"You'll have to excuse my maid," Joy said. She leaned closer and whispered behind one gloved hand,
"She thinks you look like a pirate."
He pinned poor wee Polly with his black-eyed stare and slowly bent his head closer and closer to the maid, who was frozen in fear. He closed in until he was but a few feet from her horrified face. "Boo!"
Polly screeched, her panicked fingers digging into the arms of both Henson and her mistress.
Hungan John's laughter, as deep and thundering as the fabled Scottish battle drums, echoed in the hall— a wonderful sound. Still grinning, he looked right at Polly, who was still clutching Joy's arm, then took a circlet of white chicken feathers from his thick belt. He hung it around Polly's neck. "Fetish necklace. Keep away the pirates, little girl." Then he patted Polly's head. He turned his gray gaze back to Joy, and the grin faded from his dark face. Very quietly, he said, "Magic."
He knew.
Joy's breath caught in her throat. Somehow, some way, this man knew what she was. She returned his look.
He smiled then. "Good magic, You Grace."
They stood there exchanging knowing looks, judging and liking what was there.
"Mr. Kallaloo will be perfect," she said to Henson.
"There's a wagon outside behind Her Grace's conveyance," Henson told the new cook. "Gather your things and load them into the wagon. We'll leave shortly."
Hungan John paused. "You Grace need more servants?"
Joy nodded.
"You need a butler?"
"Why, yes we do. Do you know someone?"
"Old mon called Forbes. He was a butler for fifty year. Master die. Old mon tossed out."
"There now, Henson. Hungan John has found our butler for us."
Henson straightened his wig and eyed the platform. "They all appear ready to slice our throats, Your Grace. Which one is Forbes?"
Hungan John pointed behind him.
Standing near a dingy curtain was a small white-haired man with bright red cheeks and thin lips. His blue satin coat was tattered and dusty, and his breeches looked to be as ancient as he was. His dingy white silk stockings were ripped and snagged, and one sagged around his ankles like elephant skin. He wore unmatched shoes—one black satin with a tarnished buckle, the other brown kid with a slightly higher heel—and they appeared to be on the wrong feet. His wire-rimmed spectacles were as thick as thumbs and magnified his pale blue eyes.
The poor wee man had no home. It didn't matter to Joy that he looked as old as the
Tower
of
London
. He seemed to need them even more than they needed a butler. Doing her best imitation of a duchess, Joy threw back her shoulders, raised her chin, and looked at the agent. In a voice she hoped was as commanding as Alec's she said, "We'll take Forbes, too."
***
Alec strode up the front steps of Belmore House, only to find the door locked. He pounded on the door. Nothing. He pounded again. Nothing. His face a mask of aggravation, he turned back around, but his carriage had just disappeared around the corner of the house.
"Bloody hell," he muttered, pacing back and forth on the steps. "Blasted weather. No servants, no footmen, no butler. Forced to eat cabbage for supper last night—
cabbage!"
He shivered at the memory of the vile stuff. He stepped back and looked upward, searching for some sign of life inside. Nothing.
Frost edged the windows, and the
London
air was freezing cold and damp and seeped right through even the many capes of his greatcoat.
"Damn, it's cold." He knocked again. "Where the hell is everyone?" He slammed his fist against the door.
The bolts clicked and the door cracked open. One ancient, wrinkled, and suspicious blue eye peered out at him from behind thick spectacles. "Who be ye?" came a shout as loud as a battle cry.
"I am—"
"Eh?"
"I said I am—"
"Speak up, there!" the old man shouted. "Can't hear ye when ye mutter!"
"I said," Alec shouted back, "I am His Grace—"
"What's wrong with yer face?"
"Not my face, you idiot! His
Grace!"
"He's not here!"
The door slammed shut.
The Belmore crest on the door stared back at Alec. He waited, counting, for the door to reopen.
Nothing. He pounded on the door again. It opened a couple of inches.
"I . . .
am . . .
the Duke . . . of Belmore, and—"
"The duke don't need yer ham!"
The door slammed shut.
Alec stared at the door, then took great pleasure in making a tight fist and clouting it. After the fifth bang the lock clicked. The door cracked again.
"Be gone with ye or ye'll have to face the duke himself!"
"I am the bloody duke!" Alec bellowed, his fists so tightly knotted his whole body shook.
A gasp sounded from behind him, and he spun around to see the horrified faces of his neighbors, Lord and Lady Hamersley, staring up at him. Taking a deep breath, he collected his wits and tipped his hat.
"Good evening, Lady Jane. Hamersley."
