Whisper of Magic (20 page)

“Oh, that was kind of him.” She produced a handkerchief and
wiped a tear. “The earl had promised . . . But I suppose that is
lies. It is all very difficult to comprehend. But our home is open to all of
you, as I’m sure you know.” She cast an imploring look at the gentleman
standing behind Celeste. “If you will be so kind as to let the marquess know,
we will be happy to help in all ways. I’m sure dear Charles will agree. He
works hard, and his position is so . . .”

“Understood, my dear Mrs. Guilford,” Lord Erran replied smoothly.
“If our families are to be connected, it is beneficial if we all work together
to ease the path of our new relations. We look forward to seeing more of you.”

Talk about lies! Celeste would be happy if she never saw
Charlotte again. The woman was self-serving and much too easily swayed by coin.
And she couldn’t be trusted not to spread scandal.

If she was to survive in this jungle, she really must
develop a backbone. And harsh experience had taught her just where to start.

The moment she was rid of her unwelcome guest, Celeste
turned to Lord Erran and said, “I wish to go to Wystan with you.”

Erran clamped his jaw shut to prevent howling.
She wanted to go to Wystan with him?
Women often had maggots in their brains, but he’d thought this one to be
sensible.

Miss Rochester was looking very much like a Spanish princess
this morning, with her mahogany hair scraped back from her high cheekbones,
highlighting her heavily lashed, almond-shaped eyes. Pearls and a lacy collar
draped around her loathsome gray gown added to the image. But the uncanny blue
of her eyes was intense and perspicacious and had him wondering if he’d heard
her wrong.

“You wish to go to Northumberland?” he asked carefully. “It
is a great distance from here.”

“Is it very costly?” She refilled her tea cup and offered to
fill his. “I can ride, if renting a horse would be cheaper than a carriage. How
did you mean to go?”

“Very quickly,” he said, taking a seat and helping himself
to a piece of toast so he had something to rip with his teeth.

“How long does such a journey take? It’s not as if we
haven’t been here since spring, suffering the slings and arrows of adversity.
Could a day or two more matter?”

She looked so damned respectable—while suggesting a highly
indecent expedition. “It’s far more than a day or two. You can’t travel with
me. It’s not proper.”

She tilted her head as if considering that. “I could take
Trevor. Or if we’re journeying by carriage, a maid.”

Erran tried a different tactic. “What can you possibly
accomplish by traveling to a moldering tower in the middle of absolutely
nowhere? Even if you took a carriage, you’d have to ride the final miles.
Ashford has been receiving complaints that the road has washed out again.”

“I have heard some of the legends of Wystan. I understand
its significance to Malcolm women. Should it come to pass that Lansdowne keeps
me from returning to my home, I shall need a place to live. I thought I might
be of use there,” she said demurely.

That would be one way of moving her out of the house. She
was dangling temptation in front of him, but Erran heard the lady’s
determination beneath the politeness. Her manipulative charm didn’t work with
him. “Give me truth or you’ll have to find your way on your own.”

The flash of her eyes warned that he’d gone too far and was
already in over his head. Women were much of a mystery to him, but this one . . .
spoke too clearly.

“I have been sheltered all my life,” she stated frostily.
“And that has made me weak. From now on, I want no knight errant, no noble
protection, no more being helpless. If Wystan holds the answers to our
problems, then I wish to be there to help solve them. My parents wrote hundreds
of journals. I am not at all certain I
want
you reading them, but even so, it would take you weeks to peruse them all.”

“I had planned on simply looking for the appropriate dates.”
Erran set down his cup to pace to the window where he couldn’t see the plea in
her proud visage. “Planning a journey with women and carriages and trunks will
take me longer than reading through the journals I need.”

“Then I shall dress in Trevor’s clothes and ride on
horseback. We are not so proper in Jamaica. I’m well accustomed to riding
astride. If there is any chance of finding what we need to claim the plantation
again, I could go
home
.”

