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“It is amazing how much privacy may be found in the midst of a crowd.”
Sinjin snorted and glanced toward Melbyrne, but the boy was already walking away…with Deborah on his arm.
“Such black looks, Lord Donnington,” Erskine said. “One might think you fear that your young protégé might actually be tempted to forswear his oath.”
“Melbyrne? Nothing of the kind. He must claim a fair companion while he can. I note that there are more gentlemen than ladies present today.”
As if to refute his claim, an expensively dressed, middle-aged woman approached at a fast pace, her unmarried daughter in tow. Nuala recognized her, though she didn’t know the woman well. She knew that the poor daughter was in her third Season and as yet unmarried, a disaster of unprecedented proportions for her family.
“Lord Donnington!” the woman cooed. “How very charming to find you here.”
Sinjin’s face instantly took on a pleasant but cynical cast. “Mrs. Eccleston,” he acknowledged.
The woman tugged the hand of the blushing girl behind her. “You have met my daughter, Miss Laetitia.”
The woman’s forwardness didn’t seem to trouble Sinjin, though her intentions were painfully obvious. He smiled and bowed to Mrs. Eccleston and the young lady, who was half-hidden behind her mother’s skirts.
“You are acquainted with Lady Charles, I believe,” he said pointedly, “and Mr. Erskine.”
“Yes, indeed. Charmed.” Mrs. Eccleston gave Nuala a narrow-eyed glance, doubtless considering the nature and qualities of a possible rival.
Nuala stifled a laugh at the improbable thought. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Eccleston, Miss Eccleston.”
Laetitia almost mustered a smile. “Good afternoon, Lady Charles,” she whispered.
“Are not the flowers lovely, Lord Donnington?” Mrs. Eccleston said. “Laetitia is most fond of flowers. She quite adores arranging them…don’t you, my dear?”
The poor girl went white at being put on the spot. “I…”
“Perhaps Miss Eccleston might enjoy touring the conservatory,” Sinjin interjected. “If you can spare her, Mrs. Eccleston.”
“Of course, of course! You are too kind, Lord Donnington.”
With a gesture Nuala might almost have called gracious, Sinjin offered his arm to Laetitia and smiled. The girl’s hand was trembling when she took his arm, but Nuala recognized the flash of gratitude on her small face. Not gratitude that Sinjin meant anything by his offer of escort, but that he had provided a means of escape from her overbearing mama.
Mrs. Eccleston could hardly conceal her triumph. “Do forgive me, Lady Charles, Mr. Erskine. I see a friend and must speak to her.”
She bustled off with no thought to her lack of courtesy. Erskine chuckled.
“Quite a dragon, isn’t she?” he remarked.
“She has a daughter to provide for,” Nuala said, watching Sinjin walk away with the most troubling of mixed emotions. “Laetitia is in an unenviable situation.”
“The remarkable thing is that Miss Eccleston seems to think her daughter has a chance with Lord Donnington.”
Nuala swallowed. “Are you quite sure she would not?”
“You are obviously a sensible woman, Lady Charles. What is your opinion?”
“He is highly eligible.”
“Quite. But there is more to matchmaking than mere eligibility.”
“Indeed. His reputation must be known by every woman in Society,” Nuala said. “Perhaps some don’t believe the strength of his commitment to his chosen way of life.” She noted Erskine’s discomfort and added, “I mean, of course, his refusal to marry before the age of forty.”
Erskine clasped his hands behind his back. “He once told me that if he ever found a woman his equal, he would marry her immediately. I doubt he will discover such a paragon, and will have to settle for less when he is finally compelled to do his duty.”
“Yet I have no doubt that he will do his duty in the end,” Nuala said, her throat tightening around the words.
Erskine gave her a penetrating look. “How long have you and Donnington known each other, Lady Charles?”
“We met in the park less than a fortnight ago.” She moved a little closer to Erskine, as if he might somehow quiet her distress. “He seemed quite put out when Mr. Melbyrne left with Lady Orwell.”
“He guards his friends’ virtue as savagely as Cerberus guards Hades.” Erskine’s cheeks took on a hint of color. “I beg your pardon.”
“Not at all. I believe you meant that the earl is determined to see that his friends avoid the snares of marriage as assiduously as he does.”
“Exactly,” Erskine said, looking relieved. “And Melbyrne is still vulnerable, young as he is. Perhaps not entirely convinced that he wishes to remain unattached for another two decades. Nevertheless, I hope that Lady Orwell…”
“Lady Orwell has a great deal of sense for her age,” Nuala said, hoping it was true. “She knows with whom Mr. Melbyrne associates and what that entails.”
“I am relieved.” Erskine glanced toward the tent that sheltered the refreshments. “May I fetch you a glass of lemonade?”
