The Marriage Spell (17 page)

Chapter
XVI

J
ack swore and almost jumped out of his skin when icy fingers tickled the arch of his left foot. So much for pretending he was asleep.

He pushed himself up in the bed, wondering if he was up to a serious conversation with his wife. Probably not, but he didn't know when it would be any easier. “Your hands are cold.”

“That's not surprising in early February.” She wrapped her robe tightly around her lushly curved figure and perched on the end of the bed. The faint light revealed her expression as calm but implacable. “Are we going to spend the rest of our lives avoiding each other? If so, the sooner we move to separate residences the better. You're ready for London, I think. Go without me. I'd much rather stay here than go to town with a husband who won't talk about anything more personal than furniture.”

The prospect of going up to town alone presented one small, cowardly instant of relief. Life would be much simpler if he didn't have to explain a wizardly wife.

But much greater were his regret and shame. He liked having Abby nearby, even though he'd been keeping his distance.

And in the midst of a serious discussion, he was having trouble not thinking about the night they had shared in this bed, and how warm and sensually responsive she had been. If he leaned forward…

Focus.
He needed to overcome his cowardice and talk to his wife. “I don't want to go to London by myself. I want to go with you.” He grimaced. “I've been behaving badly. The problem isn't you, it's me.”

“Of course it's you,” she said, unimpressed by his willingness to take the blame. “We were getting on rather well, I thought, until you kissed me and sensed the energy flow around us. You have magic, but the merest suggestion of that sent you running like a fox fleeing a pack of hounds. I don't know how long you can hide from this side of your nature, but not much longer, I suspect.”

“No!”
You have magic.
Just hearing the words made his stomach knot. “I'm no wizard. Once I had some interest in such matters, as boys do. Perhaps I even have a little power, since you claim to have used it during the healing. But I lost all interest in magic at school. I want nothing to do with it.”

“Lost interest or were bespelled?” Her expression was grave and perhaps pitying. “Your reaction to the thought of having power is so fierce, so different from your usual temperament, that I have to wonder if a spell was cast to make you hate your magical nature. Did Stonebridge cast such spells to ensure that its students would walk the path their parents chose for them?” She paused for emphasis. “If so, do you want to live your life controlled by what others wanted for you?”

Panic washed through him, flooding his common sense. Panic so great that underneath, the small part of him that was still rational wondered at its intensity. Abby had said nothing that should frighten him—unless she was right and someone had tied knots in his mind.

He managed to choke out, “You're only guessing that someone put a spell on me. You can't know for sure. I bear the strongest anti-magic spell known on my own flesh.”

Abby's dark brows arched. “There is no spell strong enough to block a wizard of my strength for long if I truly wanted to break through, but I have not done so. It would be very bad manners.”

And a betrayal so great as to end any chance they might have had at a real marriage. Thank God she was wise enough to know this, or their marriage was already doomed.

But he wanted a real marriage, and despite his fear, he wondered if she might be right about the spell. “If I were to grant you permission to explore my mind, how do I know that you won't plant a spell of your own?”

Her full lips tightened. “You would have to trust me. I suppose that is asking too much, given that we are still more strangers than not. But there is another way. You can explore your own mind. Now that I've told you that you might be the victim of a suppression spell, you might be able to find it on your own.”

He frowned. Though he would rather not have his mind invaded, he doubted that he would find anything there that he hadn't noticed for the last twenty years. “Even if I could find evidence of a suppression spell, what could I do about it?”

“It is an offense against nature for a spell to block a person's deepest self,” she said slowly. “Even the most powerful wizard has trouble creating a suppression spell that can last indefinitely. I doubt you could have been controlled in that way if you hadn't been a boy when the spell was laid on you. You grew up not realizing that a vital aspect of your spirit had been suppressed. Now you are a man. If you look inward and find such an unnatural barrier, you might be able to break it down. Or if you give me permission, I could help you do so.”

He did trust Abby, he realized. More than he trusted Colonel Stark, who had wielded discipline at the Stonebridge Academy with such unholy satisfaction. But…“I don't want someone else poking around inside my mind. Even you.”

“I understand.” Her voice was gentle. “Are you sufficiently offended by what was done to you that you will look for yourself?”

Even the thought of probing his mind for alien magic caused another spike of panic. Which meant, he realized, that he had no choice but to look inward, no matter how painful the process. “More than sufficiently offended. But how does one study one's own mind?”

“Imagine some kind of scene,” she replied. “Perhaps a place you know and find comfortable. A meadow, a familiar house, perhaps how you imagine life would be if you were a fish under the sea.”

“A fish?” he asked, temporarily sidetracked.

She smiled. “What you choose is only a metaphor. Move through the scene in your imagination, and if something feels wrong, look closer.”

That seemed simple enough. What to imagine?

For some reason, his thoughts went to a beech wood on the estate of a friend he'd visited several times in the Cotswold. Beeches didn't grow in Yorkshire, and he had been fascinated by the dense canopy of leaves that blocked most sunlight. Because of the deep shade, few plants grew and the floor beneath the beeches was layered with a thick, yielding carpet of fallen leaves.

The peace and mystery of the beech wood had made a lasting impression. Sometimes he'd dreamed of it in Spain, on the eve of battle. Closing his eyes, he imagined himself among the massive trees. All was as he remembered, at first. If the beech wood represented his mind, he was comfortable in it. And he walked without pain, without crutches or canes.

