Dangerous Magic (23 page)

Rafe climbed the stairs, the summons to London from DeWinter burning a hole in his pocket. They meant to drag him back, damn them. He’d tried to put the past beyond reach, yet it stretched grasping fingers out to him, threatening to hold him prisoner. Captain Fleming was to be resurrected. DeWinter and the Foreign Office had a use for him, and to hell with what he wanted.

Under any other circumstances, he might have leapt at the chance to escape Bodliam and the mess he’d created. He needed space and time to think. Resettle his bearings. But he knew Gwenyth meant to go. Her eyes and heart already looked to the west. If he left now, she’d be gone upon his return. He felt a black aching despair, a yawning pit of loss beneath his feet. With each moment that passed, the crumbling ground gave way, showing him what awaited him once she was no longer in his life.

He paused at the head of the stairs, debating whether to turn left or right. Left meant a chance to repair the damage done by his drunken rage. Right meant admitting defeat. Knowing that no matter what he said he could never hope to atone, still he found himself passing down the corridor toward her room. He couldn’t have her, but he was loath to think she hated him.

The door to her room stood open. He lifted a hand to knock but the vision before him rooted him to the spot. Gwenyth knelt upon the floor in front of the windows, the long shadows of afternoon pooled around her. Her hair fell across her shoulders and around her face, hiding her sorrow. But she rocked back and forth, her hands gripping her prayer rug, now butchered almost beyond recognition. Pieces of the once-vibrant tapestry trailed upon the floor, the magic destroyed.

She must have sensed his presence. She swung around, her face a mask of bewildered grief.

“It’s ruined. There’s nothing left,” she cried. No tears marked her face. Instead, her gray eyes smoldered dark as storm clouds, a hint of vicious lightning flickering in their depths. “A boy came asking after me. Sent by Mr. Purkiss, he was. The old man was needing his dressing changed and his ankle checked for swelling. I left to tend to him. No more than an hour, mayhap two, I was gone. When I returned…this!”

Her fingers clutched at the remains of the dark center square, a fervent look of desperation on her face as if she awaited something. “It’s no use. ’Tis spoiled, the magic gone.”

Rafe stepped into the room. “Who’s done this?”

Gwenyth shrugged, dropping her hands to her sides in surrender. Her eyes held a shrewd, knowing look, but she said nothing.

He frowned. “You know. Tell me.”

She gave a violent shake of her head. “I’ve no way of knowing.” She refused to look him square in the face, but dodged his questing gaze by dropping her eyes to the remains of her mother’s handiwork. “Pinning blame won’t rework the magic or repair the prayer rug. Morvoren’s work is gone and naught but mere scraps for the rag man.”

A chill draft fluttered the curtains, swirling around Gwenyth, worrying at the pieces of tapestry. The current of air smelled of the dark, hidden places of the forest, earthy and musty with age. But then as if the wind changed direction, it grew tangy and salt-laden like a heavy sea. Gwenyth drew in great breaths of the strange breeze. It seemed to ease her pain and settle the tension stringing her body.

His stomach knotted as she pushed an errant strand of hair behind her ear with one hand, and he spied for the first time the lonely, vulnerable child hidden behind the elegant perfection of her features.

Rafe had the urge to drag her to her feet, kiss away the anger burning behind her eyes, and crush her body against his until the steady thrum of her pulse met and matched his own. He asserted an iron will over such impulses. He’d done that before, and used it as a weapon against her. She’d fear the worst from him now, and who could blame her? Any words he could utter would only confuse her, making her suspicion blossom anew. He’d severed the bond between them with his callous brutality. He couldn’t make that right with mere words.

A single bag sat upon the bed. “You pack to leave?”

It was all he could manage to say around gritted teeth. Inane, but it kept him from howling his fury at her refusal to look past her fear to what might be if she only took that leap of faith with him.

Gwenyth’s hands fiddled with the ruins of the weaving. “I take only what was mine upon my arrival. Once I’m back in Kerrow, I’ve no need for such fancy things as I’ve been wearing.”

