Parthenope grabbed Sophie’s arm. “Did you hear that? We should show up in our riding habits tomorrow morning and tell him we’re reporting for duty. Maybe he’ll invite us for breakfast.”
“I don’t know about you, but I intend to sleep until noon if we get through this evening without incident,” Sophie muttered back. And suddenly wished she could go find a quiet place to hide from the cheerful bustle and just be alone. But a quiet space would have to wait. “I think I ought to go watch the duke in the ballroom, don’t you?” she said to Parthenope.
“One of us should,” Parthenope agreed. “You go. And sit down for a few minutes. You’re no good to us if you exhaust yourself before the ball has barely started. If anyone asks, I’ll tell ’em you needed to use the necessary.”
“You’ll do no such thing, or I’ll send Hester out here to make a mess on your shoulder.”
“Of course I won’t, goose-cap.” Parthenope looked at her with concern. “Are you sure your shoes aren’t hurting you?”
“They’re fine. I’m just—”
“Worried,” Parthenope finished for her. “Don’t be. It will be all right. Go watch Hester and the duke and make sure they both behave.”
All seemed as it ought to in the ballroom—two of the musicians playing softly, little groups of guests (and the one large group centered on the Duke of Wellington) chatting amicably. Sophie edged her way around the room to where Hester sat on his perch. “Seen anything, Hester?” she murmured to him.
He looked at her with his head cocked to one side, then turned to scratch and smooth the feathers on top of his wing.
“I’ll take that as a no, shall I?”
“Good evening, Your Grace,” he said, swiveling back to scan the room. “How are you this evening, Your Grace?”
“The duke’s over there, silly bird. I’m Soph—oh, all right. Watch him, then.” She sat down in a chair next to him with a sigh of relief. Maybe she shouldn’t have worn her new slippers tonight, but they went so well with her dress, and Parthenope had been so excited about giving them to her, not to mention Amélie—
No. She would not think about Amélie right now, so she scanned the room instead … and saw Lord March approaching her chair, smiling.
“I believe the dancing will be starting shortly, so I thought I’d find my favorite nondancing partner to open the ball with,” he said lightly, sitting down beside her.
“Turnip,” Hester said.
“Hester,” Sophie said warningly. Dratted bird! “Don’t mind him,” she said to Lord March. “He might have said something much worse.”
“Has Lady Parthenope tried to train him out of saying them?” March examined Hester with interest.
“Heavens, no! She taught him most of them.”
He laughed. Though it had been more than a year since he’d come back from serving with Wellington in Spain, he still seemed tanned from the Iberian sun, and his teeth flashed white in his handsome brown face. “Lady Parthenope is quite a character. My sisters are not sure whether to adore her or be terrified of her.”
“They’re wise women.”
“But you seemed to have tamed the lion—or lioness, as it were.”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s just that the lioness took a violent liking to me.”
“I don’t blame her.” His blue eyes were warm as he looked at her. “I have too.”
Sophie smiled and looked down at her lap. The Richmonds were all charming—they must have inherited their charm from their ancestor King Charles II, who had been almost too charming, it was said. But Lord March had the Richmond charm in extra measure. All his sisters doted on him, which wasn’t surprising. But his brothers did as well, which was less common, and Wellington was said to love him like a son. He would eventually become Duke of Richmond on his father’s death, and though the family was not wealthy, they held several estates in England and Ireland. He was, by most counts, a splendid catch, and she liked him very much.
But that was all. She couldn’t see him as anything but a friend—perhaps a dear one—but not anything more. She wasn’t sure that she’d ever be able to look at any young man with anything but a sisterly eye … except for one. And he was lost to her.
“Ah, there they go. Your aunt’s injury seems much better since your arrival,” March said.
Sophie looked up. The sets to open the dancing were forming. On the other side of the room, Papa had taken the Duchess of Richmond, as the female guest of highest rank, as his partner to lead his set. Directly in front of where Sophie sat, Amélie had done the same with the Duke of Wellington. Just behind them were Aunt Molly and the comte.