Then he felt a tug of wrongness. Frowning, he followed the feeling. The majestic trees gave way to crooked saplings that were jammed together unhealthily. The trunks were as close as fence railings—as if they had been designed to conceal.

Wondering if a spell might be hidden in this dark corner of his beech wood, he forced his way between the crooked saplings, shouldering trunks aside by sheer force when necessary. He would not have been able to make his way through real trees, but his imaginary world had the qualities of a dream even though he was awake.

The farther he penetrated into the rank, unhealthy woods, the colder the air, the harder it was to breathe, and the greater his fear. By now it was clear that Abby was right. The fear was artificial, created by something outside himself. That didn't mean that he didn't feel looming terror, but he refused to let himself be affected by it.

Impatient at his lack of progress, he swung his arm and knocked all the trees in front of him to one side. They fell with splintering crashes to reveal a pair of iron doors set into a steep hillside. The doors were circular, as if concealing the mouth of a cave. He recognized deep wrongness. With sudden fierce certainty, he knew that this portal was the source of the blind panic that throbbed through him like a mortal injury, urging him to flee for the sake of his sanity.

Clenching his teeth against the panic, he studied the pattern embossed on the doors. The design was elusive, an ever-shifting matrix of shadows and sinuous lines, mysterious and seductive.

Dizzily he recognized that the pattern was sucking him down like a whirlpool. As he fell into the design, he sensed horrors waiting on the other side of the door.

Swearing, he shook his head and looked away, knowing that if he continued to look into the pattern he would lose all will and determination.

Abby.
The mere thought of her steadied him. As the vertigo faded, he realized that if he'd ever accidentally found these doors, that sorcerous pattern would have pulled him down into paralysis. Perhaps he had been here over and over, and each time the memories had been wiped from his mind.

But this time he had been warned, and he would not lose himself to a wizard's spell. Not here, not in the middle of his own soul.

Eyes averted, he reached out and flattened his left palm on the iron door. The jangling energy was deeply unpleasant, but he forced himself to maintain the contact while he analyzed what messages the door held.

This door—this spell—had been cast at Stonebridge, he realized, and by none other than Colonel Stark himself, with the assistance of his second in command. The old devil had set up a school to suppress wizardry while being a wizard himself!

Deep in the metal, he felt an echo of the colonel's torment. Magically gifted, the man had grown up loathing himself. Ironically, the one way he had been free to use his magic was as a tool to cripple the power of the young boys placed in his care.

Jack could almost feel sorry for him. Almost, but not quite.

Are you sufficiently offended?
Abby had sent him into the darkness of his own mind to seek wrongness, and he had found it. Was she also right that he might be able to destroy the spell himself because his magical nature yearned to be free? What would be strong enough to break down these iron doors?

Anger.
Deliberately he reached deep into himself to find rage.

He had learned early to let go of anger because it did him no good, but now he collected all the suppressed furies of his life. He harvested the baffled misery of the times his father beat him for no reason. The rage engraved on his soul by the cold menace of Stonebridge Academy, and the torments inflicted by the most twisted of the prefects. The anguish of a small boy being punished unjustly, and his towering rage when he'd cursed God for allowing good men to die meaninglessly.

When he had gathered his life's burden of fury and outrage, he laid both hands on the doors and let his emotions blaze through his palms like Greek fire. The doors exploded, white-hot shards flying in all directions.

He barely noticed the shattered fragments of the spell because they were trivial compared to the energy that blasted loose from the bonds that had trapped it so long. He staggered back under the cascading power, feeling as if his skin was being seared away.

His left shoulder burned like the fires of Hades, worse than the time a musket ball went through his upper arm. He clawed at the pain frantically, yet pain was matched by wild exultation. A hole in his soul he hadn't known existed was being filled.

He felt as if he were too close to an exploding shell. He was in the heart of a whirlwind, tumbling frighteningly free, uncertain where he would land. Or how hard he would hit.

Ka-bang!
He smashed into a hard surface with an impact that jarred his bones. Dizzily he wondered if the fall was real or in his mind.

“Jack!” a voice called.
“Jack!”

Abby's voice. He blinked his eyes open, and found himself flat on his back on the cold floor. His wife knelt beside him, her expression shaken. “Abby?”

“Are you all right?” She began to skim her hands several inches above his body. “I felt your energy shift. Then you began flailing about and fell off the bed. I'm so sorry I didn't catch you!”

“Even you can't catch me all the time.” He pushed himself to a sitting position with one hand, grateful that Abby had laid a carpet beside the bed. Its thickness had cushioned the impact a bit. “I'm all right, I think. Bruised but not broken.”

“Dare I ask what happened?” Abby asked.

He ran tense fingers through his hair. “I found a closed door that felt wrong, and blasted it open. The spell was cast by Colonel Stark, the headmaster of Stonebridge Academy.” He recalled what else he had detected in the doors. “My father requested the suppression spell. I don't believe it was routinely applied to all students.”

“Your father had a particular hatred of wizardry? More than the usual lord?”

“He thoroughly loathed magic, especially in his son and heir. My mother was not so adamant, though she followed his lead.” He realized that those two sentences were the most he'd told Abby about his parents. He really must give her a better idea of the kind of family she had married into.
Later.

Abby got to her feet. “Can you stand with my help? If not, I'll ring for Morris.”