Must Be Magic (19 page)

Eagerness replaced his disapproval. “Of course, my lady, anything to please you.”

The man she would really like to try her perfume on was Ewen Ives, but he was much more complex than the man on her arm. Start simply, she decided.

She escorted the baronet to her laboratory, and he watched in perplexity while she mixed scents and chatted. If he'd thought she'd brought him here for a bit of wooing, he was sadly disappointed, but he had the courtesy not to show it.

Perhaps she ought to teach Dunstan such manners.

Then again, she rather liked the surly Ives just the way he was. Smiling at that thought, Leila added a hint of rosemary to her concoction, then tested the fragrance. Raw, but she didn't have time to let it age.

She offered her guest the bottle into which she'd poured the fragrance. “Would you care to test it?”

Before the baronet agreed or disagreed, a shadow dimmed the candlelight, and Dunstan loomed in the doorway. No scowl hinted at his thoughts as he propped his big shoulder against the wall, crossed his legs at the ankle, and lifted a brandy glass to his lips. “You should invite the rest of your guests for the evening's entertainment,” he advised.

Everything that was feminine inside her went pitty-pat and melted at the smoldering look he turned in her direction.

“I cannot offer every guest a perfume of his or her own,” she said sweetly. “And Bryan is a special friend. Perhaps, if you're very nice, I'll prepare a scent for you,” she teased.

Not liking the loss of her attention, the baronet grabbed the bottle and tilted a puddle of fragrance into his palm, then slapped it to his sagging jowls. Unwittingly, he riveted both Leila's and Dunstan's attention with that gesture.

“A stable!” he cried in fascination. “It smells like my favorite London stable.”

Leila sniffed the fragrant aroma. “Manure is an honest smell, sir,” she asserted cautiously. The scent seared her nostrils, and to her astonishment, she recognized the familiar sensation of the room spinning. Excitement and fear assailed her as she grasped the worktable to steady herself.

The laboratory faded into a stable, an expensive one. High ceilings, a carriage with prancing horses… A woman's laugh. Familiar, hauntingly so. Fury welled, strangled by helplessness and humiliation—not the woman's emotion, but that of the man she mocked…

“Leila, are you all right?” Strong hands gripped her arm, gently retrieving her from emotional torment.

She blinked and glanced around. No stable. No woman. She leaned into Dunstan, letting his heat and strength ease her confusion. The baronet merely looked puzzled.

“Did you know Celia Ives?” she demanded of the young man, having no idea why she asked.

Behind her, Dunstan stiffened, but the laughter still echoed inside her head—tauntingly familiar laughter. Celia had been a vain, shallow creature who enjoyed flaunting her beauty and humiliating those she thought unworthy of her. A rural baronet would be an object of ridicule to her, however suited to her country origins he might be.

“I may have met her in London,” the baronet answered warily.

“In a stable?” Leila replied, then mentally slapped herself. She was too new at this. Had she really felt this young man's anger and humiliation? Or did her perfumes just give her headaches and strange notions?

The baronet's obvious discomfort answered her question, even when he refused to do so. Bowing, he made ready to depart. “If you will excuse me, my lady, I'd rather not discuss the dead.”

Before Leila could throttle the fool, Dunstan intruded. “Poorly done, sir. The lady gave you a gift. The least you can do is offer honesty in return.”

The baronet looked startled, rubbed frantically at the smell on his face, and appeared ready to bolt.

“I'd offer you my soap,” Dunstan said in an effort to sound sympathetic, “but the lady believes I smell like dirt.”

Leila almost giggled at the baronet's distress. He glanced at her, then at Dunstan, and without another word, raced from the room.

“That was unkind,” she chided. “I do not think you smell like dirt any more than I think Sir Bryan smells like a stable.”

Dunstan slanted a glance down at her. “What was that about Celia?”

