Must Be Magic (4 page)

“Lord John, the presumptuous twit.” Leila glared at her reflection as the maid brushed off her black gown and pinned up her hair again. She hated black, hated powder, hated the trappings of this woman she'd become to suit her husband. But she wore the guise for good reason. It gave her the authority she needed to wield her wealth and assets, and the approval of society required to do so.

“He is most handsome, my lady,” the maid whispered.

“And he's gambled away this quarter's allowance,” Leila replied in irritation, well knowing the company the gentleman kept. She hoped her nephew avoided the gaming tables that Lord John frequented.

“Ahh, but a gentleman like that could be
très
amusing. And what pretty children he would give you.”

Leila ignored the swift shaft of pain to her heart and, feigning lightness, replied, “Oh, I'm much too busy for children.”

She allowed Marie to pin her hair beneath the black lace cap. Lord John was the spoiled younger son of a nobleman and would not leave without a personal reprimand. His kind always thought their charms irresistible.

Brushing away her maid's offer of earbobs and necklace to match her rings, Leila descended the front stairs without hurry. She'd performed the role of society beauty for so many years, she could do it in her sleep.

She'd disdained panniers for this encounter and merely brushed her petticoats aside as she entered the guest parlor. Lord John leaped to his feet, made an elegant bow, and offered his gloved hand.

“My lady, London has been forlorn without you.”

“Fiddle-faddle. What are you doing here, sir?” She removed her hand from his. He smelled of horses and gaming tables, odors she found particularly repugnant at the moment. She produced a handkerchief to ward off the scent. “Did my nephew not tell you I have tired of the city and wish to rusticate a while?”

“I could not bear the thought of another evening without your presence. The lure of the countryside, and you, drew me onward.”

So, the young viscount had not given him the message. The little brat. He was up to his childish pranks already. She would never be rid of these encroaching mushrooms. “I am sorry you have come so far without reason,” she said. “My sisters have not arrived to entertain you. But I understand Bath is lively. Perhaps you could seek lodging there.”

“Do not send me away so soon,” he pleaded. “I will be all that is circumspect until your family arrives. Let us take time to know each other better.”

Marie was right—he was a handsome man. Beneath his elegant wig, Lord John revealed a high, intelligent forehead, eyes of pleasing bronze, and curved lips one could contemplate with pleasure. She had dallied an evening or two tasting those lips, but they had not inspired her to more. In fact, his fawning courtship had shown her the shallowness of the seductive powers she'd wielded these last years.

“Remember my heritage, my lord,” she said. “My father may be a marquess, but my mother is a Malcolm. I know you far better than you know me.”

She rarely flaunted her ancestry. Her husband had frowned upon it. Most men didn't wish to be allied with a family that was commonly rumored to include witches, but Malcolms were wealthy and powerful, and men couldn't resist the alliance any more than they could like it.

It was a measure of Lord John's desperation that he hesitated only briefly. “I do not court your family,” he informed her boldly. “It is you I desire. Let me beg just a few days of your time.”

He kissed the back of her hand and gazed upon her soulfully, as if he truly meant the depth of his devotion. Had she been an innocent eighteen, she might have believed him.

The loss of that innocence pained her, but it was too late for regret. She'd chosen to do her duty as a Malcolm should. Although she'd failed to produce more Malcolms, she'd accomplished the main objective of adding to the family coffers. Now that that duty had been fulfilled, she needn't marry again.

Leila removed her hand and rang for the butler. “Homer will show you out. I believe there is time to reach Bath before nightfall. It was good of you to stop and visit, and if you will post your direction after you are situated, I will see that you receive any invitations we offer this summer. Good day, my lord.”

She held her capped head high, clasped her fingers in the folds of her black silk, and remained inflexible while the butler escorted her guest to the front doors.

With Lord John gone, the house echoed in emptiness.

Her nose twitched in irritation at the scent of horses and leather and cowardice lingering in the air after he departed.

It was almost sunset. She could slip into the garden to fill her senses with fresh fragrances and erase the stench of decadence. The most recently planted roses had been healthy last time she looked.

