The Magic of His Touch (May Day Mischief) (4 page)

When they reached the drawing room, Sir Alexis was talking to
Papa about crop rotation. Firmly, she refused to allow her eyes to do more than
pass over him. She had no true interest in him; her amorous thoughts were an
aberration caused by this morning’s encounter. So what if the memory of his eyes
on her naked body sent shivers through her? Under his attractive exterior, he
wasn’t her sort of man at all. He was Lucasta’s sort. Lucasta’s man.

Lord Elderwood and Lucasta were arguing about the existence of
buttery spirits, who haunted the houses of the dishonest and ungrateful.
Surprisingly, Lord Elderwood claimed to believe in such creatures. He was
probably just amusing himself, but Peony couldn’t help but be glad he had
Lucasta’s full attention. At least she wouldn’t notice the guilt which must
surely be written all over Peony’s face.

Aunt Edna disapproved of Lucasta’s scholarly bent and thought
folklore a waste of time. “I hope you found your way without too much
difficulty, my lord,” she interrupted.

“No difficulty at all,” he said with his typically bored
air.

Aunt Edna simpered. “Sometimes guests become quite lost in this
rabbit warren of a house.”

Lord Elderwood smiled at her. “Yes, they would do. It’s because
of the magic. It is by nature convoluted, so it prefers this rambling sort of
environment.”

An astonished giggle burst from Peony. First buttery spirits
and now magic! Aunt Edna gestured deprecatingly with her fan and laughed. “My
lord, you mustn’t encourage our Peony in such nonsense, even in jest.”

Lord Elderwood’s gaze lit upon Peony. “You believe in magic,
Miss Whistleby?”

“Of course not,” cried Aunt Edna, batting her eyelashes when
ordinarily she’d scowl furiously at such a topic. Evidently, she was like the
other foolish women who fell under Lord Elderwood’s spell.

“We live in the modern world,” Papa said. “The Priory has a
history of unusual occurrences, but my daughter knows it is naught but
superstition.” He nodded to the footman to open the door for them. “Let us go in
to dinner. I think you will find the carp to be excellent, as it comes from our
own ponds.”

“Surely you can’t dismiss your heritage so easily, Mr.
Whistleby,” the earl said. “Well, Miss Whistleby?” All eyes were upon her. She
hated it when everyone was watching her. Aunt Edna frowned, Papa looked worried
and Lucasta pursed her lips.

Sir Alexis let out a tiny huff.

How dare he? “I don’t know what I believe,” she said and
marched toward the door.

A volley of tsks, huffs and scolding pursued her, broken by
Lord Elderwood’s detached voice. “I hear Whistleby Priory has a haunted room. I
daresay the ghosts wail from time to time, and everyone tries to assure everyone
else it’s the wind.”

“Because it
is
the wind,” Aunt Edna
said.

“Yes, often it must be,” he went on, “which makes matters even
more confusing. Even after growing up in several haunted houses, I’m not always
certain which is which.” He sounded so sincere that Peony turned in spite of
herself, but Lord Elderwood had fallen a little behind, and Sir Alexis’s frown
confronted her instead.

She whirled to face front again. “Nor am I, but I keep the
Haunted Bedchamber clean and tidy because no one else will go there, and I made
a point of thanking the ghosts when they scared a horrid governess away.”
So
there
,
Sir
Alexis
!

“Quite right,” the earl said, as if he agreed completely. Sir
Alexis didn’t. His silence crackled with disapproval. Good. She didn’t want him
to approve of her. She wanted him to dislike her and show it, so her treacherous
thoughts would go away.

“It is far wiser to err on the side of belief,” said the
earl.

“For God’s sake, Elderwood,” Sir Alexis burst out. “Must you
talk such drivel?”

“I feel positively obliged to.” The earl’s airy voice became
suddenly serious. “An open mind is always preferable to a closed one. Just
because one doesn’t believe in or understand all the forces about us doesn’t
mean they don’t exist.”

“Perhaps not, but one can’t read a magical meaning into every
circumstance,” Sir Alexis said.

