Midsummer Magic (Magic Trilogy 1)

Ruthven was quiet a moment, marveling at the different tracks his daughters’ minds took. He remembered the words from Chandos’ last letter. “Yes, a bit,” he said. “He evidently fancies ladies who are charming, witty, very gay, in fact. And of course beautiful.”

Viola laughed her gayest laugh. “Ah, how marvelous!”

“All of you are pretty enough to attract his attention,” Sophia added, “so we needn’t concern ourselves about that. I’m sure it will be a simple matter of personal taste, and none of you girls—I repeat, none of you—will be jealous of the one he picks.”

The questions had flowed on and on until Frances was ready to scream. She’d escaped Castle Kilbracken as quickly as possible, tugged on old walking boots, and made her way to the loch. She was not, she thought now, shivering again, so conceited as to believe that it would be she the earl would pick to marry. Viola, although very young, was quite pretty and as charming and gay as any man could wish. As for Clare, at twenty-one, she still had the fresh innocence of youth and the softness of a compliant wife, despite her bouts of artistic endeavor. A compliant wife was certainly something a man wanted, no matter how witty she appeared before company.

“What a ghastly mess,” she said aloud, and a bird chirped back at he

r from an overhead branch.

It came to Frances suddenly, and she leapt to her feet, staring over the still gray water of the loch. I will ensure he doesn’t want me. He wants a witty, charming, gay lady. Well, I shall be a mouse—boring, timid, diffident, a nonentity.

You’re being silly, she told herself. Such a ruse won’t be necessary. He wouldn’t want you. Still ...

She touched her hand to her thick, untamed hair that tumbled down her back in a profusion of wild curls. Her father had once told her that her hair was the color of autumn in the highlands, an uncivilized blending of blond, red, and brown. Since his thick hair was the same combination of unlikely shades, she’d ignored his brief outpouring of parental compliments. A bun, I think. Yes, a very severe bun at the back of my neck. A high-necked gown—my old gray muslin, I think, should do it. It would make the earl bilious. And a sampler to stitch—there must be one somewhere, perhaps tucked away in the nursery. She wasn’t really undermining her father’s plans, she decided, turning away from the shore. The dear earl would be happier with either Clare or Viola as a wife. She was merely reducing the field, so to speak, saving the poor man time and effort.

Smiling, she strode from the loch, through the thick pines, back up the steep rise toward the castle. And, she thought, as a crowning touch, I will save the precious earl’s groats. I should never want to go to London for one of their silly Seasons.

Never.

2

O, she is the antidote to desire.

—WILLIAM CONGREVE

“Reminds me a bit of the rough hills in Portugal,” said Grunyon.

The earl cursed by way of reply as he gently eased his horses, beautiful matched bays, over the rutted stretch.

“See yon, Major Hawk, in the distance. That must be Loch Lomond, and there, on that rise, Castle Kilbracken.”

“I’m enthralled,” said Hawk, staring a moment in the distance at the stark gray-stone castle with its crenellated towers. “It looks to be crumbling.” He closed his eyes a moment. “My father was senile seventeen years ago.” He ignored Grunyon’s use of his army name, used now by his valet only in moments of stress or excitement.

“His lordship never saw the castle,” Grunyon said. “Poor country,” he added.

Hawk would have said that it was a beautiful, wild, clean country, but he was tired, irritable, dirty, and so depressed that he could barely bring himself to be civil to anyone. They’d seen so few people, and the villages they’d passed through seemed out of the last century, not this one. It did remind him of Portugal, at least the stark poverty did. He wished he was Major Hawk again. Even the poverty of Portugal was preferable to what lay ahead for him.

The sight of Loch Lomond, the largest freshwater lake in Britain, didn’t move him. Nor did the striking three-thousand-foot peaks at its northern end.

Grunyon studied his master’s profile silently, feeling right sorry for him, to be sure. He’d been the earl’s batman in the army for five years, when he was Lord Philip Hawksbury, an officer Wellington could count on when the odds were rough, as they nearly always were. They’d been through battles together, seen more suffering and death than should be allowed, but now poor Hawk, as his friends still called him, all his military friends from the old days, that is, was ripe in the middle of a god-awful mess, a mess not of his making. And there was his father, perhaps in his last prayers.

“I feel like I did just after the Battle of Talavera de la Reina,” said Hawk. “Well, dirty and tired, at least. I feel none of the elation.”

“No, not likely,” said Grunyon. “But young ladies are young ladies, my lord, and like you told me, the marquess said they were all pretty.”

“Senile and probably blind,” said Hawk. “They’re in all likelihood as toothsome as Macbeth’s hags. After all, my father was taking the word of Lord Ruthven for their collective beauty. Jesus, I don’t damned believe this!”

Grunyon clucked in sympathy, then sniffed. Both he and his master were gamy as could be. “You could bathe in the loch, my lord. The water looks nice.”

Hawk unconsciously scratched his ribs. “I think I will. That last inn we stayed in—if you could call that moldering pile an inn—had fleas, I’m sure of it.”

“And other beasties as well, I imagine,” said Grunyon.

Hawk’s left eyebrow shot up a good inch. “Speaking like a Scot now, Grunyon? Beasties?”

“Wee beasties,” said Grunyon.