The Penwyth Bride (The Witch's Daughter Book 1) (10 page)

A wave of sympathy for the girl doomed to drudgery rose in me.

She caught it and returned an unpleasantly mocking smile as if it were I who should be pitied. Deftly she helped lace the stiff stomacher to the mantua properly, pulling the cords securely but not tightly. She expertly draped the buffon, and in two minutes I was dressed, a great improvement over Nanny’s clumsy work. She also pulled my wild hair into a charming knot at the back of my neck.

The maid showed her training, and I could see now how thoughtful Lady Penwyth had been to give her to me. But I could not like her. She attended me with an air of one who thought the tasks beneath her. Several times I saw her smirking in the mirror as she stood behind me threading a ribbon through my curls. I read her thoughts all too well: by birth I was above her, but in personal attraction far below.

And in this world, what would be of greater advantage in the end?

###

The next morning, I could no longer contain myself. My affinity clamored for release and I knew that if I did not allow the flow I would soon sicken.

I made my way to the walled garden. The scent of dirt baking under the flaming summer sun filled my mouth with sweetness. I drowned in a cauldron of whispers from the plants tangling over themselves to be heard, while the land flinched from me like an animal licking a barely-healed wound. Dimly I sensed that it was still recovering from a rupture, but my skill in reading was weak from disuse, half-taught secrets, and a distracting memory from the previous evening . . .

. . . a card blown under the japponaised cabinet as the whist table was being put up . . . Lady Penwyth’s entreaties that I might find it while she fussed over the chits and notes . . . two polished shoe tips breaking into my vision while I hunched over my knees on the floor . . .

“I think I have what you seek.”

The breath was warm on my ear as Damon spoke.

I scrambled up immediately, heart fluttering.

He held up the missing knave of hearts between two fingers.

“You are a rogue, sir,” I said with a shaky laugh. “I’ve been on my knees this quarter of an hour searching while you watched. How long would you have let me gone on?”

“Not much longer,” he replied. The tip of his tongue came out the side of his mouth in a wicked grin. “Your diligence has been proven.”

I could not tell if he made me a sly object of fun or paid me a compliment, but in the next instant he reached for my hand and pressed the card in my palm. “And it has done my heart a world of good to see a woman down where men usually dwell,” he murmured in that half-mocking way of his before he bowed and departed.

My hand felt scorched where he had touched it, burning me down through my soles.

Now I sat gazing dreamily at that hand, curled like an autumn leaf on my lap, expecting to see blisters where his fingers sizzled my flesh. Gradually the sun slumped lower, and it took the sigh of the myrtle blossoms preparing for the drenching of night insects to startle me out of my reverie.

I jumped up and hurried to the wrought-iron gate, dodging vines reaching out to hamper me. As I avoided the claws of an insistent thatch of bittersweet, my bad ankle banged against something hard.

I parted the bittersweet. Two spheres of mildewed granite huddled within the prickles, balanced upon each other like a snow-maiden the children would make in the North. The top sphere of granite had been hollowed out in the shape of a ring.

“A giant’s wedding ring,” I murmured.

It was a strange object, an ancient object, and without conscious thought my hand reached out to it.

Hoof beats and the swish of a horse’s tail on the other side of the wall made me pause.

“Did you see him?”

It was Susannah. She spoke with an eager breathlessness.

But it was another familiar, impatient voice that made me shrink silently into the shadow of the wall near the gate. Damon.

“No. He wasn’t at The Three Lions, and I had no time to go to the quays today.”

Susannah made a sound of disappointment I strained to hear over the thumping of my heart. The horse jangled its bridle, as if jerking its head.

“Sister, I warn you that you had better leave off this foolish fancy of yours. Our mother will never countenance it. For that matter, neither will I.”

“But you like him! You said he was one of the best fellows in the district.”

“A man who can tell an amusing ditty while in his cups is very different from the sort who is suitable for marriage to one of us. Look higher or Mama will do the looking for you.”

“I suppose you are speaking from experience now?”

There was no answer.

Susannah laughed unpleasantly. “You’d better pay less attention to your own amusements and more attention to our little brown sparrow with her broken wing if you wish to win her. Others have been sniffing around the heiress.”

“What do you mean?”

“Only that Miss Persia Eames has seen more of dear Cousin Roger this summer than
we
have. You know he brought her home that day she got lost on the moors.”

“And whose fault was that? What the devil were you about to let her wander away? She could have been killed out there. You know what the bogs are like.”

I warmed to the concern in Damon’s voice.

“How was I to know she’d go so far with that foot of hers?” Susannah replied defensively. “If she had stayed put I would have come back for her. I only meant to be gone a few minutes, and then she spoiled--never mind.”

“What . . . oh, good God, don’t tell me you met
him
out there!”

“Well, what if I did? And the high-and-mighty manner is rich coming from you. I know all about your dolly-mops, so don’t speak to me about soiling myself with the lower orders.”

“That is entirely different, and you know it.”

“But why? Why is it different for you and not me?”

Baffled rage suffused her voice, and I would have felt sorry for her if I had not been grappling with the news that Damon indeed kept a mistress or two. The pain was of a queer sort, wounding but not fatal.

“Don’t be a damned fool. It is the way of the world,” Damon replied impatiently. “I wouldn’t put it past Mama to pack you off if she got wind of your little amusement with Jack Toddy. And don’t worry about Miss Eames and me. I’ve got that well in hand.”

“I wouldn’t count on anything yet, Damon. You did not see the way that Roger was looking at her when he fetched her from St. Ives.”

“And what way was that?” murmured a buttery voice.

“Papa!” Susannah gasped. Her horse whickered, hooves scraping the ground.

