Amanda Scott (24 page)

“But she said everyone I loved would die, and Oliver once told me witches could do anything. Oh, Cousin Jack, are you sure she cannot do it? I don’t want anyone I love to die, and she said they would, every one! I thought she had killed Aunt Emily in the woods that day only because Aunt Emily had seen her!”

Once again, when Emily moved toward the child, Jack tried to motion her back, but this time she defied him, taking Melanie in her arms and hugging her tightly. “I didn’t die,” she said gently. “I fainted, and you very bravely came back to rescue me. Knowing now how terrified you must have been, I cannot doubt that you have the courage to help us stop that woman from doing such terrible things ever again. For we are going to stop her, are we not, Jack?”

“She’s got to be stopped, certainly,” he agreed.

“But how?” Melanie asked through her tears.

Jack smiled at last. “The way one catches any beast, little one. We shall lay a trap for her. I have been thinking, and I believe that that is much the best way. You can help us.”

“Oh, no, I can’t!” Melanie cried, panicking again. “You can’t do that! She will know. Witches know everything.”

“Nonsense,” Jack said. “You have shown us already how good you are at keeping secrets. This will merely be another one. When anyone asks you what transpired here today, you must tell them that Aunt Emily’s jewels were found in your bedchamber and that I have punished you for stealing them.”

“But I didn’t—”

“Protest your innocence as much as you like to the people you tell,” he advised her. “Keep them thinking about the jewelry, and we will come off like winking. On Wednesday afternoon you will go the village just as you have been doing, but this time I shall be lying in wait in the woods. When your witch trots along to get her money, I will capture her.”

“No, oh, you mustn’t, Cousin Jack! You don’t know how powerful she is. She can do anything. She told me so!”

“She will have to show me her power before I will believe in it,” he declared grimly.

When Melanie looked as though she might become hysterical out of her fear for Jack, Emily said practically, “Cousin Jack will not be alone, you know, darling. I will be with him.”

“No, you will not,” Jack retorted.

“Well, perhaps not,” she agreed, noting that her words had agitated Melanie more than ever, “but you ought to have someone along, and not those ridiculous Runners, either. Once they knew what was planned, neither Tickhill nor Earswick could be trusted to keep a still tongue in his head.” She paused briefly, thinking. Then a look of mischief lit her face. “I know,” she said. “I know precisely who will help. Melanie, do you think your witch would dare try to cast a spell over Mr. Scopwick?”

Melanie looked at her in awe this time. There was a long silence before she said thoughtfully, “He is not my family.”

“No,” Emily agreed, “but even if he were, I believe he would be more than a match for any witch, don’t you?”

The little girl nodded, appearing for the first time to believe that something could actually be done.

Jack reminded her again that she was to speak only of the jewelry found in her bedchamber and of nothing else.

“Giles will demand to know everything,” Emily told her. “He was most concerned about you. Do you think you can manage to tell him only that much and no more?”

Melanie nodded. “Giles believe what I tell him, and he will not expect long explanations from me.”

When she had gone, Emily turned to Jack and said cheerfully, “I am so pleased to see her behaving more like a normal child. Do you really believe we can capture her witch?”

He was regarding her with a quizzical look in his eyes, but he replied evenly enough, “Certainly. The woman is no doubt only some goody from the village who has known her for years.”

“But if Melanie had recognized her, she would have told us.”

“She may have disguised herself.” He paused, then added abruptly, “Look here, Emily, I had to do that to you, you know. You were already relaxing, no longer afraid of what I mean to do, and we needed a tremendous shock to loosen Melanie’s tongue. I thought at first that fear of her own punishment would turn the trick, but when it didn’t, I was only too willing to follow your lead. Then you nearly ruined everything. If she had noted that you were no longer fighting me, she would never have spoken up.”

Reminded, Emily rubbed her backside and shot him a straight look. “I will pay you back one day.”

He chuckled. “Oh, I don’t doubt that for a moment.”

“You enjoyed it!”

