Whisper of Magic (2 page)

Even as he said that, Erran wasn’t convinced he hadn’t seen
a ghost. She had glided with the elegant grace of a lady, head high, steps
delicate, skirts swaying with expensive layers of petticoats. But no lady would
have brown skin, wear an ugly black cloak, or use the servants’ entrance. It
was
all
a puzzlement.

It was his own damned house he was trying to get into.

His whole accursed life had become a mystery, even to him.
He blamed his brother Theo for marrying a witch—although Lady Aster had merely
been a thorn in their collective sides at the time the courtroom incident had
happened.

Her family research had simply prompted the notion of
inheriting the bad strains of prior generations. Just because Cousin Sylvester
had persuaded thousands of pounds out of the hands of wealthy investors didn’t
mean Erran had inherited his relation’s deceitful streak. Erran considered
himself to be a man of education and science, not a superstitious peasant—or a
thief.

But with judges unwilling to take his cases, he was an
unemployed
man of education.

“How will we get the house back for Papa if we can’t move
out the tenants?” Hartley inquired anxiously. Hartley was the worrier of
Ashford’s illegitimate twins. The catastrophic summer had turned the boy’s
usual cheerful smile upside-down as the weeks passed and it became evident his
father would never be the same. “We’ll never persuade him into town otherwise.”

Erran had his doubts that they’d persuade the marquess to
town even if they gained the townhouse, but the family home was the only
suggestion his newly-blind brother had shown an interest in. It should have
been a simple task to find the tenants new accommodations and help them to move
out. Unfortunately, the tenants had proved remarkably unavailable for moving.

Legally and morally, he could do nothing to evict them. The
tenants had a proper, paid contract and no obligation to open their doors to
him. He had been hoping to persuade them by offering a better house in
recompense. He might have more success battering down doors, but that would
make him as reprehensible as the landlord he’d taken to court.

These days, he was working hard to stick to a moral, as well
as a legal, high ground, in hopes he would one day be employable again. Being
arrested for battering down his own family’s door would set tongues clacking
and guarantee disbarment.

“It’s time to make more inquiries,” Erran concluded,
steering his nephew toward the tavern now occupying the former stable.

In this street just off St. James Square, the once
formidable stone and granite mansions built in the prior century were showing
signs of deterioration. Many had been subdivided and turned into shops and
taverns or bachelor flats. The Ives town house, however, remained a solid
square occupying the entire space between the street and the mews.

“Hunt down those ruffians and find out why they’re throwing
stones at our tenants’ servants,” Erran ordered. “I’ll be in the tavern making
inquiries. Don’t take too long. We have to return for dinner at Theo’s.”

Obediently, Hartley ran off to find the neighbor lads. That
there were vast differences in their stations didn’t occur to the son of an
actress and a marquess. Well, for all Erran knew, the ragged ruffians could
have been the bastard sons of dukes. The Crown owned half the property around
here.

He entered the smoke-filled dark room to put his lawyerly
skills to work—praying he would have no use for the dangerous Courtroom Voice
that had caused him to lose his profession and question his sanity.

***

Celeste Malcolm Rochester removed her muddied cloak with a
trembling hand and hung it on a hook by the back door. She’d had enough
experience at these misadventures lately that she no longer collapsed beside
the door, shaking and crying. She’d learned to take deep breaths and go on.

But the gentleman—he was a new development, and he’d rattled
her badly. His mellow baritone had promised a security she hadn’t known since
they arrived in London—which was entirely ridiculous. She hurried up the stairs
to find a window overlooking the mews. Rubbing her elbows, trying to calm
herself, she peered through a gap in the drapery.

The formidable gentleman who had followed her wore a
fashionable gray frock coat, the kind with a redingote collar. He’d topped it
with a handsome black muffler and held an expensive tall hat. He was no
ruffian, although she questioned the origin of the child to whom he was
speaking. Were they the instigators of these episodes?

The boy ran off while the gentleman studied the windows
where she stood. Dark curls and slight sideburns framed an arrogantly square
jaw and high cheekbones, before he slammed the muddy hat back on his head and
retreated to the tavern, out of her sight.