He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, touching the edge of the letter. Perhaps Gwenyth was right to worry over loving him. Danger already stalked him in the guise of Colonel DeWinter. No job he’d ever entered into for the Foreign Office had been easy—or safe. It could be that his future began to unravel even now, like thread from a spool.

“And so you leave today.” His words were careful, controlled, nothing to show her his true despair. He’d done that in the woods beneath Burhunt Down and gotten only sorrow for his trouble.

“Sophia asked me to stay on for a day or so until His Lordship returns with Dr. MacNeil. I couldn’t refuse her,” she lowered her head, “though I wish with all my soul to be gone.”

Like a stab to the heart, her words pierced Rafe to the core. He hid his suffering beneath a brittle mask of indifference, giving a curt nod of understanding. “It’s a large house, Miss Killigrew. We needn’t see each other again.” And then he turned and was gone to nurse his grief alone.

Wearing naught but his breeches, Rafe sat at the water’s edge, tossing pebbles across the dark surface of the water. He’d spent his agony in hard-swum laps back and forth across the length of the lake, and now leaned against the rocky ledge, gaining back his breath, and trying not to think of Gwenyth. Damn her. If she couldn’t see past her ridiculous fears to accept him, there were others. As if thinking it made it so, a crunch of footsteps sounded on the gravel path. Anabel stood watching him, her admiring gaze tracing a path down his bare chest to rest at his crotch.

Her lips curved in a satisfied smile. “I knew you’d be here. You always came to the grotto to sulk.”

Rafe stood up, tossing the last of his pebbles into the water. “And you always followed after. Not much has changed in thirteen years.”

She approached, hips swaying in invitation, every curve outlined for him by the sheerness of her gown. Anabel was on the hunt. “You’ve changed.” She put a hand out, her fingers barely grazing him as they traced his tattoo’s design. He shivered under her touch, and she laughed. “You feel it too—this pull between us. I knew it from that first moment we saw each other in the gallery.”

When he didn’t pull away, she circled him. Her bold fingers explored the flesh of his shoulder. He felt her eying his scars as she caressed the heavy ridged skin of his back. “You poor tortured darling. You suffered so much because of me. Had I only known I’d have—”

“Married me and not Charles?”

She faced him again, her hands splayed on his chest. “I was going to say I’d never have led you on for so long. We were children playing at grown-ups, you and I. It would never have worked then.” She leaned forward, her lips brushing his ear. “But that isn’t to say it can’t work now.”

Her perfume reached into his memory, bringing back images of years long gone. Her body was his for the taking. He knew that was why she’d followed him out here. Her need was as great as his own. Gwenyth’s rejection goaded him forward. He’d show her how little he cared.

He crushed Anabel against him, her body melting into his. She gave a squeak of protest, soon silenced by his lips. He raised his head to see desire darkening her eyes. “I came back here, thinking you’d be a settled wife with a brood of children about your feet.”

Anabel twitched, and a look of disgust, gone almost instantly, passed across her flushed features. “Aren’t you relieved I had my ways and now we’re not fettered by a passel of Woodville brats to raise between us?” She ran her fingers through his hair as she rubbed her body against him. “Send your Cornish light skirt home, and we can be free to revel in each other.”

Rafe tensed. “Gwenyth’s no whore.”

Anabel shrugged. “If she’s no whore, neither is she your betrothed. From the start, you and I both knew you’d never go through with such a disastrous marriage, and now she knows it too.”

“What do you mean?” Rafe’s certainty waned under Anabel’s self-satisfied boasting.

“Miss Killigrew and I chatted in her rooms earlier today. She’s come to understand that her presence can only bring you further humiliation. But with me as your wife—Oh, Rafe.” She pulled his head down to hers, her lips capturing his in an urgent kiss.

His mind clearing, Rafe responded mechanically to her embrace. Anabel had been in Gwenyth’s rooms. Anabel despised Gwenyth. And what Anabel hated, Anabel destroyed.

The tapestry.

Gwenyth had to have known or at least suspected who had shredded her mother’s weaving, but she’d kept silent. Why? The answer came to him almost before he finished asking the question. He’d convinced her that he and Anabel would wed. She must have assumed that any accusations she made would be regarded as jealousy or spite. And would she have been wrong?

