His mother gasped, “We can’t leave the hall! Alfred, darling, explain to Jack how impossible that would be.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “I can’t believe that my only son would drive me from my home!”
It was an effort for Jack to keep his voice steady in the face of her tears. “If you were widowed and alone, of course there would be no question of your leaving, Mother. But you are not alone. You’re married to one of Yorkshire’s leading gentlemen, a man who owns a fine home only three miles away. The real question is why you have not long since taken up residence under your husband’s roof.”
His mother swung her head around to glare at Abby. “This is all your fault! You have poisoned my son’s mind against me!”
Jack cut in before Abby could reply. “My wife has said nothing against you. The decision is mine. A fortnight from now, after you’ve moved and settled into Combe House, you’ll be glad. It’s a fine place, more modern and comfortable than here, and it would be yours.”
“She does not wish to go,” Scranton said, his eyes glittering with anger. “I do not want your mother distressed, Frayne.”
Reminding himself to be calm and tactful no matter what, Jack said, “You were most considerate to indulge my mother’s sensibilities and not take her from the house that had been her home for so many years. But no house is large enough for two masters and two mistresses.”
His mother was pouting like an adorable child. Though he was exasperated by her attitude, he could not despise her the way he did Scranton. He had too many fond memories of how she used to be. “The sooner you set up your own establishment, the better, Mother. You deserve to be mistress of your own home, and so does Abby.”
“You don’t understand. We can’t leave.” She rose from the table and darted from the room, weeping.
Scranton rose to follow her. “Don’t do this, Frayne,” he said ominously. “You will regret it.”
Jack rose, his height allowing him to look down at the older man. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it need be, Scranton. You have one week to leave peaceably. If you don’t, I’ll remove you bodily if necessary.”
The expression in Scranton’s eyes was chilling. His stepfather wanted him dead. “For Helen’s sake, I will say it one last time—don’t be a fool, Frayne.”
“My decision has been made, and I can’t think of any good reason why you shouldn’t move back to your home.”
“It is the bad reasons you should worry about,” Scranton said with lethal softness before he stalked from the room.
Jack drew a shaky breath and sat again. “I can’t say that went terribly well.”
Abby reached across the table and took his hand. “It’s hard to imagine how it could have gone smoothly. I’m curious why your mother is so sure they can’t leave. It seems an unnaturally strong attachment to this property. Do you think Scranton might have had a geographic spell laid on her to create the belief that she can’t go?”
“The opposite of the spell that made me stay away? It’s certainly possible,” Jack said, glad to have something to think about other than his mother’s reproachful eyes. “Could you study her and perhaps remove any such spells if you find them?”
Abby frowned. “She carries a very powerful anti-magic spell. I would rather not force my way into her mind against that. Such tactics should be a last resort.”
He squeezed her hand. “I think that we are rapidly approaching the last resort.”
She sighed. “So do I, my dear. So do I.”
After the confrontation with his mother and her husband, neither Jack nor Abby was in the mood to make love, but it was wonderful to cradle her warm body in the quiet of their bed. As she settled against him, she said sleepily, “I think we should redecorate the master and mistress’s rooms before we move in.”
“And maybe have them exorcised,” he added dryly.
She laughed. “At the least, we can burn some incense and cast a circle of protection so that the energy will be clean and clear when we move in.”
“Do you think they’ll leave quietly, lass?”
She exhaled softly against him. “I think that Scranton will call on his black magician to create a really nasty spell aimed at one or both of us. Maybe more than one spell. We must be on our guard. Are you shielding yourself?”
He nodded. “I hope his black magician lives more than a week away so there won’t be time to create trouble. I doubt we’ll be so lucky, though.”
“Much better to expect the worst.” Abby yawned and drifted off while Jack stayed in the uneasy territory between sleep and waking. Scranton’s words had been threatening, but what form would that threat take? The man had already driven Jack from Yorkshire and given him an attraction to risk, and there were far too many other possibilities. But now he had Abby beside him. Soothed, he finally dozed off.
In the deepest part of the night, Jack jerked awake, every fiber of his being saturated with despair. What was wrong?
Everything. His relentless mind spelled out all his failings in bitter detail. He had abandoned his family to become a middling army officer, one whose position could have been filled by better soldiers. Another officer who would have lost fewer men. In the horrors after midnight, the blood of Jack’s lost troopers stained his soul.
There was more blood, a dark river of blood, from the men he had killed personally, and the men who had died as a result of his orders. Decent Frenchmen who had wanted to live, whose only crime had been the uniforms they wore. How many lay rotting in foreign fields because of him? More than he dared count.
Though he hadn’t shot any of the inhabitants of Langdale, his betrayal of his people had surely caused deaths from misery and want. The knowledge of all the death on his hands was a tearing sorrow in his gut that could never be healed.
Agony swamped him, too excruciating to bear. His breath came in harsh pants and his heart hammered as if to burst from his chest. Frantically he wished for a way to end this anguish.
His pistols.
Knowing that he had a cure for his pain filled him with cool relief. He slipped quietly from the bed, taking care not to wake Abby. She was another of his failures, a lovely, gifted woman who had tied herself to a monster. She would despise him if he gave in to his violent nature and killed Scranton. She would be far better off without him.
