Must Be Magic (21 page)

The memory of their earlier lovemaking rose between them, and Leila blushed and turned away just as Ninian came down the staircase. The dark-haired boy in her arms had taken apart a large wooden soldier and was industriously putting it back together again, oblivious of the circle of golden-haired females around him.

“There you are,” Ninian called. “I told them they might stay up until you returned.” Glancing from Dunstan to Leila, she smiled knowingly. “I suppose I should be glad you returned at all. If you have things to talk about, I'll settle the girls into bed for you.”

They hadn't even begun to discuss London, much less their future. Fearful that Dunstan would panic and run, Leila started to suggest they go to their sitting room. Dunstan surprised her by overriding Ninian's suggestion.

“The girls need their bedtime story, and I need to pry Griffith out of the library. We have to pack. We'll be leaving for London in the morning.”

Leila thought she'd like to capture the moment of frozen silence that followed this announcement and pin it in a picture book for safekeeping. He'd even caught omniscient Ninian by surprise, but the young man standing in the doorway farther down the hall held Leila's attention most forcefully. Griffith looked in turn startled, proud, and delighted.

She had no idea how
she
felt.

“I can mind Griffith,” Ninian offered. “He is no trouble at all. You and Leila—”

Dunstan handed his sleepy burden to Leila, then gestured for his son. “He needs to learn how to go about in company. I'm not much of an example, but I'm all he has.” Casually, he dropped his hand on Griffith's shoulder when the boy came to stand beside him. His son practically beamed with delight at his father's recognition.

Leila searched Dunstan's rugged face, but though she understood his character, she could not read his mind. “What of your turnips?” she asked.

“The turnips will grow without me. And the gardeners know what to do with your flowers. There are more important things than turnips and roses. I cannot have a future unless I clear my name, and I have more need to do so now than before.” He searched her face, waiting for her response.

“It's the height of the Season,” she said slowly, watching his eyes. The stubbornness and determination that made up much of his character overpowered all the other scents she'd thought to find, leaving her at a loss.

He met her eyes with a steady gaze. Leila understood he was doing this for her and for their child, but he wouldn't force her to come with him. He sought to protect her reputation and understood the importance of her gardens and her research here. He placed her desires over his own.

Joy welled up from deep within her heart and spilled out to curve her lips upward. He did not demand that she marry him and hand over all her wealth for the child's sake. He did not ask that she help him steer through society's dangerous shoals. She could stay here and meddle with roses and perfumes to her heart's content, and he would not say her nay. He offered her the freedom of her own decision.

In appreciation, she offered him the same freedom of choice.

“May I accompany you?” she asked softly, for his ears alone.

“And all these?” His gaze fell upon the little girls waiting impatiently for the adults.

“They shall go with us, as far as the Ives estate. Ninian dislikes London.” She watched him accept the inevitability of traveling in coaches filled with little girls. He was a big man, in more ways than the obvious.

With a look of understanding, Ninian gathered the children and bustled them up the stairs with promises of an exciting new bedtime story.

A little shakily, Leila turned to Griffith. If Dunstan could learn to deal with little Malcolms, she supposed she must learn to deal with young Ives. It seemed her future would be inextricably entwined with his. The thought both frightened and delighted her. If all Ives males were as challenging as Dunstan, she would never have a dull moment. She would certainly never lack company or need society for amusement.

The boy watched her with curiosity. She didn't think an Ives existed who didn't possess an avid curiosity.

Her daughter would be an Ives.

“And you, Griffith?” she asked the boy. “Will you mind my borrowing your father upon occasion? In return, I promise to find entertainments you'll enjoy in the city.”

The boy's eyes gleamed in anticipation. “If you would, please? My father hates the city and will growl and bark the whole time.”

Dunstan growled and caught the boy by the nape. “I will not,” he barked.

Not in the least terrorized, Griffith nodded, winked at Leila, and slipped out the front door, leaving Dunstan and Leila alone.

“Everyone who is anyone will be in London now,” she warned him.

