Under Your Spell Read online

  Time was short. Nay, it was up. The well. Where was the well? She searched the darkness, and there, almost hidden by shadows and brush, she saw a tumble of stone.

  “Lizzy!” she screamed the girl’s name as she leaped from Silk’s back. “Lizzy!” Timbers covered the top of the well. She braced her feet and dragged the first aside, yelling again.

  But she heard nothing. She screamed again, panting, struggling against the rough-hewn planks. They were as heavy as death, dragging at her shoulders.

  “Elizabeth! I’m coming.” One more board and she would be able to squeeze through.

  “Your mother waits. Don’t give up. Don’t let them win,” she implored, and then she heard a faint mewl from below. “Dear God,” she breathed, and yanked at the plank. But suddenly the world exploded against her head. She stumbled sideways, tumbling to the earth, striking the well with her shoulder. Darkness splashed in, but from the corner of her eye she saw another movement. She jerked away.

  A board flew past her head and thundered against the stones.

  “Who the devil are you?” growled her attacker.

  She watched him groggily, trying to concentrate on the hatred, the agony, the power she had seen in the image. But her ear was bleeding, her head swimming.

  Even in the darkness she could see the resemblance between the brothers, though Bixby was older, worn, seething with pain and anger.

  “I know she’s down there,” Ella said, but her voice was barely audible.

  “She’s paying,” he growled, and took a step toward her.

  Ella managed to shimmy up the stone wall behind her, to gain her feet, but the world was heaving beneath her. She widened her stance, narrowed her eyes. “It’s not her fault.”

  He shook his head. “I never said it was.” He was drawing the board back again, over his shoulder, like a cricket player at bat.

  “Then let her go.” She shifted carefully away from the well, almost falling, catching her balance. Her head was pounding, obscuring her sight, muffling her thoughts. “Before it’s too late.”

  He laughed. The sound shivered across her skin. “It’s already too late,” he said, and then he leaped.

  She tried to escape, but her limbs wouldn’t quite obey. Pain smashed across her spine. She crumpled to the earth.

  “No.” She rolled to her back, finding him through the haze of pain. “No. Not too late.” She was panting, barely able to force the words past her straining lungs. “She’s still alive.”

  “And you think nothing else matters?”

  She tried to scoot backward on her hands and feet, but her legs tangled with her gown. He stalked her. “No. No.” She shook her head. The movement was too much, almost spilling her into oblivion. But there were images in the abyss. Names, faces. “Henry mattered,” she gasped.

  He paused for a moment, seeming to fall into another place for a moment, then: “My Henry. He had his mother’s eyes. But my hands. Big.” He nodded. “Strong. And smart. Just the thing for the academy.”

  She nodded, managed to scoot back a few bare inches. Unconsciousness hovered, threatened, but she would remain lucid. If only for a few more minutes. “He was smart,” she whispered.

  “Brave as a Viking. My brother said he’d be safe. An officer.” He nodded. “They care for their officers.”

  “Brave,” she agreed foggily.

  “He’s dead,” Bixby screamed, and swung. She rolled, but not fast enough. Agony struck her arm. Still, she made it to her feet, and he was off balance from the swing, leaning in, bending forward. She stumbled in close and brought her knee up under his face. It connected with flesh. Cartilage crunched. He screamed and stumbled backward, but she was beyond mercy now and driven by desperation. Swinging around, she delivered a kick to the head. He reeled sideways, fell, and lay still.

  Ella staggered to the well. “Lizzy! Elizabeth!”

  There was no answer. Lurching to where Silk watched from the lawn, she tried to unbuckle the reins from the bit, but her right hand refused to move, forcing her to use her teeth. She wrenched the leather from the metal, smearing blood across her gown.

  But a noise from behind startled her. She spun about. A horse flew at her. An apparition in white jumped toward her.

  “Where is she?”

  Not a ghost. Not Bixby. But Lady Moore, still dressed in her night rail, hair wild around her tragic face. She’d taken no time for clothes or saddle or thought, driven only by terror.

  Ella managed a nod toward the well.