A heavy weight settled in Rafe’s chest as he reached up, pulling Anabel’s arms from around his neck. “You’re right. I have changed. But it’s taken coming home again to show me by how much.”

Anabel’s lips curled into a pout. “What are you talking about?” She tried grabbing Rafe’s hands, but he backed out of her reach.

“I thought I could do it. I really did. I thought I could begin again with you. I was prepared to try.”

Anabel drew herself upright, disbelief and outrage hardening her features. “It’s that peasant trollop,” she sneered. “She has you so confused you don’t know what’s good for you.” As suddenly as it slipped, her mask settled back into place, and Anabel was once again the seductive siren, trying to lure him in. She eased close, her hips sliding against his, allowing him to feel the heat of her body. “Well, I do know, Rafe Fleming,” she purred. “We’ll wed, and I guarantee after one night with me, you’ll forget your little village healer ever existed.”

How could he have been so blind? How had he ever thought they might marry and make a life? It would have been a match made in hell. Anabel hadn’t changed. She was as unfeeling and ruthless as ever. Her hand came up to caress his chest, and Rafe grabbed it. “I said it’s over, Anabel.”

She wiggled to get free, but his fingers only tightened around her wrist.

“All of it. My dreams of you. My dreams of coming back to Bodliam and taking up my old life. That’s just what they were. Dreams. But I’m awake now, and I see what I really am and where I belong.”

Her eyes crackled with green fire. This time there was no effort to hide her true feelings. “You’re mad,” she spit. “Where would you go? What would you do? You aren’t like her, no matter how hard you pretend.”

His earlier fury returned as if the laps of swimming had never happened. Rage over Anabel’s betrayal, held in check for thirteen years, spilled forth, mingling with the fresher, hotter anger over Gwenyth’s rejection. His vision narrowed to a pinprick as it seemed even the blood in his veins rose to a boiling point. He wanted to lash out. Make others feel his hurt. Make others understand even an ounce of the humiliation and anguish he’d suffered.

Anabel’s bones seemed to bend beneath the strength of his grip. Her skin whitened under the pressure. Her gasp of shock and pain checked him only moments before he lost control. Flinging her hand away, he closed his eyes as he sucked in great heaving breaths.

Opening them again, he saw Anabel had backed away, cradling her wrist, fear widening her eyes. “You’re an animal.”

The rage gone as quick as it came, his shoulders slumped in exhaustion. “Goodbye, Anabel. Forever.”

He knew what he hadn’t wanted to face before. He would ride for London, but after that, he wouldn’t be coming back. Bodliam was no longer home. With or without Gwenyth by his side, he’d forge a new life somewhere else. He’d started over once. He would do it again.

It was the graveyard watch, close to two in the morning, when Rafe lifted the latch on Gwenyth’s bedchamber door. Refusing to risk a candle, he used the filmy light of a low moon and his own memory to guide him.

It took only a moment to find what he sought, Gwenyth’s valise. His heart thudding so loudly he was sure she could hear it, he unbuttoned the flap and reached in a hand. He knew what he searched for would be within. Even in pieces, the tapestry would never be left behind. His shaking fingers brushed across the soft material of the weaving, folded into a tight bundle. Surely Gwenyth would wake and find him here, and then what would he say? What could he say?

He stilled the unexpected attack of nerves and bent his mind to the task ahead. He’d no time for hesitation. Sliding the tapestry from the bag, he tucked it beneath his arm. With a quick glance at Gwenyth asleep within a shimmering halo of moonlight, he clamped his jaw tight, hardened his heart to his purpose, and crept from her bedchamber, weaving in hand.

Lord Brampton returned with Dr. MacNeil whose snapping black eyes observed everyone and everything with a keen and penetrating gaze. He questioned Gwenyth about the birth like an inquisitor, His Lordship standing by.

