Seduction (29 page)

“What are you doing with her?” Sophie snapped at her daughter. She indicated me with a toss of her head.

“Probably learning how to act like an American teenager,” Joelle said before turning her malevolent gaze on Fabby. “Is that it, darling? Is the cook teaching you how to chase after grown men?”

“Excuse us,” I said, moving past them up the stairs.

“Oh, must you go? We were hoping you’d tell us all about how you forced Belmondo into spending an evening with you.”

“Oh,
Mother
!” Fabienne said. She tried to take my hand, but I shooed her up the stairs. She ran into her room and slammed the door behind her.

“Yes, why not?” Sophie joined in, ignoring her daughter’s exit. “I imagine you’ll tell all your little friends about your tawdry exploits. Americans are so poor at keeping secrets.”

“You’re so right,” I said as brightly as I could. “In fact, I’ll tell you a secret right now. I didn’t spend an evening with Belmondo.” I smiled sweetly. “It was three.”

Joelle backed up a step.

“Three evenings,” I said, just to make sure she got the point.

For a moment Joelle’s eyes blazed at me furiously while I clenched my jaw and tried to hold my ground. Finally, Sophie took Joelle’s arm and led her away, forcing a laugh.

“Oh, by the way,” she said, barely raising her voice as she turned to address me, “Pierre is adjusting very well to our life here. I imagine he’ll be staying after you leave.”

Joelle laughed for real this time.

I ran upstairs and opened the door to my room with trembling hands.
Pierre.
They’d even changed Peter’s name to make him one of their own.

CHAPTER

•

THIRTY-FOUR

Don’t think. Sew.

Marie-Therèse’s last hurrah, the immortal witches, Fabby’s future, Azrael, Belmondo, Peter . . . just about everything in my life, including my totally waning enthusiasm for French cooking, was turning to dreck, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do to change anything. Marie-Therèse’s birthday party would begin in a few hours, and the rest of her life was going to depend on how I handled things there. The problem was, I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do to prevent her from going to the Poplars.

So I sewed the book together and hoped that if I could just relax, maybe an idea would come to me.

It was strangely comforting to move the needle in and out of the ancient binding. I wanted to get the job done, but at the same time I didn’t want Jean-Loup’s story to end. I wondered if it was possible that his apprentice, Henry Shaw, might be the same Henry Shaw I’d heard about in Whitfield. If so, that
would make Peter one of his descendants. How weird would that be?

Peter had always been ashamed of his connection with that Henry Shaw, who had been a dishonorable tycoon who’d turned in his own wife to the authorities when he’d found out she was a witch. To protect her, my own ancestor, Serenity Ainsworth, together with a West African shaman named Ola’ea Olokun, had cast a spell over part of Whitfield that would render it invisible. That was why so many witches lived there today: Those early witches had lived with no outside influences at all for generations, until Massachusetts was safe for our kind again . . . no thanks to Henry, who’d disappeared when the witch hunters couldn’t find anyone to persecute.

No one knows what happened to him. Fifty years later, a relative of his showed up and revamped the businesses Henry had started, but the Shaws never regained favor with the witch community. I guess people who’ve been accused of being demons can be slow to forgive.

But I was getting too caught up in the book. Shaw was a common name, and coincidences happen.

These days, they seemed to happen all the time.

1568

Henry

So Henry Shaw, now 215 years of age, embarked on a new chapter of his life in what would come to be called Whitfield, Massachusetts, where he established one of the first import-export firms in North America.

Shaw Enterprises brought great wealth to Henry—so much that in time he nearly forgot that he had the ability to make gold. He certainly didn’t need it; he wanted for nothing. Unfortunately, his personal life was not nearly as successful as his business ventures.

Henry was lonely. Try as he might, he could not erase the memory of the beautiful young woman from the abbey from his mind. He had known from the moment she’d touched him with her long siren’s fingers that she was dangerous for him—too beautiful, too carnal, too intoxicating—and yet he had longed for her with an ache in his heart.

And then, just as he was finally able to admit to himself that he wanted this woman regardless of what damage she might inflict upon him in the future, she was gone. Just like that. What had her replacement said? Oh, yes, that she had left to find a husband and a title. A terrible woman, surely, a grasping, mercenary vixen.

And yet, his thoughts revolved constantly around her, her golden hair and sparkling, mischievous eyes, and the way her hand had touched his, as if offering a promise of things to come. . .  .

But only for the right man,
he knew. A duke, perhaps, or a foreign prince. A woman like that would never give herself to one such as Henry, an orphan raised as a pirate’s apprentice, a farmer with a farmer’s rude manners and callused workman’s hands.

She—whose name Henry did not even know—was the main reason he had crossed the ocean. He had meant to begin a new life in the new land, forgetting the strange, unending life associated with the Abbey of Lost Souls.

He grew older. The years Henry spent away from the abbey and its youth spell showed in his face and body. He’d lost much of his hair, and was already beginning to walk with a slight stoop.
Soon my legs will become too old to move
, he thought, although his body was still far from old. But he knew he could not spend the rest of his life—his short life—dreaming about a woman who would never be his.

He had to marry.

For his wife, he chose the plain-faced but efficient Zenobia Ainsworth, who had been on the ship with him. Zenobia and her twin sister, Zethinia, had been children during the sea voyage to America, but over the years they had grown into intelligent, respectable women.