“Why do they hate us?” she asked, attempting to expel her
fear and despair. “We have harmed no one.”

“People fear what they do not know,” her African nanny said
prosaically, glancing up to verify Celeste was unharmed, then returning to
pedaling the machine they’d brought with them.

Nana Delphinia had been with them for as long as Celeste
could remember. The older woman had loyally accompanied them to London, leaving
behind her own grown children in the process. Therein lay the true tragedy of
their lives, and another reason Celeste spent her sleepless nights in tears.

Their faithful servant’s hair was turning gray, and lines of
worry marred her face, but Nana had lost none of her strength of character.
“What happened this time?”

“They’ve escalated to mud flinging. I’ll have to scrape my
cloak once it dries. I’m not certain what the gentleman had to do with the
attack, if anything.” Celeste dropped the old velvet panel back in place. “If
he’s a solicitor, he’s more elegant than the others they’ve sent. I may
actually have to talk to him.”

Celeste’s younger sister hurried to look and frowned at
seeing only the empty alley.

Her younger brother glanced up from his schoolbook with
alarm. “Unless we’ve miraculously found the coin to hire a solicitor of our
own, talking to him isn’t wise,” Trevor counseled. At seventeen, he was the
image of his great-grandfather in the portraits their great-grandmother had
painted—tall, dark-haired, brown-skinned, and handsome, now that he was growing
into his bones.

“The lease is ours,” Celeste assured him, trying to convince
herself. If they lost the roof over their heads along with everything else, she
didn’t know what she would do. “They can’t take away our home. We’ll have a
solicitor of our own soon enough. I have a new order for shirts. Sewing in the
pleat has proved popular. Young gentlemen lack servants who can wield crimping
irons.”

“Popular, but tedious,” Sylvia complained, returning to her
chair and her hand sewing. Unlike her older siblings, Sylvia was blond and
petite, more like their mother than their father. “I was so hoping for grand
parties and elegant gowns and . . .” She let her voice drop off
at Celeste’s pointed glare.

“We’re in mourning, and you’re still too young.” And Celeste
was too old and too unsuitable, but their father had cheerfully refused to
acknowledge that. He had paid for his foolishness with his life and quite
possibly the lives of others, but that couldn’t have been predicted. “Your time
will come, but first we must earn the funds to find a good lawyer. Be grateful
for what we have.” Celeste hunted for her sewing basket.

“Be grateful for a cousin who has appropriated our
inheritance?” Trevor asked bitterly. “Or for a half-sister who won’t
acknowledge our existence? Or for our father’s unfortunate demise on a
miserable ship that nearly took our lives?”

“For being alive with an excellent situation and food in our
bellies,” Nana scolded. “You have seen how those back home fare. It will be your
duty to help them one of these days. Now study.”

It would be Trev’s duty to save the servants—like Nana’s
family—from their cousin’s greed was the admonishment they all heard. Trev
paled and dipped his head back to the schoolbook.

Celeste swallowed back tears and picked up her own sewing.
If only she’d been born a boy . . . But it would be four more
years before Trevor would be of a legal age and could assume their father’s
estate. Four years in which their father’s cousin, the Earl of Lansdowne, could
sell off all their father’s assets, along with the people who had served their
family for decades.
Free
people, not
slaves—although without access to their father’s papers, no one could prove
that.

Celeste couldn’t imagine any English court of law giving a
woman the right to take care of her family, not any more than she could imagine
them giving Nana her freedom if the Earl of Lansdowne chose to challenge it.
He’d already usurped their father’s estate by having himself declared head of
the family.

Hiring a solicitor was scarcely one small weapon in their
puny arsenal.

Hiding for the next four years didn’t seem like a brilliant
plan, either, but it was the best she had. It wasn’t
all
she had, but anything else was built on fairy dust and magic.

Having cleaned the worst of the mud from his boots and
brushed off his coat, Erran settled at his sister-in-law’s dinner table knowing
no one but he would notice if he sat down in shirt sleeves. Fashionable, his
brothers were not, despite their wealth and lengthy aristocratic history.
Theo’s eccentric new wife was cut of similar cloth.

