The Secret Witch

by Harvey, Alyxandra;

  “Oh, Maman.”

  She clapped her hands imperiously and the girls rushed to stand at attention. “Girls, the duchess has very kindly invited you here to practice your dancing. I trust I do not need to remind you to be discreet.”

  More girls arrived, none of them from Rowanstone. “Remember, girls,” Lady Wyndham was saying. “You must show yourself to your best advantage at all times. You must be decorative and elegant and pleasant. Do not monopolize the conversation.” She glanced pointedly at her nieces. “And do not display your intelligence too obviously, lest it intimidate your dance partner. You must have a care. Men are not as confident as they appear to be.”

  Gretchen rolled her eyes. “Then why aren’t they working as hard to impress us? Why should it always fall to us?”

  Lady Wyndham’s nostrils flared. It was the only indication that she was about to lose her temper. Her voice was cold and calm. “Napoleon has taken all of our young men, both proud and poor. They fight against him to keep us safe. The sad fact is, many will not return. They deserve our respect.” She looked at each girl directly. “To put it plainly, there are more girls looking for husbands than there are men left to become husbands. Therefore, you must all be the prettiest and the most accomplished if you are to have any hope of success.”

  Daphne stood so straight, Lady Wyndham might as well have been a general in the army.

  “I trust you do not need to be reminded that it is not acceptable to dance more than two dances with the same gentleman, however handsome he might be.”

  “Not even Cormac Fairfax.” Someone giggled but Emma couldn’t see who it was. Daphne’s head turned sharply.

  “Not even Lord Blackburn,” Lady Wyndham corrected. “You may mark the following dances on your fan for this evening: the cotillion, the reel, and la boulangere.”

  “May we also practice the waltz, Lady Wyndham?” Lilybeth asked breathlessly.

  “Certainly not,” she replied. “Take your positions.” She nodded curtly at the dancing master. “Begin.”

  The lessons went on for two hours, with Lady Wyndham interrupting the dance master with helpful proclamation such as: “We do not gallop, ladies. We skip.” Even Gretchen found herself enjoying the exertion, though she never would have admitted it to her mother.

  “The dancing master will be on hand to assist you,” Lady Wyndham announced when they stopped for lemonade. “And if you should feel lost during the ball, listen for him calling out the steps. He is there to make you look good.” She nodded graciously. “You are dismissed.”

  “Quickly,” Gretchen whispered to her cousins. “Let’s make our escape before she notices.”

  They were near the doors when Lady Wyndham spoke again. “Gretchen a moment, if you please.”

  She froze, very much like a rabbit under the shadow of a hunter’s hound.

  “I am sending the dressmaker to you later this week, Gretchen. Don’t forget.”

  Gretchen fancied she knew exactly how the rabbit felt just before it was eaten.

  Chapter 36

  The next day, Emma and Penelope went to Hyde Park. It was a rare bright London day without fog or the foul smell from the Thames tainting the air. Rotten Row was packed as always, with ladies in fine riding habits on horseback and gentlemen in cutaway coats and brimmed hats. On the other side of the riding track, painted and gilded carriages trundled by, filled with countesses and duchesses and their bored daughters eager to see and be seen. Emma and Penelope preferred to stay on foot, strolling over the lawns as the wind tossed the canopy of leaves, letting in more sunlight. They stopped to watch two carriages going far too fast in a race to see who would reach the oak tree around the corner. Just last year two people had died from a collision during such a race. Riders moved aside, grumbling. Money changed hands as bets were made as to the outcome.

  “He’s quite handsome,” Penelope said, making a subtle motion with her head to point out the young man in question. He was leaning on the railing, watching the race. His pocket watch caught the sunlight. “Maybe he’s my true love.”

  “Perhaps your true love is a portly old man with no hair on his head,” Emma teased.

  “Perhaps,” Penelope replied, cheerfully. “So long as he doesn’t mind an equally portly girl with a father in trade.”

  They meandered down the path, cutting away from the crowds and stopping to watch the ducks floating in the Serpentine. “I think we’re being followed,” Penelope muttered. “I was hoping that gentleman was eager to make our acquaintance, but now I think it’s a Keeper. As if the footman wasn’t enough.”

