So Enchanting (23 page)

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Authors: Connie Brockway

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General

BOOK: So Enchanting
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Chapter Twenty-four
What an awful day, Grey thought morosely, staring out the window, where a battalion of chimney swifts dove in and out of his view. Not only had he been laid flat by a flowerpot and rendered incapable of navigating under his own power, but he’d passed out like a girl. When he’d come to again, it had been to find himself piled awkwardly into a highly aromatic cart, being transported down the hall by Violet and Ploddy.

 

As his demand that they stop had been completely ignored, he stayed there until they reached the bottom of the stairs, at which point it became evident even to the stubborn, iron-willed Juno overseeing their progress that they weren’t going to get any farther with their prisoner.
With Ploddy’s aid, he’d managed to struggle out of the cart, which was then hauled up the stairs ahead of him. Then, under
her
hard and unsympathetic eye, he’d pulled himself step by step up the seventeen risers before collapsing once more into the cart.

 

And now,
now
he lay between pristine linen bedsheets, a new bandage wrapped around his throbbing head, utterly and completely in the siren’s clutches. He hated feeling so powerless. It brought back too many memories of arguments with his father, recalled too many episodes of impotent adolescent rage played out in reeking spiritualist dens.
Adding to his misery, he was now beholden to
her
. And she was nowhere to be seen.
Damn the woman.
Didn’t she have a particle of human feeling? She ought to be here gloating, not flouncing about elsewhere. He would have been, had the situation been reversed. He would have been smiling down at him, smoothing back the hair from his brow, laying cool fingers to his cheek, and jeering.

 

The blazes with her.
He didn’t have time to satisfy her need to feel superior anyway. Because that urn
could
have killed Amelie Chase, and someone
might
be responsible for its falling, and, damn it all, she was right: It was
his
responsibility to ascertain where the threat came from—
if
there was a threat—which would be bloody hard to do lying in bed.
He’d been so certain Fanny had written the letter summoning him to Little Firkin. It made sense. She’d been trying to escape her prison without abandoning her charge.

 

But if the urn hadn’t toppled over by itself, then his theory was wrong and Amelie stood in grave danger. But
who
would want to kill the girl? The throbbing in his head grew.
A light tap on the door interrupted his thoughts. He pushed himself higher on the pillows before calling for Fanny to enter. It had to be her. Everyone else pussy-footed around him.

 

It was.
She looked him over and then turned to someone behind her and motioned. A crone entered his room. There really was no better word to describe the small, wizened female festooned with an extraordinary array of what appeared to be old tablecloths. She looked familiar. Ah, yes, she was the old woman who’d challenged Amelie Chase to an incantation contest.

 

The crone sailed into the room with an exultant air, trailing crumbs and cat hair. She looked like a high priestess of some alien culture who’d just gotten word there was a human sacrifice available for the night’s festivities. Violet followed her in.
“This is Grammy Beadle.” Fanny spoke without preface. “She is here to see to your head.”
Dumbstruck, Grey looked at Fanny. Her face wore a closed, uncompromising expression.
Grammy smirked.
“You have hired a witch to see to my wound,” he said, just to make sure he had it right. “Knowing my views on witchcraft, necromancers, spiritualists, and the rest of the world’s snake-oil salesmen.”
“Snake oil’s no good fer a cracked skull, young man,” Grammy said with obvious disgust.
“I don’t need her,” Grey told Fanny. “It’s not the first time I’ve been knocked unconscious. I know a thing or two about the signs of a concussion.”
“You are the patient here. Be quiet,” Fanny replied calmly, folding her hands at her waist like a school-teacher dealing with a tiresome student. “Grammy is a talented herbalist.”
“Don’t you be callin’ Grammy names!” Violet said sharply.
“Now, now, lass,” Grammy said soothingly. “I’ll deal with this.”
“An herbalist is one who makes poultices and tinctures from herbs and green growing things,” Fanny explained to Violet.
Violet snickered. “Ach. Any witch worth her mettle knows aboot sech things.”
“And potions,” Grammy put in severely, fearing her witchly light was being dimmed. “Don’t ferget the potions. Not limited to salves and teas, I ain’t.”
“And potions,” Fanny dutifully amended.

