He cleared his throat. “Miss Allington? I have something to ask you.”
She turned slowly to face him, and he saw with a quailing heart that she knew what he was going to say.
And that she was going to refuse.
He asked her anyway. There was nothing else he could do, though his spirit faltered at the prospect of her answer. He took her strong hand in his, looked into her forget-me-not eyes, and said, “If your father were here, I would speak to him first, but as that’s not possible, I will take the liberty of speaking directly to you.”
“Oh, James,” she began, but he shook his head. He was committed now. It would be cowardly to give up before he began.
“I will come to the point,” he said. “I would like you to do me the honor of becoming my marchioness. Of being my wife.”
“James, I—”
“Truly, Annis, you must let me finish my speech,” he said, pulling a wry mouth, and pleased at the dry humor he managed to produce in his voice. “I rehearsed it, you see.”
Her little smile of comprehension and sympathy melted his heart, and he had to restrain himself from crushing her into his arms. He stood even more stiffly than before, holding her hand at a little distance from his body. He pulled in his chin, fortifying himself against the disappointment to come.
“I have never met a young lady like you,” he said. “And while at first I was—somewhat surprised—”
“Shocked, you mean to say,” she said. “Perhaps even revolted.”
“No, no, not that. Well, perhaps, a little bit. But in these few days of our acquaintance, I’ve come to admire the very qualities that—uh, startled me. We share many interests, especially our passion for good horses. Your life would be comfortable. Although there are duties that go with the title, I think you would not find them onerous. And,” he added, with a self-deprecating lift of his shoulder, “my mother would be pleased.”
“You mean, because she believes Papa will settle a lot of money on me.”
“I’m afraid your stepmother has made that clear to her.”
“Oh yes, my stepmother will surely have done that.”
He blew out a breath. “Money is a consideration for us, I’m afraid, but it’s not by any means the reason for my proposal. I promise you that. I thought, under the circumstances, that frank speaking between us would be best.”
“Of course,” she said. “I much prefer it.” Gently, she withdrew her hand from his. “I will speak frankly, too, James. I thank you for your offer of marriage, but I must decline on two counts.” She stepped back a little and met his eyes with her unnerving blue gaze.
“First,” she said. “I have no intention of marrying anyone. I don’t think the restrictions of marriage would suit me. Second,” she said, a little hurriedly, as if expecting him to interrupt, “I would hate to think that someone—anyone—should marry me for Papa’s money.”
“I’ve tried to make clear the money is not everything, Annis.”
“You’ve done a fair job of that, but still, as you say, it is a consideration.”
“I suppose I haven’t presented my suit in the poetic way that might persuade you.”
She exclaimed, with a laugh, “Poetic! I would hate that!”
He laughed, too. “Yes, probably. And I would be terrible at it, but do let me make a clean breast of everything. There’s no doubt that Seabeck needs an infusion of money. Marriage, I believe, is an economic agreement as well as—for the most fortunate—a romantic one.”
“I understand that,” she said, nodding. “Money can be useful. I intend to use mine for my bloodline, for example, to acquire more mares, expand my stables—”
“But you could do that here,” he said.
Her eyebrows lifted. “Here?”
“Of course.” He waved his arm to indicate the expanse of Seabeck all around them. “We have adequate stables, but we could make them bigger. We have an abundance of pasture and some excellent seed stock right here in Dorset.”
“But, James, everyone here in England is so—so old-fashioned. So stuffy. They would never let a woman like me breed horses!”
James could see he had no hope of convincing her, and he was dismayed at how much it hurt. It was physical, an ache deep in his solar plexus. He struggled to hide it from her, to maintain some remnant of his dignity.
He said, “You forget that there is the title. I’m a marquess, and only a duke—or Her Majesty and her children, of course—rank higher. We are often the ones who break the rules.”
“I don’t see you as the kind of man who enjoys breaking rules.”
