The Marriage Spell

by Mary Jo Putney

  “Do I have to give a speech?”

  The other man shook his head. “Your maiden speech will come later, whenever you feel ready. It’s customary to give a short, uncontroversial address that will be congratulated no matter how bad it is. This is the only occasion on which you can count on your fellow members to compliment you on your speaking.”

  Jack had never studied rhetoric, but he’d done his share of speechifying as an army officer. He knew how to project his voice and make his point, so when the time came, he’d be ready. To his surprise, he realized that he had opinions, lots of them, about how the country should be governed. Performing the duties of his rank might be more amusing than he’d thought.

  The duke stubbed out the remnant of his cigar and got to his feet. “I’m sorry to rush off, but I have a meeting to attend. I’ll see you later.”

  Jack retrieved his cane and stood. “I’ll go up to Celeste’s boudoir and see how the ladies are getting along. I’m not sure if they’ll like each other or be at each other’s throats.”

  “I hope your bride is up to the talons of the city,” Piers said as the men left the study. “A girl from the country might find society alarming.”

  Wondering if his brother-in-law was implying that Celeste had grown talons, Jack ascended the sweeping staircase that led to the upper floors. He had become adept at climbing steps, especially when there was a solid banister to hold on to. Cane in right hand, railing in left, yes. He was going to be a dab hand at crutches and canes by the time he needed neither.

  As he knocked at the door to Celeste’s parlor, he heard a burst of laughter from inside. Thinking that sounded promising, he entered the room. “You two seem to be managing well.”

  “We are indeed.” Not bothering to ask if he wanted tea, Celeste poured him a cup, added milk, and set a plate of pastries beside it. “Thank you for marrying Abby instead of that dreadful Devereaux chit you flirted with last year.”

  “You didn’t like Lady Cynthia?” he asked, surprised. “I thought she was the sort of young lady you approved of. Wellborn, well behaved, and pretty.”

  “She’s a sly cat.” His sister smiled at Abby. “I should have had more faith in your judgment.” Abby’s expression turned satiric, but she didn’t comment.

  “I think it was my luck, not my judgment.” He took the chair between his wife and sister, laid down his cane, and started in on the tea and cakes. “Who won the battle of the ball?”

  “Celeste has convinced me that a ball is necessary. Luckily, she is willing to take care of all the hard work involved.” Abby glanced at her new sister-in-law. “Have you decided whether to mention that matter we discussed earlier?”

  Celeste’s quick alarm shifted to determination. “Jack, I never dared tell you, but I have a touch of sorceress in me.” She raised her hands and a globe of light formed on her right palm. She poured the light into her left hand with liquid smoothness.

  “Good heavens!” He stared at his sister. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “It’s not uncommon for magical gifts to run in families.” Abby’s voice was neutral, but he recognized the strong hint in her voice. She obviously thought it was time for brother and sister to be honest with each other, and she was right.

  “Power does run in families, Celeste. Maybe you were too young to realize, but I was sent to Stonebridge because I was showing signs of magical ability.”

  “So that’s what happened,” his sister said thoughtfully. “I knew the academy’s goal was to suppress magic, but since I was so small, I couldn’t remember if you’d done anything magical or you were merely too interested in the subject. Sometimes I thought I’d invented memories of your doing magic to make myself feel better.”

  His sister had needed to feel better? He didn’t like knowing that under her bright, happy surface, Celeste had been painfully concealing her talent, even from him. He should have been a better brother. Thinking she would be glad to know how much they had in common, he held out his hand and imagined a ball of light on his palm. “I wonder if I can do that?”

  The effort made his temples throb, but a glow appeared.

  “Oh, well done, Jack!” Abby applauded.

  Jack closed his hand around the light, obliterating it. “Magic is part of me. But that doesn’t mean that I want it or will ever use it.”

  “True, but it’s healthier to accept your talent, even if you choose to ignore it.” Her gaze moved from Jack to Celeste. “You’ve both suffered from having to suppress your abilities.”