 

“She’ll poison me,” Grey protested, his head pounding like Thor ’s anvil beneath the hammer.
“Perhaps.” Fanny didn’t sound terribly concerned. “
Or
she might rid you of your headache.”
“I’ll need a pot filled with boiling water,” Grammy told Fanny.
In turn, Fanny nodded at Ploddy, hovering uselessly by the door. “Have Miss Oglethorpe bring up a pot of boiling water,” she said.
“Can’t,” Ploddy intoned. “The Oglethorpe left as soon as the witch crossed the threshold. Said one witch was enough, wouldn’t stand two, and she’s off to report yer doin’s to the vicar. Says she’ll be back when one or t’other leaves. Said that fer herself, she didn’t care which witch went, but I was to remind you that the young witch might not be as set in her evil ways as the old one.”
Fanny’s composed demeanor showed a crack. She raised her eyes to the ceiling, muttering, “By all that’s holy.”
“Not exactly, mum,” Ploddy corrected. At Fanny’s expression, Grey started to chuckle, which bloody well hurt and turned into a moan.
“Get me that boiling water, Ploddy.”
The old man disappeared.
Apparently, the introductions were over, for with a quick, workmanlike clap of her hands, Grammy came to the side of the bed and leaned over him. She smelled of onions and cat.

 

Her small eyes, nearly hidden beneath the overhanging lids, grew smaller still as she peered at him. Before he could react, she reached out and stuck her thumb and forefinger above and below his right eye socket, wrenching his eye open as far as it would go. Then, grabbing his chin in a pincerlike grip with her other hand, she wrested his head around until he was facing directly into the brutal light. She leaned even closer, her gimlet eye inches from his.
“Look ta th’ right,” she commanded.

 

This was ridiculous. Gentleman or not, subjecting himself to the ministrations of the local witch was beyond what good manners demanded. The light seared his skull.
“My good woman—”
“Look ta th’ right, ye great lummox!’ Grammy said, bringing her point home by jabbing her elbow into his chest.
“Ow!” He looked to the right.
“Now left.”
He looked left and caught sight of Fanny watching with imperious indifference.
“Up, then down.”
“For the love of—”
“Up. And.
Down
.”
Churlishly, he acquiesced.

 

She grunted, released her death hold on his head, and began poking his wound with sharp-tipped, shriveled fingers.
He endured with commendable stoicism, his gaze locked on Fanny. She would pay for this indignity.
Finally satisfied, the old lady turned toward her granddaughter. “Violet, fetch me some pussytoes and feverfew, a bit of greenswort, and a nice handful of St. Joe’s weed.”
With an alacrity Grey had yet to witness in the girl, Violet took off out the door. Grammy continued peering, muttering, and poking.

 

“I hope you are satisfied,” Grey said to Fanny in his coldest voice.
She didn’t look a bit intimidated. But then, neither had Grammy nor even that slip of a girl Violet. In fact, everyone in the damn house, including his own nephew, seemed summarily unimpressed with his bad temper. And he
was
in a bad temper. Very bad.

 

He hated being at the mercy of a little pain. She would think him weak, like the vapid Alphonse or that cold fish McGowan, men not of her caliber, unworthy of testing her mettle. That she didn’t seem in the least disconcerted by his temper, his words, or his tone only made his case for him. She considered him negligible.
Bloody hell.

 

She didn’t answer him, instead turning to leave the room.
“Where are you go—Ah!”
She glanced back. “Shouting will only make your head throb worse. I am going to get my sewing basket.”
“Why?” he demanded.
“You are still oozing blood. If I do not stitch up that wound you will have a very nasty scar.”
Dear God, the woman was going to poke him full of holes. Was there no end to her sadism? First the witch, now a needle?
“I assure you, ma’am, I do not have the least interest in whether or not I am scarred.”
“I doubt that,” she said primly, and before he could protest she continued, “I suspect you would like a big, mean, horrifying scar very well. But since you are in my house and under my care, you will abide by my decisions, and I have decided I do not want you to have a disfiguring scar.”
“ ‘Vanity, thy name is woman,’ ” he paraphrased darkly.
“Why not? That’s as good a reason as any I can come up with as to why I care,” she said, and with that enigmatic statement she left, passing Violet.