A smile flitted across Lucasta’s face. Well, it was only
natural and
most
kind of him to be supportive of the
views of his betrothed, but—

Peony halted her thoughts right there. She was
not
jealous. She had no right or reason to feel that
way. She couldn’t desire a man who belonged to someone else. She was incapable
of such perfidy. She loved her cousin and would never, ever betray her.

Lord Elderwood’s voice hardened. “No, but life has taught me
that if one cannot avoid the unusual—and I have never been able to do so—one
must learn to live with it and work within its parameters. Otherwise, the
consequences can be disastrous.”

All at once Peony knew. Magic had always been on the perimeter
of her life, but she’d never tried to work with it. This morning, she’d dabbled
in it for the first time—and something had gone terribly awry.

* * *

She’s
as
mad
as
Elderwood
, thought Sir Alexis in dismay.
Believing
in
magic
! Perhaps she thought some spell or other would
keep her from getting with child by her dastardly lover. The very idea made him
ill.

While Elderwood was obediently proving to one and all that he
had no interest in anything but folklore—and that he was unbalanced, into the
bargain—Sir Alexis found himself sitting next to Miss Whistleby. She smelled
soft and sweet and infinitely desirable, but she answered his attempts at polite
conversation with equally polite monosyllables. After a while he gave up and
decided to enjoy his dinner. The baked carp in gravy was indeed excellent, and
as for the veal collops, he would have to send a laudatory message to the
cook.

Miss Whistleby reached across to pick up a dish of pickles. Her
aroma drifted his way, circling around him enticingly. How could he possibly
concentrate on spring spinach dressed with cream, however well prepared? He had
to exert the utmost control not to lean closer to Miss Whistleby and inhale her
scent.

This was ridiculous. She was putting him off his feed! Much
good it did him being so strongly attracted to her. The one instance when her
arm almost brushed his, she gasped, dropped the salt and cringed as if she’d
been burned.

“Bad luck,” he said, almost irritably, before he could stop
himself. “Better throw some over your shoulder.”

“That’s nothing but a silly superstition,” she retorted.

“And, er—” He chose a topic Lord Elderwood had mentioned on the
drive over. “Boggarts are not?”

“No, they’re not.”

“Peony!” chided her aunt.

“I’ve been meaning to ask about boggarts,” Elderwood said.
“Whistleby Priory is reputed to have one of its own.”

“We used to,” Peony said.

“Peony!” said her aunt again. “Lord Elderwood will have a very
odd idea of you if you say such things. You’re not a baby anymore.”

Something about the way Peony stiffened, at the way she caught
her lip between her teeth, tore at Alexis’s heart. Damn it, she had the right to
believe what she chose, whether they or he or anyone else agreed.

“There is such a legend,” said Mr. Whistleby uneasily, “and as
a boy, I thought I saw the boggart.” He gave a deprecating little laugh. “But
children do have such fancies, and of course there’s no sign of one now.”

“That’s because it left when Great-Aunt Wilma died,” Peony
said.

“Fascinating,” Elderwood said. “Did her death release him, or
did he choose to go?”

“She had released him long before. She told me so. I don’t
think he wanted to stay once she’d gone.”

“Quite possible,” Elderwood said. “I trust you’ve included this
story in your opus, Miss Barnes?”

“Of course,” Lucasta said in an icy voice, which she
immediately moderated by embarking on a recitation of the various stories of
boggarts she had recorded. At any other time, Alexis might have been amused by
the sparks flying between his two dearest friends, but instead he wished he
could pull Peony into his arms and tell her that she was bright and beautiful,
and that she should believe whatever she damn well pleased.

What with her aunt’s constant scolding, her father’s weakness
of character and Lucasta’s forceful personality, it was no wonder she had run to
the arms of someone who pretended to appreciate her.

She was headed for devastating disappointment and perhaps
worse. He wouldn’t put up with it. Something had to be done.

* * *

Sitting next to Sir Alexis Court through an interminable
dinner drove Peony quite, quite mad. She could have cheerfully boxed Lucasta’s
ears for arguing with Lord Elderwood about folklore throughout the meal and
paying no attention to her betrothed, thereby obliging him to talk to Peony. He
was good-natured about it, but she couldn’t manage to put two words together.
For once, it wasn’t shyness that deterred her. Strangely, she didn’t feel shy
with him at all. Perhaps that was the result of being viewed in the nude.