At the end of the conversation, Dr. MacNeil pushed his spectacles up his knife-blade nose, directing his frank stare at Lord Brampton. “You should be extremely grateful to Miss Killigrew. She’s as well trained as any of the young surgeons at the University of Edinburgh, and a damn sight more intuitive. By all accounts, Miss Killigrew saved the child from death or injury. Perhaps Lady Brampton as well.”

Gwenyth didn’t want Lord Brampton’s thanks or his payment, which he tried to press upon her. She left the room with a headache blossoming behind her eyes. She’d done what her nature demanded she do. It was no more than she’d done for Sarah Landry, or anyone asking for her aid. Being a midwife meant she brought forth life into the world, and working as a healer meant that once that life burned brightly, she fought for its survival with all her skill. The Dowager, Sophia, not even Cecily truly understood that about her. Perhaps, not even Rafe.

Remembering Dr. MacNeil’s solid strength and the spark of affinity that passed between them, she knew he, out of everyone, might empathize. Her heart eased. Sophia and Simon would be in good hands when she left. This man would make certain of that.

Returning to her room, she sank upon the bed. Pain lanced her head, and a gnawing ache clutched at her stomach. She knew it wasn’t the child causing it, but Rafe’s departure. She felt his presence fading; the ties between them stretched thin as spider’s silk. Their last harsh words would be their final parting.

With a heavy sigh, she rose. As she drew her cloak up off a chair, her gaze fell upon a rolled bundle tied with silver ribbon lying hidden beneath. Her heart lurched and a gasp caught in her throat as she recognized the prayer rug. With trembling hands, she released the ribbon and unrolled the tapestry flat upon the bed.

Morvoren’s handi-work had been pieced together, each section sewn into place with some of the neatest stitches she’d ever seen. A note was pinned to the center black square. Gwenyth had no need to read the words to know who had bent his sailor’s skills with canvas sail to the delicate work of repairing her rug. Plucking the paper from the center square, she felt a shivering spark race up her arm. She laughed with joyous relief while reading the words through eyes blurry with hot tears.

Gwenyth could no longer deny the truth set before her. Rafe’s life was bound to hers; his fate was bound to hers. Anabel’s words echoed in her head: to have the courage to risk all.

Did she have that courage?

A knock from behind made her start with wild excitement, but spinning around, she saw it was only Cecily. Her troubled eyes traveled over Gwenyth’s cloak and valise before noticing the weaving. She rushed forward. “Your prayer rug? What happened?”

Gwenyth rubbed her hand across the repaired tapestry, surprised to find herself following the new seams in much the same way she’d traced the scars upon Rafe’s back. “’Twas a fortunate accident for it’s forced me to see things clearly at the last.”

Cecily’s gaze moved to Gwenyth. She frowned, biting on her thumb. “Rafe rode out an hour ago.” She cast a sidelong glance at the valise. “And I suppose I’m not surprised you’re on your way as well. If you’re bent on leaving, there’s a wagon for Carrisbridge being readied in the kitchen yard. It will save you a long walk.”

Gwenyth flashed her a warm, grateful smile. In the short time she’d spent here, she’d seen Cecily Fleming grow from a petulant child to a confident woman. Gwenyth spared a sympathetic thought for Mr. Minstead. There was no doubt in her mind he’d soon find he took on more than he knew. What would happen then was anyone’s guess, but she imagined it would be interesting to watch.

“Mother and Anabel have been taking tea downstairs.” Cecily’s eyes burned, her chin jutting at a mulish angle. “I wish that horrible she-cat would just leave us all alone!”

A knot twisted in Gwenyth’s heart as she stilled the wild hopes fired by the tapestry’s restoration. Nothing had been resolved. Rafe had left intending to wed Anabel Woodville, and Gwenyth had confessed to Anabel that her relationship with Rafe was at an end. What could she say now to even begin to untangle the mess she’d created? Or should she leave well enough alone now that she and Rafe had broken so completely? Did his repair of the tapestry mean that perhaps their relationship might be mended as well?

Trying to keep the desperation from her voice, she asked, “Do you know where Rafe has gone? I’ve got to see him, got to speak with him before…” She couldn’t bear to even say the words.