Zenobia possessed more magic than her sister—so much magic, in fact, that she had dazzled even the normally unflappable Henry. Her gift was esoteric but domestic: She specialized in knot magic. Into her quilts, rugs, sweaters, and children’s clothes were woven spells of protection, of love, of creativity and contentment and passion. Pregnant women vied to possess the shawls Zenobia crafted that brought peace into their hearts. Men wore gloves that ensured their success in the hunt.

Henry wanted to tell his wife about his own gift as an alchemist, if only to assure her that she was marrying among her own kind, but he never forgot Jean-Loup’s warning to him:
Even witches can go mad at the smell of gold.
He knew Zenobia’s head would not be turned at the prospect of unlimited riches, but he could not be certain that she would not mention it to anyone else, particularly since she had a twin with whom she shared almost everything.

And so he said nothing about his talent. It didn’t seem to matter, anyway. Zenobia provided a good home for him even though she believed he was cowen. Perhaps she even loved him.

And in his way, he loved her, too. He locked away his memories of the beautiful abbess in the recesses of his heart, and went on with his life.

Until the witch hunters came. In Salem, these Puritans heard about the woman who infused spells into her woolens. Nearly everyone in Whitfield possessed something that Zenobia had woven or sewn, and her name had spread to outlying communities. A bunting she made for the Fowlers’ baby had cured it of whooping cough, they whispered. Her towels made the skin feel smoother. Feet never got cold in socks sewn by Zenobia.

Through his many business connections, Henry had learned that the fanatics from Salem had placed Zenobia in their crosshairs and were on their way to Whitfield, hoping for the kind of bloodbath that had shaken their own settlement to its foundations. Knowing that he would be the first to defend his wife, the witch hunters had already sent out spies to watch Zenobia’s husband.

Henry had been close to panic. Zenobia had bore him two children whom he knew might also be in danger if the witch hunters had their way.

Then something happened that was to change the course of Henry’s life. An African shaman who had settled in Whitfield provided him with a plan to save his wife and every other witch in town.

“I am Ola’ea Olokun,” she said, introducing herself. “Your mother-in-law and I would like to enlist your help.

She went on to explain that she and Serenity Ainsworth had nearly perfected a spell that would transform a tract of land known as the Meadow into a place where witches could put themselves out of the reach of the hunters. “We will transport our people to another plane of existence until the Puritans offer no more danger to them.”

“How long will that be?” Henry asked. In his experience, nothing took longer to dissipate than hatred and fear.

“A generation or two,” she answered. “Maybe three.”

“Three generations?” He swallowed. He would die in Whitfield, then, or in whatever version of Whitfield his wife would be inhabiting if the shaman’s plan came to pass. He would never return to the land of his birth or partake again of the magic that had extended his life for hundreds of years.

“Only witches would be able to enter this alternate plane,” Ola’ea pressed.

It took Henry a moment to fully understand what the woman was saying, which was that everyone in Whitfield believed Henry Shaw to be cowen. He had kept his alchemy a secret even from his wife.

“But—”

“Listen to me,” Ola’ea hissed. “The magic that will save your family is not yet ready. And even when it is perfected, the spell will be a lengthy process because only one person at a time may enter the portal we will have created. During this time—perhaps a week or two—someone must prevent the witch hunters from coming here.” She looked deeply into his eyes with her own steady gaze. “Do you understand?”

Henry was silent for a moment as the full implications of her words sank in. “What happens after the spell is complete?” he asked. “After the witches have all left this plane?”

“The Meadow will be sealed as soon as the last witch has entered,” Ola’ea said. “To the outside world, it will be as if the people who once lived here had simply disappeared.”

“And no one else will be able to enter?”

“No one,” Ola’ea said pointedly. She did not have to add,
including you.

“Who else knows about your plan?”

“No one,” she repeated.

That was for the best, he understood. If a whisper of this magic were to reach the Puritans’ ears, the whole town and everyone in it would be burned to cinders.

“I understand,” he said.

• • •

The first thing he did, which shocked everyone, was to repudiate his wife and children, putting them out of their home and then announcing to the world—and to Whitfield’s tightly knit community of witches—that he had learned of the accusations against Zenobia, and would have nothing to do with anyone, even his own wife, who may have dabbled in magic.

This served two purposes. One was to throw the posse from Salem off the track by making them believe that Henry Shaw was of a mind with the Puritans. The other was to alert the Whitfield witches to the extreme danger they faced, in case any of them might consider refusing to participate in Ola’ea’s plan. They
must
leave, he knew. They must do it quickly and without exception, if they were to save their own lives.

After he established himself to the Puritans as a righteous hater of witches, Henry led the Salem zealots on a merry chase through the American colonies until they gave up looking for Zenobia and consequently, with the disappearance of all the other witches in Whitfield, anyone else who might be suspected of possessing talent or knowledge beyond the ordinary.

It had been an exhilarating ride, but after it was over and Henry walked through the ghost town of what had once been magical Whitfield, he was nearly overcome with sadness.

“There is a ship leaving within the hour,” someone said behind him.

He turned around in alarm. No one had been near him a minute ago, but now Ola’ea stood before him, large as life.

“So you can leave after all?” he asked hopefully.