They nodded, whispered something to each other, and hurried toward their home across the square as if running from a raving lunatic.
Seething, Alec turned around and took a step toward the entrance.
The door slammed closed again.
He saw nothing but a red haze. He spun around and strode down the stairs and along the carriage path toward the back of the house. His boots crunched in the snow with every sharp, angry step. He jerked the kitchen door open and ground to a halt.
Blackbeard was in his kitchen.
Blackbeard.
He stepped back outside, took two deep breaths, and tried again.
"Put the lime in the coconut." The man's long black braid swung from side to side as he sang in a voice as deep as if it came from a cannon.
Alec's stunned gaze moved from the man's shiny black head, past the earring—he needed a brandy—to the hammy black hands poised over bowls. First he squeezed the lime, then a lemon.
Speechless, Alec moved through the wide space that separated the kitchen from the larder and ascended the stairs toward the person responsible—his wife, the bloody witch.
***
"Oh, Alec!" Joy spun around in the foyer when she spotted her husband. Relief in her voice, she ran to him, her hands patting his chest and arms. "Are you injured? Forbes said—"
"Forbes?"
"The new butler. He said someone came to the door looking for idiots, and then he said you were bloody." She searched for wounds. "Where are you hurt?"
He removed her hands from his chest and threw off his greatcoat. "Follow me," he ordered in a voice as icy as the
London
air and strode into the drawing room. "You went to the hiring fair."
She followed him inside. "Yes, but—"
He slammed the doors and spun around. "I told you you could not go."
"But Carstairs is ill and—"
"I don't care if he's dead! And he might be when I get through with him."
"He has the measles," she whispered and watched him pace.
"You disobeyed me."
"But we needed servants, and you were gone, so I thought as the Duchess of Belmore I should hire them."
"Do not disobey me again."
"I'm sorry." She searched, but the only blood she could see was the blood red color of his angry face.
"Are you all right?"
"No! I'm bloody mad, or going mad!"
"I thought something terrible had happened," she said.
He spun around, his face cold with rage. "Something terrible did happen. I married you."
She stood frozen; her hand flew to her mouth. His words were so cruel they robbed her of breath. She stared into his face, then escaped his coldness by closing her eyes. When she opened them, the room was nothing more than a mist of tears, the dark blurry shape of her husband the only thing visible.
She found her breath, but it labored in her chest where her heart had died a sudden death, where her shame had begun. She turned, pulled open the doors, and ran out of the room and up the stairs, the sound of her small feet and one broken sob echoing in the cold marble hall as, outside, fresh snowflakes fell on the windows of Belmore House.
***
Brandy glass clutched in his hand, Alec opened the door to his bedchamber just as the clock struck one. He checked his pocket watch, a habit he'd acquired since his marriage. It was indeed one in the morning. He raised the glass to his lips, but stopped in mid-motion.
A small table sat in the sitting room near the smoldering remains of the fire, a chair on either side. He crossed over to it, doing his best to ignore the apprehensive tightening of his stomach. He looked down at the table.
It was set with the Belmore crystal, china, and silver— two places little more than three feet apart. Two small silver candleholders stood on either side of a bud vase filled with pink roses.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. As if drawn by a chain, he faced the door to the adjoining room. He continued to stand there, looking at the door, his eyes hard and unseeing, his mind a jumble of thoughts and something else . . . some emotion. Alec didn't like this emotion. One could temper anger, hide grief and fear and jealousy. He'd been trained to do so from a young age.
But guilt was too hard to control.
All evening and into the night he had tried to summon up some anger. Anger would have been justifiable, considering what he had gone through recently. But all he saw was the image of his wife's stricken face the moment those cutting words were out of his mouth. He had made cutting remarks before and never felt a moment of remorse. But those he cut had deserved it.
Something deep inside him knew that Scottish didn't. Whatever she had done, feeble-brained as it might have been, there was no malice, no mean intent in her actions. Most everything she did was done with the innocence of good intentions.
But all the good intentions in the world wouldn't change the fact that she was a witch and had the power to ruin both of them and the Belmore name as well.
He sat heavily in a nearby chair and stared unseeing at that damnable table.
Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. The word became a litany in his mind with each tick of the clock. His harsh words had crushed her, hurt her so cruelly that he cursed the tongue that had spat them. His anger had been real, but he wasn't sure whether he was angry about the servants she had foolishly hired or angry because she had gone out and, worse yet, gone out without him to keep a watchful eye on her.
His jaw tightened as he faced another sharp and foreign pang of guilt. Worse than the odious words he had said was the knowledge of what her reaction would be if she knew he was hiding her.