“I don't know.” Leila tried to recall the moment, but it was already fading now that the scent of straw and manure had departed. “I don't understand what is happening to me. I thought I heard her laughing, and it felt as if Sir Bryan was the one she laughed at.”

Dunstan snorted. “Undoubtedly so. He's just the sort she would humiliate. If you heard Celia, then you must be a witch.”

In wonder, Leila tried on the appellation like a much-desired cloak. A witch.

Maybe she was.

She didn't understand the how or why of it, but joy infused her as an immense world of opportunity opened before her.

She could hear and see people who weren't there.

Her mother would be so proud.

Dunstan watched Leila's progress through the parlor in the aftermath of her interminable dinner. He'd sat on the edge of his chair throughout the meal, fretting over her decision to include him among her party, while her damned guests ignored him and chattered about her perfume experiments as if they were some new parlor game.

He had to admire Leila's determination in going after what she wanted, even as he worried every single minute she spent experimenting on other men. What if others reacted like Lord John? What if she stumbled onto some deep, dark secret in the same way she'd stumbled onto the baronet's memory of a stable?

Dunstan had attempted to pin down Sir Bryan and question him about Celia, but the man had given his excuses and fled. Did he dare trust Leila's strange perception and harass the man for more answers?

He couldn't imagine Celia spending time with a mere baronet—a rural one at that, admittedly, though, she'd had a fancy for fine horseflesh.

The vicar gazed at him as if awaiting an answer to a question, and Dunstan stumbled back into the conversation, muttering something inane as Leila led Ewen away. His heart thudded off-kilter at the picture of Leila and Ewen together.

“I'm of the opinion that plants have male and female parts as animals do,” Dunstan said, intruding on the vicar's monologue against the “unnatural” practices of scientific sheep breeding. “Plants breed just as indiscriminately as cats if left untended. Excuse me, I must speak with my brother.”

Leaving the vicar speechless, Dunstan attempted to veer behind a gaggle of ladies and escape the room. With a rustle of silks and satins, the ladies swung en masse to surround him.

“Is it true, sir,” one of the bolder matrons demanded, “that bagwigs have gone out of fashion in London? I cannot persuade my Harvey to part with his.”

One of the younger women tittered and hid behind her fan. The older ones watched him expectantly.

Feeling like an insect pinned to cloth and framed behind glass, Dunstan grimaced, rolled his fingers into fists, and said the first thing that came to mind. “Wigs attract roaches, madam. If you'll excuse me…”

He escaped amid gasps and flapping fans. No doubt he'd said the wrong thing again. Why did the fool women ask such questions if they didn't want his opinion?

Stretching his shoulders against the constraint of his coat, Dunstan eluded the rest of Leila's guests and escaped in the direction of her laboratory. He should ask her to create a magic potion to make him comatose if he was to parade around London seeking Celia's killer. He wasn't cut out to be courtly.

He burst through the dairy door in time to catch Ewen and Leila laughing intimately, and the ugly serpent of jealousy coiled and spat in his chest. He wanted to wrap a possessive arm around the lady's slender waist, kiss her lovely nape, and defiantly mark his claim.

He had no right to do any such thing.

A subtle scent of fire and smoke and things he couldn't name wrapped around him as both dark heads turned in his direction, still laughing. “I take it Ewen's scent is that of a clown?” Dunstan asked.

“Your brother has a very charismatic soul,” Leila said playfully, appropriating Dunstan's arm and leaning against him as if she belonged there. Her powdered hair brushed his jaw, and her swaying skirts wrapped around his leg, enfolding him in their exotic scent.

Dunstan watched Ewen's reaction to their familiarity. His younger brother—charismatic soul that he was—had a way with women. He'd been born flirting with the midwife.

Ewen merely grinned and winked at Dunstan. “I think she means I'm damned to hell and is too polite to say it.”

The subject of hell was much too uncomfortable for a man accused of wife murder. Dunstan shrugged and tried to pretend he didn't have a ravishing Malcolm's breast pressing into his arm. “Have you examined the distillery?”