“I will come with you, Mr. Erskine.”
They proceeded to the tent, and Nuala contrived to speak as if not a thing in the world could discompose her. She genuinely liked Erskine and thought they might have become good friends under other circumstances, now that she was in a position to make friends of a more permanent sort. But she had the strong suspicion that Sinjin would object to her association with Erskine as much as he obviously did Melbyrne’s with Deborah.
He has no control over whom I wish to see, she thought. Nor has he any power over Deborah. I shall see to that.
She enjoyed a glass of lemonade with Erskine, excused herself to speak with Lillian and Tameri, and had fallen into conversation with Lady Oxenham when Sinjin reappeared, quite alone.
“We meet again,” he said very pleasantly.
“How did you find your tour of the conservatory, Lord Donnington?” Nuala asked, feeling her skin begin to warm with the beginnings of anxiety.
“Most illuminating. A very fine collection.”
He said nothing about Miss Eccleston, but it would not have been polite for him to do so, even had he anything good to say about her. He glanced at Mr. Erskine.
“Mr. Erskine, you will have no objection if I claim Lady Charles for a few minutes. That is, of course, if the lady is willing.”
It was much more a command than a request, and Nuala’s annoyance almost submerged her concern about what was to come. Still, she had wanted to speak to Sinjin, and here was her chance.
“Of course, Lord Donnington,” she said.
He touched her shoulder, steering her toward the house. The contact was electric, sending currents of awareness through that now-empty part of her that had always been the source of her magic. She stepped out of his reach and continued on through the French doors and into the reception room.
“I believe we will have more privacy here,” she said, gesturing toward a door leading off the reception room. The door led into a cloak room, hardly more than a closet. Nuala made certain that the door was left partly ajar after Sinjin entered. She moved to the small window looking out over the garden and faced him again.
For a moment they simply stared at each other. “I know you have many questions for me, Lord Donnington,” she began, unable to bear the silence.
“Do you?” he asked. His gaze swept from her shoes to her hat. “Strange to be calling you Lady Charles. I should never have thought to see you in London. How quickly you’ve risen…Nola.”
“That name was a temporary one,” she said, refusing to be intimidated by his deceptively casual manner. “My true name is Nuala.”
“I remember.” He looked over her shoulder at the window, as if the view beyond it held some great fascination for him. “You left Donbridge very suddenly.”
“Yes.”
“I wonder why? What were you afraid of, Nuala?”
“My work at Donbridge was finished.”
“Your work.” His lips curved in a chilling smile. “The work that led you to deceive all of us. The work that resulted in my brother’s death.”
There would be no beating around the bush, no benefit of the doubt. Nuala closed her eyes, remembering how it had all begun—when her powers had called upon her to aid a young bride, Mariah Marron, wife of Sinjin’s elder brother Giles, the Earl of Donnington. A wife who had been left a virgin on her wedding night, for Giles had plans for her that few mortals could comprehend: he intended to deliver her to Cairbre, a lord of the Fane, the unearthly denizens of the Faerie realm Tir-na-Nog. Cairbre had intended to use Mariah, unknowingly part Fane herself, as a means of taking power from the rightful king of Tir-na-Nog.
In return for Mariah, Cairbre had promised to give the avid hunter Lord Donnington the greatest prize of all: the unicorn king known as Arion. But Cairbre quickly learned that Mariah could not be forced through the gate to Tir-na-Nog by one she did not love.
Arion, exiled to earth in human form, had been deceived into believing that he would be permitted to return to Tir-na-Nog only if he could win Mariah’s love and lead her through the gate. Lord Donnington had left his estate, Donbridge, immediately after his unconsummated wedding, intending to throw Mariah into Arion’s path and simultaneously removing any obstacle to their love.
But his plans had not gone as expected. Mariah had not only fallen in love with Arion, he—called Ash in the human world—had fallen in love with her. Nuala, who had posed as the maid Nola in hopes of helping them defeat the evil plans of Giles and Cairbre, had not foreseen the complications that would ensue. Giles’s mother, the dowager countess, had wished to break up her son’s marriage to Mariah. She had conspired with beautiful, blond Pamela, Lady Westlake—Sinjin’s mistress—who loved Lord Donnington and thought only of destroying Mariah. Pamela had used Sinjin, while setting out to ruin Mariah’s reputation in Society.
But no one, least of all Nuala, had anticipated that Giles would unexpectedly return to England, confront Ash and break his deal with Cairbre by claiming Mariah for himself. Or that, in the chaos that followed, Arion would prepare to sacrifice his life, Mariah would give up her freedom, and both Giles and Pamela would meet tragic ends because of their own hatred, jealousy and betrayal.
The guilt that surged in Nuala’s chest nearly choked her.
