Whisper of Magic (6 page)

For all her strength in the face of adversity, the lady
looked frail and vulnerable. Erran wasn’t in the habit of taking care of
others, but her defense of her siblings appealed to his better instincts.

“Distant family, possibly,” she finally replied. “Mother was
born in Jamaica. We lost her to an epidemic a few years ago. She used to
correspond with people here, but we never met them, and from what little she
said, she had never met them either.”

Erran rubbed his hair. “I don’t suppose she kept journals,
did she?”

All three of the siblings stared at him. The young blonde
was the first to respond. “Why, yes, as do we. It is a family tradition.”

“Malcolms, of course,” he said in resignation. “As I
mentioned, my sister-in-law believes you’re related to her family, although I
thought the
Malcolm
in your family
name was from your father’s side. I will return with Lady Azenor on the morrow,
if I might, and leave you undisturbed for the rest of the evening.” He bowed.

“Wait a minute!” Miss Rochester leapt up and caught his arm
again.

He liked the way she touched him so easily. He also approved
of the way her head rose past his shoulder. Her lips would be right where he
could lean over and…

He had to
evict
her. Prurient thoughts were inappropriate. He waited patiently in the glow of
the one candle.

“You did not tell us your urgent matter. If you are to help
us, how might we help you?” she asked in concern.

“You can’t,” he said curtly. “I doubt anyone can. I’ll let
Lady Azenor explain. It involves more mumbo-jumbo than I’m prepared to relate.”

And he was fairly certain that telling them he needed them
out of his brother’s house immediately would not go over well. He should bask
in the lady’s approval for this one brief moment, before she returned to
regarding him with well-deserved suspicion.

***

Biting her bottom lip, Celeste pulled back the faded
drapery to watch his handsome lordship stride down the road as if he hadn’t a
care in the world. She knew better. She’d seen the weariness in his eyes and
heard the worry in his voice.

“He saved us from the earl’s treachery,” Sylvia said
hesitantly. “He’s a good man, yes? We can trust him?”

“We can’t trust anyone,” Trevor responded angrily. “They’re
all as bad as pirates in this place.

“It’s not as if we can trust everyone in Jamaica,” Jamar
said with his usual complacency. “Our neighbors will jump at the opportunity to
buy our people even knowing they are free.”

“Papa protected us from seeing the evil,” Sylvia said sadly.

As Celeste could not. She hadn’t the strength to carry this
burden alone, so she had inflicted her fear on Trevor and Sylvia. She regretted
that. “Let us see about fixing supper, and then we must hurry and finish more
shirts. I have told Mr. Taylor we must raise our prices or sell them ourselves.
He has agreed to pay more, but only if we can continue producing in the same
quantity. We cannot let him down.”

“I should be doing more to help,” Trevor grumbled. “We
cannot afford Oxford now, so studying is wasted time.”

There
was her real
hope in inviting Lord Erran into their household. The brother of a marquess
would surely know how one went about teaching a boy to be a baron and the owner
of a vast plantation—

One that would be bankrupt and without field hands before
Trevor came of age, if the earl had anything to say about it.

She would fight until her dying breath for their home and
her family, but she rather suspected a man as evil as Lansdowne was capable of
arranging that too.

“Let us see what his lordship’s family can do to help,” she
replied with more equanimity than she felt.

“It’s rather like choosing the devil you know or the one you
don’t, isn’t it?” Trevor asked, sensing her hesitation.

“Yes, rather,” she agreed, without adding that Lord Erran’s
devils must be great for him to agree to help complete strangers. “Except we
don’t really know Lansdowne any better than Lord Erran, do we? So it’s in
ourselves that we must trust. We have this home, and we have our talents. Let
us put them to the best use.”

What worried her most was that her best talent apparently
did not work on the very autocratic Lord Erran. His family
owned
this house, and she could say or do nothing that would stop
him from taking it if he wished.

Losing another home would shatter her—and her family. She
could not let that happen, if she must cause rioting in the streets to prevent
it.

And she could. She’d done it before.

Late that evening, Erran slammed his fist into a heavy
canvas punching bag, relishing the release of frustration. He followed with
repeated blows using both fists, working up a sweat and hoping to clear his
head.