There was the argument that could sway him. If he could send
the Rochesters back to Jamaica, where they belonged, he would have the
townhouse back again. Finally, he would have accomplished a task the way it
should be done. He would prove to Duncan that he would make an excellent estate
solicitor. With a respectable abode in the house of a marquess, he might even
be able to persuade the judge to let him back in a courtroom again.

They would all get what they wanted. He had to keep his mind
on the goal—and not on sea-blue, slanted eyes and rich feminine scents.

“I meant what I said about staying in Wystan,” she continued
when he did not immediately agree to her pleas. “I am not cut out for society.
I will not
take
, as you say it. I am
too old, too different, too independent to ever want a society marriage.”

Startled out of his cogitations, Erran swung around to stare
at her in disbelief. “Not
take
? You
are the most stunning woman in all London, and you don’t believe men will be
crawling at your feet? What kind of insects do they breed in Jamaica to leave
you believing this?”

She looked genuinely shocked at his idiotic speech. He tried
to go back over his words to discover which had shocked her, but he couldn’t
take back any of them.

She looked as if she’d speak. Then she closed her mouth and
set down her cup and blushed. He’d actually made her blush. He’d simply been
honest. The house had mirrors, after all. She had to see herself. Her beauty
couldn’t be a surprise.

“Modistes flatter me so I will spend money. Gentlemen have
courted me for my dowry,” she said, hunting for words. “But if I wished a
particular gentleman to take me to a dance, I had to use my vocalization on
him. I was never belle of the ball. Even if I wear no heels, I tower over most
men. I am dark, and gentlemen prefer pale English skin. I believe my ancestors
had Spanish blood, perhaps native. It’s attractive on Trevor, but not on me.
But looks are not what I’m talking about. It’s
me
. Who I am.”

She was beseeching him to understand, but he did not. She
was not only attractive, but she had grace and a quiet strength he admired far
more than he ought. It was for his
own
safety that he fought. Days in her company, and he’d go stark, raving mad with
the need to throw her into bed and possess her—when all he should want was to
send her home. He returned to his chair to plead with her common sense.

“I do not comprehend how riding to Wystan with me will prove
anything, unless you wish to prove that you have no care for your reputation,”
he said as disparagingly as he could.

Except in the back of his mind, he was actually trying to
figure out a way to let her go with him. He would enjoy her company, yes, but
she would also be an excellent buffer to whatever women were currently
occupying the castle. The notion appealed to him entirely too much. She was
already making him mad.

“Fine, then, go. I will find some other means of traveling
on my own,” she said stiffly.

Erran wanted to rip out his hair at the thought of this
beautiful woman, a stranger to England’s ways, traveling alone by coach,
staying in inns with treacherous men, innocent of all the dangers.

His teacup rose from the saucer on its own. Hoping she
hadn’t noticed, Erran swiped the errant china from thin air and pretended to
sip from it.

“I’ll let Aster talk to you,” he said curtly, setting down
the cup and rising to head for the door. “She’ll make you see sense.”

***

“Oh, I wish I could come with you!” Lady Aster cried upon
being presented with Celeste’s proposal of traveling to Wystan. “My family is
only a day’s ride from Northumberland. But if Erran is to gallop off and leave
the construction project, someone needs to be available to see that Ashford’s
needs are met. Besides, I cannot desert Theo. He is buried in harvest duties
and swearing like a sailor already. I know a perfectly competent companion who
can travel with you, and you can take Ashford’s barouche. It’s most comfortable
for distances.”

“Not the barouche!” Lord Erran practically moaned. “I hoped
you’d speak
sense
to her!”

The frosty gentleman was deteriorating rapidly under their
continued pressure, Celeste thought—not with satisfaction. She wanted him to
want
her with him, and that was the very
definition of insanity.

He had called her
stunning
.
And he’d been sincere. She’d heard it in his voice—a new phenomenon she’d
developed since moving here. She could hear the emotions in other people’s
voices—or she thought she could. She’d almost talked herself into imagining he
really wanted her with him but was trying to talk her out of it for the sake of
propriety. Just the possibility had given her the courage to stand up for
herself.

His flattery had rattled her thoughts. She needed to
remember she was no longer interested in a man’s approval.