She wanted to touch him. His large masculine presence in such
close proximity made her fingers tingle and itch. His warm, resonant voice sent
tremors through her, and somehow those tremors slithered hotly downward to
settle in her private parts. She ached and throbbed and squirmed on her chair.
It was all she could do to maintain the pretense of being a proper, well-bred
woman. When he reached for the mustard at the same time as Peony picked up the
salt cellar, she dropped it with a horrified hiss. What if his sleeve had
brushed her bare arm? She would have died of heat on the spot.

Something had gone terribly wrong with the morning’s ritual.
This sort of reaction might be appropriate with a man one loved and who loved
one in return—not that she’d ever imagined such a feverish sort of
attraction.

On the other hand, apart from the fact that Sir Alexis was the
wrong man, it did feel rather good. No,
extremely
good.

She set that unacceptable truth aside. At first, she’d thought
the magic had failed her, but the explanation wasn’t that simple. It had
certainly affected
her
. She was in danger of
tumbling into love with Sir Alexis, which was not only traitorous but absurd. He
was far too attractive to want a beanpole for a wife.

Perhaps
not
, she thought wistfully. Perhaps some gentlemen
liked tall women with flat figures. Couldn’t Sir Alexis be one of them?

Dinner came to an end, and the ladies left the men to their
port. Lucasta excused herself briefly, leaving Peony to suffer Aunt Edna’s
raptures over Lord Elderwood’s looks and charm. She berated Peony for not trying
harder to attract him but concluded bitterly, “Your case is clearly hopeless.
You’d never attract a pimply nobody like the curate’s son, much less a catch
like Lord Elderwood.”

Nor a wonderful man like Sir Alexis. She’d been a fool to even
think it possible. In numb silence, she sorted embroidery silks and made her
plans. In her ignorance, she must have performed the ritual the wrong way. It
was too late to try it again. Instead, she must undo what she’d done.

Rather like walking around a church widdershins, she would
simply do things in an opposite sort of way. Instead of dawn, she should have
performed her counter-ritual at dusk, but it was too late for that. Instead, she
would choose darkness as the opposite of light. Instead of rolling naked, she
would remain clothed—what a relief.

Some tiny, disappointed part of her whispered that nakedness
was much more exciting. She shook the whisper away. She wasn’t doing this for
excitement. She was trying to correct an error. When at last they’d had tea and
gone to bed and the house was quiet, she dressed in the same old gown and crept
out the side door once again.

Nighttime was unexpectedly noisy and much more unpleasant than
morning. She far preferred friendly birds and imminent light to this dense
darkness filled with skittering feet and unseen wings. She set her nervousness
aside and thought of additional ways of counteracting the magic. Instead of
lying with her head facing the center of the meadow and her feet toward the
perimeter, she would turn the other way. Instead of hoping with her heart, she
would resolve with her mind.

Something erupted from a thicket with a screech. Peony clapped
her hands over her mouth, muffling a whimper. Twigs crackled beside her, behind
her,
everywhere
. She whirled, stumbling, and caught
herself with a gasp.

No one was there. How could she resolve anything with her mind
if she let it play tricks on her? She had fallen asleep once in the Haunted
Bedchamber and woken after dark—something grown men were afraid to do. There was
nothing to fear out here, either. She strode fiercely forward until she reached
the meadow.

It stretched ahead of her, encircled by ancient trees and
blossoming may, bathed in moonlight and alive with magic. She gathered her
thoughts and concentrated on what she must do. Banish hope and longing; replace
them with reason and self-control. Banish unacceptable desire and replace it
with—

From somewhere nearby came a soft laugh.

She squeaked. A hand clapped over her mouth and a strong arm
pulled her backward. She thrashed.

“Stop struggling, Miss Whistleby,” said a sharp male voice in
her ear. “It’s I, Alexis Court.”

She slumped in his arms, her heart threatening to burst from
her chest. Slowly, he released her, setting her gently on her feet.

She whirled and punched him soundly on the shoulder.

He caught her hand before she could do it again. “Shh,” he
whispered. “We’re not alone.”