Flinging off her cap and shaking loose the pins for the second time that day, Leila raced up the stairs, gleefully anticipating the sight of those first rosebuds.

“Damnation.”

Garbed in an old red wool gown left from her unmarried days, Leila collapsed on the muddy ground in the middle of a garden of ruined rosebushes, fighting back tears.

“Hellfire.”

Row after row of distorted rose leaves and withered buds stretched out around her. Propping her elbows on her knees, she sought every curse word she knew.

It seemed the only appropriate response to this latest in a succession of disasters. The horses had eaten her lavender seedlings last week. The geraniums had been frosted upon the week before that. Mites had infected the seedlings in the greenhouse. And now, her precious roses were dying.

She swiped furiously at a tear trickling down her cheek. “Bloody damn hell,” she continued in such a tone that even her cat looked askance at her. “My gift has to be related to fragrances, Jehoshaphat. I can tell the scent of a Celsiane rose from a Celestial, a damask from an alba. And if
Maman's
gift is for creating happiness with scented candles, I don't see why I can't do the same or more.”

Jehoshaphat jumped in her lap, crumpling the dead rose leaf in her hand, the useless product of years of study. Leila swallowed a sob, and feeling cast adrift on stormy waters, she stroked her only companion.

She'd spent the empty days of her marriage examining every rose in England so that when the opportunity arose, she would know the varieties required to create the fragrances that danced in her mind. She'd kept notebooks, written down names and gardeners, and researched growing habits, pretending that someday she would have a chance to use her knowledge and ease the pent-up frustration of being a useless nonentity in her own family. Every time she flashed another false smile as she spun around a ballroom, she thought about the scents she could create from the flowers she studied and imagined how she might bring joy to people's lives.

With every blink of her eyelashes, she had longed to rip away her social mask and reveal the woman inside, weeping to get out.

These gardens were the life she'd never lived; the roses were the children she would never bear. And now they were
dying.
Something new and precious inside her withered with them.

“Friggin' filth.” Feeling another tear escaping, Leila set the cat aside and dug at the roots of a plant, trying to discover some sign of life. But there was no sign of anything she could understand. She didn't know enough. All her book knowledge and learning were for naught.

Pounding the ground with her fists, she shouted, “Hell's bells!” At least out here in the privacy of her garden, she had the freedom to curse and rail at the heavens.

She smacked at a wayward tear and choked back despair.

Perhaps she was an anti-witch. Perhaps her every touch brought death instead of life. Maybe she really
wasn't
a Malcolm.

Horror struck her at the possibility. She would not think that. Ever.

She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her sleeve, smearing her face with mud. “I just want to be useful,” she muttered, scrambling to her feet.

She refused to believe she was without any ability at all. She
knew
she had a talent for scents. Her sisters loved the ones she'd created for them before she married. Perhaps she could buy the flower bases from other growers.

But other growers were simpleminded jingle-brains who didn't know how to pick what flower under which full moon, and they mixed varieties and scents indiscriminately. She wanted everything to be
perfect.

Looking at her pitiful rows of distorted roses, she felt panic plucking at her heartstrings.

She'd married a man who could give her this fairyland setting of farmland, and then he hadn't let her plant it. She'd ignored his objections, and Teddy had run his hounds and horses through her tender plants. She'd moved her flowers elsewhere, and he'd ordered those acres turned to sheep. She'd been frustrated in every way by her husband, and now it seemed that even nature had turned against her.

Grabbing her hated black curls, she tugged and scowled at the threatening sky. In response, thunder rumbled in the distance.

She wouldn't give up. She
wouldn't.
Now that Dunstan Ives had arrived, she would pay him to do what she could not. She would risk whatever spell Ives men had over Malcolm women to find the gift that she must possess.

Wiping her hands on her skirts, she stalked from the field to escape the approaching storm.