He shook his head. “I was angry with you. Never doubt that. Indeed, you ought to be pleased, since your object was to make me as angry as you could. Even through my fury, though, I recognized your intent. I cannot say you have never ripped up at me in front of anyone else before, but your temper usually flashes and your words spill out, noun over verb, without thought or reflection. This time there was clear calculation in the things you said, and you were sarcastic, something you rarely are. But you almost went too far. You made me damned angry, almost too angry to realize in time what you were trying to do. You might just as easily have ended in the lake again, you know, and that would not have served our purpose nearly as well.”

“You did not have to strike me so hard,” she said.

“I believe I did. If your shriek had not been entirely real, I doubt that Melanie would have been shocked out of that stupor she’d fallen into.” He stood up and looked down at her with gentleness in his eyes. “I’ll not deny that aggravation lent strength to my arm, lass, but you cannot blame me for having been angry with you. Though I did not then know the truth about your accident in the woods, you have done many other things of late to vex me, have you not?”

“Don’t be foolish,” she said, stepping back to put distance between them. When he caught her by one shoulder, she looked first at his hand and then up into his face. “Release me, Meriden.”

In answer, his free hand moved to her other shoulder and he drew her close again. When she opened her mouth to protest, he silenced her with a kiss that instantly stilled her protests and inflamed her emotions. With a soft moan, she melted against him, and some moments later he set her back upon her heels and said quietly, “You cannot respond like that one moment, Emmy love, and the next expect me to believe either that you feel no tenderness toward me or that you think I feel none toward you.”

Breathless, wishing her passions would not betray her so, Emily tried to glare at him, but his smile informed her that the result was not a success.

“What exactly do you intend to do about Melanie’s witch?” she asked, trying to put the conversation back on a course she could deal with.

His smile broadened to a grin. “I mean to do precisely what I said I would do. I will discuss the matter with Scopwick, of course, but I daresay he’ll agree with me that the best course is to capture this witch. Whether we then deal with her ourselves or present her to a magistrate remains to be seen.”

“You are assuming, of course, that the vicar will listen to anything you wish to say to him,” Emily said, noting as she spoke that her breathing was returning to normal. “Also, will you not need Melanie to draw the witch out of hiding?”

“Yes, but the child will be perfectly safe, I promise you. All she need do is to walk to the village and back again, just as she always does. I will see to it that she is watched every step of the way. When the old woman approaches her, we will catch her. There is nothing that can go wrong.”

“I want to be with you or to be one of the watchers,” Emily said firmly.

“No,” he replied. When she bristled, he said, “I’ll use lads of my own from the Park, men who know the moors and woods so well they can blend in with the deer and the chaffinches. You could not do that. And you cannot stay with Scopwick and me, because you would have to give reason for your absence from the house. Both Sabrina and Miss Lavinia would demand to know where you were going, and you are no great dissembler, lass.”

“But I have left the house before without—”

“Perhaps,” he said very gently, “now is as good a time as any for us to discuss what happened the last time you wandered off on your own. My sisters were never allowed to set foot beyond our gardens without protection, you know, and I would wager that your father never allowed you to do so either.”

“I am a woman grown, Meriden, and—”

“Why is it,” he asked plaintively, “that I sink to being ‘Meriden’ again whenever I dare to disagree with you?”

“You are not disagreeing,” she retorted. “You are merely attempting, as usual, to exert your will over mine. Surely you do not believe I did anything foolish or dangerous merely by following a child to the village or an old woman into the woods!”

“Subsequent facts prove that to be one of your more fatuous declarations, my dear.”

She flung out her hands in frustration. “You know what I mean. Of course events proved otherwise, but the simple fact of following Melanie’s old woman was not an action anyone of sense would have conjectured beforehand to be dangerous.”

“Life is dangerous,” he said severely.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Jack, you put me all out of patience with you when you talk like that.”

“I am certain,” he said in that same grim tone, “that you would as lief put an end to this conversation altogether, but I have several things I still wish to say to you, not the least of which is to express my displeasure over the fact that you knew what Melanie was doing and said nothing to me about it.”