“Oh dear, Aunt has left off her sling. I hope she won’t strain her arm,” she said.
“I’m sure her partner will take care that she isn’t hurt,” March said soothingly. “And I’m here with my nondancing partner,” he added with a grin. “Where’s your friend the lioness? Isn’t she dancing?”
The musicians had finished tuning, and the lead violinist looked inquiringly at Papa. He nodded, and they played the opening measures of the dance.
“I don’t know.” Sophie scanned the edges of the room. That was odd—where had Parthenope got herself off to? They had agreed that she’d dance the first dance, for appearance’s sake, then join Sophie in guard duty. “Perhaps I should go find her.”
March rose at once and offered her his arm. “Please allow me—I should like to try my hand at lion hunting. Or lioness hunting, rather.”
The opening measure ended, and the dancers began to move, bowing and curtsying, then beginning the figures. Sophie tried to ignore them as she let Lord March help her up—it was still difficult to judge how to move with these new slippers. This was the moment of a ball that always hurt the most—the first dance of the evening, when everyone was fresh and eager and smiling, able to do what she longed to do again, but never would.
But before she and March had taken a few steps, the line of dancers nearest to them had suddenly faltered, and the dancers at the head of the line stopped entirely.
“Why—where did the duke go?” someone—Aunt Molly, it sounded like—said in bewilderment.
* * *
A shock of fear froze Sophie in place for a few seconds. Even though she and Parthenope had been afraid something would occur, the reality of its actually happening was overwhelming.
“What is it?” Lord March asked, looking down at her.
“I don’t know.” Her voice sounded almost ridiculously calm in her own ears. She let go of his arm and turned back.
The entire line of dancers had now stopped, looking befuddled. “The duke—he just vanished!” someone else was saying loudly above the murmurs of confusion.
“The duke!” The name moved down the line like an ominous breeze. Now the other set of dancers had paused and looked toward the first set in confusion.
Sophie pushed her way through the milling crowd. At its center was a small clearing. Amélie stood there alone, looking stunned.
“Nonsense,” a man said, from farther back. “People don’t just disappear.”
“But he did!” a woman cried in response. “I saw him—and then he wasn’t there!”
A few people were looking about them, as if the duke had suddenly taken it into his head to play a game of hide-and-seek. Everyone had stopped dancing now, and the musicians had ceased playing and had risen in their seats to peer over the ferns to see what the matter was. One or two ladies here and there started to cry.
“See here—you were dancing with him. What happened?” A man stepped out of the crowd and pointed at Amélie.
She opened her mouth, closed it, then finally said, “I do not know,” in a very small voice.
“He just—wasn’t there all of a sudden.” Aunt Molly stepped forward, her vague blue eyes wide. “We were right behind them, weren’t we, Auguste?”
The comte was just as pale and shocked looking as she. “It is so.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that—and he was gone. Mada
me, surely you must have seen,” he said to Amélie.
Sophie turned away. She didn’t need to hear anything more, and she didn’t want to see Amélie’s face. What had she done to the duke? And why had she chosen to do something so public and obvious as to make him disappear in front of an entire roomful of guests?
What should she do? Should she confront Amélie right now, in front of everyone? What would Amélie do if she accused her of sorcery against the Duke of Wellington—and would anyone believe her?
“Sophie!” A hand caught her arm. “There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you!”
Parthenope! Sophie turned. “What do you mean? I’ve been look—”
Parthenope looked flustered and excited, but it was the person standing just behind her who stopped Sophie’s words, and her breath. Peregrine Woodbridge stood there, looking at her steadily. “Please excuse me—I didn’t intend to crash your party tonight,” he said.
Breathe, Sophie, a cool voice in her mind reminded her gently. Why had he come here—and dressed in buckskin trousers and dusty boots and traveling coat, as if he’d just arrived in town? She gulped and wished she could sit down, but there was no time for that now. “N-not at all, Lord Woodbridge. Will you please excuse us? I have to talk to Parthenope now—”
But Parthenope was already pulling her, none too gently, to the edge of the crowd. “Sophie, you’ve got to hear. Perry’s just ridden straight from Ghent, and he’s got something to tell you.”