“Which should make my task simpler,” he agreed. “Everyone who knew Celia in the last days of her life will be there. Finding a murderer involves an easier logic than solving the problem of what we will do after that.”

“We will go on as we have,” she declared. “Once your name is cleared, no one can threaten us again.”

He snorted in disbelief, but she knew his was a cynical nature that must be convinced. She would show him. They could do this. He could raise turnips and his son, and she could raise roses and their daughter. She was very good at managing things.

But the next days and weeks promised to be a whirlwind, spinning the peaceful life she'd planned out of control.

Actually, she rather looked forward to it.

“Your sisters and I explored the inn where Celia died,” Ninian told Dunstan and Leila over the rattle of the coach headed for London. The children were traveling in a separate carriage with the nursemaids, giving the grown-ups peace in which to talk. “It is a very old inn, with too many ghosts and vibrations to easily tell one from the other.”

Dunstan crossed his arms and glowered at his sister-in-law. She had maneuvered her way into Leila's coach when he'd hoped to have Leila to himself. He'd brought his gelding. He should have ridden outside—would have, if he'd known he would have to endure this prattle of ghosts. Two days of traveling in Ninian's company might test any doubts he possessed about his self-control.

“If Celia's ghost existed, she'd no doubt name me murderer just to give me grief,” he said in contempt. He didn't need damned interfering Malcolms cluttering up his investigation. Did none of them know how to mind their own business?

Leila tittered, caught his glare, and covered her laughter by looking out the window.

Dunstan fought back a twitch at the corner of his mouth. He didn't know if she was laughing at him or at Ninian's fancies. He just liked that she was laughing. That still didn't ease his righteous anger at being chaperoned by his sister-in-law when he wanted Leila alone.

He had a sneaking suspicion that Malcolms exaggerated their peculiarities for their own purposes. Women were still women, no matter what unorthodox talents they harbored.

He glanced surreptitiously at Leila. Beneath her gray cloak, she wore a glimmer of blue. She wore colors for him, instead of the widow's weeds in which she appeased society. He let the pleasure of that thought relax him as he sat awkwardly on the narrow carriage seat.

No other woman had cared to please him. He would do whatever was necessary to return the favor—such as trusting her strange abilities.

But that didn't mean he had to do the same for her cousin. He glared defiantly at Ninian, waiting for her to utter another asinine observation.

“Felicity says the desk Celia sat at gave off vibrations that brought to mind a green stone. Did Celia have any green jewels?” Ninian asked.

“I gave her jewels in every color of the rainbow,” he admitted. “She would coo and bat her lashes and wish for red ones, and I'd give her them. And then she'd buy a green gown and pout until she had something to match. The woman was insatiable.”

Celia had never worn blue for him. He would cling to that thought and believe that Leila and her family meant to help, not harm, no matter how witless their talk of ghosts and vibrations sounded or how irritating their meddling.

“Perhaps she was robbed?” Leila asked from her corner of the carriage.

I should think she'd have pawned or sold most of the jewels to keep her London creditors at bay,” Dunstan argued. “I did not pay her bills.”

“Tracking her gems is where we should start, then,” Leila decided. “Make a list of where you bought them and what they looked like.”

The task gave him something to do besides mentally stripping off Leila's clothes and looking for signs that she was increasing with his child, not to mention the other things he might do once he had her naked.

“Drogo is in London,” Ninian warned, apropos of nothing. “I shall take the girls with me to Ives so they won't be underfoot. Drogo will be happy to have you and Griffith for company in town, Dunstan.”

He shot her a look from beneath lowered lids. Damned woman was reading his mind again. She was telling him that to see Leila naked, he'd have to slip her past his eagle-eyed brother. The alternative was to find some way around Leila's scatty mother to the upper stories of her father's town house.

He would have to watch Leila laugh and flirt and not be able to touch her.

In her corner, Leila wrapped her cloak more tightly around herself and shifted in her seat. “Dunstan…” she warned in low tones.

“Dammit, I'll ride outside with Griffith.” How the devil would he live with a woman who could
smell
his need for her? He gave the roof a great whacking thump and threw open the carriage door before the coach could barely grind to a halt.