  “Jack more than I,” Celeste said. “Once or twice I was caught practicing magic, and while I was scolded, I was never beaten the way Jack was.”

  Abby’s eyes narrowed. “You were beaten?”

  “Regularly.” Jack’s voice was terse. Some memories deserved to stay buried.

  And yet…Another long-buried memory surfaced, and without thinking he reached out mentally to lift one of the little lemon-filled pastries and send it flying toward his sister. “En garde!”

  The pastry abruptly slipped from his mental control and reversed direction to whip back across the table toward Jack. It stopped just short of his nose and hovered. His sister exclaimed, “Good God, we used to do that in the nursery! I’d forgotten.”

  “So had I.” Jack stared cross-eyed at the pastry, shaken that both he and Celeste were able to send it flying. “How much have we forgotten? And was forgetting natural, or were spells laid on us? Abby, can you tell?” He plucked the pastry from the air and ate it in one bite. He felt the need to eat something sweet.

  Abby looked troubled. “The only way to be sure would be to enter your minds. Given your father’s powerful dislike of magic, it’s possible, even likely, that he had you both bespelled. It’s not uncommon for people of your class to lay a mild suppression spell on children who show signs of magical ability. If that spell wasn’t strong enough and you continued to experiment with magic, it would explain why Colonel Stark was asked to cast a much more powerful spell on you. If only a mild spell was laid on you, Celeste, it probably wore off after a few years so you could resume working with magic.”

  “While I qualified for Stark’s stronger spell because I was the son and heir. Lucky me.” Jack dropped his hand when he found himself rubbing the shoulder where the anti-magic spell had been emblazoned. “Celeste, do you think you were bespelled? I only remember us tossing things around the nursery when we were very young.”

  “We seem to have stopped and forgotten. That would fit with a mild suppression spell.” His sister smiled ruefully. “Until now, my earliest memories of doing magic were when I was twelve or thirteen. But even before then, the subject interested me. I used to borrow books from Mr. Willard.”

  “You, too? Oh, Celeste, we’ve hidden far too much from each other!” Jack wondered if his life would have been easier if he’d realized he could confide in his sister. Perhaps. Maybe then he wouldn’t have buried so much of himself.

  “I think you were both treated abominably,” Abby said crisply. “I wonder who cast the spells? Ethical wizards won’t do such work on someone who is unsuspecting. But there are always magic workers who are willing to do anything that is well paid.”

  “There are several wizards who specialize in placing such spells on wellborn children,” Celeste said tightly. “I’ve heard other women discuss them, and what age their children should be when they’re be-spelled, but it never occurred to me that I had been a victim myself.”

  Abby shook her head. “I thank God that I was born into the gentry class and was not subject to such wicked restrictions. Since I come from a family of wizards, I had all the support and training anyone could wish.” Three tarts swooped into the air and hovered before each of them.

  “You’re showing off,” Jack said with a grin.

  She laughed. “A little. But they’re lovely tarts.” She pulled hers from the air and ate it. Jack and Celeste followed suit.

  Abby finished her tea. “It’s well known that magica
l gifts run in families. Both of you have significant gifts. It takes real power to lift objects without touching them. Though not impossible, it would be unusual for both of you to possess substantial abilities without having other magic in your family. So where did your power come from? Your mother or your father? A grandparent?”

  Jack’s gaze caught his sister’s, and he saw a shock that matched his own. In all these years, he had never once asked himself where his accursed magic came from. Had that lack of curiosity also been the result of a spell?

  There had been a wizard in his family home, and it had subtly shaped both of their childhoods. “Father.” He licked dry lips. “It had to be him.”

  “That’s impossible,” Celeste whispered, her eyes huge. “Papa hated magic.”

  “Even more impossible that it was Mama.” Transparent, sociable, and uncomplicated, their mother had carried no hidden shadows.