Sophie shook her head. “It will have to wait. It happened—the duke is gone! Amélie’s done it, right in front of everyone!”
Parthenope and Peregrine exchanged looks. “Tell her,” Parthenope commanded.
Peregrine swallowed. “Lady Sophie, please excuse my appearing like this. I’m not quite sure how to start—”
Parthenope groaned. “Oh, never mind all that now. Sophie, you were wrong—or rather, you were right!”
Sophie was starting to become annoyed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Parthenope, we have to do something—”
Peregrine spoke, forestalling his cousin. “She means that you were right about Madame Carswell not being responsible for trying to kill your father and the others.”
Sophie shook her head impatiently. “No—Amélie already did something to the duke—”
“Sophie, please listen to me,” Peregrine interrupted. “You know I started working at the War Office after we—after you left for Brussels. Lord Palmerston assigned me to keeping his correspondence with King Louis’s Minister of War—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, skip all that!” Parthenope demanded. “Sophie, Peregrine has found something out about the Comte de Carmouche-Ponthieux.”
Sophie blinked. “What does he have to do with any of this?”
“It turns out that he’s not working for the king after all,” Peregrine said. “In fact, no one at the king’s court has ever heard of him, including the king himself. All his credentials to Lord Palmerston are forgeries. I went to Ghent myself to make absolutely sure and came straight here.”
Sophie felt as if she were trying to think through treacle. What did this matter now, when the duke was gone? “I don’t understand—who could he be working for, then?”
“Whom do you think he might be working for?” Parthenope looked exasperated. “You were right that the assassin isn’t Amélie. It’s the comte! We wondered who might have been responsible for trying to kill the War Office people … well, wasn’t he also there at every attempt—in the park and at the opera and all? It all fits together! He already knew who your family was—what would have been more natural than for him to ‘discover’ the lost love of his youth in London while posing as an envoy for the king? It gave him the perfect opportunity to be in the center of things, with access to your father and all the—”
Sophie closed her eyes. “Parthenope, aren’t you forgetting one vital piece of information?”
“What you saw this afternoon isn’t proof that it’s Amélie!”
“Isn’t it?”
“What information?” Peregrine asked.
Parthenope looked at Sophie for a few measuring seconds, then turned to Peregrine. “The fact that whoever tried to kill Sophie’s papa and the others was using magic to do so.”
“Parthenope!” Sophie grabbed her arm. Oh, how could she have said that?
“He has to know, because we need to do something now,” Parthenope said firmly. “Sophie is a—”
Sophie dug her nails into Parthenope’s arm. Parthenope winced. “I mean, she can sense when magic is being done.”
“Magic,” Peregrine said carefully.
“Yes, magic.” Parthenope shook off Sophie’s hand. “Sophie sensed it at all the other attempts in London and thinks she saw Amélie putting an enchantment here in the ballroom.”
“The murder attempts—they were accomplished by magic,” he repeated.
Parthenope patted his arm. “You’re really taking this very well, you know. I’m impressed.”
Sophie agreed that he seemed to be accepting this with remarkable composure, but there wasn’t time to think about him now. “I didn’t just think I saw Amélie,” she said angrily. “What about Hester? He felt it too—you’re the one who—”
Parthenope’s face lit up. “Hester! Of course!” She hurried away from them.
“Parthenope, what are you doing?” Sophie called after her. Parthenope ignored her.
Peregrine cleared his throat gently. “Sophie, I’m sorry. This is … this is not how I would have chosen to come and apologize to you.”
Sophie felt faint again under his pleading gaze. “You don’t have to apologize to me. It was—I was the one who was wrong. Amélie—I didn’t want her to be a spy for Napoléon.”
“But I don’t think she is.”