  Emma sighed, following her cousin’s gaze. Behind their very polite footman a young man was walking toward them, looking nonchalant. It wasn’t his pocket watch that had been gleaming but the chain of an iron-wheel pendant. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  Penelope grinned mischievously. “He looks so severe. Shall we take him on a merry chase? And our very bored footman as well?”

  “Let’s.”

  They kept their pace steady and slow until they reached a curve in the walkway. Where it turned away from the water, disappearing into several small groves, they exchanged a quick grin and burst into a run. They flew through the grass, trailing bright laughter. Emma left behind ghouls and secrets and opened gates to the Underworld. There was only Penelope’s hand in hers and the press of wind in their hair.

  “Here he comes,” Penelope exclaimed. “Oh, look at his face!”

  They jumped over plants, nearly bowled down an elderly couple out for a stroll, and then ducked into the trees. Birds flew off their perches in a flurry of agitated feathers. They collapsed under a willow tree, giggling. Emma tucked a lock of hair back into the knot at her nape, listening for pounding footsteps or a warning shout. It was silly, but it made her feel better to have outrun a Keeper.

  Not all of them were as easy to escape.

  “Well, well.”

  Emma froze, shutting her eyes for a long moment. Penelope was grinning at her when she opened them again. “Lord Blackburn, how do you do?” her cousin asked, cheerfully unrepentant.

  Emma turned around to face him. “Did the Order send you to follow us too?”

  “You gave that poor man palpitations when you ran away,” he answered, smiling easily. His navy coat perfectly set off the rich darkness of his hair and eyes. “I have to say, my Keeper duties rarely involve escorting two such lovely ladies as yourselves.”

  Emma lifted her eyes skyward. “Do stop flirting. You might hurt yourself.”

  “I am well practiced.” He caught her hand in his, pressing a kiss to the back of her knuckles.

  “I am aware,” she said, her mouth quirking as she fought a smile. Even through her gloves she could feel the warmth of his lips. Penelope watched them as if they were a particularly fascinating play.

  “It’s never a hardship to escort two of the Lovegrove cousins,” Cormac continued, still holding her hand. His thumb stroked the inside of her wrist, his left eyebrow rising in a perfect arch as he waited for her reaction.

  “I need my concentration to hold the Fith-Fath spell,” she said, snatching her hand back. Her fingers tingled. “If the glamour fades you’ll be wandering the park with a wild deer-girl. Think of what it would do to your reputation.”

  “I can take it,” he assured her. He glanced at Penelope who looked smug. “Aren’t there always three of you?”

  “Gretchen had to stay behind to learn embroidery,” she explained, laughing out loud.

  “She was very seriously put out.” “She hates embroidery,” Emma elaborated. “With a passion usually reserved for ball gowns and calves’ foot jelly.”

  “Is there anyone who doesn’t hate calves’ foot jelly?”

  “True. But apparently she needs embroidery skill for charms and spell bundles.”

  “While calves’ foot jelly is good for nothing at all,” Penelope added.

  “I heard your cousin was a Whisperer.”

  “Yes. Are
there male Whisperers as well?” Emma asked curiously.

  “Certainly,” he replied as they began to walk.

  “And do they embroider?”

  “Yes.” He flashed a grin. “Yes, but only in secret.”

  “As long as it’s fair and equal torture,” Emma approved.

  “I like embroidery,” Penelope pointed out. “More’s the pity.”

  Emma looped her arm through Penelope’s. “Don’t think for a moment Gretchen won’t be needling you to do it for her.”

  “I know,” she replied. “I don’t mind.”

  They ducked out from the feathery branches and headed back to the path. The Keeper was red-cheeked and frantic, next to an equally concerned footman. “Easy, Thaddeus. I’ll see the ladies safely home,” Cormac told him.

  He bowed stiffly at them and then stalked away. Penelope’s lips quirked. “I don’t suppose he’ll ask me to dance now.”

  Cormac dismissed the panting footman as well, who left with a relieved smile.

  “I am allowed off the grounds,” Emma felt compelled to say.

