by Stuart, Anne
Or he could think about how he was going to trap Leona Coleman without her little champion getting in the way. Because he had no doubt at all that Leona was everything he suspected, and worse, and while her pernicious influence on Sybil was at this point only psychological, he didn’t trust it to remain that way. According to the Muller sisters, Sybil had “Money,” though she didn’t care to use it. If it were up to Leona, she might no longer have that option.
Gingerly he lowered himself into a chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him and contemplating the quiet, musty room. His plans were simple. He had to research his book, trap Leona and break through Sybil’s defenses until she was ready to be involved, both physically and emotionally. He still wasn’t quite sure why he didn’t want to settle for a brief affair, but the longer he was around her, the more he wanted, and he wasn’t getting anywhere rationalizing about it.
He had to accomplish all this within six weeks. He was going to have a busy time of it, and the only way to accomplish everything was to get started. First things first, he told himself, and headed straight for the book of spells.
Chapter Seven
SYBIL COULDN’T get through to Leona. She’d gone off to Hanover with Mary Philbert and they weren’t due back until dinner. By the time darkness had closed down around the old building, she no longer wanted to. After all, she thought, adding row upon tangled row to her knitting, what would be accomplished by passing on Nick’s infamous suspicions? They were patently absurd, no one else would even dare imagine such a thing, and to tell Leona would only hurt her feelings. It would be much better if she kept an eye on Nick, to keep his nosiness under control, rather than worry her elderly friend with pointless gossip.
She just had to hope he wasn’t crass enough to start spreading those sorts of malicious tales around. For all his faults, and they were countless, he didn’t strike her as the vindictive sort. He probably didn’t for one moment believe that about Leona; he probably made it all up just to torment her.
But on the off-chance that he did believe it, on the vague possibility that he would start harassing Leona on some misguided suspicion, she would have to be doubly observant, and very careful. She would have to keep an eye on Nick Fitzsimmons, to make sure he wasn’t causing any trouble for her friend. She couldn’t just ignore him, as she told herself she longed to; she’d have to keep close tabs on him. The thought was infuriating and depressing, but highly stimulating.
She had her busiest day in the entire year, with a grand total of eight paying customers and almost three hundred dollars’ worth of business. She almost forgot the presence in the office upstairs—forgot, until she heard the measured tread, the shifting of a chair, an absentminded cough.
The Mullers came at the end of the day. Miss Edla, the plumper and more talkative of the two, peered at her out of nearsighted, fading blue eyes that were quite mischievous, while Miss Minna devoted her attention to choosing between a lapis lazuli pendulum and a tiger’s eye one for her totally disinterested niece.
“We like your young man,” Miss Edla said, leaning over the counter confidentially.
Sybil dropped another stitch. “My young man?” she managed to say in an admirably bewildered tone. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, Miss Edla.”
The frail old lady giggled. “Of course you do, Sybil. I haven’t lived for eighty-three years without learning something. We had your young man to tea this morning.”
“Oh, you mean Professor Fitzsimmons?” she said in a voice that would have fooled half the population of northern Vermont. “He’s not my young man, Miss Edla. We don’t even get along very well.”
Miss Edla wasn’t fooled. “He was asking all sorts of questions about you. We didn’t tell him much, just enough to whet his interest. And when he left we dowsed it. There’s no question about it, Sybil. He’s your young man.”
Sybil didn’t use rude language in front of little old ladies, so she gritted her teeth into a semblance of a smile. “Not if I can help it,” she said.
Miss Minna looked up from her perusal of the Christmas-themed pendulums. “I don’t know if you can, dearie,” she murmured. “We’ve got a very good track record in predicting these things. We haven’t been wrong yet.”
No, they hadn’t, Sybil remembered gloomily. “There’s a first time for everything,” she said.
“Of course. But this isn’t it. Here . . .” Miss Minna removed the knitting from Sybil’s slack fingers, pausing long enough to cluck in dismay over the tangled mess, and replaced it with a jade pendulum. “Try it yourself.”
“Miss Minna, you know I can’t dowse—”
“Everyone can dowse,” Miss Edla said sternly. “Go ahead, try it.”
With a long-suffering sigh, Sybil held the pendulum over her left knee. “Clockwise for yes, counterclockwise for no,” she ordered in a bored voice. As usual the pendulum responded. “Are my eyes brown?” Yes. “Am I thirty years old?” Yes. “Do I love my family?” A less enthusiastic yes. “Are the Muller sisters with me?” Yes.
“Try something a little harder, dear,” Miss Minna ordered, her blue eyes bright in the afternoon.
“Will there be peace in our time?” she asked, and the pendulum swung back in a depressing no.
“Not that hard, Sybil. You know what to ask.”
She did indeed, and she didn’t want to. Her results had been far better than usual—for once she was trusting the answers the pendulum was giving her. She didn’t want an answer that could turn her world upside down.
But the Muller sisters were watching her, their matching blue eyes curious and trusting. And not for anything, not even Nicholas Fitzsimmons, would she let herself be thought a coward.
She hedged her bets just a trifle. “Will Nick and I ever get along?”