He could still smell Miss Rochester’s floral scent, feel her
slender waist close to his and the softness of her breasts crushed against his
chest. He wanted to beat Lansdowne’s solicitors and half the world into a pulp
for harming such a delicate blossom.

And he needed to put her out of her home—Ashford’s home.

He whacked the heavy bag again, until it slammed into the
wall behind it.

“Natural aggression is a good thing,” his Uncle Pascoe’s
voice said from the cellar doorway. “But it ought to be channeled into more
useful pursuits.”

“Right.” Erran wiped his brow on his drenched shirtsleeve.
“I’ll punch a few boneheads, shall I?”

“Personally, I prefer chasing women for release of tension,
but you apparently have different tastes. Does this have anything to do with
removing the tenants from Ashford’s house?” Dressed in frock coat and pleated
linen, still wearing his gloves from outdoors, Pascoe leaned his broad shoulder
against the wall and twirled an affected walking stick.

His uncle was only in his early thirties and as hale and
hearty as Erran, but Pascoe’s political role required that he play the part of
effete gentleman.

“Your multi-talented valet has learned to use a crimping
iron?” Erran asked, nodding at the pleated shirt, unwilling to discuss his
reason for pounding the sawdust-filled bag. “I’ve admired them but I’m not
about to learn to crimp them.”

Pascoe glanced down at his shirt. “There’s a tailor near St.
James that sells them with the pleats neatly sewn in. Merritt is most
appreciative that he needn’t learn crimping. Besides, the brats would only rip
up anything not sewn down.”

Pascoe had twins still in the nursery, with no wife to care
for them. Erran admired the man’s ability to deal with household, politics, and
family—except it made Erran look like a milksop for not being able to handle
the one job he’d been given.

He grabbed a towel to wipe himself down. “Useful to know.
I’ll look for him next time I’m down there.”

“And the reason you’re beating a bag into submission?”
Pascoe pushed.

Erran had hung the bag in an unused portion of Pascoe’s wine
cellar so it was available when the boxing salons weren’t open. They had no
audience and could speak plainly here.

“It has everything to do with the world being a rotten core
inhabited by worms,” Erran said in disgust, not acknowledging that a woman was
at the core of his particular apple. “I need Lady Aster’s genealogical charts.
Have she and Theo left for Surrey yet?”

“Surely you jest?” Pascoe said with a laugh. “You have given
her new material with these New World arrivals. She’s frothing at the bit. If
you do not introduce her, she will introduce herself. She told Theo to hie
himself home for the harvest, if he needed, but she was staying here. And this
from newlyweds. It’s a wonder Theo isn’t over here staving in your head.”

“Poor thug, torn between duty and a woman. Rather him than
me.” Except, by Jove, that was exactly where he was. Disgruntled, Erran yanked
his waistcoat over his damp shirt. “I don’t know how much of the tale Lady
Aster should be given. It involves Lansdowne and filthy tricks. Theo won’t
appreciate involving his bride, and Dunc won’t appreciate our interference.”

“Ah, now I see the difficulty. This is not a task you can
punch your way out of, and finesse with ladies is not your style.” Pascoe
nodded understandingly. “From all reports, the election date will fall in November.
It’s more important that we have Duncan in place than worrying about one earl’s
favor. Shall I attend Lady Aster in her visit with her new relations? Will that
persuade them from the house any faster?”

“Nothing will persuade them from that house, I’m convinced.”
He should be grateful for his uncle’s offer, but Erran wasn’t a shirker who
could send a busy man like Pascoe in his place. “There are a number of legal
matters involved. Lansdowne is head of their household. They claim he has
usurped their inheritance and is trying to drive them out of the house and into
the streets. At the moment, he’s merely using trickery, thinking they’re easily
frightened naïfs. He’ll escalate to warfare, if necessary, to drive them out
and demand the lease money back from Dunc for his own coffers. That would be
our simplest solution.”

Pascoe frowned, either hearing his reluctance or
understanding the lack of scruples involved.

Erran sighed in resignation. “If Lady Aster can prove the
tenants are related to us, I’ll have better leverage with the estate
solicitors. Lady Aster it will have to be. Once their funds are safe, perhaps
we could find them a smaller place for less cost.”