  “I know,” Cormac returned easily. She’d noticed he always seemed more comfortable when there was no one else around. At the moment there was no one in sight. They were alone save for a rabbit eating dandelion leaves. “With the Sisters and the gates and now the ghouls, the Order is concerned for everyone’s safety. They especially want Rowanstone students to be escorted.”

  At the mention of the gates, Emma felt another stab of guilt. She hadn’t broken her mother’s bottle on purpose, but she felt the weight of the ramifications all the same.

  “I am but a glorified footman,” he said with a twinge of bitterness. “But God and Country and all that rot.”

  “You sound rather cynical for a Keeper,” Emma noted, intrigued despite her constant resolve to resist him. He shrugged one shoulder and let it fall, his easy smile returning. She was learning to recognize which of his charming smiles hid darker secrets and that was definitely one of them. His fingers brushed her as he walked beside her. The wind kicked up.

  She glanced around, mortified. Did he know she was causing the wind because she was nervous around him? Dust snapped the hem of her dress. The wind pushed harder. She frowned.

  She wasn’t that nervous.

  The wind wrapped around her and gave her a great shove.

  She remembered the last time she’d felt it do that.

  “Oh no,” she said, digging her heels into the grass. “Not again!”

  There was no fighting the inexorable wind. Cormac and Penelope each took one of her arms but it only served to wrench them in their sockets. Cormac and Penelope let her go, doing their best to keep up. The trees tossed back and forth and the grass flattened around her, but the water of the Serpentine in the distance was still as a glass mirror.

  Emma tripped over the foot of a girl half draped over the lower branch of an oak tree. Tiny icicles dripped from the bottom of her sleeve. Her lips were dusky blue with cold. She was utterly still, her eyes frozen wide open.

  The wind died. Emma scrabbled backward. She met Cormac’s eyes wildly, remembering vividly the last time she’d been dragged to a dead girl by a strange storm. Unlike Margaret York, this girl was dead before they found her.

  And they weren’t alone any longer in a wild corner of the park. They had an audience.

  Worse still, it was Daphne.

  Chapter 37

  Daphne, Sophie, and Lilybeth hurried toward them, the flowers on their matching bonnets trembling with their shock. “We were waiting for our footman to secure us a boat when we heard someone shout,” Daphne said, staring at the body in the tree.

  A Keeper chased them from the path on the other side of the shrubbery. “Lady Daphne, wait!”

  “Damn it,” Cormac swore, stepping away from Emma so abruptly she stumbled. He wouldn’t even look at her, when a few moments ago, she’d been sure he was about to hold her hand. “Virgil.” He greeted the other Keeper with a stiff nod.

  Virgil whistled through his teeth when he saw the body. He proceeded to puff up his chest and step in front of Daphne and her friends. “Nothing to be afraid of,” he said pompously. “Your father himself asked me to protect you.”

  “Why do I keep stumbling over dead girls?” Emma asked bleakly, her teeth chattering. She felt cold all over, like there was ice under her skin. Penelope rubbed her arms, trying to warm her.

  “Yes, why is that exactly?” Daphne asked sharply.

  Cormac took a pinch of the crushed apple seeds, quartz crystal, and mugwort herb he kept in his snuffbox and tossed it up. It hung suspended for a brief moment, before glittering into an arc of sparks to guide nearby Keepers to the spot.

  “Oi, I can handle this,” Virgil complained, though he’d yet to do more than glance at the body.

  “You don’t have the authority,” Cormac relied blandly.

  “And you don’t have the magic.”

  Cormac’s jaw clenched.

  “And I see that though your sisters aren’t here to save you this time, you’re still hiding behind skirts,” Virgil added with a sneer.

  Emma decided right then and there that she didn’t care for Virgil one bit. Thunder growled in the distance. Cormac shot her a quick, startled glance, before resuming his formal polite posture.

  “Poor girl. Should we call for a doctor?” Sophie asked softly, her eyes very bright.

  “It’s too late for that, I’m afraid.”

  “Did she fall out of the tree?”

  “I don’t think so,” Cormac said. “Do you recognize her? Is she Rowanstone?”

