Must Be Magic (5 page)

She definitely liked this man.

With a swing of her hips, she set off toward the cottage she'd had cleaned and prepared for the estate agent she'd hired—the best agronomist in the kingdom.

***

Dunstan's addled brain seemed to tilt, then right itself once his feet found solid ground.

Feeling as if he truly must have cracked his braincase, he trudged down the lane after the woman in red. He'd
flirted
with the wench. Gad, he couldn't remember flirting since he'd sired his son on Bessie. He would have to further investigate the effects of blows to the head. Could one pound sense
out
of heads?

Rubbing his bruised skull and rounding the bend in the lane, he watched his playful companion walk up to a neat latched gate in a privet hedge. Beyond the gate, the steward's two-story stone cottage, which he'd moved into earlier, rose against a backdrop of larches and chestnut trees. How did the bedraggled female know to return him here—unless she was a servant he hadn't met?

Dunstan didn't waste much time studying people the way he studied crops and weather, but he had an odd notion that the impertinent bit opening the gate didn't have an ounce of servitude in her.

A pity. Given his clash with his last employer, he probably ought to take some lessons—

A sight down the lane, past the gate, distracted Dunstan's musing. Otto, his damnable horse, stood calmly cropping the grassy verge ahead.

Forgetting the woman waiting at the cottage gate, Dunstan strode past her to grab the horse's halter. Otto shook his shaggy head, splattering him with moisture. Amazed that he'd noticed those few drops in the midst of a downpour, Dunstan glanced up at the sky. The clouds had parted, and a rainbow pierced the sky.

He glanced back at the alluring figure tapping her foot, and something twitched inside him. He knew temptation when he saw it, and knew he must resist it at all costs.

Leading his horse, he stopped in front of her. Now that he wasn't blinded by rain, he could see that she had midnight-blue eyes lit with starfìre and lush lips that didn't need the artifices of paint. No more golden-haired, deceitful aristocrats for him. A hearty country wench like this one was just the sort of woman he might one day hope to have at his side, and in his bed.

To his regret, that day wasn't today. He couldn't afford her or any other distraction until he cleared his name in Celia's death. It would be a long time after that before he could afford a wife, even a country one.

“I would offer you the warmth of a fire,” he said politely, “but I cannot risk angering the lady of the manor by dallying where I shouldn't. I'll bid you good evening, and hope we meet someday under more auspicious circumstances.”

Leading his horse through the gate, Dunstan turned his back on her surprised expression before she could destroy his illusion of loveliness by unleashing whatever female temper she harbored.

He was becoming very good at turning his back on temptation.

After carefully covering his turnip seeds with damp linen, Dunstan jotted down a few notes in his scientific journal, then glanced out the cottage window to the freshly plowed field caught in the fading rays of the sunset.

The first pleasure and satisfaction he'd known in a long time rose in him at the sight.
His
field, earned with the sweat of his own brow, planted with his newly developed seeds—a root crop that with the proper care should grow thrice the size of all others. He'd been here only a week, but the weight of the world was already lifting off his back.

If all went well, he would have a thick crop of feed vegetables to sell next winter, the newly formed agricultural society would recognize his achievements, and he'd have taken a step toward improving the lot of small farmers everywhere.

Had he owned the land, his labors would be considered a gentlemanly endeavor to improve it, and he would have aristocratic visitors from across England. As it was, the snobs wouldn't step past their gates for him, and he would be fortunate to attract the interest of anyone except local tenants. So be it. He didn't crave recognition so much as a means of earning his living and a modicum of respect.

Self-respect would suffice, for now. It was hard enough to come by these days.

The vision of the broken corpse that had once been the bright-eyed, laughing girl he'd married still haunted him. He had a man's blood on his hands because of her. Guilt and shame and a gnawing horror at his own actions continually tormented him.

He didn't know if he had the ability to rebuild a life for himself in the aftermath of Celia's death, but he had a son to support. The challenge of surviving each day for Griffith's sake kept him occupied. The search for the truth of Celia's death kept him from wallowing in self-pity. Now that he had an income again, he had funds for the investigator with whom he would meet shortly.

He glanced at the daily written summons from Lady Leila that his housekeeper had left on his desk, which he continued to ignore. Allowing a seductive Malcolm to bewitch him was a certain road to madness. Better to remember Celia and the tragic results of passion.

He'd hired gardeners and ordered the ground plowed. What more could the lady ask? Visiting her would accomplish nothing.

A bright swirl of red dancing between the dirt rows in the sun's waning light distracted Dunstan from his thoughts. He didn't need some fool crushing the hills, destroying his seed. Furling his fingers into fists, he pushed away from the high desk, prepared to chase off the trespasser.

His eye caught the dancing red again as it drew nearer—the woman from the lane following a small black-and-white cat. She was like the moon, appearing at day's end to tempt a man to folly.