“We cannot find good horses along the way to haul a carriage
that large,” he insisted, “and that unbalanced monstrosity certainly won’t
navigate Wystan’s narrow lanes. Can’t you see this is
a mad idea?”

“A post chaise then?” Lady Aster asked dubiously. “That
won’t be very comfortable.”

“Did I not read that the mail coach can reach Edinburgh in
two days? I will simply travel that way,” Celeste said serenely. “Lord Erran
may travel as he wishes.”

Both Lord Erran and Lady Aster looked appalled. His lordship
ran his hand through his dark curls until they tumbled about his brow, creating
a rather dashingly romantic image. Celeste turned her gaze to her tea to avoid
falling for everything he said simply because she wanted to please him.

“I have a cousin working with a steamship engineer,” he
admitted reluctantly. “He wants to develop a transportation route through the
North Sea using a steamship combined with sail. I don’t know how far north they
can take it or where it will port, but even if we only reach Newcastle, we can
save several days of travel.”

“A steamship?” Celeste widened her eyes in apprehension at
this terrifying new development. “It will not explode?”

“Says the lady willing to travel in close proximity with
filthy flea-ridden drunks for forty-eight non-stop hours,” Lord Erran said
disdainfully. “No, it will not explode, or they would not still be alive, would
they?”

Celeste set her jaw. If new experiences did not kill her,
they would make her stronger. “Then steamship it shall be. When will we
depart?”

They could not be any more in debt to Lord Erran than they
already were, and she could not bear to sit here for weeks sewing shirts, while
he rode off to the rescue. If she was to be labeled bastard and cast out of her
home, then she would have time and a little more knowledge to make plans.
Penury was horrible enough, but without honor, she would simply wither away in
shame.

“Marvelous!” Lady Aster cried, clapping her hands. “Just be
certain when you arrive that they give you rooms on separate floors. Legend has
it that the first marquess was conceived in Wystan by magic.” She smiled
happily.

Celeste didn’t dare look at Lord Erran after that.

When Celeste explained her intentions later that day, Sylvia
and Trevor were appalled. Trevor wanted to take her place, until she explained
that Wystan was where Malcolm women went to have their babies. Since Ashford
was the property owner, Lord Erran had the excuse of visiting as his brother’s
representative, but unmarried gentlemen were not particularly welcome.

Apparently a castle of expectant women seemed safe to her
siblings—she didn’t mention Lady Aster’s mad assertion about magical
conceptions—and the argument was surrendered. Lord Erran’s brother, Theo,
promised to take Trevor, Sylvia, and Nana to Iveston, where they would be
protected from any more of Lansdowne’s depredations.

“It will look as if we’re running from scandal,” Trevor said
worriedly, even though his eyes had lit with delight at the invitation to the
countryside.

“We will simply say the construction crews are causing too
much disruption. No one would question that. We can depart in all directions
with no one being the wiser,” Celeste explained. “Jamar and the workers will be
here to protect the house.”

“But what about the dinners and parties Lady Aster
promised?” Sylvia cried.

Celeste considered Wystan a far
better solution than dining among society to prove they weren’t afraid of the
earl’s scandal-mongering, but she answered in terms her sister could
understand. “We’ll still do that after our wardrobes are complete, and we have
proof in our hands. We’ll make a grand entrance!”

Her siblings breathed easier, not knowing the exigency of
travel ahead for her.

Of course, the noble Lord Erran was barely speaking to her
by the time all the arrangements were made. If she must learn not to rely on
him, that was probably best, but she missed their often lively give-and-take.
That was understandable. She was lonely, she acknowledged. She would find other
companionship—perhaps at Wystan. She was rather looking forward to this
mysterious outpost.

Unwilling to delay, Lord Erran swiftly arranged their
travel. Two mornings later, he escorted Celeste and her new companion, Mrs.
Lorna, to a carriage to take them to the docks. He rode alongside, accompanied
by a groom. Celeste thought the pistol, whip, and sword he carried a little
excessive in civilized London. It wasn’t as if they were traveling with jewels
or even fat coin purses. All she had was her sewing money.