 

The girl came in out of breath from running, her apron filled with forage. Ploddy followed her at a more sedate pace, carrying a china teapot, a tendril of steam rising from the spout.
“Here ye be, Grammy.”
The old lady nodded, digging into the stained velvet pouch hanging from a cord around her waist and withdrawing a small mortar and pestle. Humming, she looked over the vegetation Violet held out for her inspection. She plucked a few leaves, shredded them into the mortar, and began grinding them into a paste.
Grey watched her, trying to ignore the bludgeoning pain in his head. “Do you really believe yourself to be imbued with special powers?” he asked after a moment.
“Aye, I am,” she replied absently, then, “Marquardt Ploddy, set that pot down and get out of here before I turns you into a toad. Just trying to shirk some work is all you’re doin’ here.”
Ploddy needed no further encouragement.
“You actually think you can cast spells, place hexes on people . . . make love potions?”
“Ayup.” Grammy nodded. “A love potion’ll cost ye a quid. Bit steep, I admit, but it’s guaranteed.”
“No. Oh, no,” Grey said. “You misunderstand. I don’t need a love potion.”
“Never win her without one, not with yer lack of charm,” Grammy said calmly.
“Win her? I don’t want to
win
her,” Grey protested, and then, because he didn’t want the old biddy thinking he was thinking about Fanny, added, “Besides, I don’t know to whom you are referring.”
“Men,” she muttered, then, “When ye’re done playing blindman’s buff by yer lonesome,” she said, “you ken send word to me by Violet. And it’ll still be a quid.”
She took the lid off the teapot and dumped the greenish gray contents from the mortar into it. A sweet, pleasant-smelling steam rose. After a moment, she poured out a saucerful of the foul-looking matter and handed it to him.
“Drink the first ’alf now and the second ’alf in a few minutes after it’s ’ad a chance to steep a bit.”
“Really, I’m feeling—”
“Drink,” she commanded, advancing on him with an outstretched claw.

 

He drank. Happily, it tasted better than it looked. He handed her the half-empty saucer and sank back against the pillows.
“Girl!” Grammy snapped her fingers.
At once, Violet darted forward, dragging a small fiddle-backed chair with her. Arranging her myriad tablecloth skirts with a waggle of her scrawny behind, Grammy settled down on it like a brooding hen. “Better yet?”
Astonishingly, Grey
had
already begun to feel better. The thundering ache in his head was still there, but more like thunder on the horizon, distant and less acute. He also felt a bit light limbed.

 

“What is in that brew?” he asked.
“Like I’d tell you,” she scoffed. “Prettier faces than yourn have tried to pry me secrets from me.”
“I don’t have a pretty face.”
She looked him up and down with a critical eye. “True enough.”
Grey laughed. Once again, it was a mistake.
Chapter Twentyfive
After Grey finished moaning—bringing not a hint of sympathy to Grammy’s raisinlike eye (what was wrong with the women in this town that they were devoid of every feminine impulse toward charity?)—he collapsed back on the pillows. Happily, the pain had been short-lived, and it occurred to him that in Grammy Beadle he had a font of information, in essence a star witness ready for cross-examination.
“Did you push that urn off the balcony rail?”
A look of astonishment spread over Grammy’s face. “No,” she said. “Are ye daft? Why’d I do a thing like that?”
“Because it is rumored that you want to be the only witch hereabouts,” he said.
“That’s right,” she admitted. “And I will be, too. Once Amelie Chase leaves.”
“Which is precisely why someone might suspect you of trying to hasten that day by upturning an urn onto the girl.”
“Huh,” Grammy said, and stared at nothing for so long a time that Grey became convinced that the notion of murdering Amelie was only just now occurring to her, and that she thought the idea might have some merit. Then, sighing, she shook her head. “Naw. In the end, it would only make things harder fer me.”
“Because of the threat of prison,” he suggested.
“Ha! Like a prison could ’old a witch of my stature,” she scoffed. “No, because ’twould send the local lads into a right lather if I was t’kill the goose that laid the golden egg afore she’s actually gotten on with the job of layin’ it, if ya sees what I mean. Most folks ’round here lives right comfortable on the money they’re expectin’ to come into from that fortune what the colonel left.

