"Thank you, Your Grace." The footman made another bow. "I am required to await a response."
"Fine," Alec returned in a clipped voice. "You may await my answer in the kitchen with the others."
"Certainly, Your Grace." The door snapped closed.
Alec stared at the doors, then slowly sat down at his desk, slicing open the message with a letter opener that he held like a dagger, which was not reassuring since he had a look of dread on his angled face. He scanned the letter and swore, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes as if the letter carried his death sentence.
"We've been summoned to Carlton House."
Joy looked at him with wide eyes. "We have?"
"The prince wishes to meet the new Duchess of Belmore."
"Me?" Joy pointed to herself.
"Yes, you. Seems I have the privileged honor of introducing His Royal Majesty the Prince Regent to my wife, the witch." He rubbed a hand over his forehead and mumbled, "Who turns statues into live things and dances with them on my roof."
"What is he like?"
"Spoiled, demanding, fat, imperious, and superstitious enough to do more than lop off both our heads if he should witness something like I did today." He leveled her with another stare of reprimand.
Joy was too stunned to notice. She was going to meet the prince regent, old Prinny himself. "Oh, my goodness." She glanced at her husband and could have sworn she heard his teeth grind together. "How did he know of our marriage so soon?"
"There's no doubt in my mind. It had to have been that meddling witch—"
Joy gasped.
He looked at her and waved his hand while he searched for another word. "That harpy, Lady Agnes, and her two bird-witted friends."
"When do we have to leave?"
Still staring at her, he drummed his fingers on the desk. "Tomorrow morning."
"That soon?"
He stood, but didn't answer. Instead, he walked over to her.
She looked up at his serious face.
"You have to promise me—no more witchcraft."
She just stared up at him, seeing his eyes shuttered with coldness. Oh, Alec, she thought, you need my magic.
He broke the spell by taking her shoulders and pulling her up to face him. "Can you promise me that?"
She looked at his face, so serious, so worried, so close. She wanted to touch him, and placed a hand on his chest, near his heart—the one she wanted a wee piece of. She would have promised him anything.
"Yes."
"No more of that business with the clocks."
"No more clocks."
"No more"— he waved that hand around— "zapping."
"No more zapping."
"No more things or people floating in the air."
"No more floating."
"No more dancing statues?"
Her mind flashed with the image of Pan's impish face. Well, they were leaving and what Alec didn't know wouldn't hurt him. "No more dancing statues." Then she added, "From this moment forward."
His hands rubbed her shoulders ever so slightly and he seemed to be looking rather intently at her mouth. His eyes flashed with want, the same way they had before he'd kissed her. He hadn't kissed her since she told him she was a witch. She wanted him to kiss her, now, in here, to show her he didn't think her a monster, to end the aching isolation.
She lifted her hand from his chest and reached up to touch his mouth. At the same moment he lifted his hand toward her face. He paused. Her hand pressed flat against his chest. He seemed to be mentally weighing something, fighting with himself. His breathing grew deeper. His hand cupped her chin, his thumb stroking her jaw line. He still watched her mouth.
Kiss me . . . kiss me . . .
.
He was so very close. If she leaned just a bit forward . . .
She did. He didn't.
A bloodcurdling scream echoed in the distance.
They jumped apart, the spell broken, and looked at the door.
The hand that had caressed her jaw only a moment before fell to his side. "What in the name of God was that?" Alec crossed to the doors and she followed. They stepped into the hall and heard a commotion near the grand staircase. She had to run to keep up with him, then all but skidded onto the marble of the grand foyer.
Mrs. Watley lay in a six-foot-long dead faint in the middle of the floor. Servants bustled back and forth, and Townsend knelt at her side. Henson strode in from another hallway, Beezle stuck to his back and a glass of water in his hand. Polly came on his heels, hart’s horn in hand.
"What happened?" The servants parted to let Alec near.
"Don't know, Your Grace. There was that frightening scream, and when I came in, she was like this." Townsend lifted the housekeeper's head and shoulders, and Polly held the smelling salts under her nose.
The woman's eyes opened. She blinked and pushed Polly's hand away from her nose as she mumbled something.
"What is it?" Alec asked.
Her face was gray. She pointed a shaking finger toward a marble statue in an alcove near the front doors. "There. Horns. Ohhhhh . . . ” Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she fainted again.
Every eye in the room turned toward the corner. There was nothing there but a statue of David. Joy chewed on her lower lip.
