Must Be Magic (30 page)

Crushing lavender to her bosom, Leila bussed his cheek. “That would be wonderful, thank you. You can help me develop new plants, and Ninian, who can grow things with her eyes shut, can help with the garden. And I'm sure Drogo will be relieved to have your wisdom again.”

She watched him expectantly. Still confused and stunned that she might even consider living in a house other than her own, Dunstan said the only words that entered his paralyzed mind. “Will you marry me, then?”

He wanted to grab the words back as soon as he said them, but as always, she caught him by surprise.

“I thought you'd never ask.” Holding the lavender, Leila flung her arms around his neck and kissed him with fervor.

Dunstan shook his head in awe of how easily she plucked his feelings from him. He didn't care if none of this made sense, if the earth trembled and the walls shook. He'd placed his future in her hands, and joy raced through him. Now was a time for acting and not thinking.

Lifting Leila by the waist, Dunstan carried her around the side of the house, out of sight of the carriage and driver. Setting her down in a patch of daisies, he reached for the nearest evergreen branch and snapped it off. While she rhapsodized over the colors and fragrances of the weeds, Dunstan snapped off every branch in sight, then spread her cloak over the lot of them.

Catching her by the waist again, he gently lowered her to the springy bed he'd made and fell down beside her. Warm air caressed his cheek as softly as Leila's fingers did when he bent over her.

“My wife should have silks and diamonds,” he murmured, plundering her mouth before she could laugh.

Leila's tongue wrapped her sweetness around his, drawing him nearer to heaven. When neither of them could breathe, he spread his kisses across her cheek.

“Your wife would prefer roses and lavender.” She breathed a sigh of delight as he found a particularly sensitive place. “And this is the loveliest bed she has ever known.”

Something primitive and joyous stirred in him when she called herself his wife. In gratitude at her acceptance, Dunstan unfastened her bodice again and spread open the front of her unhooked corset. Seeking the tender morsels buried beneath the frippery, he suckled deep and long until she could no longer speak but merely cried out in need.

“I will give you roses in winter,” he vowed. “You will never lack for precious scents if you will have me.”

“Give me
your
scent,” she demanded, dragging his shirttail from his breeches and rubbing her hands over his chest beneath it.

That was one request he could grant without difficulty. Sprawling his great bulk between her legs, Dunstan propped his weight on his elbows and bent to press his kiss upon her eager lips. He wanted her promises in simple terms that even he could understand. “This seals our vows before God, Leila,” he warned. “Be certain this is what you wish, because no matter what the future brings, you will not be rid of me once you're mine.”

She yanked the loose ribbon from his queue and spread his hair over his bare shoulders. Dunstan felt himself falling into the depths of her eyes, but he hung on, willing himself not to move until he saw her answer in the loving smile on her lips.

“I vow to love, honor, and take thee in equality for so long as both of us shall live,” she whispered solemnly.

In
equality.
Dunstan remembered Drogo's panic at that Malcolm vow, but he'd had time to understand it better than his noble brother. He'd never known such joy. He might be a man who couldn't live without a woman, but only
this
woman would do. “I vow to take thee as my wife, to love, honor, and respect thee in equality, for so long as both of us shall live, and beyond,” he promised without hesitation.

Her eyes widened in delight at that, but he had exhausted his supply of patience. Feeling like a pirate claiming a precious treasure, he joined his flesh with hers, celebrating the promises of their hearts with the pleasures of physical possession.

He'd conquered the lady's heart only after he had submitted his own heart to the power of her love, the only witchcraft needed for building a future.

“I'd rather chew off my own arm than wear—” Dunstan snapped his mouth shut as his bride-to-be lifted amused eyes to his. Standing across the room, Leila wore a shimmery powdery-blue confection that matched the sparkles in her eyes, and every time he looked at her, he couldn't remember what he was complaining about.

Wearing a simple silver-blue gown adorned with blue ribbons, Ninian fastened a bunch of leaves and flowers to his lapel and patted it with satisfaction. “This is bay for love and honor and success, and a spray of jasmine for prosperity.”

