The rough music, the skimmington ride. Pots and pans and burning in effigy. Tiffany wasn’t sure she could quite manage dragging anyone through the street, but she could very well do the rest.
She was righteous in her anger as she marched towards the village, which was just as well as she hadn’t realised quite how dark it would be, or how frightened she would be in the hollow lane. She daren’t conjure a witch light in case someone should see it, and she wasn’t completely sure she could put it out again. She had put on her stoutest boots and plainest dress, and a dark cloak covered her satchel of supplies, but the rain had soaked her in minutes, and it only seemed to be getting harder.
Aunt Esme had said a finding spell worked best with a crystal or semi-precious stone of some kind. She had used a topaz earring, which now glowed warmly in her palm. There was a weed she had pulled from Mrs Cotton’s garden as she passed by earlier. His name she didn’t know, but she had described him as accurately as possible when she did the ritual. And now it had led her here, to the tavern, which was full of light and noise and merriment.
She had filched a box of chalks from the nursery, and used it to draw on the stones of the wall by the brook what she had planned after Elinor shut her in her room. A row of pots and pans, held together by string. A string she tied to the gatepost of Ivy Cottage—which stood dark and forlorn, a baby crying within.
Next she drew fearsome shapes in the dirt with a stick—monsters and ghouls with drooling fangs and huge claws. And finally, an effigy—although the only one she’d ever seen was Guy Fawkes, burnt on the village common in November, so she drew something like that, on a stake, with flames coming out of it, and then she waited.
And waited.
A couple of men left the tavern, staggering slightly, and went off in the opposite direction from Ivy Cottage. Tiffany really wished she’d got Morris to bring her up some food. She was cold out here, and being hungry only made it worse. And, she realised, while she had the earring pointing her towards the tavern, she had no idea what this Mr Cotton looked like.
Oh dear, had all this been terribly foolish?
She was about to turn for home when the door opened, and the earring in her hand pulsed hotly. A figure, silhouetted in the dark, portly and stumbling.
‘Go home and sober up, Jeb Cotton,’ called a voice from within.
He shouted something back into the tavern that Tiffany was sure would make even Nora blush, and belched loudly.
Tiffany squared her shoulders, and reached down to pick up the drawn piece of string from the ground. She wrapped it around her hand and yanked, and the pots and pans she’d drawn jangled noisily.
‘What the bloody hell?’ slurred Jeb Cotton.
She jangled them again, and then gestured to the ghouls and monsters. They rose from the dirt, not alive but flickering and pulsing in the rain. They were eerie, and even though Tiffany knew they weren’t real and would disappear in an hour or two, they still made her shiver.
Now came a bit of a gamble. ‘Monsters I have drawn, make to wail and groan,’ she whispered, and a dreadful moaning wail rose from them.
‘What? Who’s there?’ shouted Jeb Cotton. Behind him, people were starting to come to the tavern door. They stood around, looking confused.
‘Jeb Cotton!’ Tiffany shouted, trying to deepen her voice.
‘Aye?’
‘Wife beater!’
‘I bloody never,’ he protested, and stumbled in the road.
‘You bloody do, Jeb Cotton,’ said one of the men standing in the tavern doorway.
‘Drunkard!’
‘That one’s right enough,’ laughed another man.
‘You neglect your wife and home! You spend all your coin on gin! Your wife starves while you grow fat!’
There was a general muttering of assent among the other men. Jeb stumbled closer, and Tiffany held her nerve.
‘Who are you?’ he shouted. ‘This is all lies! Lies!’
‘Do not come any closer,’ Tiffany warned, panicking a little and waving a glamour over her face to make herself unnoticeable. She yanked on the string again, and the pots jangled.
‘Yeah? Or what? You’re a girl,’ he sneered, ‘and I know what to do with girls—’
She gestured the effigy into life, and up it blazed, sudden and blinding in the wet, dark night.
Jeb swore and stumbled backwards, losing his footing and sprawling in the mud.