Climbing the stile near the road, she watched a rider top the crest of the hill, silhouetted against the backdrop of boiling thunderheads. Cloak flowing over wide shoulders, thick dark hair swept back by the wind to reveal a square jaw, he appeared to be lord of all he surveyed.

Dunstan
Ives.

Now, there was a throat she'd like to slit—a nice, strong throat. If he'd only taken the position when she'd first offered it, these disasters might have been averted.

But no, the goddesses forbid that a proud and worldly man submit to the command of a lowly female.

The servants had informed her that he'd moved into the steward's cottage. He must have been out surveying the land he meant to plant without consulting her.

Hands on hips, thinking bloodthirsty thoughts about her new hire, Leila watched Dunstan's progress with a far higher degree of interest than he deserved.

He kicked his mount to a gallop down the hill, apparently attempting to outrace the approaching storm. Surely he was not riding back to tell her he could not take the position after all.

More likely, the prancing jackass had just viewed her blighted gardens and come to rub her nose in failure.

Letting the wind catch her black curls and blow them off her face, Leila waited to hear his opinion of her multifarious disasters.

Lightning struck in the distance, and thunder crackled. If Dunstan had been a true gentleman, he would have offered her a ride back to the house before the storm broke. But the all-male households of Ives men offered few gentle influences. Barbarians, the lot of them. The damned man was practically upon her and hadn't slowed his mount yet.

Her red skirt billowed in a sudden gust of wind. Another crack of thunder rolled across the sky. Dunstan's horse whinnied in fear and balked. Leila admired the man's skill in bringing the huge gelding under control.

Reining in his frightened mount, Dunstan finally looked at her as she stood on top of the stile, wind whipping her hair and skirt—until a stronger burst of wind and a crack of thunder blended with an ominous snap above her head. Leila caught his look of horror but didn't have time to react before the branch whipped across her shoulders. With a scream, she lost her footing and plunged forward.

The horse reared, and Dunstan, reaching out to catch her, lost his balance just as the cloud burst open, unleashing a torrential rain. With a yelp, he rolled on his shoulder and landed in the lane with Leila on top of him.

He lay still, spread-eagled in the mud, staring up at the clouded sky, rain pouring in rivulets down his chiseled cheekbones, mixing with the dirt in his raven-black hair. Sprawled across his sturdy chest, Leila thought she'd killed him.

Frantically, she slapped both sides of his jaw, trying to jar him back to life. She didn't have the slightest notion what she should do. She just knew this man exuded the most exciting aromas she'd ever known in her life, and she
needed
the wretch. “You can't die on me now,” she yelled into the wailing wind. “Stop playacting and get up.
Get
up!
”

Slowly, his gaze swiveled to focus on her. She knew the instant she had his attention. The element of lust shot sky-high. Fascinated, she didn't bother moving from her unladylike position across his chest.

“I
am
up,” he said solemnly, although with a touch of bewilderment. “I daresay if you would care to oblige by moving a little lower, I'll be more
up
than I've ever been in my life.”

Heat suffused her face and spread lower. Annoyed, Leila smacked his face again, but he only smiled with the dazed look of a man who'd been unexpectedly offered heaven. The wretch was absolutely irresistible, even if he was an accursed Ives. Daringly, she propped her elbows on his broad chest and inspected him as if she were a common wench and he, her inamorata. “I think I've cracked your brainbox.”

“I doubt that's any cause for alarm.” His glance fell to her soaked woolen bodice. “Maybe I had to hit bottom before I could look up. Are you all right? Did the branch hurt you?”

Leila tried not to laugh. Surely she'd rattled his brains, at the very least. This was a side of the brooding Dunstan Ives she'd never imagined. Perhaps he was not entirely all male arrogance and prickly thorns.

She wriggled experimentally, and his sinewy arm shot out to wrap around her waist and hold her still. Heat and strength poured into her, and she eyed him with some measure of awe. “My, you're a brawny one,” she said teasingly.

“Is that rain, or are we lying under a waterfall?” He squinted skyward again. “I suppose in a countryside where red ravens swoop from the trees, one could have waterfalls from the sky.”

