Uncertain Magic

  Earnest was the only one who took her gift so matter-of-factly. She was silent a moment as caricatures of half the local personalities formed and changed and vanished from his fertile and energetic mind.

  “Earnest,” she said shyly, “I wanted to tell you something.”

  He abandoned his amusing meditations in an instant. “And what might that be, love?”

  She twisted her hands together. “I’m engaged to be married.”

  For a moment he just looked at her, his mind a stunned blank. Then the thought and the words erupted simultaneously. “Engaged! To whom?”

  She pulled away a little. “I don’t suppose you know him. He’s one of Geoffrey’s friends.”

  “Engaged,” Earnest repeated. “I never thought you—” He stopped, but the completion of that sentence was clear to Roddy.

  “I know,” she said, and pulled away entirely. She went to the window and tugged nervously at the heavy damask drapes. “My talent. But you see—I want—” She dropped the curtain and turned. “Oh, Earnest, my gift doesn’t work with him! It’s just like normal people.”

  “Doesn’t work.” He frowned at her. “Are you certain? That’s never happened before, has it?”

  “No. But I’m certain. There’s nothing. He’s like—I don’t know. Silence. With everyone else it’s a babble, and I have to work to keep them out. When I’m with him…I don’t have to try. I can’t feel him if I do try. It’s wonderful, Earnest. So peaceful and calm.”

  “Who is this fellow?”

  “He’s an Irish peer,” she mumbled quickly, as if by speaking too fast she might somehow slide over the truth. “Lord Iveragh.”

  “Iveragh!” Earnest’s dismay hit her like wall of falling bricks. “You’re joking!”

  “No, I—I’m not. And I know what you must have heard of him, but—”

  Earnest had lunged to his feet. “Heard of him! Holy hell, girl, are you raving mad? The man’s a killer!”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Does Papa know of this?”

  “Yes, he—”

  “Why didn’t he call me back?” Earnest flung himself into pacing the room. “I could have told him—oh, God, oh, God, how did he let this happen? Has a contract been written yet?”

  Roddy summoned a trembling breath. “Last week. And Faelan isn’t a killer. I mean—they were honest duels, and fair, and they were forced on him. Geoffrey acted his second.”

  “Faelan,” Earnest sneered. “It’s Faelan, is it? The bloody bastard—I suppose he knew just how to twist a pretty child around his finger! I suppose he asked you to call him Faelan, and he called you my love and darling, and expected you to fall down at his feet. Has he kissed you?”

  Roddy drew herself up. “That isn’t your affair.”

  “Roddy.” He caught her arm. “He’s a murderer. He killed his own father in cold blood.”

  She twisted away. “That’s not true!”

  “The devil it isn’t. I suppose he told you that, too.”

  “He said it was a rumor. And why wasn’t he hanged, if everyone is so certain he’s a murderer?”

  Earnest waved his hand. “Because his mother got him off somehow. The deluded woman stands by him to this day. She’s the only reason he’s received anywhere in London, and she won’t hear a word against him.”

  “Perhaps she’s right.”

  He took her by the shoulders and shook her. “He wants your money, Roddy. Don’t you see that?”

  “Of course he wants my money,” she cried defiantly. “He’s going to lose his estate without it.”

  “Why?” Earnest pleaded. “Why marry him? There are any number of gentlemen who—”

  She struggled out of his punishing grip. “You know why, Earnest! I told you! My gift—”

  He looked at her for an arrested moment as the piece he had forgotten fell into place in his mind. Then he threw back his head with an ugly laugh. “Like a damned stupid ostrich. You can’t see the evil in him, so you think it isn’t there.”

  “He isn’t evil. He’s Lord Geoffrey’s friend.”

  “Yes. And a worse judge of a man than Lord Geoffrey I’d like to see. His Lordship’s damned notions of loyalty will be the death of him one of these fine days.”