The crowd at the tavern door had spilled out by now, and among the gasps and cries of fear, Tiffany heard someone say incredulously, ‘It’s the rough music. It’s a skimmington ride.’
‘This is the roughest of rough music, Jeb Cotton,’ Tiffany intoned. ‘It is a warning. You will cease your ill treatment of your wife. You will cease drinking. You will work hard and care for your family.’
‘I will, I will!’ gibbered Cotton.
‘You never have before,’ said one of the men from the tavern. They were beginning to move closer now.
‘Aye, we’ve all told you!’
‘That good woman will end up in the poor house because of you,’ said another.
‘And poor Henry run out of town to be shot at by the French!’
They had begun to pick up her pots and pans now, and Tiffany shrank further back into the shadows as the men began banging them together, making a rough music of their own. The flickering light from the effigy made the puddles dance.
‘This is witchcraft!’ Jeb spluttered, gazing up at the misshapen effigy and the wailing shadows.
‘No, this is justice,’ said one of the men.
Lights were beginning to show in windows, and doors were beginning to open. Out came more than one villager—people Tiffany had known for years—banging their own pots and pans together and advancing on Jeb Cotton as he lay sprawled in the mud.
Tiffany glanced up at Ivy Cottage. It remained dark, but she thought she saw a pale face at one window.
She made herself unseen, and crept that way while the villagers advanced on the terrified Jeb. Flitting down the weed-choked path, she tapped on the door.
‘Open it,’ she hissed. ‘I’m a friend.’
But the door stayed closed, and barred from within. Tiffany took from her satchel an envelope that contained a banknote and Aunt Esme’s address in London, and slid it under the door.
When she turned to go back to the street, her path was blocked. By Jeb Cotton.
‘You!’ he gasped. ‘Who are you?’
Tiffany looked into his face, lit by the flickering flames of the effigy, as the crowd closed in behind him. He was puffy and red-nosed, his breath stank—and not just his breath. She was sure if she had more light she’d see a wet stain on his trousers that had nothing to do with the rain.
‘Do you beat your wife?’ she demanded. ‘Answer me!’
‘I— I— Only when she deserves it!’
‘If you are not honest with me, Jeb Cotton, I will—’
He gibbered and sank to his knees. Maybe that had been a bit too much.
‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Them brats keep wailing and she— I— it makes me feel like a big man, I’m sorry, please don’t hurt me!’
Tiffany had never tried to make herself look fearsome before, but whatever her features contorted into, it terrified Jeb Cotton, who sobbed and curled into a ball.
‘You will never darken this door again if you know what’s good for you,’ she snarled. ‘You do not deserve Amy Proudbody. You’ll sleep in a ditch until you can become a better man!’
How’s that for a threat?
Tiffany drew herself up and strode past him, out of the cottage gate, and all the villagers drew back from her in terror. In the darkness, the only light came from the burning effigy, a horrible misshapen lump with its face on fire. The shadow ghouls still wailed and groaned.
‘Make him feel ashamed,’ she said. ‘Don’t hurt him, but make him feel shame.’
She turned to walk out of the village, and the crowd parted as if afraid she would curse them next.
‘Oh,’ she said, slightly drunk on this new power. ‘And if any other man behaves like this with his wife, or any other woman, I will be back to mete out the same justice.’
And she strode away, victory coursing through her.
The power was immense. She had made those ghouls speak! Well, moan. She had incited a group of timid villagers into publicly shaming one of their own. She had strode—stridden—she had walked with purpose, just like Aunt Esme did, and they had been terrified of her! She had made a threat surely even Nora would be impressed by!
She had helped Henry’s sister.
The elation carried her out of the village and up the monastery hill. She didn’t know why, but for some reason she needed to be up high, closer to the moon, to celebrate.
The ground was wet and muddy beneath her feet. Tiffany curved her hand in the air to conjure a witch light, concentrating on forming the white ball of light, and didn’t see the tree root until it had already tripped her.