A sparkling smile lit Cecily’s face. “I don’t, but Derek may. He and Rafe spent all morning closeted together in Brampton’s study.” Cecily grabbed Gwenyth by the hand and dragged her toward the door. “Come with me. I think I saw Derek headed toward the stables.”

Gwenyth threw her a warning look as she allowed Cecily to take charge. “I thought you weren’t allowed in the stables.”

Cecily grinned. “If I have my way, Mama shall have to accept many changes. A trip to the stables will soon be the least of her worries.”

“No, I don’t know where Rafe has gone.” Derek relaxed against the paddock fence, his elbows resting upon the top rail. “He only told me he meant to end in London, not where he planned on heading first. And he’d no idea when he might be back. Unfinished business, he said.”

He twirled his crop idly in one hand, but Gwenyth noted the shadows clouding his eyes and the taut lines sharpening his jaw. He may not know everything, but Rafe had revealed enough to cause him concern.

“Take her to London with you, Derek!” Cecily pleaded, frustration and hurry coloring her face.

Derek started, dropping his crop. “Now look here, Cec—”

Cecily hurtled on, refusing to be calmed. “You know the City! Take Gwenyth to find Rafe. She’s got to speak to him before Anabel does.”

Derek plowed a hand through his hair, letting out his breath in a whoosh. “I can’t just rattle off to the City with my brother’s betrothed. Just being seen once in my company unchaperoned would ruin her.”

Cecily jumped with inspiration. “You’re a vicar. Surely a man of the Church could—”

Derek gave a rough bark of laughter. “Have you forgotten my reputation, Cec? The devil’s vicar, they call me, and you know it. It’s best if Miss Killigrew waits here for Rafe’s return.” His troubled eyes looked beyond them to the empty avenue as if wishing he saw Rafe’s horse approaching between the trees. “And he damn well better come back this time.”

He muttered the words beneath his breath, but Gwenyth stood close enough to understand. His fear held more than the pain of memory. This was a new worry shrouding his expression.

“Then Gwenyth shall go without you!” Cecily declared hotly. “Or…or I shall go with her.”

Derek leaned forward and tweaked one of Cecily’s curls. “Don’t be daft, moppet. Mother and Brampton would never allow you to go off with me.”

“But there must be a way,” she wailed, almost frantic.

Derek silenced her with a sympathetic pat while Gwenyth stood puzzling over what to do. To remain at Bodliam was no answer. She couldn’t stand one more day in the house. Too much unhappiness had passed beneath its roof for her to ever again feel comfortable within its grand and lofty rooms. But going to London seemed equally impossible. Mayhap ask her to travel to the moon.

Before leaving Kerrow for Hampshire, she’d never been farther away from home than Penzance. And she’d not the funds to undertake such a trip. Food, lodgings and coach fare alone would be more than she could earn in a year. And how long would it take to find Rafe? If the city were so huge, she might never find him, even did she have an idea of where to look—which she hadn’t.

She sighed. “I can see nothing for it but to go home as I intended.”

“But you love him! I heard you,” Cecily insisted. When Gwenyth raised an eyebrow in question, Cecily continued, “The night you argued, I was there. I didn’t mean to spy, but I heard you. You can’t deny that you care for him.”

Gwenyth shook her head. “I won’t refute it now, though I’ve done so for weeks on end. I love your brother with all my heart. If that spells disaster, so be it.”

Derek broke in. “When he returns, Miss Killigrew, we’ll tell him. Cecily and I both shall make him see. He’ll come to you in Cornwall.”

Gwenyth nodded in grateful acceptance. “And Lady Woodville?”

Derek offered her a demon grin. “I told you once I wouldn’t wish her on my worst enemy. That’s still the case, but I can think of someone who definitely possesses all the right attributes for our narcissistic neighbor. Anabel shall come through all this better than she deserves, and we’ll be free of them—I mean her—at last.”

Gwenyth caught the mischievous gleam in his blue eyes and bit her lip to stifle the bubble of mirth that welled within her. For the first time since meeting Rafe, she felt that fate just might turn her way.