The pendulum wasn’t sure about that one. It swung clockwise for a bit, then looped around to counterclockwise, then swung aimlessly.
“You see,” she said to the sisters. “I told you we can’t get along.”
“That’s not the question, Sybil.” Miss Edla used to be a schoolteacher, and she hadn’t lost the iron touch. “Stop avoiding the issue.”
Sybil sighed, staring at the tiny piece of jade that was ordaining her future. “You tell me what the question is, Miss Edla.”
“Will you and Nick fall in love?”
“No!” she said violently.
“I didn’t ask you, Sybil. That’s for the pendulum to answer.”
“I’m not asking that question.”
“Then phrase it your own way.”
Sybil stared at the pendulum, then took a deep breath. So intent was she on the question she was formulating that she didn’t hear the footsteps, the admittedly light footsteps, on the hall stairs.
“You asked for it,” Sybil muttered, “you got it. Will Nick and I be lovers?”
The pendulum stopped its aimless twirling and began a slow, clockwise motion. It grew in intensity, moving faster and faster, so that it was spinning around in her hand, parallel to the ground in the enthusiasm of its positive response. “Damn,” she muttered. And looking up, she stared directly into Nick’s golden eyes. Those eyes were bright with malicious amusement.
“Parlor games?” he questioned, walking into the tiny bookshop, which was suddenly crowded to overflowing with his large presence.
Sybil stared up at him. She could always hope that he hadn’t heard her question, but fate hadn’t been doing her any favors recently. Besides, Nick wouldn’t have that grin on his face if he thought she’d been asking about the weather or water veins under the building.
She closed the pendulum in her fist and shoved it into the pocket of her jeans. “Parlor games,” she agreed.
“I’m heading home now. I’m taking a couple of books with me. Do you have any problem with that?” He was carrying a c
ouple of the oldest leather-bound volumes, and Sybil knew she should put up a token protest.
“Not in the slightest. I think you’ll be more comfortable working from home.”
“Oh, I have no intention of doing that. There’s no suitable place in the Black Farm to spread out. The library upstairs suits me just fine. As long as I’m not distracting you.” It was said so innocently. Sybil wanted to stomp on his toes.
“You’re not distracting me,” she said through gritted teeth.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said, his eyes still bright with mischief. “Where’s the best place for me to get herbs around here? And I don’t mean the supermarket kind, I mean homegrown.”
“Dulcy.” She came up with the answer quickly, knowing if she hesitated she wouldn’t want to send him there at all. One more inconsistency in her bewildering behavior.
“Oh, my yes. Dulcy has the finest collection of herbs in New England. She grows them, dries them and even manages a small mail-order business,” Miss Edla volunteered. Sybil was doubly glad she hadn’t hesitated. Nick already thought he knew too much about her and her reactions to him.
“Why don’t you sell them in your shop? You have everything else under the sun.”
Sybil smiled. “There are a few areas of disagreement between Dulcy and myself. One of those areas is her herbs and the uses she puts them to.”
“Dulcy’s a white witch,” Miss Minna offered. “She grows her herbs for spells.”
“And healing,” Sybil added fairly. “But it’s an area I tend to keep away from. I think it’s dangerous to mess around in things I can’t understand.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Nick said mildly.
“Only when it comes to witchcraft. It’s an area where there’s been active work toward causing harm. Even white witchcraft makes me uneasy, so I keep away from it.”
“Very wise. I’ll give Dulcy a call this evening.”
“Do that,” Sybil said evenly, ignoring the irrational stab of jealousy that had come over her once again. “Why do you want herbs?”
Nick only smiled, and his clutch on the ancient leather books tightened. “Parlor games, Sybil. Parlor games.”
The Muller sisters left with him, thank heavens. The last thing she wanted to do was answer any more questions, deny any more suppositions, defend her skepticism or her honor. She watched them leave. A light snow was falling, illuminated by the street lamp that was one of seven in the entire town of Danbury. Standing motionless in the front window of the old house, she watched them go, and she reached into her pocket for the pendulum.
She pulled it out, watching the reindeer head swing aimlessly. She wouldn’t be proved a coward in front of the Mullers, and she was damned if she’d be a coward with only herself watching.
“Will Nick and I fall in love?”
Yes, said the pendulum, swinging clockwise, and Sybil bit her lip. Might as well go the whole way.
“Will we live happily ever after?”
Again that aimless swinging, that irritating refusal to answer. She was about to pocket the piece of jade once more, when an irresistible question came into her mind.
“Is Leona harmless?”
Once more the pendulum began to spin, but it turned in a negative, counterclockwise circle. Sybil stared at it, opened her mouth to ask another more specific, damning question; then she shut it again and shoved the jade back into her pocket. After all, if the pendulum was clearly wrong about her and Nick, it couldn’t be trusted about Leona, either. She would have to rely on her own instincts, and her instincts told her . . .
Damn, she didn’t even trust her instincts anymore. Her instincts told her to trust the pendulum. It was only her brain that knew better. It was past time to start listening. It could hardly get her into the kind of trouble her instincts and the pendulum seemed intent on leading her.