 

“Course, I
could
spell the whole town into doin’ me biddin’ if I wanted to,” she confided. “But Little Firkin ain’t the only town I gots to oversee, and the sort of attention ye need to keep up a spell that big takes effort. Not to mention all them albino fox whiskers.” She looked at him to see if he appreciated the degree of difficulty entailed.
“I can imagine.” He nodded owlishly. That damn elixir had actually worked. He could hardly feel his head at all. In fact, his lips had gone a little numb.
She sighed tiredly. “Witchly empiring is a tricksy business.”
He nodded sympathetically. He had no idea all of the considerations that went into cabal management. Who would have thought being a witch and a politician were such similar occupations?
“Do you know anyone who would want to harm Miss Chase?”
“Haven’t you been listenin’? No one would harm a precious hair on her head, includin’ me. What use is havin’ a kingdom if all yer subjects is clearing out ahead of the dunners?”
Such logic couldn’t fail to persuade. From a purely practical standpoint, no one in Little Firkin
would
want Amelie dead. But he’d known that. Which meant the urn must have fallen without the aid of a human agent . . . or the motive for the attempt was personal.
He hadn’t realized he’d spoken his thoughts aloud until Grammy answered.
“Probably just a cat prowlin’ about,” she said. “We grow grand-size tabbies here. Besides, as well as her dad’s fortune keeping her safe, no one here has gots much to say agin’ Miss Chase. She ’n’ Mrs. Walcott keeps to themselves, ’cept for Bernard McGowan and the vicar. And the vicar only comes ’cause the archbishop wrote ’im and told ’im he ’ad to.”
Now, that was interesting.
“The vicar’s sister works here, doesn’t she?”
“She cooks,” Grammy said, and leaned over to hand him the teacup. He accepted it.
“Does the vicar disapprove of her being here?”
“Vicar disapproves of everything aboot Quod Lamia, and Miss Chase scares ’im shitless, and like most folks that’s scared shitless of something, he hates it fierce,” she said simply. “And, twixt us, I think ’is sister’s probably a witch, too. Ever taste her puddin’?” she asked slyly.
“Yes. It was delicious.”
Grammy nodded in dark concurrence. “
Unnaturally
delicious.”
“You seem to have a surplus of witches around here. Any others?” He took a sip of Grammy’s potion.
Grammy gave the matter a moment’s thought. “Naw. That’s just aboot all of ’em. I thought fer a while maybe Mrs. Walcott was one, but Vi don’t see no evidence of it, and neither do I.”
Grey almost choked on his tea.
Grammy leaped up, clapping him on the back, sending rockets of pain ricocheting through his skull. “Hold up a bit there, lad.”
“Mrs. Walcott?” he sputtered.
Grammy sank back in her chair. “Now, that’s one as ought to have gone into the witch trade, if you ask me. Never seen a more natural-born witch than Fanny Walcott.”
If only she knew.
“What makes ye think someone wants to kill Miss Chase, anyways?” she asked, abruptly returning to the topic at hand.
“Someone wrote Lord Collier a letter to that effect.”
She slapped her palms together, visually cleaning her hands of the subject. “Well, there you go, then. Ain’t a half dozen folks in Little Firkin would even know where Lord Collier could be found to send a letter to.” Her tiny eyes narrowed. “What about McGowan? He’d know where to send a letter. Yup, I fancy McGowan did it.”
Grey shook his head. “McGowan was in Edinburgh speaking to a roomful of stamp collectors at the time of the initial attempt, and in the middle of the ocean on the second.”
“Ach. That’s too bad.”
“You don’t like the banker?”
“I don’t like ’ow he treats them beasts of ’is,” she said shortly. “Well, that’s it, then, less you believe old Colonel Chase ’ad cause to worrit about them threats made agin’ Miss Chase when she was but a lass. And six years is a powerful long time between threat and deed.”
He stared at her. He was certain what she said was important, but he couldn’t reason out exactly why. The tea had clouded his thinking. Something flitted out there on the edges of conscious thought almost within grasp . . . and then it was gone.
Grammy leaned forward, shoving the saucer with the rest of its contents under his nose. “Drink up,” she said companionably.

 

He took no further prompting.
It really was a remarkable potion. It had mellowed his mood and relieved his pain, though he admitted to feeling some floatiness. Nothing wrong with floatiness. Unhappily, something niggled at him, spoiling the experience. What was it . . . ? Oh, yes.

 

Where the devil was Fanny?
“Treating you well, are they?” Grammy asked.