  “Just because—”

  “Just because Geoffrey’s some kind of bloody philosophical saint, you don’t have to send yourself to perdition by the same road. He thinks Iveragh saved his life when they were a couple of scrubby schoolboys; that’s why Cashel holds with the man. It was some boating accident…ancient history. The last decent thing Iveragh ever did, and it happened before I learned to walk. You weren’t even a gleam in Papa’s eye, you little twit.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  He sat down heavily. “No. I don’t. Roddy, I can’t let you do this. For all we know, the next we’d hear of you after you went off with Iveragh was that you’d fallen from a sea cliff and been killed like his father was.”

  Roddy caught a chilling vision along with those words, of a body tumbling from a cliff—a man’s body, that twisted and changed to her own. She shoved away Earnest’s horror. “Stop it. You’re being ridiculous. I hope I’d not be so poor a wife that Lord Iveragh would feel he had to push me off a cliff.”

  Earnest bent his face into his hand. “I can’t believe Mama and Papa have agreed to this.”

  “Well,” she said, “they have.”

  “And when is the wedding to be?”

  She hesitated, wary of another outburst from him. “The banns are already posted. The ceremony is to be in two weeks, when Fae—when Lord Iveragh returns from London.”

  “Oh, God,” he said, his voice muffled. “Roddy—don’t do it. There must be any number of ways to break the contract. His character alone—”

  “I’m not concerned with his character,” Roddy said sharply. “Don’t you see, Earnest? My gift. How can I make you understand what it means to find someone who isn’t afraid of me? Who doesn’t flinch when I look at him? Maybe I am an ostrich, but that’s better than being an outcast all my life!”

  Earnest looked up in sudden suspicion. “Does Papa know your talent has failed with Iveragh?”

  She set her chin. “No, he does not. And you won’t tell him, Earnest, because if you do, I’ll run away with Iveragh. I swear to God I will.”

  He stared at her, judging the seriousness in her stony expression. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, I see that you will.”

  A sudden trembling took her lower lip. “Just wish me happy, Earnest,” she whispered. “Please.”

  He stood up and drew her into his arms, closing his eyes in anguished defeat. Oh Roddy, he said in silence. I do. You know how much I do.

  Chapter 5

  An early winter struck on the morning of the wedding, leaving the parish church frigid with the first deep snow of the season. Even the crush of guests did not warm the gray stone walls or the chilly air. In her stiff white muslin gown, Roddy’s toes were cold and her fingers were frozen around her nosegay of satin ribbon and evergreen, but her face burned with shamed agitation as she walked down the aisle under the prurient interest of everyone present.

  The general opinion was pregnancy. The hotly debated topic was who—Lord Iveragh himself, or some undergroom whose get the earl would claim as his own in order to gain control of Roddy’s portion. Odds ran heavily in favor of the groom, since Iveragh had been known to come into the country only a bare few weeks before.

  Still, there was wild speculation about the man who stood silently waiting at the front of the chapel beside Geoffrey. Tall and fiercely handsome, black hair and black cloak and eyes as blue as the sky beyond a soaring hawk—Faelan’s unholy allure was as strong in church as without. As she walked toward him Roddy was treated to some lascivious inspirations from the imaginative ladies of the East Riding concerning her future husband.

  The images made goose bumps of cold and fright stand out on her arms. She reached Faelan and would not look at him. Only h
is solid warmth, so close as they turned to face the altar, made him seem human to her at all.

  His voice, that rich and seductive voice that she had almost forgotten in the three weeks since she had seen him, repeated the vows with steady certainty. Her own words quavered pitifully, as fleeting as her frosted breath. It was suddenly becoming real, this ceremony. She stood there and thought: What am I doing? Every warning, from her father and mother and Earnest—from Faelan himself—all came back and tumbled around in her head until she thought she would crumple to the floor where she stood.

  Faelan touched her arm, and suddenly it was already over, already too late to change her mind. He took her hand and worked her glove free. The ring slid onto her trembling finger, as smooth and cold as the closing of a trap.

  Without the support of his offered arm, she doubted she could have made the walk back down the aisle. She looked toward her family as she passed, and saw not a flicker of the discomposed emotion beneath those unmoved faces. Even her mother did not cry, too frozen in unhappiness for tears.