“And I don’t think it could be the comte. That would mean—” She looked away, blinking back tears. That would mean that he’d deliberately insinuated himself into their family … and back into poor, innocent Aunt Molly’s heart.
She felt him touch her arm. “Sophie, can you—is magic real, then? Can you really sense it?”
It was as if his question had opened a yawning chasm before her. How should she answer him? Should she tell him what she was—or what she once had been? What would he do if she did?
Well, she would find out, before he apologized to her … or before she let her feelings for him out of their tight little prison. She took a deep breath. “Yes, but it’s more than just—”
“Here we are!” Parthenope pushed her way between them, one hand raised, on which perched a grumpy-looking Hester. “Come on, Sophie.” She took Sophie’s hand and pulled her along.
“What are you doing?”
“If he can find spells, then maybe he can find the person who made the spell,” Parthenope said. “Will you believe him?”
“A spell?” she heard a woman say behind her. “Did that girl just say it was a spell? Witchcraft? Someone’s done a spell on the duke?”
“Now you’ve done it,” Sophie muttered to Parthenope.
“Twaddle,” Parthenope said, still pushing through the crowd, but her usually pink cheeks were pale.
“A witch?” someone else called. “She’s a witch! It must be that woman—the one who was dancing with him.”
“Foul sorcery!” an older woman cried, and fainted.
“Nonsense!” someone said loudly. Sophie looked up.
Papa strode into the middle of the circle just as they reached its edge. He walked up to Amélie and took her hand. “Are you listening to yourselves?” he asked contemptuously. “Muttering about witchcraft and spells? Are we living in 1815 or 1615?”
“Papa,” Sophie whispered to herself. Should she shout to him to run? That he was putting himself in the direst of danger?
“Well?” he said again.
No one answered him, though there was muttering. He ignored it. “I say again, it’s utter nonsense. Madame Carswell is not a witch and
has not harmed the duke in the least.”
“Then where is he?” a tall woman called.
“I don’t know. Moreover, neither does Madame Carswell. Do you, madame?”
She shook her head. “Monsieur le Duc … c’est incroyable … I do not know—I did nothing. He was here, and then—” She turned and buried her face in his shoulder.
Papa looked around at the crowd. “You heard her. She has done nothing ill tonight. The duke’s officers and I will—”
“She’s a Frenchwoman!” she heard someone shout. “Why should we believe she’s done nothing to our duke?”
“A Frenchwoman! What does anyone know about her?”
“A widow from India, someone said.”
“A convenient story…”
“You don’t think she’s—”
Sophie and Parthenope had reached the edge of the crowd. Just beyond Papa and Amélie, Sophie could see Aunt Molly clinging to the comte. He had put a comforting arm around her shoulders.
“All right, little man.” Parthenope brought Hester close to her face and spoke in an unnaturally high voice. “Someone here did the big cold spell you showed me today. Will Mama’s little love show me who made it, pretty please?”
“Oh lord, Parthenope, he won’t—”
Parthenope glared at her over Hester’s head. “You’re not helping. That’s my good little boy. Go show Mama now?”
Hester twisted around and scratched at his back with his beak, then looked, unblinking, at Parthenope.
“Go, Hester!” Parthenope threw her hand up in the air.
Hester flapped in place for a minute, and Sophie was sure he’d settle back down on Parthenope’s shoulder and call her a turnip. But then he began to circle the crowd, his purple head and green wings bright under the chandeliers. He glanced down at Sophie; she could see his dark, sparkling eye examining her. Then he circled again, seeming to search the crowd.
“Oh, what a darling little bird! Such pretty plumage!” a lady in a feathered turban cried loudly. Heads turned from Amélie and Papa.
“Don’t you even think about it,” Parthenope growled under her breath. “Come on, Hester!”
Hester did one more circuit of the room to the accompaniment of more exclamations of surprise. Then his wings slowed, and he arced down … down … and came to rest on the comte’s shoulder.
Courtship and Curses Page 25
