A Lady and Her Magic

  “Do you remember the chit I set up in Mayfair?”

  “Vaguely.” If Ashley remembered correctly, there was nothing truly remarkable about the girl.

  “She’s up and left me.”

  “And?” Certainly, worse things could happen to a man. Like being shunned for killing one’s wife.

  “And she started a bit of a rumor.”

  “About?”

  “My lack of physical attributes and attention to her needs,” Finn mumbled.

  Ashley tried to hide his chuckle behind a cough into his closed fist.

  “It’s not amusing,” Finn pointed out.

  “Certainly, it is,” Ashley said, laughing a bit louder.

  “How do you deal with it? The whispers behind your back? The constant judgment from your peers?”

  Ashley shrugged. “One becomes accustomed to it with time.” He’d had seven years to learn to accept his lot in life. The only time it rankled was when he met a lady like Miss Thorne. Then he wished he was anyone but himself.

  Finn reached for the whiskey bottle again. Ashley intercepted it and moved it out of his brother’s reach. “Drinking any more will be a waste, because you’ll not remember the taste of it when you wake up.”

  Ashley stood and called for Wilkins. The man appeared within moments. “Let’s find a room for Lord Phineas and help him to it, shall we?” he asked of the butler.

  Wilkins nodded his head and called for footmen to assist. “If I may be so bold, Your Grace, the rest of London should know what a good man you can be,” Wilkins said.

  “I prefer to let them think the worst.” Ashley sighed. “They’ve no expectations of me that way.”

  Ashley returned to his study and began to open his correspondence. Despite his sordid past, he was a bit too well connected to be ousted completely from society. For the first two or three years following his wife’s death, he’d been avoided as though he had a communicable disease, as though the propensity to murder was contagious.

  Then the few friends he had, namely his brother Finn, Matthew Lanford, and Jonathon Roberts, whom he’d met at Eton many years before, had rallied around him and forced him to resume his place in the House of Lords and step back into society. They all believed him innocent of any wrongdoing. It was unfortunate that they were all incorrect.

  The clip of quickly moving slippers in the corridor made him groan and hang his head. Within seconds, the Duchess of Robinsworth flung open his door and burst inside his sanctuary, without even the good graces to knock.

  “Mother,” was his only response as he looked down at the note before him. “What brings you to my home?”

  “You really should replace that butler,” she scolded.

  “And why should I do that?” he asked as he closed his ledger. She obviously had a purpose for visiting. And would most likely get to it as soon as she got over whatever slight Wilkins had given her. He would curse the man, but the butler seemed to be one of the only people who could keep his mother in line.

  “He’s impertinent. And rude.”

  Said the pot about the kettle.

  “He blocked my entrance to the old library. The one in the west wing. He stood right there in the doorway and refused to let me pass. Of all the nerve.” She harrumphed and dropped into a chair.

  That wing of the old house had been closed for longer than Ashley could remember. Since before his father had died when he was a boy. “And what purpose did you have for visiting the west wing, Mother?” he asked as he poured himself a liberal dose of the whiskey Finn had left behind.

  “It’s awfully early to be drinking, dear,” she scolded.

  “It’s awfully early for you to be visiting, Mother,” he returned. His mother never rose from bed before the luncheon hour. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping off the excesses of the night’s activities?”

  “I wouldn’t call them excesses,” she mumbled.

  He fished a note from the pile of correspondence Wilkins had given him. “You do not find one thousand pounds to be an excess?” he questioned.

  “Give me that.” She held out her hand and leveled him with a stare that would have made him quake in his boots when he was younger. With her icy glare and pinched brows, she could freeze him in his tracks when he was a boy, but no longer.

  “I think not,” he returned. Then he took a deep breath and dove directly into the issue at hand. “I believe it’s time for you to move back to the Hall, Mother.” He would hate having her underfoot, but he couldn’t keep an eye on her if she wasn’t at hand.

  She pulled back and turned up her nose. “I’ll do no such thing. My town house is perfectly acceptable.”

  “You mean my town house,” he clarified.

  “It’s mine in theory,” she huffed as she sank primly onto a chair across from him.

  “The amount of money you’re losing at the gaming tables is tremendous,” he said as he withdrew more notes from his drawer. They arrived nearly every day. From people his mother had gambled with and lost. They all knew she wasn’t good for the debts. Yet they played with her anyway because the Duke of Robinsworth never left a debt unpaid. His presence in their drawing rooms might not be valued. But his purse certainly was.

  “I’ll take those,” she said again.

  “Why, Mother? You cannot begin to pay them.”

  Her face fell. “I do not know why you feel you have to be so cruel,” she said as her eyes welled up with tears.

  “I do not understand why you gamble with money you don’t have.” He tapped the cards on the table. Then he made a clucking sound with his tongue. “But I’m prepared to pay them in full.”

  “As you must, Robin,” she said quietly, using his childhood nickname.

  “On one condition,” he amended.

  Her face contorted slightly. “Which is?” she said from between gritted teeth.