  It was Roddy who wept as the door closed on the carriage. In the cold light of dawn that morning, she’d visited the stables before she left home, fed her old pony an apple in small pieces, so his worn-out teeth could manage it. She’d gone to all the rooms in the house and the secret places in the garden where she had played as child, gathering precious memories amid the bare, silvered branches.

  She pulled her woolly cloak about her and pressed her gloved hand to her mouth to conceal its quivering, staring very hard out the frosted window until the sight and sound of the guests was far behind. It was done, irrevocably, and she felt as if she had leaped from Earnest’s imaginary cliff and now fell through the air, a long, slow fall, with time in plenty to remember every fear and regret.

  Faelan was watching her, she knew. Just watching, from his place by the other door, which made her want to cry harder. Because she was afraid. Because he was a stranger still and maybe did not understand what it was to leave the home and family that had been her shelter for nineteen years. Maybe he had never loved anyone, and never could.

  The future unrolled before her, empty of affection and laughter: no brothers, no parents, no familiar network of minds and hearts to envelop her in comfort and security. She marveled that her lips had moved to say the words that bound her to him. The folly of it, the utter folly…she would never find happiness by leaving behind all she had ever known and loved. Her need for freedom now seemed a crazy dream, with no connection to this reality of a ring and a promise and the unknown man beside her.

  Her head drooped, nodding listlessly with the motion of the coach as the long ride dragged on. Faelan was silent, and Roddy found she had no voice to speak. Even the rattle of the wheels was muffled by the new snow that covered the frozen road. The interior grew dim with late afternoon, and her clasped fingers seemed very white in the gloom.

  An unexpected movement caught her eye in the twilight. His hand touched hers, covering the pale shape with another, larger one, entwining their fingers in a gesture that was no less intimate for being muffled by two layers of kidskin. He remained silent. He did not even look at her. Though he pressed his palm to hers steadily, she sat still, afraid to misinterpret. It was so strange, to have that touch and not be certain of the thought behind it. She wanted comfort, but she was not sure, not brave enough to turn to him and lay herself open and find that she had been wrong.

  “Regrets?” he said, his voice soft amid the darkness and the creak of the wheels on fresh snow.

  Roddy looked up at him. She nodded.

  He smiled a little. “Honest child. You’ll shame me into respectability.”

  She moved her hand uncertainly, and his hold tightened, just enough to still her.

  “Roddy,” he said, with a note in his voice she had never heard before, “I want you to forget your regrets. For tonight. Tomorrow you may take them up again. I won’t blame you. But you’ve given me back my home, little girl. You’ve given me another chance. For that…” He stopped, and his fingers closed harder on hers. He said fiercely, “God—there aren’t words to make you understand what that means to me. I want to show you.” He lifted her hand and pressed it to his lips. “For tonight—forget what I am, forget what you know of me. Let me make everything perfect. This one time. Before the world comes back to haunt us.”

  She stared at her hand in his. Gratitude. It was not what she had wanted, but anything…anything that would fill this terrible void…

  “I’ll try,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  The relief in his voice surprised her. He sat back, but kept her hand in his lap, and held it there for all the long ride to York.

  Firelight sent huge shadows against the low ceiling of the inn’s best chamber. Roddy watched them move and listened to the occasional creak of the floor under Jane’s busy feet. A simple mind Jane had, with no room for fine speculations on gentlemen’s reputations. To Roddy’s maid, a man was at worst a brute to be endured and at best a mild annoyance. Jane’s thoughts as she hustled Roddy into the bedroom, clucking around her as she changed out of the wedding dress and into a taffeta gown, were divided between sympathy that Roddy would have to suffer a woman’s duties and the hope that those duties would soon result in another child for Jane to fuss over. The maid said nothing of either, though, and kept her moon-shaped face neutral. Won’t do to frighten the girl, she was assuring herself. Only make things worse.

  Such grim presentiments made Roddy’s knees feel a little shaky. Deliberately, she called to mind another opinion, this one held by a scullery-maid: the one who seemed to be caught so often in the pantry by one of Roddy’s brothers. She had no quarrel with male importunities. She was proud of the fact that she had introduced each of the Delamore boys in turn to the delights of love. Standing there with Jane fussing about her gown, Roddy felt her face grow hot as she recalled jumbled pantry scenes that had leaked into her awareness, try as she might to block them.