She felt Alec's gaze and made the mistake of looking up. His eyes had narrowed in suspicion, and he stared right at her.
One deep breath and she shrugged, hoping the guilt she felt didn't show in her eyes and praying that Pan wouldn't pop out of a corner any second.
After a good long stare, Alec turned back to the servants. "Send someone to the village for the physician. Tell him to come immediately, and take Mrs. Watley up to her room." He turned to two of the chambermaids. "Don't leave her alone."
A troop of footmen lifted the tall woman and carried her toward the back of the house. Alec turned to Henson. "We leave for
London
in the morning. Make ready." He turned to Polly. "Pack Her Grace's things and your own. You'll travel with Henson and Roberts in the fourgon. I want to leave by eight. Understood?"
"Yes, Your Grace." Polly curtsied and was gone in a flash.
Alone in the foyer, Alec turned to Joy. "What did she see?"
She winced and raised her fingers to her lips and chewed a nail.
"Answer me!" he said in a hoarse whisper.
"Pan."
"Pan?" he gritted.
She pointed to the roof and nodded.
"Alive?"
"Aye," she said quietly, watching his color deepen from angry red to livid crimson.
"Find him! Before we leave. Do you understand me?"
She nodded.
He turned with military sharpness.
"Alec?"
He turned back with a look that said "What now?"
"Must we leave so soon?"
"We need to be in
London
as soon as possible. The prince doesn't like to wait and we only have a few days to prepare you. If we leave early that will enable us to stay in Reading tomorrow night, and should put us in London in two days, instead of three." Alec dismissed her with a cold look, but Joy stopped him.
"Where are you going?"
"I shall be up all night going over the accounts with my steward. Twice I have come home only to have to leave again." He paused, his jaw tight, then added, "Find that . . . that thing!"
She nodded.
He started to turn, but stopped as if forced to. "Can you find your way to your chamber?"
"Yes," she said to his stiff back. "I mastered that the second day."
"Fine." He turned and walked down the hallway, all cold, hard duke.
She watched his back until he turned and was out of view. Then she listened to his boot heels clip on the marble floor until the sound faded to nothing. Finally she sighed and slowly turned to go up the stairs, her mood suddenly listless.
She walked across the marble floor, stopped, and looked up at the painted ceiling. All this opulence surrounded her—marble pillars and staircases, gilded balustrades of intricate iron work, vases that were as old as dirt, furniture so glossy one could use the surface for a mirror—and yet this place seemed as cold and lonely as the depths of Fingal's Cave.
And now this was her home, a home in which she didn't fit. She closed her eyes and swallowed, then turned to look back at the empty corridor into which Alec had disappeared.
Clinging to her hope, she lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. Determination made her eyes brighter. She would fight. She would be the best duchess Belmore had ever seen. She was unwilling to accept defeat. After all, she too had English blood, aristocratic blood. If she became a proper duchess, Alec would be proud, perhaps even as proud of her as he was of his name. That would take care of half the battle, she was sure of it. If she could make him proud that she was his duchess, then surely love would follow.
A bright smile lit her face as she let her fanciful mind imagine a day when Alec would look upon her with pride. Lost in thought she ascended the stairs, humming a love ballad and swaying to the tune until she reached the second landing and happened to glance wistfully upward, her mind's eye seeing her husband's proud face, his lips descending to give her a kiss for all the world to see. Her dreamy eyes focused upward. It wasn't the image of her husband she saw.
A mischievous, elfin face, complete with goat horns, grinned down at her from the third-floor balustrade.
"You wee Devil's spawn!" she hissed and raised her hand to zap him just a second after his head disappeared.
Skirts in hand, the Duchess of Belmore charged up the stairs as if the hounds of hell were after her instead of somewhere above her—and ahead of her.
Chapter 11
"Bloody hell. Now it's snowing." Alec glared at Joy as the carriage plodded along the icy road.
She raised her chin in defiance and pulled the carriage robe a bit tighter around her in an attempt to keep warm. "It is not my doing. I told you that when the fourgon broke down. I have not done anything. These are real accidents. I had nothing to do with that broken axle."
His eyes filled with skepticism.
"And," she said, "a witch cannot control the weather."
"Remind me to get a list one day in the very near future of what a witch can and cannot do," He turned to glare out the carriage window at the falling snow. "Damn, it's cold."
"Is this the only blanket?"
He looked at her and nodded.
She bit her lip. "I can help."
"No."
"But why should you be cold when I can whip up another blanket, or even a down coverlet?"