“Ah. You think I’m stuffy, too.” He managed to produce a grin, and took pride in it.
She answered, in her blunt way, “Yes. A bit.”
There seemed to be nothing else to say. No other argument he could make. He cleared his throat again and immediately regretted it. He had been trying to rid himself of the habit. “Well. Thank you for hearing me out, Annis.”
“Oh, James, I do thank you for the honor,” she said. “I do. And I hope—That is, could we be friends?”
“Of course.” He turned away to begin untethering the horses, adjusting saddles and checking cinches, glad of the excuse to look away from her penetrating gaze. He was afraid she would recognize the pain in his eyes. “We had better start back. We’ll be expected for tea.”
She came to take Dancer’s reins from him and placed her foot in his cupped hands for a boost into the saddle. He held her boot, gave her the needed lift, guided her boot into her stirrup with care, making no contact with her skin or even the hem of her divided skirt. He avoided her eyes as he stepped up on the flat boulder to mount Breeze.
His throat tight and his heart burning, he let Annis and Dancer lead the way down the winding road so he could give in to his misery.
26
Annis
Annis was gripped by an acute sense of unhappiness as she and the sprightly Dancer led the way back toward Rosefield Hall. She couldn’t understand it. She had felt completely free of Frances’s maleficia this morning. She had no doubts about refusing James’s proposal, because it was her conviction that only the maleficia had driven him to make it. So why did she feel this welling of regret in her chest, this sorrow for what could not be?
She stripped her glove from her right hand and pressed her palm over the moonstone nestled at the point of her collar. The stone seemed to pulse against her hand, and beneath it a physical pain rose from her breast into her throat. Was she imagining that? She didn’t think so.
With her left hand, she lifted the reins to urge Dancer into a trot. She needed to think about this. It was nothing to be laughed off. Perhaps Aunt Harriet could explain it.
She glanced back to be certain James and Breeze were behind her, and caught a breath at the look of woe dragging at James’s eyes, his mouth set in hard lines of unhappiness. His hurt look made her chest ache even more. She swallowed, trying to release the ache, but without success.
It struck her, all at once, that there was a reason she couldn’t swallow these feelings away. They weren’t her own feelings. They were out of her control. But why should she experience James’s emotions, feel them as sharply as if they were her own?
She was utterly confused, and at first that frightened her. A moment later her fear gave way to anger. She said, “Let’s go,” to Dancer and pressed her heels against the mare’s ribs. Dancer broke into an eager canter, and then, when Annis pressed her calves tighter, a gallop.
Annis didn’t look back to see if James and Breeze were keeping up. Recklessly, relieved to be in motion, even if she was in danger of falling, she gave Dancer her head.
The mare was magnificent. Set free, she stretched her body into a flat run, ears back, tail streaming in the wind. Annis bent low over the pommel of her saddle, and strands of Dancer’s mane whipped against her face, stinging her cheeks. The wind brought tears to her eyes, but she didn’t care. She clung with her hands and her thighs and her heels, giving
herself thoroughly to the thrill and the risk of racing an unfamiliar horse full out on a strange road.
She arrived at the Rosefield stables a full five minutes ahead of James and Breeze. Jermyn met her with a disapproving scowl. She barely restrained herself from sticking her tongue out at him.
Jermyn was one person, at least, she thought, who would be delighted to know there was no chance of Annis Allington becoming the marchioness.
“You. Did. What.”
Annis gaped at her stepmother, stunned at the fury that blazed from her. It made her take a step back, as if Frances might strike her.
She said, her voice trembling just a little, “You heard me. The marquess asked me. I refused him.”
Frances’s lips pulled into a thin line, and white spots appeared beside her mouth. Annis had seen her stepmother lose her temper before, but not like this. This rage felt primal, ancient, as if a long-banked fire had suddenly blazed into an inferno and any pretense of sophistication had vanished in its flames. Frances leaned forward as if she might seize her stepdaughter by the throat. She hissed, “You will go back to him. Apologize. Tell him you’ve changed your mind.”