“They can't help themselves,” Ninian said reassuringly as the door slammed shut and the coach lurched into motion again. “Sex is always uppermost in their minds. One must simply dig past it to their brains.”

Leila thought she would like to imitate Dunstan's glower, except her cousin wouldn't heed her any more than she heeded Dunstan. “I cannot imagine how we will find one murderer in all London,” Leila said, changing the subject. “This is an impossible mission.”

“Perhaps so,” Ninian said tranquilly, “but our search will give Dunstan time to become accustomed to having a family. He's been alone far too long and fights our assistance every step of the way. You will be good for him.”

“Only if we keep
Maman
and Aunt Stella away from him,” Leila answered. “They will pry his head off his shoulders once they know he does not intend to marry me.”

“Doesn't he?” asked Ninian, opening a book she'd brought with her. “Perhaps you ought to mix another perfume for him if you believe that.”

Leila entwined her fingers and squeezed. Marrying Dunstan would cost her the land and freedom she'd waited years to gain.

He didn't always agree with her, but he hadn't insisted that she marry him. She would trust that they were in agreement on the subject.

But that didn't mean anyone else in their respective families would honor their decision.

***

Dunstan thought he might explode and save everyone the quandary of what to do with him.

Pacing the worn planks of the hall outside the rooms they'd taken at an inn on the road to London, he tried to appear to be a civilized gentleman and not a crazed beast, trapped by fear and anxiety.

Girlish giggles and the murmured remonstrations of an assortment of nannies and nursemaids seeped through the walls of the rooms to his right. On his left, the rise and fall of feminine voices, light steps, and laughter identified Leila and Ninian and their maids. He was surrounded by females and about to lose every iota of control he'd ever possessed.

Leila had looked green by the time they'd reached the inn. Nervousness ate at his stomach. He knew nothing about women who were breeding. He could vaguely remember Bessie flinging ribbons and hay at his head when she'd discovered her condition. She'd burst into hysterical tears every time he looked at her for some months after, and he'd looked often because she'd grown a splendid bosom. Then he'd gone off to school and knew no more about the episode until he'd returned to a squalling red-faced baby boy.

He'd been pretty well terrified then, too, but he had been little more than a child himself, and no one had expected him to be responsible. Or even reasonable.

A door creaked open, and Dunstan glanced up hopefully. He needed to talk with Leila. She could settle some of his panic simply by telling him she was feeling fine.

He breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of her slipping through the doorway at the end of the hall. He waited for her to look in his direction, praying she had some notion of where they could go to be alone. He shared his room with Griffith.

She hurried toward him, her light slippers tapping against the floorboards, her blue skirts swaying. “Thunderclouds will form in here any minute now if you don't stop your pacing,” she scolded. “I've never known a man who could boil air as you do.”

“How am I to rest when you looked as green as my turnips?”

Pleased surprise lit her expression. “Are you worried about me? I'm sorry. I did not know. I'm quite fine. Ninian tells me travel sometimes exacerbates the sickness of these early months. If that's all that has upset you, you may rest easy now.”

“Rest? Do you think I'll ever rest again? I've been wanting to do this ever since you flounced down the steps this morning.”

He pressed his mouth to hers and reveled in the answering passion he found there. This wasn't a woman who played games. He tasted the sweet wine of desire on her tongue, and her nipples became hard beneath his groping fingers. She sighed into his mouth, and Dunstan thought he would like to lift her skirts and take her right there.

The giggles behind the door prevented that action.

“I'll go mad,” he muttered, bending to press a kiss behind her ear and absorb the flowery scent of her skin.

Deliberately, she slid her fingers to the buttons of his breeches. “It would require but a minute—”

Dunstan caught her hand and moved it to safer ground. “It would take far longer than a minute, longer than a night or a week or a month. And it will have to wait until we've returned to the privacy of the country. I'll not have both our families looking over our shoulders while we rut like animals.”