He imagined her in London as the wealthy widowed Lady Frayne. Having been accepted by the ton, she could now have any husband she wanted. Yes, she would be better off without him, even though the thought of her with another man was like a saber in his belly. Lucky that they’d had a London lawyer draw up proper marriage settlements. Her future was secure, and Hilltop House would go to her outright.
The floor was icy under his bare feet as he padded into his adjoining bedroom. He knew exactly where to find his pistol case. He opened his trunk and bent over, finding the polished wooden box by touch. The pistols were French-made and very fine. He’d taken them from the tent of a dead French officer after the battle of Talavera.
Loading the pistols would be easier with light. He snapped his fingers over the bedside candle and the wick sparked into life. As he watched the flame catch and lengthen, he thought how the evil in his nature had surfaced. In the last weeks, Jack had managed to convince himself that magic was harmless, sometimes even good, but in the dark of night he knew it for wickedness. His father would be ashamed of him.
Dear God, what if the land’s blight was because he had been drawing off power to preserve his worthless life during his army years? The thought was unbearable.
His fingers were numb with cold, and he dropped the metal ramrod after he poured the powder charge into the barrel. He had to kneel on the floor and feel around for the rod, since his vision was curiously hazed.
Ah, there it was. He rammed the ball into the chamber and primed the pan. He repeated the procedure with the second pistol, since a man always wanted a second shot available just in case.
Salvation was at hand.
Hoping
his death would be enough to atone for his crimes, he raised the pistol to his temple. It was important that the weapon be aimed correctly. His hand shook so badly that the barrel jerked across his skin.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and raised his left hand to stabilize the weapon. Didn’t want to miss the killing shot and end up a pathetic brain-damaged creature incapable of caring for himself.
“Jack! What are you doing?” a female voice cried out with horror.
He looked up. In the connecting door was a tall, nightgowned woman with wide, shocked eyes that pierced his soul. A woman—yes, Abby. His wife.
“I’m doing this for you,” he tried to say, his voice a raw whisper.
He pulled the trigger.
Abby choked with terror when she saw Jack’s finger curl to fire the pistol. Desperately she hurled energy at the weapon to disrupt the firing process. Yes, blow the priming powder away now.
The hammer slammed into the empty firing pan. Instead of an ear-numbing blast, there was only a metallic click. Misfire.
As she darted across the room, Jack lowered the weapon and looked at it with a puzzled frown. Then he set it on the bedside table and lifted an identical pistol.
Again she flicked the priming powder from the pan, but it seemed a chancy way to prevent the gun from firing. She snatched at the pistol, hoping to get it away from him, but he was too strong for her. As he wrestled to keep the weapon, his eyes were wide and staring, as if he was in a trance.
“Dear God, Jack,” she cried. “What are you doing?”
“This is none of your affair!” The pistol wavered between them, and for an instant the barrel swung toward Abby.
“Abby?” Jack’s expression changed as abruptly as if he’d been doused with ice water. He stared at her with horrified disbelief. “Abby!”
He instantly released his grip on the pistol, which sent Abby stumbling backward. As she struggled to keep her feet, Jack bent over and pressed his hands to his temples, gasping, “What madness is this?”
She set the pistol aside and laid her hands on the side of his head. Finding enough calm to channel healing energy wasn’t easy, but after several long moments she managed to send him energy to reduce mental and emotional pain.
His expression smoothed out and the tension left his body. “There is heaven in your hands, lass,” he breathed. “Was I under some kind of spell? I woke feeling the blackest despair I’ve ever known. All I could think of was ending the pain.”
“It had to be some form of dark magic, though not one I recognized. Thank God a noise woke me. Since you weren’t in bed, I came to investigate.” Lightly she brushed his tangled hair as she took her hands away. Her heart still hammered from the terror of seeing the pistol pointed at his head. “Do you have any brandy here?”
He gestured at his trunk. “There should be a flask in there.”
She found the well-worn silver flask without trouble and unscrewed the cap. Hoping to steady her shaking hands, she took a hefty swig before handing it to Jack. The brandy burn helped clear her thoughts. “Don’t drink too much. We need to think about how this was done. The next attack might be more successful.”
He swallowed a mouthful of the brandy, coughed, then took a smaller sip. “Let’s do our thinking in our nice warm bed.”
He got to his feet and capped the flask, then wrapped an arm around Abby as they returned to the other bedroom. As she stacked the pillows, he created a ball of light and attached it above their heads on the canopy of the bed. They settled against the pillow-stacked backboard and he pulled the covers up to their chests. Lord, his feet were icy cold! Bless Abby for putting her warmer feet on his. “Where do we start, apart from the fact that once more you’ve saved my life? How did that devil get into my mind?”
“I think we made a mistake in assuming that Scranton had hired a black magician to cast the earlier spells,” Abby said slowly. “I think he must have created them himself. He isn’t a regular wizard—I would sense that if he was. But my father’s research has found references to odd magical talents that are not well known or studied. Given what we know about Scranton, I think that he has one of those twisted talents.”