Annis took another step back, but she managed to say, though her mouth had gone dry, “No. I will not.”
“Lady Eleanor and I—”
“It doesn’t matter, Frances. This is between James and me.”
One of Frances’s hands had tightened into a fist. The other was a claw, the fingers curled, the nails sharp, and Annis braced herself for the attack that seemed imminent.
“You will do as I say,” Frances growled, in a voice Annis didn’t recognize. The cat’s smile was now a tiger’s snarl.
Annis shook her head, though inwardly she trembled. “I’m not going to marry him.”
“Any normal girl would leap at the chance to become a marchioness. I would be thrilled if I were you!”
“You’re not me, Frances! We’re different. I will apologize, but I’m going home.”
“You will do no such thing.”
“Do you think you can stop me? I have my own means, you know.” That was a slight exaggeration. Annis guessed she had enough money in her purse to buy passage for herself and Velma, but not a penny more.
Frances spun away from her, facing the wardrobe, her shoulders high and tight, one fist still clenched against her hip. Annis watched her, her own hands clasped before her breast, fighting a sense of terror that was out of all proportion. She was bigger than Frances. She was younger, and stronger, and yet…
She heard Frances draw a long, noisy breath. She watched her drop her shoulders and release her hand. Frances gave a tiny, almost undetectable shudder, and turned back.
Annis gaped anew at the change in her.
Her stepmother’s eyes no longer burned with that terrifying wrath. Her cheeks were smooth, and her lips curled. Her hands were relaxed by her sides. She said sweetly, “You know, Annis dear, there’s a telegraph office in Seabeck Village. Should you decide to go through with your mad little plan, I will wire your father. Black Satin will be sold before you reach New York.”
“No!” Annis cried. Her hand dropped from the moonstone. “You won’t do that! If you do, I’ll—I’ll tell Papa—” Her voice broke, and she twisted her fingers together so hard they ached.
Frances’s kittenish smile intensified, and her eyelids drooped lazily. “What?” she purred. “What will you tell him?”
“I’ll tell him that you—that you’ve been—”
“Oh, come now,” Frances said, just showing her little white teeth. “Let’s have it all out in the open, shall we? You’re threatening to tell your father I’m a witch.”
Annis gaped at her stepmother. “You—you—spied on me! On me and Harriet!”
“I observed you. Of course I did. What you were doing concerns me, after all.”
“So you admit it!” Annis cried, her composure in shreds. “You’re a witch! You magicked poor James, and you tried to magic me!”
“And what do you think your father would say if you told him that, you idiot girl?”
Annis didn’t respond. Breathing hard, as if she had run a mile, she turned to her dressing table and started pulling the pins out of her hair.
She knew the answer to Frances’s question, of course.
Her father wouldn’t believe a word of it. He would think his daughter had lost her mind.
Tea was an ordeal. Annis was again seated at James’s right, but neither of them spoke a word to the other, nor did they touch their food. Annis felt Lady Eleanor’s sharp gaze throughout the meal, and she knew there was trouble ahead. She should never have come. She should never have allowed herself to be used this way. When she had given in to Frances’s scheme, she had thought only of herself and getting home to her horses. It had never occurred to her that some young man might be harmed.
And now she had to fear for Black Satin as well. Frances didn’t make empty threats. She might be vain and selfish, but she was no weakling. She had proved that already. She was capable of doing just what she had said.
And Papa? She couldn’t trust him. He had been content to let Frances use her however she wished. What else might he do to keep Frances from pestering him?
When the meal ended at last, she and James parted without a word or a glance. James went into his library. The rest of the guests followed Lady Eleanor out to the garden to observe the midsummer flowers in bloom. Annis followed, but at the first opportunity she slipped away into the woods to be alone, to try to think what she might do to save herself, to save Bits, to soothe James’s wounded heart.