“A spray of bank drafts would work better,” Dunstan grumbled, but he tugged to be certain the flowers were secure. He needed all the prosperity he could accumulate to support a wife as well as a son and daughter.

“I told you to keep Celia's jewels,” Drogo said absently from where he leaned against the mantel, head bent over a book. “It was considerate of Wickham to save us the trouble of retrieving them from that pawnshop. The green one adequately repaid Handel, with some left over, and I never considered the money I gave you as a loan needing repayment.”

“It was far and above our agreed-upon percentage for my work.” Holding his chin high so Ninian could straighten his cravat, Dunstan stared over her head to the foyer of the Ives London town house. Beyond the foyer waited the formal salon, where Leila's female relations flitted about, decorating for the upcoming nuptials. He refused to be nervous about the eccentric rituals that lay ahead, but his gaze kept drifting to Leila for reassurance. The love he found in her eyes soothed his ruffled hackles every time.

“You don't like being paid to play in the dirt,” his soon-to-be wife scoffed. “I see I shall have to negotiate your wages for you.”

Dunstan grinned and dodged Ninian's interfering hands to cross the room. “Do you intend to douse Drogo in perfume and discover my true worth in his eyes?” He grabbed the lacy veil and circle of twigs with which her sister had just covered Leila's curls and tossed them in the direction of the fireplace.

While Christina rescued them from the flames, Leila boldly met his gaze. “Your lofty brother has no clue what you're worth.”

“And you do?”

Before Leila could reply, her mother and aunt hurried across the foyer with a rustle of skirts and squawks of outrage to join them in the family parlor. “That impossible man is here,” the duchess cried, at the same time that Hermione wailed, “Someone hung”—she spluttered and turned pink—“those
things
on the rowan tree!”

So that was where his extra supply of protectives had disappeared to, Dunstan realized. His brothers no doubt thought he wouldn't need them anymore. Why they had chosen to tie them to a rowan tree wasn't a question Dunstan cared to pursue. He chose to answer the duchess's complaint instead. “I invited the impossible man,” he warned, stopping the duchess in her tracks. “Griffith requested it.”

“Adonis?” Leila whispered beside him, having been told of the invitation.

Dunstan nodded while continuing to stare down the huffy duchess.

“Well!” Stella turned her attention to Leila's bare head. “Where's your circlet of rowan?” she demanded, sweeping across the room to snatch it from Christina. “And his?” She shot Dunstan a demanding look.

“Wear it,” Leila ordered in an undertone as Dunstan started to protest. “For me,” she finished with a smile that smote his heart.

Dunstan bit back his grumble and let Christina stand on a chair to lower a circle of dried twigs and purple and white flowers onto his head. “I feel like one of your damned rosebushes,” he complained when Christina jumped down and eased out of his way. “Next you'll be sticking my feet in mud and telling me to grow.”

Leila's muffled chuckle was music to his ears, so he didn't protest too loudly when Hermione fluttered about him with the silly cape they'd forced Drogo to wear at his wedding.

“It's Leila who will grow, dear,” his mother-in-law-to-be corrected. She turned to Leila to adjust the cape Christina had placed over her shoulders. “You will need to leave for our home in Northumberland by fall so you do not risk having the child while traveling in winter.”

Dunstan's life had been rearranged so completely these past weeks, he'd become accustomed to it, but he didn't have to let the interfering witches think they had the upper hand. He wouldn't question their belief that Malcolm babies must be delivered in Wystan, their ancestral home, but he could argue all else, with vigor. “We'll leave when I have my land drained, and not an instant before,” he warned. “I promised Leila a garden, and she'll have one.”

“Leila's dowry will pay for that drainage,” Drogo reminded him, setting his book on the mantel. “You might give some consideration to her mother's concerns.”

“It's Dunstan's land,” Leila defended him. “Between us, it is a joint endeavor. We will use the sale of his crop and turnip seeds to pay for my flowers, so I will be in his debt, not the other way around. I will trust his judgment on when we should leave for Wystan.”