  Feeling suffocated, he shoved himself from his chair and stalked across the room, stopping at the window overlooking Grosvenor Square. His mind was suddenly full of memories that were the same, yet entirely different.

  You must not use magic. It is wicked. Disgusting. The beatings, his father’s grim, implacable face. Though Jack had been whipped harder at Stonebridge, those beatings had never hurt as much as the ones from his father.

  An arm slipped around his waist, and he realized that Abby had joined him. Wisely she said nothing. Did she use healing magic to dissolve his angry pain, or was she offering only the purely human magic of caring? He put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close to his side.

  “My father was the one who ordered the Stonebridge spell,” he said harshly. “He might have been the one to cast the milder spells on Celeste and me. I can…almost see him bespelling me. It’s like a memory that is just out of reach.”

  “He was shamed by the magical part of himself,” Abby said softly. “He didn’t want you to suffer as he had, so he tried to remove even your knowledge of your own power. I think what he did was wrong, but it was done because he loved you.”

  She was right, he realized. His father had been a tormented man, particularly when the subject was magic. “I’m glad he wasn’t so hard on Celeste. I don’t think he could bear to hurt his angel child.”

  A brittle laugh sounded behind them. “I’d forgotten that he called me his angel child,” Celeste said. “I’ve forgotten so much.”

  Abby handed him his cane. “And you forgot this when you stood up.”

  So he had, and his leg ached from the extra strain. Guessing that Abby was suggesting he go to his sister, he crossed the room. Celeste sat in her chair with her usual grace, hands folded and back straight. Only the tear tracks on her face revealed her inner turmoil. “The world just changed, Celeste,” he said quietly. “Yet it’s no different than it was, except in our minds.”

  “That’s a very large except.” She stood and wrapped her arms around him in an unhappy hug. “To think that Papa was a wizard! I never knew him at all.”

  “Neither did I.” He felt closer to his sister than he had since they were children in the nursery. He glanced up and saw Abby standing quietly at the window, allowing him the time with his sister.

  He put out one arm and beckoned her to join them in their hug. Without her, there would be no new understanding. And painful though the experience of finding out was, he was glad to find that his past finally made sense.

  Chapter XIX

  After Jack left, well stuffed with pastries, Abby asked the duchess, “When would you like me to examine you? Tomorrow morning, perhaps?”

  “Now?” Celeste laughed ruefully. “After ten years, I know that a day more or less won’t really matter, but I’d like to know what you think.”

  Abby recognized the yearning for a miracle. Luckily, though her healing power was still below normal because of the energy she was lending Jack, that shouldn’t affect her ability to scan. “I’ll do a preliminary examination. That will give me the information to write my friend, Mrs. Wayne, who has great expertise in female health problems.”

  “If you need help, would she come to London?”

  Abby shook her head. “Not if she has patients that require special care, which she usually does. She won’t leave a woman who is at risk even for a duchess.”

  Celeste narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “Then perhaps I can go to her, if you think it helpful. But first you must make your examination.”

  “Lie down on your sofa and relax.”

  The other woman crossed to the elegant little French style sofa and stretched out with her head on a brocade pillow. She looked more like a girl from the schoolroom than a duchess, though she must be Abby’s age or older.

  Abby stilled her mind and summoned the special sensitivities needed for scanning and diagnosis. When she was ready, she studied Celeste’s aura. The basic color was pink. She guessed that the shade should have the brightness that marked a tender, loving, compassionate personality, but now it was marked with muddy tones and glints of a dark, depressed blue. She looked for signs of ill-health. Despite the heaviness of her aura, overall the duchess was healthy. “Your right elbow looks sore,” she observed. “Does it need treatment?”

  “No, it’s only a bruise from where I banged into my desk by mistake,” Celeste said. “But I’m impressed that you knew that without even touching me.”

  “There was a red glow around your elbow,” Abby explained. “Relax, and we’ll see what else we can find.”