“He says he can improve upon the design,” Leila answered for Ewen. “By this time next year, I could have my own rose distillations,” she said with a sigh of ecstasy.

“I'll sketch something for you,” Ewen promised. “May I have this fragrance? I rather like it.”

“It smells of wizardry,” Leila acknowledged. “Fitting for a mechanical genius.”

“Wizardry does not have a smell,” Dunstan reminded her.

“I think she means I smell like grease,” Ewen said cheerfully, taking the stoppered bottle she offered. “But I like the smell. I'll test its appeal on the ladies.”

He slipped the vial into his coat pocket and strode off whistling before Dunstan had the presence of mind to object. He didn't know if he wanted to object, not with Leila hanging on his arm.

“Will you stay tonight?” she whispered, studying him from beneath thick lashes. When he did not answer, she released his arm and gravitated toward the table.

Dunstan felt large and oafish in her slender presence, but he knew it was her elegant silk and powdered curls that distanced him. He told himself he needed that distance; otherwise he was a doomed man.

“I don't think it's wise of me to stay,” he said carefully.

Moving vials into order, not looking at him, Leila nodded. “Could we not… have a
special
place? Somewhere where we could just be us?”

Dunstan groaned at the temptation she dangled before him. Knowing she felt as he did would bring him to his knees faster than tears or promises. He could resist histrionics, but he had no experience with wistful desire. “It will only make matters worse,” he admitted, praying that she understood without an explanation.

“I thought men… I thought it was easier for you.” She lit a candlewick, and an odor of vanilla wafted on a breeze. Tense, she studied him, her dark eyes wary. “Do men not take mistresses and discard them with abandon?”

“Not this man,” he snapped, his resistance fraying.

She looked unhappy, as if he'd confirmed what she already knew. “It doesn't seem quite fair,” she murmured. “Half the population of London flits from bed to bed without a care. Lovemaking is a mere entertainment for them.”

“And London is where you think I belong?” he asked dryly.

She shook her head in a flurry of powder and curls. “No. I'm just confused. I know you desire me. And I desire you, as I have never desired another man. It's a new and frightening experience for me. I cannot understand why it is wrong to act on our desires.”

Dunstan rubbed his hand over his face and wondered if he was an even bigger fool than he thought. He could have the lady in his bed. Why deny himself the pleasure?

But he was beyond the point of being satisfied just to have her in his bed. He needed far more of her than that, far more than he could ask of her, given his circumstances.

The knowledge that he wanted more than a brief affair clawed his insides raw.

“I'm an accused murderer with no prospects for the future, Leila. All I can offer you is a fine romp in bed and a bastard in your belly. I'll be leaving for London shortly. I suggest you think hard about what you're asking of both of us.”

“I
have
thought hard.” She leaned against the table and hugged her elbows as if she held herself back. “I suggest
you
rethink if you believe you can leave for London without me.”

The idea of tarnishing her reputation with his appalled him. He couldn't take her to London with him.

But succumbing to the desire to possess her one more time, Dunstan bent to kiss her defiant lips. The taste of Leila's eager tongue soothed his battered patience, stripped away his cold restraint, and nearly undid him.

Before he could capitulate to his baser nature right here in her laboratory, with all her guests outside, Dunstan reluctantly stepped away, leaving her gripping the table behind her and looking stunned.

“We have no future,” he reminded her, “and you can't go to London with me.”

She merely stared, waiting, her kiss-stung lips moist and beckoning, her breasts rising and falling with the passion he'd provoked.

He could no more resist her temptation than turnips could resist rising to the sun. “Tonight, in the grotto,” he agreed, then swung on his heel to go in search of a stiff drink.

Leaving Leila contemplating the empty place where he'd stood, her heart pounding, her head spinning.

She was on the brink of discovery. A precious, valuable gift was hers to explore.

A child could be growing inside her, a child that both terrified and thrilled her.

