Uncertain Magic (6 page)

"I have not." The ice in Iveragh's voice would have frozen hot coals.

"She said she liked you." Her father made it an accusation. "Did you put her up to it? If you've compromised her and then forced her to prate about some affection between you to gain my approval—"

Say yes
, Roddy begged the earl silently.
Say you've compromised me
. Her father was certain to knuckle under to that, even if he were mad with rage. Calling Iveragh out would only ruin her publicly. Marriage would be the only answer.

But Iveragh seemed to have lost the quick wit he'd displayed earlier. He said, quite gently, "I have forced her to nothing, Mr. Delamore. Nor will I ever."

"Then why in God's name would she say she liked you?" her father sputtered. "M' daughter's no muttonhead. She must know full well what you are."

"I confess," the earl said, "I am as much at a loss as yourself. Perhaps you should ask her."

"Eh?" Mr. Delamore had subsided into a concentrated review of exactly what he remembered of Roddy's declaration concerning Iveragh. She lifted her chin in renewed hope at the conclusion that leaped into his head. "Good God, man," he exclaimed. "Are you in love with her?"

Roddy bit her lip in the long pause that followed, afraid that Iveragh would miss another golden opportunity. But this time the earl took his cue. In a strangely subdued voice, he said, "It's quite possible that I am."

Beautifully done, Roddy thought triumphantly. Just the right touch of self-doubt and conviction. Her father snapped up the bait. "Damme, if that ain't a leveler!" He chuckled. "The little vixen. She never told me."

"I wouldn't have thought she knew," the earl said dryly. "I'm sure I've never discussed it with her."

Roddy's father gave a hoot of laughter at that admission. She heard his chair scrape as he stood up. "Court her, then, by God!" he cried. "By all means, press your suit!" And for the rest of the brief visit, he continued to break into chortles of wicked amusement each time he thought of how this hardened rakehell was in love with his daughter, and didn't even think she knew it.

Roddy sat plucking at a seam on the green velvet couch in the music room while her parents poured out objections and warnings. Her father's impetuous permission to Iveragh had been instantly dismissed by her mother as an act of insanity. Under Mrs. Delamore's chilly stare, the joke had seemed not quite so amusing to Roddy's father either, and now both of them joined forces to instruct Roddy on how to repulse her unwanted suitor.

"You must not let him single you out tonight before dinner, my dear," Mrs. Delamore said. "If he approaches you, you must draw someone else into conversation immediately. Your father or I will come to your aid as quickly as we can in that instance. Now—I've rearranged the seating at table, so that you will be between Lord Geoffrey and the vicar. Iveragh I shall keep at my side, since your father seems so ill equipped to deal with him."

"Matty!" Mr. Delamore exclaimed in hurt accents. "My responsibility as head of this family—"

Her mother turned a jaundiced eye upon him. "Your responsibility, my dear? Indeed yes, I would think that would include protecting your only daughter from ruin, but I see that it only extends as far as making bargain purchases of horseflesh."

He flushed crimson. Roddy lifted her chin. "Don't blame Papa." She amazed herself with the calm decision she managed to put in her own voice. "I
want
Lord Iveragh to offer for me. I suggested it to him myself. If Papa had refused, I would have eloped."

Two pairs of horrified eyes fixed on her as her parents absorbed this unexpected blow.

"Eloped!" her mother said in strangled accents, and promptly burst into tears.

Mr. Delamore looked as if he would have liked to do the same. Roddy bit her lip, dismayed at the hurt she had never meant to cause. She had thought they would be glad to have her gone. Her gift gave her no divine omniscience: there were levels and levels in the quicksilver shift of mind and emotion, but right now there was only anguished disbelief. "Mama," she said, and all the steadiness had left her voice. "Don't cry. Of course I won't elope—not now. But you must understand I want to be married. You and Papa can't look after me forever. I need a family of my own. All my happiness depends on it."

Mrs. Delamore buried her nose in her handkerchief. "We
can
look after you forever," she cried in a muffled tone. "We want to!"

Roddy squeezed her hands together in distress. "Oh, Mama!" How could she say that a lifetime of unfulfillment in her parents' home stretched like bleak winter before her? She was a burden to them, however loving their intentions. A burden to anyone who knew of her talent. They loved her as they would have loved a unicorn in their midst. Careful of the magic. Of the sharp and certain truth.

And yet she was human, her needs and fears the same as theirs. She was not different. Not in her heart. She longed to be useful and necessary for her own sake. Not like Aunt Nell, sheltered and protected, imprisoned in her indulgent family for all of her life.

"
Iveragh
." Roddy's mother could barely speak past the sob in her throat. "The things they say of him—"

A multitude of sins were rumbling about her mother's mind, too incoherent for Roddy to catch more than a flash of mistresses and duels and dishonored maidens. Roddy frowned, remembering Lord Iveragh's face in the moonlight, and how quickly it had changed from despair to cold pride. "Mama," she said with gentle firmness, "I of all people should know that what people say isn't always the whole truth."

Her father looked up from where he had been breaking a quill into fragments at the writing desk. He stared at Roddy a moment. "Do you know the whole truth in this case?" he asked suddenly.