“I did not kill your brother,” she whispered.
“No. But his death could have been prevented. You could have stopped it.”
“I…” She paused to whisper an instinctive and surely useless spell meant to quiet her racing heart. Naturally it had no effect, neither on her profound discomfort nor on her physical awareness of Sinjin’s masculine power. “I did not have the ability to control or anticipate everything that happened,” she said. “My purpose was to—”
“Save Ash and Mariah. ‘They are destined to be together,’ you told me. What happened to anyone else was of no concern to you.”
Her fingers trembled. She hid them in her skirts. “That is not true, Lord Donnington. I merely observed for nearly the entire time Ash and Mariah were together. My powers—”
“Your powers.” His eyes were dark with unspoken pain. “You claimed they were fading. Yet you maintained your illusion for months. You traveled to Tir-na-Nog twice on Ash’s behalf…oh, yes, Mariah told me. You helped heal Ash when he was dying.”
“Nevertheless, I—”
“You instructed me to ride after Giles, to stop him from hunting Ash. You knew that Pamela had helped my brother and was willing to do anything to protect him, yet it never occurred to you to consider that she was mad.”
“You knew her far better than I.”
He flinched. “I never claimed to hold superhuman abilities. You knew of Pamela’s earlier conspiracies, did you not?”
“I could not be everywhere at once.”
“Then you chose to begin something you could not hope to finish.”
Anger, however unreasonable, gave Nuala a sliver of courage. “Would you have let your brother betray Mariah and kill Ash?”
“Not if I understood what was going on. You could have approached me at any time, and I would have helped you before things got out of hand. You assumed that you could interfere in our lives without consequence.”
All he said was true. She had attempted too much. Even before Donbridge, she had known that her power had gradually been growing weaker, though she had not understood the reason. She should have taken heed of her limitations. Only she was to blame. Yet to do as she had intended, to admit her mistakes to this man who so despised her…
“I deeply regret what happened,” she said, meaning it with all her heart. “But Lord Donnington chose his own path.”
“Perhaps you wanted Giles dead.”
The accusation took her breath away. “You are wrong,” she said. “I would not wish to see anyone—”
Would you not, Nuala?
She turned her back to him, clasping her arms across her chest. “I wished no one such a fate,” she said. “Not even a man who would sell his wife for the chance to hunt and kill a unicorn.”
The silence fell like smothering snow. “My brother made many mistakes,” Sinjin said at last, his voice thick with emotion. “But he planned to defy the Fane and keep Mariah.”
“At the cost of Ash’s life.”
“You couldn’t even help Ash in the end. You left it all up to Mariah.”
“Because she had become strong enough. She didn’t need me anymore.”
“You were so certain of that, yet so ignorant of everything else?”
She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t explain what she didn’t fully understand herself: how she had always depended upon her witch’s instincts to tell her when to take direct action in the lives of those she watched over, and when to leave them to determine their own ultimate fate. It had always been a fine balance, and she had utterly failed to find it at Donbridge.
Sinjin’s footsteps moved about the room, the tap of his heels beating out an agitated rhythm. He clearly wanted much more from her than an apology.
For his guilt was almost as great as hers. It simmered beneath his righteous anger and grief for his brother. He and Giles had never been close; to the contrary, both Giles and their mother, the dowager, had been cool and distant with Sinjin since his childhood.
And that made matters all the worse for him. He had to convince himself that he had not sacrificed a lifetime’s closeness to his only sibling because of his own choices. He wanted to prove to himself, and to her, that he had not betrayed his brother by loving Lady Westlake, for refusing to recognize the depth of Pamela’s obsession and determination to claim Giles for herself at any cost…even the former Lord Donnington’s life.
Yet Nuala had no power to ease his pain. She could not fight his battle for him; she could scarcely fight her own. She hugged herself more tightly.
“Why are we here, Lord Donnington?” she asked. “Is it your intention to punish me?”
“And how should I do that, Lady Charles? By exposing you for what you are? Informing Society that they have a witch and former chambermaid in their midst?” He barked a laugh. “Even if I were to attempt it, you might summon up a spell to turn me into a toad.”
“I have never possessed such an ability,” she said, staring at the window glass without seeing anything beyond it.
His footsteps came to an abrupt halt. “You admitted that you were a witch when you first revealed yourself to me,” he said, his words measured, as if he feared to expose his own suffering. “If I had not seen the impossible with my own eyes, I would not have believed such creatures existed. But you never explained what that means, where you came from, or how you knew that Mariah needed your ‘help.’”
No, she had not. There had been no time…and then she had chosen the coward’s way out rather than face just such questions as these.
But there were things she simply couldn’t tell Sinjin, part of her past that, if revealed, would only make him despise her more….