Pascoe frowned. “I don’t like it. Lansdowne could be testing
Ash. Montfort and Caldwell are wooing the earl’s favor for the Tories and have
shown themselves willing to join in his schemes.”

Sir George Caldwell and Lord Henry Montfort were Ashford’s
country neighbors, staunch conservatives who opposed everything Ives
represented. Their scruples were questionable. Erran smacked the bag again.

“If that pair were truly behind the attack on a man as
powerful as Duncan, what might they do to ladies if Lansdowne asks it of them?”
Pascoe asked.

“Ladies who have no power? Nothing besides threats,” Erran
said with a shrug. “If Lansdowne is truly at fault, he’s after cash. It takes
wealth to buy votes, and he has exhausted his. Montfort and Caldwell are far
more likely to come after
me
if they
believe I am intervening between the earl and the Rochester money.”

“I dislike playing our hand too soon.” Pascoe twirled his
stick thoughtfully. “We need to install Ashford discreetly, so the Tories won’t
realize he’s back in play. Any chance your ladies and the young baron will be
willing to share the house?”

Erran tried to imagine the terrified Rochesters dealing with
Duncan’s roars of fury and frustration and couldn’t. But then, he was a lawyer
and better at strategy than understanding a woman’s nature. “That’s one
solution. I’ll call on Lady Aster and we’ll see what can be done,” he said
noncommittally.

Perhaps his sister-in-law could talk Miss Rochester into
signing papers so he could take himself off to the executors and courts and
places where he knew what he was doing—far, far away from seductive scents and
mysterious females with eyes the color of peaceful seas.

***

The next morning, after receiving a note from Lady Azenor
Ives requesting a visit, Celeste dithered in front of the old-fashioned cheval
mirror that had come with the furnished household. Her hair was the dismal
color of blackened walnut and refused to curl into feminine ringlets. All she
could do was pin her thick braids into an elaborate chignon and pretend she was
fashionable.

Sylvia waltzed in, sporting her best lavender silk, wearing
her blond tresses in charming curls to frame her face. “Lavender is suitable
for mourning, is it not?” she asked with a frown. “I don’t want the lady to
take a distaste for me.”

“It has been almost six months. I think you’ll be fine. It’s
not as if anyone knew Father or cares when he died,” Celeste said, hiding the
pang of grief at this huge hole in their lives. “I am simply amazed that she
responded so quickly after Lord Erran told her of us.”

She feared they would merely be a subject of dinner table
gossip for the next week and no more, but she had to take the chance. Risk-taking
had ruined their lives, but sometimes, one had to take risks or surrender.

“Wear your cashmere shawl,” Sylvia recommended. “It is very
elegant and makes your eyes even more blue. At least we will not look like poor
relations.”

No, they would look like old-fashioned colonial relations,
but that could not be helped. Their talents for sewing had to be applied to
projects that provided an income. Adding wide sleeves and lowering hems to fit
more petticoats didn’t fit into their goals.

“Do we entertain them upstairs or down?” Sylvia asked
worriedly. “The parlors are so very drab.”

“If we bring them upstairs, there’s a chance they might see
our fabrics and machine and realize that we’re working for a living. Let us
keep visitors to the downstairs and attempt to maintain the pretense that we’re
genteel. Although I hate to open the draperies on the street to brighten that
room. It will let people know we’re home and make the disrepair more obvious.”
Celeste glanced out the upstairs parlor window at the busy street below,
fretting over the decision.

“Let’s open them just a little,” Sylvia pleaded. “We can’t
burn oil in the middle of the day!”

That would be an additional expense, so Celeste reluctantly
nodded agreement. “We’ve dusted and cleaned as much as possible. They’re our
landlords, after all, they should realize the state the house is in.”

Jamar had installed a door knocker for the occasion. The rap
at the door ended any further fretting. Celeste shook out her skirt over all
the petticoats she owned, sent up a prayer of hope, and hurried down the
stairs. Jamar played the part of butler, waiting for them to enter the front
drawing room before opening to their guests. Sylvia hurried to tug the drapery
back just enough to allow in a ray of morning light.