“Might he have the ability to draw life directly from the land?” Jack exclaimed. “That could be why the estate is ailing. He sucks up the land’s energy for himself.”
“I think you’re right!” Abby sat up straighter. “When I met him, my first impression was that he drew energy from all around him. I even felt him tugging at me. His twisted talent might use that energy to create certain kinds of spells. My guess is that his power is inefficient, its range very limited. In the past he was able to drive you away from Yorkshire and make you reckless. Tonight he drained your sense of well-being and made you wish to end your own life. Those are inherently negative forms of magic.”
“So he takes and destroys and never heals or builds,” Jack said. “That odd magic may be able to get around my basic shields. Is there any protection that might be more effective against him?”
Abby bit her lip. “There might be.” She slipped from the bed, crossed to her linen press, and returned with a needle. “I think this will help.”
She stabbed it into the index finger of her left hand, then drew down the covers so she could raise the hem of his nightshirt all the way to his chest. Cold night air tickled his midriff. “I’ll draw a symbol of protection on your solar plexus.”
“Blood?” he asked warily.
“It sounds like the most dreadful hedge-witch flummery, doesn’t it? But there is truth buried in the old superstitions. Blood has power. Particularly the blood of a wizard.” With the bleeding tip of her finger, she drew a symbol that looked like three twisting spirals that joined at the center. He winced when she had to prick her finger again to renew the blood flow.
When she finished, she said, “This will be effective until it’s washed off.”
He took the needle from her. “You’re stronger and more disciplined than I, but if this symbol protects me, I assume it will benefit you, also.”
She shrugged. “I’m not likely to be the focus of Scranton’s wickedness.”
“We don’t know that for certain, and I don’t want to underestimate him again.” He studied the symbol till he was sure that he could reproduce it, then uncovered her midsection and pricked his finger.
When he touched the smooth, pale skin of her midriff, she said, “That tickles!”
“Then I shall be quick.” Trying not to be distracted by the lovely curves revealed by the magical light, he drew the three intersecting spirals. “Interesting. I can feel the protective shield forming.”
“It’s one of the most powerful of protective charms, but it’s not used often because of the requirement for blood,” she observed. “Plus, it’s stronger if there is a bond between the person casting the spell and the one receiving it.”
“So one couldn’t hire a wizard to do this and get as strong a shield.” He blew gently on the blood to dry it out, and a shiver passed through Abby. “Now, what else can I do while waiting for the blood to dry? Hmm.” He bent and began kissing her belly, his tongue teasing the soft skin while his hand slid between her thighs.
She slid lower into the pillows, her hips pulsing in rhythm to his stroking hand. “We must take care not to rub off the symbols.”
“If that happens, we’ll draw more.” His mouth followed his hands, tasting the hidden sweetness of her. She moaned and opened her legs to him as she buried her fingers in his hair.
After a brush with death, there was nothing sweeter than worshipping life.
Chapter XXXI
After making love to Abby, Jack slept soundly, but he awoke with reluctance. From the light, it was early and a clear, sunny day. Since Abby seemed awake, he asked, “Last night wasn’t just a bad dream, was it?”
“I’m afraid not.” Abby pushed herself up and studied his face, then nodded. “But we survived. What is on the schedule for today?”
Jack didn’t sup
pose he could say, “Kill Scranton,” since that would just upset Abby. But he didn’t see another solution, since Jack wasn’t up to a magical battle with the bastard. Abby’s own positive, healing power was so different from Scranton’s that she might be vulnerable to the man’s twisted spells. “We should ride over the estate. I need to see the place for myself, inch by inch and tenant by tenant, and so do you. Are you up to a day in the saddle?”
“I look forward to learning the estate, and maybe finding some clues about how to heal it.” She slid from the bed and reached for her robe. “Are your shields in place?”
He tested them. The symbol she’d drawn on his solar plexus pulsed with power. “Yes. I don’t think that Scranton will be able to poison my mind again.”
“I don’t think he poisoned it,” she said seriously. “Rather, he drew out everything good and positive in your nature, leaving the dark threads of fear and despair that haunt all of us on bad days.”
“Even you?” he said quizzically as he climbed from the bed and retrieved his robe. “You seem so strong and calm and sure of yourself.”
“Oh, Jack.” She laughed a little as she poured water into the washbasin. “I suppose I must be glad that I conceal my doubts and fears so well.”
He relaxed his eyes and studied her with inner vision as she splashed water on her face. Oddly enough, he’d never really looked at her like this, even after he had accepted that he had wizardly perception. Because she had always been strong, the rock he’d depended on when recovering from his accident, he hadn’t thought about the fact that she must have her share of doubts and regrets.
Her shields were too strong for him to do more than dimly sense those shadows, but the knowledge that she was vulnerable invoked new tenderness. As he returned to his bedroom to wash and dress, he realized that even though she was his superior in wizardry, he could still be the knight to his lady.
After dressing in riding clothes, they headed downstairs. Abby looked splendid in a navy blue habit with gold military-style trimmings. The tenants of Langdale would be impressed by their new mistress, Jack knew.