“We did not see you, sir.” Damon said it carefully.

“Of course you did not. Your heads were bent together like gossiping housemaids. Now, what was this about Roger and our guest?”

“Nothing,” Susannah muttered. “Only that he seems to have taken an interest in Miss Eames, probably to spite us.”

“That will not do if he has,” Sir Grover said mildly.

I am sure Damon and Susannah froze in terror. The world hushed its breath while air leaked fitfully into my lungs.

Footsteps approached the wrought-iron gate near where I crouched on the other side. “You had better make sure her interest is not diverted, sir. I’ve had a note from my man of affairs.”

“Oh Christ,” Damon groaned.

“I hope your Maker hears you, for the latest tidbit making its rounds through the drawing rooms is that since his return from the Continent, Damon Penwyth’s newly developed taste for deep play has resulted in owing Mr. Henry DeVere five hundred quid.”

I stifled a gasp.

“This time,” Sir Grover said, “I don’t intend to pay your debt.”

“You cannot leave me swinging,” Damon choked. “A gentleman’s honor . . .”

“A gentleman should not gamble with blunt he does not have. I’ve the new wheal to consider, and your sister has to be launched soon, your mother says.”

“But Papa, I don’t wish to be launch--”

“Silence.” Sir Grover wielded the word like a knife, and Susannah instantly stilled.

He continued pleasantly, “I suggest that you exert yourself with regard to our houseguest, Damon.
She
, perhaps, might be more agreeable than I am. I--now what the devil was that?”

I could see a hand closing about the bars of the gate; from its place on Sir Grover’s finger, the cabochon ruby winked.

“What was what, Papa?” Susannah asked.

“I thought I heard . . . something.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Damon muttered.

Sweat exploded off my forehead while Sir Grover paused in a thoughtful silence. Finally he said: “Well, be off the two of you. And stay away from this part of the property. After the hay is ricked I’m going to have the hands pull the wall down.”

Hoof beats faded as Susannah and Damon moved away, leaving Sir Grover standing by the wrought-iron gate. The hand with the ruby ring drifted along the bars to the iron knob flaked with rust, while the other came up to wrap around the bars.

I huddled silently in the grass, terrified of discovery and praying with every nerve that he would not push open the gate and see me. Like a fox brought to bay I stared at Sir Grover’s gripping hands.

A sound, either anger or disgust, vibrated in his throat. The gate rattled under his grip.

To the left of me the land stirred angrily. Something undefined reared an ancient head and began to snake silently toward the defiler.

“Bah!” Sir Grover flung himself away. Unsteady footsteps marked his retreat while the shadow sank back. I leaned against the cold stone wall, breathing freely once more and despairing that I would be unable to warn Sir Grover. The garden would be revenged upon him if he followed his plans to destroy it.

But warning him would lead to awkward questions I had no desire to answer. The safety of a witch hinged upon discretion.

I wiped my clammy forehead against my bent knee. Eavesdroppers got what they deserved, so Sarah Eames would say, and I certainly got mine. I wished I had not learned that Susannah had a secret lover, or that Damon amused himself with a few mistresses, and I allowed myself a watery smile over the notion that the reclusive Roger Penwyth could have any interest in me.

But mostly I wished I had never known that Damon was desperate for money, and that I remained his only hope of getting it.

CHAPTER NINE

I pulled myself together and made my way back to the house. Nanny came upon me as I hobbled gingerly through the kitchen, spent by the release of my affinity and burdened with the weight of secrets I was never meant to know.

I needed to sooth my distracted mind, but I knew what to do. I begged from Nanny the use of a spinning wheel.

She giggled at my request, putting a cracked black nail in her mouth. “Eh, miss, I don’t know what mistress will say, me letting a quality lady do such humble work.”

“Oh, spinning is a fine genteel occupation,” I assured her. “My stepmother always approved of it at home, and she is Lady Penwyth’s sister.”

“Genteel, you say? Humph, I never feel genteel while I be spinning greasy hanks o’wool. But whatever you say, miss. Oh, did you know that old Tom Pyder come by? He brought ye something.”

“Something for me? How strange.” I hadn’t seen Tom Pyder since he showed me where the walled garden lay.

Nanny smiled, as secretive as anything Jenny could produce.

“I’ll let ye see it for yourself. It be in the front hall on the inlay cabinet. I’ll bring the spinning wheel into the sunroom, if that be where you’d like it to go, miss?”

“Yes, the light will be better there. You’ve set my curiosity quite on fire, Nanny!”

I limped to the front hall. On the cabinet, as promised, sat a potted plant choked with purple blossoms. The flowers dripped like bells from slim stems, and an exotic, clove-like fragrance filled the hall.

“Oh Tom, you rascal,” I breathed as I gently touched a bloom. A bead of nectar slid down the stamen and onto my finger. Suddenly my skin suffocated with unbearable heat, and my ears filled with the screek of equatorial birds.

I was about to fall into dark mysteries when my fingers brushed a piece of folded paper.

The vision shredded as I came in contact with smooth vellum pressed, the wood pulp told me, in an Amsterdam warehouse. Reluctantly I opened the note.

This plant needs an admirer. It should serve to remind you to keep your feet on the ground.

It was signed with a spiky
RP
.

###

As promised, Nanny brought the spinning wheel to the sunroom where the waning light could best be had. She also fetched a large basket of wool already washed and carded into creamy piles, and ready to be spun into yarn.

I settled next to the well-used wheel, smelling the homely musk of new wool, and felt myself search for, and find, my center. Loading onto the distaff the long-stapled, tough wool of the local sheep--very different from the lustrous, silky wool of the North--I began to spin, putting aside the unpleasant aftertaste that eavesdropping had left in my mouth.