  “Lizzy!” she yelled, and threw herself toward the well.

  “Wait.” Ella grabbed the woman’s wrist with her good hand and spun her about. “Reins…” It was impossible to breathe, to remain erect. “Not long enough.”

  The eyes haunted her even in the darkness.

  “It’ll do you no good to die with her,” Ella said.

  “You’re wrong,” said the other, and ripping free, scrambled over the crumbled lip of the well.

  Ella pressed her arm to her ribs, holding down the pain. “She doesn’t want to die,” she whispered, and the woman stopped, eyes wild in the dark halo of her hair.

  “What do I do?”

  “Get your reins, your leathers, whatever you have,” Ella ordered, and steadied herself against the stone.

  The woman was gone in an instant, back in little longer. Her fingers fumbled against the leather, but in a moment she had them secured to Ella’s, then she was gone, scrambling over the edge of the well in a second, holding the reins in white, knobby knuckles, shimmying down.

  “Careful. Be—” Ella began, but she was already alone.

  The world grew misty around the edges, but a weak croak from below brought her to.

  “Baby. My baby,” she crooned, voice softening. “Lizzy. It’s Mama. It’s me. Come to take you home.” There was the sound of sobbing, then louder, desperate with terror, with a pain so deep it hurt to hear it: “Help us! Help us!”

  Ella turned mistily, stared blurrily into the depths. “Can you tie the rein around her?”

  Water splashed from below. “No.” Another sob. “No. It’s too short.”

  “Boost her up.” The world was spinning slowly right, then left, like a toy on a street. “Tie it around her.”

  There was another splash. A muffled whimper. “I can’t. I’m not—”

  “Then she dies,” Ella stated, and gritted her teeth against the knife of pain that sawed her arm.

  There was silence, the sound of stumbling through water, of falling, of labored breathing.

  “Pull.” The voice from below was desperate, breathless, filled with doing and hope and life. “Pull her up.”

  “God help me,” Ella murmured, and gritting her teeth, pulled with every fiber in her being. Lady Moore pushed from below. But lucidness was fading, blurring, darkening. Ella shook her head, wrapped the rein about her wrist, and staggered backward.

  The girl inched upward. Almost there. Almost. But suddenly pain swung out of nowhere. She screamed as it struck her shoulder.

  “Get away!” roared Bixby. Blood covered his face. “Get away!” he shrieked, and struck again. Pain blasted her arm. She was slammed sideways, propelled by the force of the blow and the weight of the dangling girl. Her head struck the stones. There was a shriek from below. But it was faint, as if it came from leagues away. As if it didn’t matter. Reality faded. Dimly she saw the old man draw his weapon back, but suddenly he was snatched away. There was a scuffle of noise, then silence.

  “Josette. Josette.”

  She opened her eyes to Madeline’s face. It was pale with worry, wide-eyed with fear.

  “You shouldn’t have come alone,” Maddy reprimanded. “I told him not to let you.”

  “Where’s the girl?” Jasper’s voice was rough, concise.

  Ella nodded toward the well, where her arm was stretched up and away by the girl’s weight.

  “Dear Lord,” Maddy gasped. “She’s got it tied to her wrist.”

  For a momen
t Ella almost thought she heard Jasper curse, but it was probably the pain, probably the thrumming in her head.

  “Give me a hand,” he ordered.

  “Hold on, love. Hold on,” Maddy said, then stood.

  The rest was a blur. The reins tightened against the numbness of her arm, but in a moment the girl was pulled over the lip of the well and deposited on the grass.

  “Is she breathing?” Ella asked, teeth gritted against the pain as Maddy struggled with the knot.

  “Just,” said Reeves.

  “Mother…” Ella breathed, and managed to draw her arm to her chest, to cradle it against her body. Fireworks were exploding inside. “Down there.”

  Jasper untied the girl, tossed down the leather, shouted into the well, but Ella didn’t hear the words, didn’t listen.

  Upon the grass, the girl looked tiny and hopeless, feet bare and faintly blue in the predawn light, wet hair swept away from pale, shiny skin.

  “Cold,” Ella murmured.