He wanted her gone—from his thoughts as well as from his sight.

He returned to leaning against the desk. With his reputation, an angry confrontation with a woman would not be an intelligent move.

If he was nothing else, he was an intelligent man—except when it came to women. Women infected his brain like green worms infected rotted apples.

There was something subtly erotic about the way she skipped among his carefully tended furrows, ruby lips flashing a taunting smile, as if she knew he was watching.

Dunstan turned away from the window.

He didn't need luscious lips tempting him to something he had no right to consider. Work must come first these days.

Retreating from his study to the front parlor, Dunstan grabbed his coat and hat. He strode to the stable, saddled his gelding, mounted, and spurred it into a gallop, leaving the figure in red behind him.

Fuming over the ability of women to turn him into a churning cauldron of lust, Dunstan rode to the pub where he'd agreed to meet the investigator Drogo had recommended. He'd spent this last year praying that the authorities would uncover Celia's murderer, but they all seemed to assume he had killed her.

He clenched his jaw and prayed that he had not.

Only idlers and travelers occupied the tables as he entered the inn. Dunstan accepted a tankard, nodded at the local butcher, and took a bench near the fire to wait.

“I say, you look familiar.” A traveler in a silk coat pinned back at the tail for riding, and fashionable new spatterdashes to cover his stockings, spoke up from a booth in the corner. “Have we met?”

The speaker was evidently a London macaroni, and Dunstan made it a habit to avoid the city and its jaded residents. He sipped his ale before replying, “I doubt it.”

“I'm Handel.” The fop carried his tankard over to the settle. “I'd recognize an Ives anywhere,” he said, taking a seat. “Those black looks and that long nose give you away. Inventive, the lot of you, I understand.”

Dunstan shrugged. If this was the man Drogo had recommended, then his brother had made a rare mistake in judgment.

“I say, you aren't here to court the widow, are you? Not fair at all, I assure you. Drogo's claimed one fair Malcolm. There's no need for Ives to take them all.”

“There are dozens of them,” Dunstan informed him dryly. “The countryside is littered with golden-haired witches. There's scarcely enough of us to take them all.”

The fop chortled. “It's the fair-haired ones who are dangerous, so they say. Now, the widow, she's different. Her late husband used to say her only power is that of seduction, and I've no objection to that.”

That fairly well narrowed the topic of conversation, although Dunstan didn't grasp the difference between Lady Leila and the rest of her clan. They were all golden-haired, dangerous seductresses, in some manner or other.

He could still feel her fingers on his chest a week after the fact. He could easily see how a Malcolm could sink her seductive talons into a man, and he'd never be free again—although dying of pleasure might be its own reward. It just wasn't for him. He had other responsibilities.

“Her late husband's nephew is offering a bounty to the first man who catches her,” Handel continued affably, apparently unconcerned that he was holding a conversation with himself.

The news about Lady Leila's nephew surprised Dunstan. He hadn't thought a young lad would be so astute as to offer cash to take the widow off his hands. “Why would he do that?” he asked, cursing himself for asking.

The macaroni shrugged his padded shoulders. “He keeps bad company? Perhaps he wants his estate back. The lady possesses only a life interest in it, and she surrenders that should she marry.”

Dunstan struggled to hide his shock. All his hard work, the field he'd just meticulously planted according to the latest scientific recommendations—left to the whims of a woman who might marry and lose it all? Was ever a man so great a fool as he?

“For a man with no wish to immerse himself in the country, her lack of land would be no matter,” the man continued, unaware he'd just dealt a blow to his listener. “She has wealth and position enough without it.”

His seeds were planted, damn it. He couldn't leave now.

Raking his hands through his hair, Dunstan tried not to panic. How long would it be before she married and he was thrown out again by the heir? He'd only met the new Viscount Staines once and knew little of him, other than that he was an obnoxious adolescent just down from school, ripe for all the trouble London could provide.

“And your interest is?” Dunstan demanded, choosing belligerence over panic. The lady had hired him. He owed her the loyalty of protecting her from idle gossip, if naught else.

The fop grinned. “Just testing to see if you're interested in a wealthier wife this time around. Full appellation is Arthur Garfield, Viscount Handel. I believe you expressed an interest in hiring me.”

An
aristocrat!
At the moment, Dunstan would prefer to plant his fist in the fop's breadbasket for his mischief-making, but that wouldn't convince the investigator that he wasn't the type of man to go about strangling wives. Why the devil would Drogo recommend he hire a
viscount
? Better yet, why would a viscount be available for hire?

“If you must test me before I hire you, I'm not interested in your services,” Dunstan said, then drank deeply of his tankard and tried to disregard the shame and anger of having to prove himself to a coxcomb.

The viscount arranged himself elegantly on the seat across from him. “Of course you are interested in my services. You have the social grace of an ox. Your only hope of discovering the truth is to shake it out of someone.”