“You are the one who twisted Staines's arm and forced him to give me the tenant farm, as promised,” Dunstan reminded her, “or I wouldn't have turnips to sell. Let us not refine too much upon who owes what to whom.”

Leila shot him a brilliant smile. “Staines was so grateful that he wouldn't have to marry Lady Mary that he would have given us the entire estate as a wedding gift if he could have. Do you think you might train one of your brothers to manage his lands as well as you did? Bath is so far, I don't think you can manage it and Ives, too.”

Dunstan would have laughed at the impossibility of any of his brothers dealing with the spoiled viscount, but he was still off balance from the reminder that Leila would bear his child in less than seven months' time. “My brothers might explore our cave, could they find it, or dig for bones or explode holes in the hillside, so I think I'd best find another steward for your nephew. I owe him that much for deeding the grotto to you, even if his grandfather will not let him keep your gardens.”

“We'll take what flowers we can to Wystan,” Leila replied serenely, tucking her hand into his. “Over the winter, we can use the conservatory there, and you can show me how to develop new varieties so we will be prepared when we return to Ives.”

Dunstan liked the sound of that, but a noise in the doorway distracted him. He smiled at the sight of his son standing there, the impossible Adonis at his side. The sudden look of uncertainty in Griffith's eyes reminded him that in the flurry of wedding preparations, he hadn't offered the boy the necessary reassurances. He still needed to hone his fathering skills.

“Lady Leila has a rather valuable stable that will need tending when she brings it to Ives,” Dunstan told the boy, ignoring the chaos of activity around them. “I thought you might help me with that this summer and come with us to Wystan this fall, unless you prefer to attend Eton.”

Griffith's eyes widened, but still hesitant of his place in these grand surroundings, he hung back. “You would take me with you?”

Leila tore her hand from Dunstan's grip and strode across the room to reassure him. “I've talked with your mother. She agrees that it is time for you to be with your father now. He'll need your company when we go north. I've been told Ives men don't fare well with only women around.”

Griffith glanced dubiously over his shoulder to the parlor, where loud male laughter mixed with feminine giggles. “He has a lot of brothers…”

“Who have no appreciation for the land from which they sprang,” Adonis replied from the door. “They'll not venture out in the dead of winter, far from the distractions of city life, in the interest of keeping family company.”

Dunstan would have disagreed, but Leila's fascinated gaze on this man whom no one could name or place irked his more proprietary tendencies. Crossing the room to join her, he rubbed his hand over Griffith's head. “Next year, Eton for you, boy, but this year is mine,” he whispered, before wrapping an arm around his bride's slim waist. “A pox on you, Nameless,” he said to Adonis. “What do you know of family life?”

Adonis's shaggy head swung slowly from Leila's admiring gaze to confront Dunstan's dangerous one. “I had a mother,” he retorted. “I did not spring from under a cabbage leaf.”

Dunstan dropped a kiss on Leila's curls, released her, rolled his shoulders beneath the tight fit of the coat to loosen them, and raised his fists. “If you had a mother, then you have a name. What is it?” He might not have any grasp of the feminine niceties strewn about him, but he knew how to stake his territory. It began by identifying the stranger's proper place in his universe.

Wide shoulders encased in a shabby blue coat, long legs in shiny new boots crossed in a relaxed stance as he leaned against the door, Adonis regarded his host's fighting stance. “You're planning to fight me for my name on your wedding day?”

“I figure I'm the largest one here and the most apt to win,” Dunstan agreed, ignoring Drogo's polite cough.

Adonis turned back to Leila with a questioning lift of his dark brow. “You're prepared to nurse him back to health after I pound him through the floor?”

Leila flashed her most flirtatious grin, the one guaranteed to drive Dunstan's ire through the roof. “That's Ninian's talent. I'll just watch, thank you.”

Dunstan laughed out loud in great, tumbling peals of joy. She'd just given him permission to do as he pleased, and encouraged him to do so with that smile. Gad, he loved the vixen.