  “She doesn’t look familiar so I don’t think she’s a fellow student,” Daphne replied. Shock made her skin shine like a pearl, sweat dampening her hair so that it slipped from its complicated updo. “And she’s not dressed like society.”

  He crouched next to the body, frowning. She wore a simple dress in washed-out brown muslin and no jewelry. Her bonnet was made of straw with a few faded silk leaves. Her limp hand dropped, fingers uncurling. He stripped off her left glove while the others waited, breaths held.

  The girl had a witch knot and it was altered, the ends unraveling.

  “Greymalkin,” Cormac confirmed. “What are these pinpricks on her fingertips?”

  Penelope leaned over gingerly for a closer look. “Those are from an embroidery needle,” she said. “But to have that many? Even as a dressmaker’s assistant, that’s a lot.”

  “Are you sure that’s what she is?”

  “With those particular calluses and those pinpricks? Yes.”

  “You have the same marks when you embroider?”

  “Not that many,” Penelope shook her head. “Not all at once.”

  Daphne stepped closer to Cormac, glaring at Emma. “You found Margaret York as well, didn’t you? Did you have something to do with this as well?”

  “I tripped over her.” Emma replied, fuzzy with shock.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said. “You’re a Lovegrove. My father warned me about your family.”

  “Emma’s not a murderer,” Penelope said, incensed. “We just got here! It could just as easily have been your fault!”

  Virgil looked as though Penelope had just slapped him. “I was escorting these ladies and I can assure you they are most proper, gentle girls.”

  Daphne sucked in a breath. “And I’m telling my father you said that. He’s the First Legate.”

  “We know” Penelope shot back, unimpressed. “My father runs a brewery. So what? Emma still didn’t do it. It’s absurd for you to accuse her. And we just arrived,” she added acidly. “With a Keeper. Don’t you think if she was to blame, Lord Blackburn would have already secured her?”

  “Blackburn’s not much of a Keeper,” Virgil put in, eyeing Emma suspiciously.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. Lightning flashed in the perfectly clear spring sky. The crack of it hitting a tree made him jerk so violently he dropped his iron-wheel pendant. Daphne also jumped, loo
king pale. When Cormac offered her his arm, she took it with a grateful smile. He still wouldn’t look in Emma’s direction. She strongly considered bringing the lightning a little closer.

  “Until the investigators arrive, we need to follow the trail before it grows cold.”

  “The Order has investigators?” Penelope asked.

  “The Order has everything,” Cormac replied without inflection.

  “I can follow the blood curse,” Daphne said briskly. “Lilybeth, stop crying.”

  “But she’s dead.” Lilybeth was moaning and squeezing Sophie’s hand so tightly the other girl winced.

  “Yes, and unless your tears have healing powers, they won’t help. Now hush.”

  Daphne squinted at the girl and then at the ground all around them. She pointed her finger, following the trail.

  The residue of magic traveled over the stones straight to Emma.

  “I told you she was involved,” Daphne said. Lilybeth looked like she might faint. Virgil stepped forward, reaching for Emma. Cormac shifted to stop him but Penelope was faster. She kicked him in the shin. Virgil squawked in pain, clutching his leg. Keeper or not, he wasn’t sure how to proceed now. He was accustomed to girls who swooned and fluttered. Though, to be fair, Daphne was doing neither.

  Penelope took off her glove, swallowing thickly. “Are you sure?” Emma asked her when she realized what she was doing.

  She only nodded and reached out to touch the girl’s arm. Penelope went faintly green.

  “What do you see?” Emma whispered.

  “Not her murder,” Penelope assured her, sweat beading under her hair. “I can’t control the flashes I get. I can only tell you that her name is Alice and she worked as a seamstress, as we thought. She sewed out in the street under the gas lamps at night.” She shivered and opened her eyes. “That’s all.” She blinked several times. “Why do I taste leeks?”

  Daphne was trying not to gag behind her gloved hand. “Blood curse.”

  “Oh. I can see it now too,” she added, grimacing. “It does lead to you, Emma,” she said apologetically. “But also” she said sharply before Virgil could react, “to Sophie and Lilybeth.” She rubbed the spot between her eyes. “To all of us, actually.”