  Maddy scrambled out of her jacket and draped it over her, but Ella shook her head. “The child.”

  Madeline winced, turned, wrapped the garment around the girl’s shoulders, and then the mother was scrambling over the side.

  “Lizzy. My Lizzy.” She wrapped the child in her arms, dragged her into her lap. The narrow form lay limp and silent, her stillness damning all. “Baby,” the mother whispered, and swept a shaky hand across her daughter’s sunken cheek.

  Mourning silence answered.

  Ella’s throat was tight, burning, blaming, choking her.

  “Don’t leave me. Please.” Lady Moore was rocking, swaying back and forth, hunched over her daughter’s flaccid body. “Take me with you. I can’t live. Can’t live without—”

  But in that moment the girl’s eyes opened, wet lashes sweeping up like a sleepwalker’s. “Mama,” she murmured, and the woman began to cry, bent over her child, weeping and praying in incoherent sobs.

  Hot tears slipped silently down Ella’s cheeks. She leaned her head back against the stones. They felt coarse, but wondrously cool against her skull.

  So this was it then, she thought. Her reason for being, for existing, for being born.

  “Get out of here.” Jasper ordered, but his voice was distant, and in truth, she wasn’t sure whom he spoke to.

  “She’s wounded,” Madeline said. Her voice was low, gritty with emotion.

  “This wasn’t the proper task for you.”

  “And it was right for her?” Maddy asked. “Look at her. She could have been killed.”

  “But she wasn’t,” Reeves said, and then Ella fell, slipping quietly into the darkness.

  Chapter 21

  Despite the fact that he had learned his social mores amid brigands and buccaneers, Drake knew he should not have come so early to Berryhill. He had, after all, seen Ella just hours before. Seen her, touched her, loved her. Which was precisely why he was there, standing on her stoop while impatience pounded him like a wild tide; he could not stay away. Could not think of anything but how she had looked, felt, smelled. Even in his sleep, he had dreamed of her. And so he had come, her thick anthology of poems in his hand, waiting breathlessly to see her again. The heralded lieutenant, wanting nothing more than to hold her swan-soft hand, to listen to the music of her voice as she read sonnets in the sparkling morning light.

  He would have laughed had he not been so pathetic.

  The footsteps he could hear shambling through the vestibule were as slow as good tidings. The door opened with creaky weariness, and a face appeared, as old as death itself. Ella had been kind to assume Amherst had not yet reached his hundredth year.

  “Good day,” Drake said, stomping down his impatience and trying, rather hopelessly, to remember something about congeniality. If he wasn’t mistaken, it did not involve scowling. “You must be Amherst.”

  The old man stared at him with rheumy eyes, then nodded once. “Yes, sir.” The motion nearly sent him toppling down the steps. “That I am, sir.”

  “I was hoping to give my regards to Lady Lanshire.”

  No comment.

  Drake reminded himself not to grit his teeth. “Might she be at home?”

  “Yes, sir.” There seemed to be a lifelong pause between each word. “She is, sir.”

  “I wish to see her.” And touch her and hear her magical laughter ring like silvery bells… Holy God, he was acting like an idiot. “If she’s available.”

  The old man blinked. Or perhaps he fell asleep for a moment. “And whom shall I say is calling, sir?”

  “Drake.” He gritted his teeth. “Sir Drake.”

  Another slow nod, then: “I am sorry, sir.”

  Drake waited for him to continue, but he had either finished his thought or, possibly, died.

  “For what do you—” Drake began, but Amherst seemed to bump back to life finally.

  “My lady will not be…accepting visitors this day.”

  Why the hell not? “Why?”

  “I beg your pardon, sir.”

  Drake bit back a scowl. “I hope she is not feeling unwell.”

  Amherst nodded, a mannerism he seemed to use for every occasion. “I fear she is feeling unwell,” he echoed.