“I gave her my word,” Emily said. “Surely you would not have had me betray her trust.”

“No,” he agreed, “where we differ in our opinions is with regard to your having given your word to Melanie at all in such an instance. By doing so, you were aiding and abetting her in an unquestionable wrongdoing. That was a betrayal of your duty as an adult toward the child.”

“I …” Emily hesitated. His words put the incident in a different light, and she knew suddenly that he was right to be displeased with her. When the thought brought a lump to her throat, she told herself it was because she hated so to have to apologize to anyone. But she knew that that wasn’t really the case. Apologies had been part and parcel of her life, for she had always been quick to see when she was wrong and to say so. With Jack, things were different, but she wasn’t certain why that was so. She only knew she would rather have cut out her tongue just then than have to admit to him that she had been wrong.

“You were saying?” he prompted dulcetly.

Emily swallowed the lump. “I … I thought I was doing the right thing,” she said. “Perhaps—”

“Perhaps?”

“Oh, very well, then,” she snapped, “I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time, if you will recall, but I see now that I ought to have brought her straight along to confess her sins to you. You would have punished her, and she would very likely never have told us the truth of the matter or ever have spoken to me again, let alone confided in me, but that would have been the right thing to have done, would it not?”

Jack grimaced ruefully. “I had forgotten that you were making decisions then with a muddled head. Perhaps we had better lay this discussion to rest before you remind me of anything else I had rather forget. Arguing with you, my lass, is, as always, a lesson in humility.”

She shook her head, finding it easier now to say what had to be said. “No, you are right. I did tell her she ought to come to you and tell you everything. I even told her I was certain you would not be as harsh with her if she would but let you help with whatever was troubling her. But when she refused, it was easier to tell her I would keep her confidence than to insist in the face of her distress that she confess to you.”

Jack put his arm around her. “Don’t torment yourself, lass. It is always easier to know what one ought to have done than to know what one ought to do next. I have made mistakes myself.”

“No, have you, sir?” Her eyes were twinkling when she looked at him, and she was astonished at how much better she felt. When he grinned at her, her breasts swelled with pleasure, and she waited, lips parted, for him to kiss her again.

Jack looked at her, bent a little toward her, and then, as Emily waited breathlessly, an enigmatic expression crossed his face and he drew back again. “You had better go now,” he said quietly, “and you had better fix it in your mind what you will say to anyone who asks questions about your jewelry. It will be best, I think, to profess dismay and perhaps some disbelief in Melanie’s guilt.”

Those feelings, Emily thought, staring up at him, would not be difficult to project at all. She was feeling them sweep through her as she stood watching an expressionless mask descend upon Jack’s countenance. He had been about to kiss her again; she was certain of that. But then he had not. Instead, he had withdrawn from her altogether and without comment.

Slowly, hiding her disappointment, she turned away and moved toward the door. Reaching it, she turned back to see that he had seated himself in his chair behind the library table and was thumbing through the ever-present stack of papers.

He looked up. “Was there something else you wished to say?”

She shook her head; then, feeling that some sort of comment was called for, she said calmly, “I was going to ask if there was anything at all that I can do to help on Wednesday, but I suppose we can discuss all the details later, after you have spoken with Mr. Scopwick.”

“We can, of course,” he said, “but mind this well, Emily. You are not to attempt to do anything on your own on Wednesday. I know you believe yourself capable of anything, but I will be very angry with you if you try to take part in that business just to show me how useful you can be. Some unconsidered action on your part might well overset all our plans.”

She sighed. “I will try not to interfere, sir.”

He nodded and turned his attention to the papers in front of him, and she opened the door and went out.

E
MILY TRIED TO FIND AN
opportunity to discuss the situation with Jack before Wednesday, but he seemed to be avoiding her and always had something more important he had to attend to when she approached him. On Tuesday afternoon, having seen nothing of him all day and determined to discover what plan had been made for the following day, Emily went in search of him, only to be told by Edgar Harbottle that his master had business with some of his tenants at Meriden Park that day. Finally, in desperation, she turned to Melanie for information.