First, though, he would have to settle this family matter, for there was no doubt in his mind that the ugly-beaked giant ornamenting the doorway had to be an Ives. No one else in all the kingdom could sport the dark looks and prominent proboscis better than his family.

“Leila understands character,” Dunstan said offhandedly, not expecting his guest to grasp the significance of that. He would have to ask her later what she'd seen in Adonis that had led her to believe they wouldn't kill each other.

Adonis considered that a moment before saying, “Aodhagán.”

“Aid-ah-what?” Materializing beside Dunstan, Drogo attempted to repeat the word.

Dunstan simply stared in puzzlement, wondering if the man spoke in tongues.

“Aodhagán,” Adonis repeated. “That's my name.”

“Gaelic,” Hermione murmured, straightening the golden cape around Dunstan's shoulders. “Aid-ah-GAN, little fire. A very, very old name. I'm surprised your mother used it. We tend to use saints' names these days, not the old names.”

Dunstan thought Adonis might strangle while processing this information from Leila's bird-witted mother. “
Malcolms
tend to use saints' names,” Dunstan clarified.

“Well, our branch does,” Hermione corrected, “but we are very forward-looking. That's not to say he's a Malcolm, dear,” she added in a flutter of alarm at Dunstan's jerk of surprise at the suggestion that there were
more
branches on the Malcolm tree. “It
is
a very old name, after all. Anyone might use it.”

Leila patted her mother's arm and steered her away from Dunstan, but her fascinated gaze remained on the man in the doorway. “I take it no one can pronounce your name, which is why you call yourself Adonis,” she concluded.

“Among other reasons,” the stranger answered with wary amusement.

“And would you care to enlighten us on the family name?” Dunstan persisted. He hadn't wanted to like the man, but he understood his humor. The god Adonis was said to be very handsome, and this giant looked like an Ives. Ives males had many reputations, but handsomeness wasn't the one that stood out.

Dunstan didn't flinch beneath the dark, considering look the larger man gave him. He had no particular desire to create a brawl on his wedding day, but he wouldn't avoid one either if the man insisted he wasn't part of the family. With all these women fluttering about, brawling seemed a reasonable alternative.

“Dougal,” Adonis finally replied, in a curt, clipped tone.

“Dougal.” Stella repeated the name thoughtfully while straightening Leila's veil. “Hermione, didn't we have a great-aunt who married a Dougal?”

“If you say so, dear. I believe the vicar just arrived. Shouldn't we be taking our seats? I don't know how much longer Felicity can keep the young ones behaving.”

All around him, women flitted and fluttered and clucked. Dunstan merely took shelter by drawing Leila to him. She was his already, vowed beneath the heavens. The ceremony ahead was merely a formality. He had responsibilities now, and he meant to assume them. Drogo had his business in Parliament and couldn't be expected to handle every situation their rowdy family engendered.

And the big man standing before him was part of the family, regardless of the name he gave them.

“Aidan.” Dunstan decided on the shorter name with satisfaction. “I'll be damned if I call you Adonis any longer. Griffith is to stand up with me, but I'd appreciate it if you would take the row with my brothers—if it's not an imposition,” he amended, feeling Leila's tug on his sleeve.

Looking trapped, Aidan glanced from Dunstan's determined expression to Drogo's interested one, to the women, who did not appear to consider this request at all remarkable. His jaw muscle ticked, then set as he shrugged. “If you wish. But do not think you can hold me afterward.”

“Of course not,” Leila answered. “Though you'll want to stay for some of
Maman
's punch, I imagine. And Ninian has ordered the most delicious little tarts. I believe Griffith has learned some trick with a puzzle that he wished to show you, but I'm sure you can do that anytime.”

Hugging his magical wife, Dunstan kissed her ear. “Don't tease, Leila. You may tame only one Ives at a time, and that one is me.” He gave his newfound friend a sympathetic glance. “Drogo has asked us to stay at Ives for the summer while I oversee the estate and drain my bog. You are welcome to join us when you can. The place is a monstrosity large enough to house two tribes.”