Parlor games, she thought, locking the bookshop and heading for her coat and boots. It was her own fault for not treating the pendulum with proper respect. No wonder it had lied to her.
NICK TOOK A DEEP, meditative sip of his cognac and surveyed the various oddments laid out on the kitchen table in front of him. The ancient book of spells and curses lay propped up behind them, open to a page entitled “Love Philtres for Reluctant Partners.” The herbs lay in front of him, encased prosaically enough in Ziploc bags, and the wooden salad bowl, still slightly redolent of rubbed garlic, waited nearby.
Dulcy had proved more than helpful. Not only did she have everything he requested, from something as mundane as lemon thyme to something as arcane as wormwood, she had been willing to drop them off on her way to a meeting that night. It had been too late when he realized he had forgotten to ask for the orrisroot, and when he called her back she had already left. He’d kept the book carefully hidden when she arrived. He had politely offered her a drink and politely offered her recompense for the herbs, both of which she refused.
“Part of my housewarming present,” she said, tossing that silvery mane over her shoulder. “Just make sure you follow the instructions.”
“What instructions?” he’d asked, looking properly innocent.
She had only smiled, that wise, knowing smile. He didn’t like deliberately mysterious women, and he didn’t like ethereal smiles. And he certainly didn’t like self-styled white witches. But he had been polite enough, waiting with barely concealed impatience for her to leave, and then had taken his basket of goodies into the kitchen to dump them onto the scrubbed pine table.
Everything was there. He stared down at the neatly marked packages, a cynical smile on his face—one that faded when he picked up a package marked orrisroot.
Coincidence, he firmly told himself, taking another warming sip of the cognac. To prove he didn’t put any stock in Dulcy’s claims, he mixed the potion with a deliberately casual hand, stirring the fragrant herbs and muttering the various incantations required. The vodka was the final ingredient. It would have to suffice—heaven only knew where he’d get honey mead in this century. He poured generously, the liquor releasing even more of the rich aroma. It was supposed to sit for an hour. Then, somehow or other, he was supposed to administer it to his intended victim.
That might prove easier said than done. For one thing, after today she was highly unlikely to show up at his house again. For another, even if she did, the concoction didn’t smell all that appetizing.
He drained his cognac, moving back into the living room and the wood stove that was a poor substitute for the glow of a fire. Sooner or later he’d find a way. The idea had fascinated him since he’d run across the recipe for the potion, tucked between remedies for the French disease and a potion efficacious for those of dangerously costive disposition. It was a combination of boredom, lust and too much Courvoisier that made him determined to finish what he had started. He was never a man to admit defeat, particularly in something as minor as an ancient love spell.
Maybe he would discover a real aphrodisiac. Think of the chaos he could unleash upon the world—the idea boggled the mind. Think of the money he could make for such a discovery. But no, he didn’t particularly need or want a lot of money. He could patent it, and then only sell it through Sybil’s pathetic little store. Then she’d become rich and famous, and in her gratitude she’d turn to him. . . .
But if the love potion happened to work, she would have already turned to him. It was an unquestionably appealing thought. Now if there were only some way he could get her over here, and if worse came to worst he could hold her down and pour it down her throat.
No, subtlety was the ticket. The phone company had outdone itself and fixed the phone late that afternoon. He could call her up, invite her over on some irresistible trumped-up excuse, and then ply her with that concoction. Or maybe he could just ply her with the cognac—it had proved quite effective over the cent
uries in seducing reluctant maidens, and he had no gentlemanly qualms about taking advantage of her. He wanted her any way he could get her. Maybe the simplest plans were the best. Though he would still like to see how she reacted to the orrisroot punch.
First things first. What in all creation would get her to enter the lion’s den at quarter past eight on a Friday evening? Leaning back on the couch, he took another sip of his cognac and put his inventive brain to work.
SYBIL STOOD OUTSIDE the doorway, huddled in her down coat, telling herself she was crazy. Nine o’clock at night was no time to be visiting Nicholas Fitzsimmons. As far as she was concerned, there was no time to be visiting him at all. She had the weekend ahead of her, two days of uninterrupted peace. So why had she driven back out on this snowy night, looking for trouble?
She could admit her first reason. She wanted to see if Dulcy’s blue Honda was still parked in front of the Black Farm. She only intended to look, then to turn around and go back and congratulate herself on her matchmaking abilities.
But Dulcy wasn’t there, and that same incomprehensible relief swept over her. All she’d meant to do was turn around in the end of his driveway and head back home, but somehow she found herself driving down toward the farm.
Well, she had excuses enough. She was still worried about Leona. Having the damned pendulum confirm Nick’s suspicions was distressing, and sitting home worrying about it didn’t help matters. She needed to prove that damned pendulum wrong, and she could do that either by proving that she wasn’t going to fall in love with Nick Fitzsimmons or by convincing Nick his suspicions were unfounded.
Either way, she couldn’t just let the situation with Leona fester in the back of her mind like an untended wound. She was someone who faced up to things, unless they were connected with her family, and facing up to Nick, nerve-racking as it threatened to be, was better than sitting home worrying about it. Right?