  In the midst of these agitating reflections, a light knock on the door made both Roddy and her maid stiffen. Jane stood upright from buttoning one of Roddy’s lacy cuffs, pursed her lips, and stalked resolutely to the door.

  A stalwart young girl entered, carrying a tray, followed by the innkeeper’s wife with another. They arranged the dishes on a round table near the fire, lit new candles, and then retired. With one hand on the door, the innkeeper’s wife paused and looked at Jane. “If you please, I’ve been asked to see you to your room, ma’am. If you’ll come with me now?”

  Jane’s face went blank, covering her instant affront at this thinly veiled order. But its source was obvious, and she obeyed, leaving the room with her jaw set and her eyes glued resentfully to her feet.

  Left alone, Roddy stood staring into the fire a moment, and then sat down. Her hands felt cold, and though a pleasant smell drifted up from the covered dishes, all appetite had left her. She poured herself a generous portion of wine and stood up again, wandering restlessly around the room.

  The bright reflection of her hair in the dressing-table mirror made her stop. She turned, frowning critically at her image in the candlelight. There was nothing there to surprise her, nothing different from what she had seen reflected in the minds of her parents and brothers and friends all her life.

  She was not beautiful. She wasn’t even pretty. She was…intense. Contradictory. Her hair shone dull gold and angelically curly, but her eyebrows were two dark wings that tilted upward, like the faces on the demons carved in the chapel at home. Her chin was too pointed, her mouth too apt to smirk, and her eyes—well, her eyes weren’t the kind that lovers liked to gaze into for dreamy hours. There would be no lazy afternoons in a hidden bower for her. When men looked at Roddy, they didn’t see an attractive woman. They saw themselves, and it was an image that none seemed to care to focus on for long.

  She lifted the silver goblet and drank greedily, hoping the wine would warm the chill from her fingertips. At a sound from the doo
r, she jumped, and the empty vessel fell with a soft thud onto the carpeted floor. She stooped to pick it up.

  When she rose, he was there.

  In a full-length dressing gown of midnight blue, he seemed to Roddy to be inordinately tall. As he reached back to close the door behind him, the robe fell carelessly open, revealing a shirt unbuttoned at the throat, a sprigged waistcoat, and pale breeches above soft ankle-boots and plain silk stockings. Roddy moistened her dry lips, determined not to let her voice squeak.

  “My lord,” she said, and sketched a formal curtsy.

  He gave her a slight bow in return, then stood looking at her, his dark brows raised and his lips pressed oddly together. “Shall we dance?”

  Roddy blinked up at him, and saw belatedly that he was joking. She made an effort to smile which didn’t quite work.

  “Perhaps we’d better eat,” he said.

  Roddy nodded. She sat down in the chair that he held for her. The heavy odor of warm food and his lingering presence at her back made her stomach squeeze uneasily. When he pulled his own chair close to hers, she felt positively ill with fright.

  There was a tureen of soup, from which he served them both. Roddy sat staring down at the clear broth, unable to even lift her hand and pretend to eat. Her insides seemed to press upward into her throat. It was a panic that fed on itself: the more she tried to calm her fear, the more terrified she became. She could not even have said what she was afraid of. Strangeness. Change. Him. Herself. Not knowing.

  That was it. The uncertainty. Her life had been ordered and comprehensible, without surprises. She’d been hurt sometimes—by Geoffrey’s withdrawal, by his loving someone else—but she had always been sure.

  Now, cut adrift, she was drowning in doubt. Faelan had said to forget what he was. For tonight, just one night, to forget. But she could not forget; she didn’t know what he was. A dark man with eyes the color of the sky. That was all she saw.

  He looked at her, returning stare for stare. “Eat your soup,” he said.

  Like a chastised child, Roddy picked up her spoon. She had thought she could not eat, but the first salty taste of broth slid easily down her throat. She took another sip, and began to feel slightly better. When he tore off a piece of bread and offered it to her, she took it. The familiar, crusty smell and blandness comforted her. Before she realized she had eaten the whole chunk, he was offering her another.