It was Iveragh's declaration of love that he meant. She met his eyes and committed herself beyond recall. "Yes," she lied. "Yes, Papa, I do know it."

Her mother made a pitiful sound of protest. Her father narrowed his eyes. "And have you told
him
the whole truth, miss?"

It took all of her determination to keep her face raised to her father's. "He understands everything."

Not exactly a lie. She didn't dare admit that her gift had failed with Iveragh, for she knew her only hope was to convince her parents that she had seen some redeeming quality in him that everyone else had missed. Lord Iveragh knew all he needed to know. With him, she was a normal person instead of a freak, and she saw no reason ever to let him think otherwise. For that one virtue she was willing to excuse him any number of indiscretions.

"Everything, Papa," she repeated, with extra firmness.

Her father's lips tightened. He stared down at the desk and struggled. The decision shifted and wavered in his mind, tossed one way and then another. He'd spoken to Geoffrey, quizzed the younger man mercilessly, and received not only anxious .reassurance, but a written letter of recommendation as well. "A man of integrity," that letter had said. "A noble friend." There was no mention of Iveragh's reputation, Iveragh's insolvency. Nothing but Geoffrey's high-flown phrases of assurance and commendation.

Her father thought of the look on Iveragh's face as he made his offer. Pride and hard truth, with no sly insinuations. Not a simpering dandy with a weakness for the card table: no one had accused the earl of that vice. And only just come into his inheritance—
at thirty-five, by God, long after a man ought to be allowed control of his own affairs. Found it ruined—some nitwit trustee, no doubt. A shame, a damned shame, ill luck that any man might have. But my daughter
...
my daughter… my precious curse. Our poisoned blood. Nell and Jane. Oh, God… Nell and Jane. A wasted life and a broken one
.

He looked up, and Roddy saw herself then as her father saw her. Against the background of dull velvet and leaden sky, she was a fragile, golden fairy-creature: all hope and future promise, innocent and wise and utterly confounding. His joy and his burden. It was beyond him, the right answer, and he knew it.

I love you
, he thought, in helpless silence.
Let it be as you want
.

Roddy slowly let out the breath she'd been holding.

Mr. Delamore rose from behind the desk. He rested his hand on her mother's shoulder and looked down at her huddled form. "Come, my dear," he said softly. "We cannot keep our bird in the nest if she wants to be free." He stroked her hair, the shining blond that was paling to gray. "Let us give her this chance at happiness with good grace."

Her mother only wept harder, and hot tears pricked behind Roddy's eyes. "Papa—" she said brokenly, hardly knowing how to put it into words the warmth and misery in her heart.

Mrs. Delamore wiped inelegantly at her eyes. She crossed to Roddy and sank down beside her, pulling her close. Neither spoke—there was no need. Roddy knew clearly how much her, mother wished her happy, and how much Mrs. Delamore feared for her only daughter's future. There was no need to look deeper, to the tiny place that might wish Roddy well and gone. A long time it had been since that day in Mama's bedroom. Long enough to forget.

If a lifetime was long enough.

"Don't worry, Mama," Roddy whispered at last. "I know this is what I should do."

Her mother made a small sound, and stood up as quickly as she had sat down. She walked from the room without a word.

Roddy's father cleared his throat. He spread his hands self-consciously. "You've grown up too fast for us, you see."

Roddy stood up. Stifling a sniff, she reached on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. "Best of my friends. I love you, Papa. I shall love you both forever."

No more was said of shunning Lord Iveragh. If her parents were not enthusiastic, they were at least silent on the subject. That was guilt, that silence. It was fear. Beneath the rush of unhappy objections there was a tiny, tiny flame. A faint breath of relief. With Roddy gone, their lives would be different.

Easier.

She closed her mind to that hurt and threw herself into impossible dreams of the future.

For the dinner party, Roddy's maid helped her dress carefully in her newest gown, with its bodice of pink- and silver-shot India gauze and white mull skirt embroidered with bouquets of the same dreamlike colors. The dress fell softly from the ribbon tied beneath her small breasts, trailing behind her as she walked. She twirled in front of the glass, so that the pearls which rested on the pale skin below her throat shimmered with reflected candlelight. Her bright hair gleamed with its own luster, framing her wide gray eyes with wispy curls.

No stablehand tonight.

No beauty, either. She knew there was a way about her; an aura that caught and held attention. She knew what she was not. Not pretty. Not sweet. Not delicate. She was not a daisy on a summer day, but instead the wind that blew it. People looked at Roddy the way they would look at a blue rolling storm on the horizon. And when she looked back, they faltered and turned away.

Down the curved stairs she went alone, past the high walls lined with Delamore stallions in gilded frames, one above the other, a century and a half of breeding blood and bone and the will to run. The moment she entered the drawing room, she felt her mother's unhappy protest over the dress. But the vicar had already arrived, and Lady Elizabeth was just stalking ponderously through the front hall in the footman's wake, so no word was said about the low neckline and slender silhouette of the India-gauze gown. Just behind Lady Elizabeth, Lord Geoffrey's party disembarked from their carriage.