  Drake stared at him. That was impossible. Ella had looked all but perfect on the previous night, as lovely as a sonnet, as healthy as a summer rose. So why would she be refusing visitors? Or was it just him she avoided? Perhaps she was regretting their time together. But that hardly seemed possible, for it had been spectacular, breathtaking, magical. Indeed, he could think of nothing but the sound of her sighs, the feel of her skin. Not finances. Not pain. Not even Sarah. “That cannot be,” he said. “She was in perfect health last…” He paused a fraction of a second, rather belatedly remembering diplomacy. “Last evening, at Lady Ballow’s, she seemed perfectly well.”

  The old man nodded. Drake considered shaking him.

  “What happened?”

  “I fear she took a spill…”

  “What the devil—”

  “From her horse.”

  What the hell kind of lunacy was this? Drake had seen her just hours before. Had kissed her beneath the arbor, had escorted her safely to her door. No harm could have befallen her, unless it had happened under her very roof.

  For a moment he was tempted almost beyond control to shake the truth from the old man, but they were no longer on the high seas. Here in London they were civilized, or so it was said.

  “How unfortunate,” Drake said. “She must have fallen on her way home.”

  The old man’s gaze never flickered. “Yes, sir.”

  Lies. Why the lies? “It is nothing serious, I hope,” he said, remembering to be subtle, to be civil, when both instinct and training demanded that he be anything but.

  “I fear her arm has been dislodged from its socket.”

  Dislodged! How? Why? It was all Drake could do not to toss the old man out of the way and leap up the stairs to see her for himself. To make sure she was well. To hold her in his arms. To demand answers.

  “There are also…”

  Drake gritted his teeth against the old servant’s halting speech.

  “Some scrapes and bruising, but the doctor assures us…she will mend in time.”

  What could have happened? Surely her staff hadn’t harmed her. She was not exactly Amazonian, but she was no wilting violet either. He had known that ever since the first night in Miss Anglican’s garden. Indeed, he had suspected things were not as they seemed, that she had somehow bested the thieves herself. But perhaps the truth was more sinister. Perhaps she was one of them, their leader, able to send them running…

  But that was ridiculous. She was naught but beauty and grace and…

  What about the night on Gallows Road, though? Maybe she had never been in real danger there. Maybe she would have done just as well without him.

  And since she had been wandering the streets then, there was no reason to believe she hadn’t done so again on the previous night
. But where? And why?

  “I wish to see her,” Drake said.

  “I fear the doctor insists…” Amherst nodded as if his statement were already complete. “That she rest.”

  For a moment Drake again considered tossing the old man aside, but damaging a man in his second century didn’t seem quite right…even to him. “Of course,” he said, and shoved the narrow book back into his breast pocket where he kept it. “Well, tell her I called.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Drake turned away, every muscle tense, mind thrumming. Things were not what they seemed. That much was certain. And some unknown sense he had never quite acknowledged made him feel the situation was somehow connected with Sarah.

  Mounting his gelding, he turned toward Hawkspur. He had been avoiding his inherited estate and the raw feelings it evoked since his return to London, but he could do so no more. The journey went quickly, for his mind was busy, spinning away at a thousand worries. Grosvenor Street had changed little since his last visit.

  Memories assailed him as he tied his mount and walked up the paved path to the towering house built of Cotswold stone. How long had it been since he’d traversed that winding walkway? Years certainly. More than a decade since his father’s blatant attempt to impress him with his newfound wealth and frilly daughter, since they had shared harsh words and harsher silences.

  Drake winced at the worsening pain in his leg. He had been too careless with it last night, but it had seemed of little import then. Strange how the pain seemed to lessen when she was near. When she touched…

  Growling silently at his thoughts, Drake drove her image from his mind and knocked at the broad, weathered planks of the front door.

  A woman answered on his third rap. She was young and pert with a turned-up freckled nose. Her face was round and her body plump. He didn’t recognize her, but neither did she identify him. And he would just as soon keep it that way. For there were things he would understand. Things that might well make themselves clear only if he pretended to be that which he was not.

  “Good day,” he said, and gave the girl a smile. He wasn’t good at smiles. Had not been for many years. And yet Ella made him want to be, to laugh, to break out in song. “My name is William Tye. I’m an acquaintance of your mistress.”