She had everything she'd ever wanted at her fingertips. Why, then, was it not enough? Why must she seek out an Ives who made it evident he merely desired her body and no more?

She wanted to discuss her discoveries with the man who had valued the talent she'd ignored because it came too easily. She wanted days and weeks to design a garden she could share with the man who could best appreciate it.

All her gifts were meaningless without that someone to share them.

Looking at the empty beaker she held, Leila abruptly set it aside and hastened back to the gathering in her parlor to see if Dunstan had left.

The parlor was full of people yet empty of Ives.

And she realized that loneliness was far worse when she was denied the presence of the one person in the entire world who could understand the secrets of her heart.

***

Having left Ewen taking apart Leila's distillery and Griffith perusing her library, Dunstan sat on an overturned wooden pail in the midst of the leathery green leaves of his turnip bed to clear his muddled mind from an overdose of socializing. With his evening vest and coat unfastened, his fancy dress shoes caked in mud, he lifted a mug of malt to his mouth and drank deeply.

Lily waited for him in a magical grotto where she would ease his aching desire.

Leila wanted him to take her to London.

He couldn't bear harming another woman. He couldn't let a woman come between him and his son again. Need warred with responsibility.

Dunstan wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve and glanced around at his green companions. “You'll make some young sheep a good fodder,” he told them. “Better fodder than I am,” he continued stoically. “Sam Johnson must have been talking about me when he said, ‘If a man don't cry when his father dies, 'tis proof he'd rather have a turnip than his father.'”

He raised his mug to the splinter of new moon. “I don't want my son to prefer turnips to me,” he told it. He wasn't drunk, he knew, but who cared if he made an ass of himself out here? His little green friends didn't. A man could think straighter with a mug of whiskey and silence, and for once in his misbegotten life, he intended to think before he stepped off the deep end.

“Of all the men she knows, why would she want me?” The one man she couldn't have, he knew. “‘Woman's at best a contradiction still,'” he quoted, but the turnips didn't respond to his erudition. He sprawled his long legs out in front of him and contemplated the real reason he sat in this field when a beautiful woman awaited him.

“I don't need witchy Malcolms telling me things I don't want to know.” He sipped more carefully, waiting for his green friends to argue that one. They didn't.

“She'll make me as daft as she is,” he agreed with the night breeze. “Manure! She smelled manure and heard ghosts laughing.” He scowled and drained the mug. She'd heard Celia laughing. Could he live with that? What else might she see or hear?

“Problem is…” He let the statement dangle. “Problem is, I don't think I can leave without her.”

The moon didn't howl in disbelief. His green friends didn't turn their backs on him, although he thought they shuddered a little. He shuddered with them. Or maybe his head spun. Leila had that effect on him. He could control turnips and steer his own path, but he couldn't control Leila any more than he could steer the stars.

“She only wants me to share her bed,” he told the breeze in confidence. He wanted the breeze to tell him to go ahead and seduce her. Instead, it spoke with Drogo's voice, reminding him of what he could not forget. “She can't have babes, she says. Anyway, it's not as if I'd have to support one,” he argued. “She could afford to wrap it in silk batting and hire it the best teachers. But she's barren.”

His green friends laughed at him. Malcolms were never barren.

Rising to stand legs akimbo in the middle of the field he'd thought would be his future, Dunstan propped his hands on his hips and shouted at the moon, “Am I supposed to stew in my own damned juices?”

The moon didn't reply.

London and the search for Celia's killer loomed before him. He had to clear his name, if only for his son's sake.

And to protect Leila.

Leila. She waited for him, a beautiful woman offering answers he wasn't prepared to accept.

He could no more leave her waiting than the moon could stop from setting. He didn't think he could prevent Leila from going to London with him either, not when it was what they both wanted, even if it wasn't wise.

Perhaps he could publish his own quote: “Wisdom goes out the door when women walk through it.”