She wandered for a bit, finding deer tracks that wound through the shadows of the trees and around the tangles of brush and berry vines. The moonstone throbbed against her throat, and instinctively she chose her direction according to its intensity. She didn’t think about where she was going but simply walked, turning beneath an ancient elm, pressing through a narrow spot where brambles caught at her clothes, following a track that widened and then forked. She took the left turning, urged by the vibration of the moonstone. It had begun to feel familiar, and she trusted it. The way was rough, with occasional stones and tree roots that threatened to trip her. She watched her step and, despite the uneven path, felt better and better as distance grew between her and Rosefield Hall.
When the path suddenly broadened and smoothed, she looked up to find that she had reached the outskirts of Seabeck Village. To her left was a cottage with an oil lamp glowing in its single window. Ahead the sun was just setting beyond the thatched roofs. Long violet shadows stretched across the high street. A horse and cart waited outside a greengrocer’s. Two women in long coats, carrying laden wicker baskets, walked in a westerly direction, away from Annis.
She stopped where she was, uncertain what to do next. It would be full dark soon. She should be dressing for dinner. Velma would be in a panic. Frances would be irate, and it was rude to miss dinner without warning her hostess. She should turn around instantly, hurry back to Rosefield Hall.
She didn’t do it. Aunt Harriet hadn’t mentioned the name of her inn, but there was only one. A sign swung on an iron shaft projecting from the thatched eaves, featuring a crude painting of four leaping fish. The legend read “Four Fishes Inn,” and as Annis started toward it, the moonstone gave one last, affirming pulse.
A tall figure stepped out of the inn’s entrance and stood waiting on the stoop. Annis hurried forward to seize her aunt’s proffered hand. “Aunt Harriet! Were you waiting for me?”
“I was.”
“But—I didn’t even know I was coming! How did you?”
“I summoned you, Annis,” Harriet said, as calmly as if this sort of thing happened every day in her world. “Fortunately, you heard me.”
“I think the moonstone heard you.”
“Only because you were open to its message. Come inside, it’s beginning to get dark.”
“Frances is going to be furious if I don’t appear for dinner.”
&
nbsp; Harriet arched one dark eyebrow. “Does that matter?” She pulled open the door and led Annis into a small, dark foyer with a reception desk at one side. Straight ahead of them was an uncarpeted, crooked wooden staircase, and Harriet started up it.
Hurrying behind her, Annis said, “It does matter, I’m afraid. She threatened to send a telegraph to my father, to tell him to sell Black Satin!”
Harriet turned right at the top of the stairs and produced a key from her pocket to open a door. The lintel was so low she had to duck to go under it. Annis did the same.
Once inside the room, as Harriet held a match to the wick of an oil lamp, Annis said, “I have never seen Frances so angry. It was horrible—one moment she was so furious I thought she was going to strike me, and the next she was like ice.”
“What made her so angry?”
“James proposed marriage, and I refused him.”
“Ah. That must have been upsetting for you both.”
“James doesn’t want to marry me, not really. It’s just the maleficia, not—not love.”
“It can be both,” Harriet said mildly. She pointed to the only chair in the tiny room. “Have a seat. You’ve had a long walk.”
“At least my electuary worked,” Annis said glumly as she sank into the chair. “I’m not having those revolting feelings anymore.”
“That’s good.”
“Why did you—what did you call it?—summon me?”
Harriet sat on the edge of the bed, stretching out her long legs. She folded her arms and regarded Annis. “I know what happened this morning.”
“You do? How?”
“It’s something I do sometimes. Something that is part of my ability. Often I can’t do anything about what I know, but sometimes I can, and this is one of those times.”
Annis said wonderingly, “I know things sometimes, too.”
“Do you? Tell me about that.”
“I knew what Frances intended, when she and Papa made me come to England.”
“Ah. Any other times?”
“Yes, this morning. I knew James was going to ask me to marry him.”
The Age of Witches Page 20
