued, hiding her fear of walking these city streets alone—as she had hidden all her fears these last months. “I am just another servant carrying her employer’s packages.”
She truly didn’t mind being reduced from privileged lady to servanthood for her family’s sake. But she utterly despised being afraid every minute of her life.
“I will go with you.” Jamar straightened his neckcloth and buttoned his coat.
There had never been any arguing with her father’s majordomo. If she tried her charm, Jamar narrowed his eyes and muttered in an incomprehensible patois until she gave up.
He was probably praying to devils and saints and placing a curse on her. She hoped he was happy that his curses had worked.
She wouldn’t encourage his bossiness by letting him see her relief.
“Fine, then. Take a big stick.” Huffing in impatience, she threw on her cloak, hid her un-English complexion beneath her hood, and picked up her box. If Jamar intended to be her security, he needed his fists free. She wasn’t risking all their hard work.
Knowing how far he could push her, Jamar didn’t fight over the box, but merely followed her down the stairs and out the kitchen garden. The September days were growing shorter, and a light fog was moving in, casting the bushes into gray shadow. They would have to adjust their hours soon. She wasn’t about to run to the tailor shop at dark. That could mean one less shirt a day—or burning more candles. She’d have to think about raising prices.
Frowning, fretting over new ways of keeping their small household running without access to the wealth to which they had always been accustomed, Celeste hurried down the muddy alley. At her side, Jamar kept his huge fist on the knife beneath his coat and vigilantly studied the shadows.
“Watch out!”
The commanding bellow so startled her that she nearly dropped the precious box of shirts. While Jamar glanced around for the danger, a well-dressed gentleman grabbed her cloak and shoved her against a brick wall. He shielded her with his big body as noxious liquid splashed where she’d just been walking.
Crushed between the wall and the bulk of a masculine stranger, Celeste stupidly noticed his spicy scent more than the stench rising from the street. Her next frantic thought was not to crush the box in her arms. She struggled to push free from an obstacle as solid as a brick wall.
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