  “I’m closing the town house effective immediately. You’ll be moving back to the Hall.”

  She jumped to her feet. “I will do no such thing,” she gasped.

  He continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “I will reconcile your debts. Every last one of them. Then you will cease gambling with money you do not have. You may use your pin money any way you see fit.”

  “But there’s not enough,” she protested.

  Still, he continued. “You will spend nothing more than your pin money. You will move back to the Hall. You will assist me with my daughter.”

  “Anne hates me.”

  Anne hated everyone. “You will assist me with your granddaughter. She could use a feminine presence. You will behave respectably and set a good example for her.”

  “You need a wife,” she snapped. “It’s unfortunate that no one of respectable breeding will have you.”

  Oh, his mother knew how to throw the barbs that would hurt the most. “Then I am free from the wife search, it seems, since no respectable woman would pay me her favors.” He leveled her with a glare. Though Miss Thorne had graced him with a smile and no fear in her eyes.

  “It took years for me to get over your past deeds. To find my way back into society. You have no idea how arduous the task was.” He couldn’t gather sympathy for her, despite the look of anguish in her eyes. “If I move back to the Hall, I will once again be cast beneath your dark cloud of suspicion.”

  “Do you think I killed my wife, Mother?” he clipped out.

  “Of course not,” she rushed on.

  “Then I would assume a mother who finds no fault with her son will be quite content to return to the family estate.”

  “My friends won’t know what to think.”

  “Quite frankly, Mother, I don’t give a damn what they think,” he drawled. “I’ll have Wilkins begin the preparations to move your household.”

  “And just wh
en do you think this will take place?”

  “As soon as I bellow down the hallway,” Ashley replied. Wilkins would take great pride in ruffling the duchess’s feathers.

  “That man hates me,” she grunted. “When I’m in residence, I’ll expect him to treat me as befits my station.”

  “He’ll treat you as well as you treat him, Mother.”

  “I’d prefer being dropped into a vat of hot oil over being nice to that man.” She jumped to her feet and headed for the door.

  “I’m certain that can be arranged,” Ashley called to her retreating back.

  Three

  The duchess arrived the following afternoon in a flurry of activity. Ashley leaned against the newel post and surveyed the staff who scurried up and down the corridors of his home.

  “How did you do it so quickly?” Ashley asked, shaking his head in wonder.

  “Sheer strength of will, Your Grace,” Wilkins replied with a haughty smirk.

  “One would think you’d be hesitant to take on such a task, since doing so means you’ll have to see Mother on a daily basis.” Then Ashley caught the direction of Wilkins’s gaze as he stared at his mother’s housekeeper, whose bottom was in the air as she rummaged through an open trunk. “The effort could come with a boon, it would seem?” Ashley tossed in casually.

  The man’s face flushed for a moment. But only for a moment. “I certainly hope it will be worth it,” he finally said with a grin.

  “At least one of us might get to enjoy the favors of a benevolent lass,” Ashley lamented.

  This caught his butler’s attention. “I can send a message to—”

  Ashley held up a hand to stop his offer. The last time Wilkins had arranged for an assignation, Ashley had found himself with a beguiling lady, one who quaked in her slippers at the very sight of him. It simply wasn’t worth the effort. They were all the same, be they barmaids, wenches, whores, or members of the gentry. They all saw him as tarnished. As fearsome. As the dangerous Duke of Robinsworth.

  Ashley clapped Wilkins on the back with a smile. “Good luck with that little piece of baggage,” he said with a good-natured chuckle as his very staid and very proper butler picked up a valise and followed the housekeeper down the corridor. Wilkins never carried baggage. It was well beneath his station. Yet, it was quite apparent that performing below his station might yield some results beneath the housekeeper’s skirts.

  The very thought brought Ashley’s mind back to the comely little lass he’d met in the park that afternoon. Little wasn’t a good description at all. She was tiny compared to him. Tall by most standards, she came up to his chin. He could probably tuck her beneath his chin and hold her close.

  “Robin,” interrupted a voice from the doorway. He turned and found his mother, her face red with what he assumed must be anger. “Why is that Wilkins insists on interrupting my beauty rest?”

  He raised one brow. “Because he enjoys torturing you?”

  “He could at least have waited until after luncheon.”

  “Where would the humor be in that?”

  “I hope you don’t regret your decision to bring me here,” she said.

  “Regret having my mother under my roof?” He already regretted it. But he continued smoothly. “Never.”

  His mother’s smile suddenly brightened. “I had the most wonderful idea last night when I was discussing my new accommodations with some friends.”

  “Crying over” would probably be a more apt description of this discussion. Or “hysterically wailing.” “I assume you plan to tell me of your idea?” he prompted.

  “I plan to have a house party,” she answered, the smile on her face evidence that she was immensely pleased with herself.

  “Absolutely not,” he bit out. Of course she would want a house party. His mother had always lived to entertain.

  “You could allow me to tell you why, Robin,” she sniffed, “before you say no.”