 

“Yes, tolerably,” he answered absently.
“Not you.” Grammy jerked her chin toward Violet. “I’m talking to Vi. Folks like you always gets treated proper. It’s folks like us ’as to always watch out so’s we gets our due.”
Not only was the old dame a doctor and a politician, but she was a philosopher, too.
“Well, Vi?” Grammy prodded.
The girl shrugged. “Fair enough, except they’re always on to me aboot cleanin’ up something or other. Use more soap on these floors inside a week than all Beadletown does on laundry in a year.”
Grammy and Violet exchanged long-suffering looks of mutual mystification. “Well, you stick with it, lass. No reward worth ’aving is come by easy.”
With a clap of her palm against the chair ’s arm, she tottered upright. Violet bolted to her side, as solicitous with her as any courtier might have been with the old queen. Arm in arm, they tottered toward the doorway.
“You’re going?” Grey asked. He’d been enjoying their talk.
“Me and you both, lad,” Grammy said with a wink. She turned to Violet. “Stay here and see as he don’t try to get up, lest he goes head over arse like a pine pole at a caber toss. Dose him a few more times wit’ the tea. That’ll keep ’im off ’is feet. Should be fine by morning. But he ain’t goin’ nowhere afore then. Ta.”
Violet shut the door behind her.
Grey tried to sit up but failed, collapsing back.
Oh, well.
Violet regarded him cautiously. “Yer head is bleedin’ again, so don’t you try nuthin’ stupid. I already hauled yer carcass once today, and that was enough.”
“Violet,” Grey said with careful dignity, “I could no more rise from this bed than talk Fanny Walcott
into
it.” Where the hell had that come from? Wherever it had, Violet seemed to accept his pronouncement as the last word in impossibilities, which did little to improve his mood.

 

“Good,” she said, settling down in Grammy’s vacated chair and crossing her arms over her skinny chest.
“If you don’t like the work here, why don’t you quit?” he asked.
“I will. Soon as I unlocks their secrets.”
“Secrets? What secrets?” He was feeling blurrier and blurrier. Fanny had secrets?
Ah, yes. Of course.
And he was her confidant.
No, no.
That was wrong. She’d manipulated him so Amelie could . . . What was the word?
Inveigle.
So Amelie could inveigle Hayden.

 

“The secrets of Miss Chase’s magic,” Violet said, drawing his wandering attention back.
Poor child. Poor, deluded child.
The pity of it was, she seemed a rather bright girl, really. Not clean, certainly. But with a native shrewdness that a little cultivation might eventually polish into intelligence. He felt an odd impulse toward charity.
“What magic?”
Violet rolled her eyes in exasperation. “
Her
magic.”
“Yes, yes, lass. But what specific magic do you wish to be privy to?”
“All of it,” Violet replied.
“So you wish to know how she flies about on her broomstick?”
“She can fly on a broomstick?” Violet whispered, wide-eyed.
“You’d know that better than I. I only just met the girl. You’ve lived with her—”
“Two years come June.”
“Precisely. So, does she fly on a broomstick?”
“No,” Violet admitted.
“Then she must summon whirlwinds and water-spouts?”
“No.”
“No? Well, does she predict the future?”
Violet’s face scrunched up. She shook her head. “Not to my recollection.”
“At least she must cause the neighborhood cows’ milk to curdle,” he said in disgust.
“No,” Violet protested loudly. “Miss Chase wouldn’t—”
“
Couldn’t
, Violet,” Grey broke in kindly. “Miss Chase
couldn’t
. Because there is no such thing as magic. There is nothing beyond the natural world, nothing beyond what we perceive with our five senses.”
For the first time in his adult life he felt a tincture of sadness as he spoke the familiar litany. What had gotten into him?
Ah, yes.
Grammy Beadle’s tea.
“It is all tricks and obfuscations designed to distract and disconcert while the magician makes fools of his audience.”
“I don’t ’alf know what yer talkin’ aboot, Mr. Sheffield, but I ken what I ken, and I ken there’s magic. Strong magic. And if’n I were you, I wouldn’t go challengin’ it with talk like that. Even you can’t stand against certain rough magics.”
Well, he’d tried. He closed his eyes.
“It looks to me like he can’t stand at all,” he heard Fanny say.

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