  The duchess obediently closed her eyes and did her best to be still, though her body was still taut. Hoping to find a fixable problem but aware that other healers hadn’t, Abby slowly skimmed her hands several inches above the other woman’s body. “Apart from nerves, you’re in fine health,” she said. “You enjoy riding and brisk walks, I think?”

  “You’re right again.” Celeste’s eyes flew open. “Might that be interfering with my ability to conceive?”

  “Not at all. Healthy, active women usually find it easier to bear children.” Abby concentrated harder on the energy flow surrounding the female organs, but she could neither see nor feel any wrongness. “I sense no obvious problems. Now that I’ve examined you, I’ll write Judith Wayne. Perhaps she’ll have some suggestions.”

  Her face a mask of disappointment, the duchess sat up. “I was expecting too much to think that you could instantly come up with a cure. Perhaps I should ask instead for a love charm to lure my husband back to my bed.”

  “I think your own beauty and love are more potent than any magical charm,” Abby said gently.

  Celeste caught her breath, tears glinting in her eyes. “I hope you’re right. Strange, isn’t it? Most women would think I have the best life in London, with health and wealth and a wonderful husband. I used to think that myself, and give thanks. But now it’s all gone wrong.”

  Abby sat on the chair by the sofa and produced a clean handkerchief for the duchess. “I can make no promises about a child, but surely your marriage can be restored. You and your husband love each other. You just need to find how to resolve this temporary misunderstanding.”

  Celeste used the handkerchief to blot her eyes and blow her nose, looking lovely even in the midst of tears. “But how? All thoughts gratefully received.”

  Abby thought about what she knew of the situation. “You said that Alderton believed that you didn’t love him anymore. Does he have any other reason to believe that, apart from your suggestion that he take a mistress?”

  “Of course not!” Celeste looked scandalized. “Men usually flutter around me at social events, but I am never more than polite. I certainly never offer any encouragement. Piers is the only man I want.” Her lips started to quiver before she pressed them tight.

  Following instinct, Abby said, “You are an extraordinarily beautiful woman, while your husband’s looks are merely average. Might he have trouble believing you could love him for something more than his title and wealth?”

  “Piers is the most attractive man I kn
ow!” Celeste looked briefly outraged. Then her expression turned thoughtful. “But I feel that because I love him. Do you think that because my appearance is admired, he assumes I don’t really care for him?”

  “It’s possible.” Abby knew from experience that an average appearance did nothing to bolster confidence in one’s desirability. In the dark of night, did Alderton wonder if his beloved wife married him only for his position and had been lying to him ever since? It was a sad thought. “Where we love, we are most vulnerable, most prey to dark thoughts. Even dukes.”

  Celeste frowned as she restlessly turned the wedding ring on her finger. “You are a healer of the mind as well as of the body, Abby. I shall think how best to reassure my husband of my feelings. Thank you.”

  Abby didn’t doubt that Celeste could charm her husband back to her arms. The question of a child was quite another matter.

  That night Jack was too restless to wait for Abby to join him, so he collected his cane and went into her bedroom first. “My bed is so large that I was lonely,” he explained, admiring the way the small night-light sculpted her softly feminine form.

  She turned from braiding her hair and flipped back the covers, smiling. “There’s plenty of room here.”

  He leaned his cane against the bedside table and climbed in. A moment later, beribboned braid swinging, Abby climbed in on the other side. He rolled over and drew her into his arms. “Is London living down to your worst fears?”

  She relaxed against him with a soft, contented sigh. “So far, so good. Celeste seemed alarmingly beautiful and perfect before I realized she’s really much like you.”

  He laughed out loud. “And I’m neither beautiful nor perfect?”

  “That’s not what I meant!”

  “I know.” He tilted her face up with a finger under her chin and gave her a kiss. Lord, she tasted good. He pulled her closer so that her lush curves were pressed against him. To his delight, he felt stirrings in the part of his body that hadn’t worked properly since his injury. Might tonight be the night?