  He took a deep breath. A room full of nosy gentlemen and ladies, all of whom would attend if for no other reason than to get a glimpse of the dangerous Duke of Robinsworth. “Why do you want to have a house party at my home, Mother?” he acquiesced.

  “So that my friends can see what a dear boy you are, of course,” she explained. “They see so little of you that naturally everyone is curious.”

  Now he was a carnival attraction. Fabulous. “No,” he clipped out.

  “My friends have been led to believe by many who are in Town for the season that you are more than just a recluse. That you’re a murderer. That you killed your wife. That you have two heads. That you have a curved backbone that twists your body into absurd proportions.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “Yes, all of those things have been whispered about. I want to show them that you’re none of those things.”

  More likely, she wanted to show off the Hall. Show off her position in society. Show off her wealth. Or his wealth, actually. But, to her, it wouldn’t matter. “And just who do you plan to invite to this gathering?” That would make all the difference in the world.

  His mother began to tick off names of prominent members of society, many of whom had marriageable daughters.

  “Absolutely not, Mother!” he said, throwing his hands in the air. “I will not allow you to play match-maker.” Truth be told, none of those women would have him. They’d quiver and stare and stammer when he came into a room. They’d pretend to be interested in him, but only long enough to gather fodder for the scandal sheets.

  “Don’t you think a house party sounds like a grand idea?” She beamed with pride as she glanced around the marble entryway of their ancestral home. “The estate has been much too quiet of late. It’s like a great sleeping beast and only needs someone to breathe some life into it.”

  “No more than ten guests, Mother,” he sighed. “And I will not be attending. So, do not think you will find a wife for me.” He turned on his heel, trying to avoid his mother’s frantic clapping and shrill shriek, but she reached for his sleeve.

  She patted his arm. “I could find a mistress for you, if you prefer. It would help your temper greatly.”

  A mistress? Good Lord. “I have no need of a mistress, Mother,” he ground out.

  “How long has it been, Son?” she whispered dramatically. “Years? Months?” She nodded to herself, a silly smile playing about her lips. “A paid woman would accept you.”

  “Mother,” he snarled.

  “Oh, never mind,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I promise not to even try to make a match for you.”

  “No courtesans. No widows.” If he kept going, the party would cancel itself simply by lack of participants.

  She mulled it over, tipping her head from side to side. “I accept,” she finally said.

  He turned to walk back to his study. “No matchmaking, Mother,” he called back to her.

  “You won’t regret this, Robin,” she called to him.

  He already did.

  ***

  Sophia cringed as her grandmother placed a vial of shimmery pink dust in her hand. “This one is for truth. Use it sparingly, Sophia,” she said with a frown.

  “I am not certain I’m ready for this one.”

  “I completely agree, but you’ve been taxed with unlocking the secrets in a little girl’s mind. They’re secrets she’s not even aware she’s carrying.” Her grandmother took Sophia’s hands in hers and squeezed. “Use it with great caution. Because if you use it for the wrong reason, the results can be disastrous.”

  “Disastrous? In what way?”

  “In a way that will affect your life forever,” her grandmother warned.

  Sophia tucked the dust vial into her reticule and stood. She glanced quickly around the rooms her grandmother had let upon their arrival in London. The accommodations weren’t too differe
nt from the land she came from. But the clothing certainly was. Sophia tugged at her bodice. She wasn’t used to wearing so many layers of clothing. She turned to face the family matriarch. “What type of dust did you use to coerce the dowager duchess into inviting us to her house party?”

  “None at all, my dear.” Her grandmother smiled benevolently at her. “I simply paid her a visit. She was deep in her cups at the time, but she still remembered me.”

  “You’ve walked between the two worlds enough that you have old friends?” How odd that her grandmother had never told her of her escapades.

  “Indeed, I have,” she said cryptically.

  “How long has it been since you’ve been on a mission? I don’t remember you traveling when we were younger.” In fact, she remembered her grandmother as always being a solid presence in her life. Much more solid than the parents she’d never met.

  “My own travels were before you were a light in your mother’s eye,” her grandmother said softly.

  “Do you plan to see her while we’re here?” Sophia asked, instantly hating the way her voice quivered.

  Grandmother’s face softened. “Do you?” she returned.

  Tears pricked at the back of Sophia’s lashes. She tried to blink them away. She had no memory of her mother. Perhaps it was best that way.

  “It’s all right if you want to go and see her,” Grandmother advised. “I can help you find her.”

  “I’d rather not.” Sophia swiped a hand across her nose. Her mother probably wouldn’t even recognize her.

  Her grandmother closed and locked the last trunk and turned to face Sophia. “That’s enough lamenting about the past.”

  No one had ever told Sophia or her two siblings why their mother had to leave the land of the fae, never to return. Why she wasn’t a part of their lives. But in the quiet times at night, she’d heard whispers of her mother’s misdeeds from the other beings who occupied the land where she came from. Those fireflies were a blasted nuisance. And, despite their beauty, they liked to tell tall tales. Tall tales full of doom and gloom. And remorse.