Wearing another of her unfashionable peacock-colored gowns,
Lady Azenor signaled one of her footman trainees to serve the first course.
“Hartley says neither of you had any luck at discerning the whereabouts of the
townhouse’s tenants?”

Accustomed to the blunt speaking of his brothers, Erran had
no difficulty adjusting to Lady Aster, as she’d asked them to call her. “We’ve
only seen servants,” he acknowledged. “As the lease indicates, the tenants are
Jamaican, and they’ve brought foreign retainers with them. If I’m to believe
half the tales told in the tavern, they have giants and ogres as well. Hartley
says the boys throwing mud balls swore the servants are witches.”

Lady Aster immediately lost interest in her soup. “Witches?
Why ever would they say that?”

Short, plump, and copper-haired, his sister-in-law might not
look much like a witch, but she came from a long line of women who’d once been
vilified with that epithet. The women might have a few uncanny talents, but
Erran didn’t count them as more than the application of illogical conclusions
to scientific principles. Although lately . . . He squirmed
uneasily, preferring not to consider his own brush with the Wyrd. “The ruffians
were incapable of communicating any story that made sense.”

He glanced at the footman serving his soup. “James?” he
asked, diverting his unease by trying to determine if this was the same footman
he’d seen here last.

“Smithson,” the servant corrected. He shut up quickly at a
frown from the lady, nodded, and moved back to the buffet.

“We’re informal,” his brother Theo said after Erran’s faux
pas. “But Aster is trying to train servants for more formal houses. Presumably,
elsewhere, they are expected to only occasionally be seen and never heard.”

“Better to train them to suit ourselves.” Erran tasted the
soup and approved. “I still need a valet. Pascoe can’t keep a nursemaid. And
Dunc will drive those few people he has left insane, so we can use a steady
flow of servants at the estate.”

“I’d thought of that,” Theo agreed. With his neckcloth
already coming undone and his overlong chestnut hair falling across his brow,
he reached across the table for the bread rather than waiting for it to be
served. “Aster can train them so Dunc can dismiss them. Some sort of poetic
justice. But then we can give them references from the house of a marquess.”

Erran knew they made light of a tragic situation. His
all-powerful older brother had been blinded in an accident that had been no
accident, as they had discovered when Aster had overheard their neighbor’s son
and a band of hired rogues. The son had fled the country, and there was no one
to give evidence or identify the hirelings—not that convicting anyone would
give the marquess back his sight.

Erran ground his teeth, sipped his soup, and contemplated
how to move the newly-blind marquess into his city home, where Duncan might
recover part of his former authority—and possibly restore Erran’s reputation.

The alternative was Erran forfeiting his education to become
a tinker. And Dunc could lose his brilliant mind cooped up inside four walls,
refusing to emerge from his misery.

“If we can retrieve the townhouse from the tenants, we’ll be
able to employ even more of my aunt’s workhouse rescues.” Aster glanced
inquiringly at Erran. “Does the place appear to be in good condition? Will it
be worth converting the ground floor for Ashford’s use?”

Erran knew she wasn’t rubbing in his failure. Aster was too
oblivious to reality for that, so he merely shrugged and posed another
possibility. “Hard to say what’s been done on the interior. The
tenants—wherever they are—aren’t complaining about leaking roofs anyway. The
location
is what Dunc needs—only a few
blocks from Parliament. Perhaps we could lease another place in the area.”

The lady glared at him. “It is
that
house he needs. Astro-geographically, it’s ideal since he was
born there. There are strong power points running through that lot. If anything
could cure him, it will be that house.”

There were dozens of reasons the marquess needed the family
London town home, but
power points
—whatever
they were—weren’t high on Erran’s list. Dunc needed to return to Parliament for
his own sanity. The vote on the next prime minister would affect the entire reform
movement, including the labor laws and other bills crucial to their family and
to the entire country. As Marquess of Ashford, Duncan had influence and
responsibility the rest of the family could only aspire to.