Under a New Year's Enchantment

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“I’m sure you’re right.” Theodora glared as Garrick threw his head back and laughed at some villager’s jest. How dare he be so carefree after dealing her such an insult? “In any event, it’s ancient history now.” In which case, why was she so irate? “I’ve scarcely spoken to him all week because he’s been in such a forbidding mood. He should have known I wasn’t angling for him.”

Smiling at a besotted villager, Lucille ladled more spiced ale.

Theodora gritted her teeth. “He makes me so angry that—that I would like to kill him.”

Lucille tutted. “No, you would like to bed him.”

“What?” Theodora squeaked, thankful no one understood them. “I certainly would not!” Sometimes she found Lucille’s conversation a little too scandalous. She didn’t know the Frenchwoman well—wasn’t sure she’d ever met her in London—but they had friends in common, and when Lucille’s coach had broken an axle in front of the vicarage, Theodora’s parents had taken her in. Since the axle would take more than a week to fix, Lucille had asked if she might attend the Westerly house party.

Theodora had agreed, thinking Lucille, who had a worldly air, would be an entertaining companion. Worldly was an understatement. Lucille wasn’t the least bit discomposed by the sensual atmosphere and seemed to expect Theodora—a respectable spinster—to feel the same.

The Frenchwoman rolled her eyes. “You cannot fool me. I have seen the way you look at him.”

Perhaps Theodora had looked at Garrick with lustful appreciation the first few days of the party. Why wouldn’t she? He still had the dark golden hair and masterful chin of his youth. Once she had recovered from her girlish attachment to him, she’d used him as a daydream lover from time to time.

“As if I would like to strangle him?” she retorted.

“As if you have suffered a severe disappointment,” Lucille said.

Theodora couldn’t deny that. “Of course I am disappointed. I have known Lord Westerly since he was a boy. He was... He has changed greatly.”

“What did you expect? He spent years at war. He risked his life, he killed others and he saw savagery and devastation such as you cannot imagine.”

Something in her voice told Theodora that Lucille wasn’t speaking only of Garrick. “You were on the Continent during the war, were you not?”

Lucille nodded.

“You have seen some of the same horrors.”

Lucille squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again.

“Yet you are polite and charming,” Theodora said. “Lord Westerly has been consistently unpleasant since we arrived.”

“War affects each person differently,” Lucille said. “I try to forget. Lord Westerly is determined not to.”

“Yes, but must he shove his opinions down everyone’s throats?” She agreed with most of those opinions—such as the need to employ former soldiers—but not his method of delivering them.

“Perhaps he hopes to shock people out of their stolid Englishness,” Lucille said.

Theodora certainly understood that. Over the past few years, she had become more and more frustrated with stolidity. With people’s refusal to believe anything but what they already understood. With rules and standards of behaviour, which were like fences and hedges one could see over, but through which one must never pass, particularly if one remained unwed. “Perhaps I have misjudged him, but that doesn’t mean I want to...”

“You cannot fool me, chérie. You want it so badly you cannot even say it.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want. I’m a respectable virgin.”

Lucille indicated the hostile eyes of the ladies and the lustful ones of the men. “Not anymore,” she said.

* * *

“Forget about apologizing,” Lord Valiant Oakenhurst said. He and Garrick were sharing brandy and a quiet moment in the library now that the villagers had gone and the guests had retired. “Take Miss Southern to bed.”

This was typical of Valiant, who was what the espionage world called an incubus—a man with unusual powers of seduction and the ability to send erotic dreams. When Garrick had first become embroiled in espionage, he’d thought this ability pure fantasy, but eventually he’d been forced to accept it as the simple truth. It was a useful quality in spies, but in a friend it could become tiresome. For every problem, Valiant suggested a sensual solution.

“Be reasonable, Val. Miss Southern is an innocent.”

“All the more reason to seduce her. Like every unmarried lady, she’s a volcano of unsatisfied desires, hot and smoking and ready to erupt.”

“That’s no way to speak of a virtuous woman,” Garrick said, but he couldn’t suppress a grin at the image Val’s words had conjured up. “In any event, it’s absurd. Theodora is...”

“Very pretty,” Val said.

“Calm, capable and a spinster by choice,” retorted Garrick.

“She has a mighty trim figure,” Val contributed.

Including a particularly attractive bosom, but Garrick’s appreciation of it had nothing to do with Theodora’s hypothetical desires. “Many women have good figures. If I’ve noticed hers, it’s your fault for stirring up the entire household—you and that damned succubus.”

“That’s no way to speak of Lucie,” Val said, suddenly not the least bit amused. “She can’t help what she is.” Lucille Beaulieu, like Val, had been a spy for years. With the two of them in the same house, extraordinarily sensual by nature and most likely sending dreams about like shuttlecocks, it was no wonder the party had become so erotically charged.

“I don’t suppose she means any harm, and nor do you, but this party is beginning to resemble an orgy,” Garrick said. “Maynard Buxton is chasing—and frequently catching—everything in skirts, and if I’m not mistaken, even my aunt is indulging herself.”

Val laughed. “Yes, with Mr. Wedgewood, the only available widower.”

“It’s unlike her—she’s one of the starchiest women I know—and it’s all your fault,” Garrick said. “If you’ve been sending dreams to Theodora, stop it.”

Val grinned. “Only the first night I was here.” Lord Valiant had come to Westerly on a bizarre mission for the Office of the British Incubi—to arouse Theodora’s interest in sensuality in order to encourage her to marry. Evidently, one of Theodora’s relatives had influence with the incubi and wanted her wed before she became a confirmed old maid. It was damned officious, in Garrick’s opinion.

“Since then, Lucie and I have been sparring with dreams,” Val said. “Or rather, I’ve been sparring openly and she’s been pretending not to. But it’s not like shooting or archery, old fellow. One conjures up erotic images and aims them at the intended recipient, but thoughts don’t necessarily go straight to their destination and stop there. They tend to diffuse and affect everyone.”

Garrick had seen this effect during the war—it definitely had its uses—but he didn’t want it here in his house. “I’ve no interest in women at the moment, so it’s a bloody nuisance.”

“Tsk,” Val said. “A woman is just what you need.” Trust Val to exit on a typical parting shot. “I’m off to a warm bed. Enjoy your cold one.”

* * *

Very well, I do want it, Theodora admitted to herself a few hours later as she lay in bed. If people were going to call her a loose woman when it wasn’t true, why maintain her very proper, very boring innocence? Sometimes she became so frustrated she felt she would burst. She longed to escape the tedium of many aspects of her life, but there was no place to go. However...why not find a lover and have an affaire?

Not Garrick, though. Perhaps Lucille was right and the war had affected him badly, but Theodora would never forget how horridly he had treated her tonight. She would have to find another candidate. She considered the other males at the party and dismissed them with a shudder. She ran through a list of attractive men she’d met in London—even a particularly brawny coal-heaver, unfortunately impossible—but her mind kept returning to Garrick. She fell asleep thinking of him.

She woke sweating and aroused, touching herself. She’d been dreaming of Garrick. His hot, sensual eyes devoured her through the thin fabric of her nightdress. Her nipples were hard against the fabric. More than that, they were visible, and he smiled and brushed them with his hand.

Her heart thudded with the power of the dream. This was nothing like the daydreams she’d had of Garrick or other men. Her imagination had never—could never conjure up anything so—so overwhelming. So intoxicating. So very real.