Dunstan grimaced at these truths. “I can't afford a bloody viscount. Why the hell would you be interested?”

Handel fluttered his long fingers. “Naught better to do with my time. I only accept payment if I solve the mystery. It gives me a good excuse to poke my nose where it doesn't belong.”

“Such as in Lady Leila's business?” Dunstan growled, still peeved at the macaroni for knowing more than he had about the lady's estate.

“Oh, Staines is informing all London of that. You really ought to visit the city more often. It's a hotbed of entertaining news. I can probably tell you far more about your wife and her lovers than you can tell me.”

He was no doubt right about that. Grumpily, Dunstan sipped his ale and scowled. There were times when he wasn't at all certain that Celia deserved to have her killer brought to justice. And then he would remember the lovely child she'd been and know he was as guilty as she was. She'd thought he offered her a dream. Instead, he'd offered his surly self. More the fool, he. “I'd rather not hear the details,” he said. “I simply want to know what happened that night.”

“To know if you're capable of murder?” the viscount asked.

The possibility haunted him. If he had killed Celia—the thought curdled Dunstan's blood—then he was a danger to every woman he came across, particularly widows who annoyed him and barefoot country wenches who lured him astray.

Shoving his ale aside, Dunstan nodded curtly. “You'd best take payment in advance if you're inclined to accept potential murderers as clients.”

Handel puckered his mouth in a frown of dismissal. “I'll rely on your brother to take it out of your estate. A handshake will do.”

His estate—should he hang.

He would never have a life, much less an estate, if he had to live under a cloud of suspicion. A London macaroni would be far more adept than he at prying information out of the fast company Celia had kept.

Gritting his teeth, Dunstan held out his callused palm to the viscount's soft white one and sealed the deal.

***

He'd been ignoring the flower gardens in favor of the income-producing fields—not a politically expedient choice, Dunstan could see now as he rode away from the tavern. He preferred logic to politics, but if Lady Leila was his employer, it might behoove him to ingratiate himself with her so she might give him a recommendation, should the time come when she married and her nephew took over the estate.

Disgruntled at the idea of groveling, Dunstan rode back under the light of the moon with an eye to looking over the land the lady wished cleared for her gardens. Contrary to what he'd led her to believe, he'd worked with his mother's rosebushes in his youth. He preferred a good solid feed crop any day. Turnips replenished the soil and fed livestock, and the strain he'd developed would help struggling farmers.

Flowers? Frivolous folderol that benefited no one.

He reined in his horse on the side of the lane, tied it to a tree limb, and climbed the stile to inspect the soil. Roses didn't like this rocky dirt, but he supposed the lady wouldn't be aware of how to measure soil quality. He would have the devil of a time developing a fallow field like this one.

He could bring in the horse manure pile from behind the stable, he thought as he followed a sheep path around the side of the hill. He halted abruptly at the sight that greeted him.

The woman in red knelt so still in the moonlight, she didn't appear to be breathing. Raven curls tumbled down her back and spilled over her slender shoulders, lifting occasionally in a light breeze as she gazed at something on the ground in front of her.

This woman never behaved in the manner of ordinary women—flying from stiles in thunderstorms, dancing in turnip fields at sunset. What the devil was she doing now? Worshiping the moon?

Common sense told him to turn around and come back tomorrow. Logic said she had no business being in the lady's field at night. Instinct warned of the dangers to an unprotected female from thieves and rogues wandering the roads. Torn, Dunstan hesitated a moment too long.

She turned. Moonlight flashed in her eyes, and enchantment moistened her ruby lips. Holding a finger to her lips, she gestured for him to approach.

Curiosity won over good sense. Striding as silently as he could across the rocky field, much too aware of his bulk and her slenderness as he approached, he crouched beside her. “Are you insane, woman?” he whispered, not knowing why he whispered.

“Shhh. Look there.” She pointed to a clump of wild rose brambles sprawling across one of the many rocks scattered over the field. The branches bore the first green sprigs of spring.

Dunstan squinted through the moonlit darkness, feeling a fool. “I don't see anything.”

“Brand-new baby rabbits,” she whispered. “Look, they're no bigger than mice, and nearly as furless.”

“You'd better keep your cat away from them, then.” Rabbits! The woman had cotton for brains. He started to stand, but the mother rabbit twitched her nose and perked her ears, and he hesitated, drawn against his will. The newborns wriggled and squirmed, searching for warmth and food, helpless and unprotected against the dangers of the night. His fingers itched to touch them.

“Why did she make her nest here instead of in a rabbit hole?” she asked. “It's not safe. Do you think we could move them?”

“They're
rabbits.
They eat crops. And you want to
save
them?” Clinging to practicality, Dunstan regarded the fool woman with disbelief.