She laughed aloud at that. Minutes ago, she'd been feeling miserably sorry for herself, but all that had changed with a bolt of lightning. Hope filled her fickle heart with joy, even if she was lying on top of a madman in a muddy lane during a torrential downpour.

“I think the water is now seeping through the crack and soaking your brain. Come, you must get up.” She attempted to slide off, but he wouldn't release her.

“Why?” he asked with perfect sincerity. “I am already soaked. I've ruined my best breeches. And I believe my horse has run off without me.” He crooked his neck to look around her and verify the lane's emptiness, then returned to scrutinizing her breasts. “If I must live at the bottom of a barrel from henceforth, the view from here is much better than any I've seen for a while.”

She had so many plans she wanted to talk about, so many things she needed to accomplish, so many hopes pinned to this impossible man—and his only interest was in her bosom!

She grabbed his long, aristocratic nose and twisted. “Let me go, oaf. I thank you for breaking my fall, but I'm not a water nymph. I want dry clothes and a roaring fire.”

He removed her hand with ease and proceeded to nibble on her fingers. “Tart. Excellent dirt. I don't suppose you have a roaring fire nearby? Lady Leila won't exactly welcome me in this condition.”

Leila's eyes flared wide.
The
daft
devil
didn't recognize her!
He'd definitely cracked his brainpan. Was this how he behaved with all women other than herself?

But then, most men behaved more honestly with women of the lower orders, and that is how she must appear at the moment. He'd never seen her without powder or wearing anything less than the finest silks. How interesting that dressing in old gowns to play in the dirt liberated not only
her
but also the man in her company.

Mischief lurked within her, and she couldn't resist testing the theory. “I know a place where we can start a fire,” she said brightly, without the studied purr she would have used in London. “It's just around the bend.”

His expression was skeptical. “You're not saying that just so I'll release you, are you? I'm perfectly content to lie here until the moon comes out.”

“And be run over by the next carriage? Up, my drowning sailor. I want a fire.” She might be intrigued by the tantalizing effect of man and arousal and pure healthy sex, but she'd never succumbed before and saw no reason to do so now. Pleasure was short-lived, but her garden was for a lifetime.

She tugged her hand away and swung her leg over his broad torso the way a man dismounts a horse. She'd always wanted to ride astride, but this hadn't been her idea of a mount.

He grimaced when he was hit by the full brunt of the rain without her warmth to shield him. “I think I've broken every bone in my body. I don't suppose you would be inclined to help me up?”

She propped her hands on her hips and glared down at him with suspicion. “I don't suppose I would. I'd end up rolling in the mud again, wouldn't I?”

A smile of sleepy satisfaction spread across his normally taciturn face. “You're much too clever for a girl. Even my brothers fall for that one.” With a grunt, he rolled to one side and heaved himself to a sitting position. This time, his gaze focused on her gardening shoes. “Dainty feet. Does the mud squish between your toes?”

It did. Her soles had separated from her flat kid boots, and the rain had soaked through. She kicked his solid thigh to pry him up, but he'd already succeeded in sending a thrill through her. Men didn't admire her
toes.
Dunstan Ives was too dangerous for her own good.

Dunstan Ives thought she was a country wench, free for the asking.

“Up, or I shall leave you here to wallow in the mud,” she declared.

He staggered up, dripping mud and rivulets of water from hair and clothes as he towered over her. Leila caught her breath at the immensity of the man blocking her view of the landscape. A black ribbon dangled from the remains of a queue at his nape. His sopping brown coat hugged wide shoulders and powerful arms. A muddy, crumpled stock clung to dripping linen and a black vest that molded to his deep chest and narrow waist. He looked perfectly comfortable in the mess, and her heart did a jig. The gentlemen she knew would be bemoaning the destruction of their pretty attire, not looking at her as if she were a piece of tasty pie.

She wore no powder or perfume, her hair hung in straggling black hanks down a muddied woolen bodice, and she looked worse than she ever had in her entire life—so bad he didn't even recognize her. And still he stared at her with devouring hunger.