She stood on her toes to nip his earlobe, then retreated to a safer distance. “You are looking for an argument to distract you from what lies ahead, and I'll not give it to you. I've been thinking of what you said about not giving Celia an allowance to live on in London.”

He stiffened. There was a subject guaranteed to take the heat out of his desire. “I couldn't afford two households and didn't see any reason to encourage her misbehavior,” he explained.

She dismissed his excuses with the wave of a hand. “So what was it she
did
live on? Or who? Think about it.”

She swung on her heel and stalked away, leaving Dunstan to groan in an agony of frustration.

***

“Tell me I'm beautiful,” Leila said to Dunstan, twisting her gloved hands in her lap as the coach lumbered through the fading light of a London evening after they'd left Ninian and the girls at the Ives country estate in Surrey. Griffith had elected to ride on the driver's seat outside the coach to better observe the exciting city he'd never seen.

“Why tell you what you already know?” Dunstan inquired curtly.

Leila thought he'd thrown his nervousness out the window miles ago after enduring two days of feminine upheavals. This day alone, the youngest babe had been nearly trampled by the horses, the eldest had insisted on riding astride with Griffith, and Leila had cast up her accounts twice—and Dunstan had seemed to accept all of it with remarkable aplomb.

When Ninian had insisted they all stop and say farewell to her son in the nursery, and the one-year-old had lofted a ball straight into the air for longer than the laws of gravity allowed, Dunstan had exchanged looks with Leila but hadn't said a word. So what was bothering the damned man now?

“It would make more sense to reassure you that you're far more intelligent and gifted than Ninian,” he continued, but even his unexpected flattery sounded brusque.

The closer they came to London, the more distance he set between them. She had tried chattering about friends and family. He withdrew further into brooding silence.

Leila leaned her head back against the seat, closed her eyes, and tried to read his scent, but she knew how he smelled far too well by now and found no surprises. “Ninian can heal people,” she answered with a sigh of frustration. “I can only make odd perfumes and smell things.”

“Leila, you haven't any idea what you can do,” he said angrily. “You've only just figured out that perfumes or smells give you odd insights. Ninian had her grandmother to teach her from childhood what she could do. It's all a matter of education.”

Well, at least she'd elicited some response from him.

“You needn't shout.” She glared out the coach window. “And you needn't speak to me of education. If it's your worry over how to go on in society that has you growling, then you're no better than I am. You need only a little experience, and you'll have the silly sheep fawning all over you.”

“I don't give a damn about sheep,” he muttered.

“Then tell me what you do give a damn about!” she shouted, her own nervousness nearly equaling his as they drew closer to their destination.

“Hanging,” he said bluntly. “Leaving you and Griffith and our child alone with my black reputation to ruin you.”

“You didn't kill Celia. Surely you know that.”

“That doesn't mean I can prove it.” He leaned back against the seat and crossed his arms defiantly.

Giving up on improving his mood, Leila leaned forward. “Then tell me what happened that day. Maybe there is something in the tale that can help us.”

“You think Drogo hasn't already thought of that?” Shadows cast his face in darkness, but an errant light from the window caught the worry marring his wide brow.

Leila reached across the space between them to touch his knee and remind him that he had her now. He didn't have to face the investigation alone. “Drogo isn't me. If we're to work together, then I must know everything you know.”

His queue fell over his shoulder as he turned away from her to glare out the window. “If I knew anything, don't you think I would have done something sooner?”

“Tell me,” she demanded, refusing to take “no” for an answer. “Start with George Wickham.”

Closing his eyes and rubbing his forehead, Dunstan spoke as if the devil tortured the words from him.

***

Surrey, 1751

“What the deuce do you think you're doing?” Dunstan demanded.

Climbing
over
the
stile
to
reach
the
horse
pasture, he glared in disbelief at the drunken fop who was attempting to round up two skittish carriage horses. One of the tenants had alerted him to the theft, but he hadn't believed any thief could be stupid enough to operate in broad daylight.

The
young
robber's chin lifted defiantly from the folds of his disheveled neckcloth as he grabbed one horse's harness. “I've come to retrieve Celia's horses.”