She fell, legs tangling in her skirts, and tumbled down the muddy, slippery hill, hands grabbing at nothing until darkness closed over her.
* * *
Santiago hadn’t brought a horse, because his was exhausted and he really didn’t need anyone asking questions about why he was borrowing one so late at night. But he had taken a lantern from the stables, and slipped back to his room for his cloak and boots.
The rain was really coming down now. What if he’d got this all wrong and Tiffany was tucked up somewhere nice and warm, perhaps simply in another bedroom where Elinor couldn’t find her? Perhaps she was just visiting a friend.
Late at night. In a rainstorm. Via a window out of a locked room.
‘Tiffany?’ he called desperately. ‘Tiffany?’
There was no answer. If it hadn’t been for the pendant in his hand, straining to his left, he’d never have even noticed the little bobbing white light between the trees.
Like the one she’d conjured at Vauxhall, just before she’d given him this necklace. It had to be her.
‘Tiffany!’
There was a hill here, ringed with tall trees and topped by the ruins of some ancient building. He crossed a drainage ditch that was already sloshing with water, and began climbing the hill. The will o’the wisp light bobbed around aimlessly, illuminating nothing, but the pendant in his hand grew warmer and strained towards the far side of the small hill.
He could hear running water now. The stream that ran through the village and along the edge of the Dyrehaven lands had clearly routed itself around one side of the hillock. Trees grew along its edge in what he was sure was a very picturesque manner on a bright sunny day, but right now only added to the nightmarish lack of vision. The moon shone through the remains of a rose window, darkening the ground like a spider’s web.
‘Tiffany?’
Then he saw her, and his heart stopped.
She was a crumpled heap of fabric, and if it hadn’t been for her pale, moonlight hair spilling from her cloak he’d have never seen her. The edge of her cloak and her skirts trailed in the swollen waters of a brook that looked as if it should not be running half as high as it was.
She lay very still.
‘Tiffany!’
There wasn’t enough light. Santiago skidded down the slope towards her, and grabbed her around the shoulders, tugging her bodily from the water. Her frame wasn’t large but her clothes were heavy, and it felt like an age before he’d got her anywhere near like safety. He collapsed on the muddy ground, clutching her to him, his heart beating like a drum.
‘Tiffany, wake up. Can you hear me? Wake up!’
His fingers were at her throat, feeling for a pulse, when she stirred. Gracias a Dios. ‘Tiffany? Wake up, mi amor.’ The endearment slipped out without him really realising it. ‘Can you hear me?’
Her skin was like ice. She wore a sturdy cloak, boots and gloves, but they were all soaked through. As he rubbed vigorously at her shoulders, she began to shiver violently.
Shivering was good, he told himself. It was when a person stopped shivering you needed to worry.
She struggled a little in his arms, her eyes barely opening. ‘No. Lemme go.’
‘Tiffany, mi amor, I think you have fallen and you’re hurt. I will take you back home, yes? You need to get warm and dry.’
She blinked at him a few times, and then those pale, clear eyes came into focus. ‘Santiago?’
To hear his name on her lips! ‘Yes, mi amor! I am here. I have you safe. We will get back to the house…’
Staggering and slipping in the mud, he tried to get to his feet, but Tiffany fought him.
‘I can walk!’ she cried, which was an extremely preposterous lie.
‘Mi amor, no. Let me carry you. At the very least lean on me!’
She fought him stubbornly, bringing both of them back down into the mud more than once before she finally conceded that she needed his help. Weak, her limbs trembling, she clung to him in a manner he was sure he would have enjoyed if he hadn’t just found her unconscious and about to drown in a ditch.
Don’t think about that now. Just get her home.
He walked her along the increasingly high banks of the brook, its waters gushing and frothing, back towards the trees and the lane. But it seemed twice as long this way. Where was the lane? The water was coming halfway up the trees now.
Then he saw the moon shining through the rose window, and his heart sank.
‘We have come around in a circle,’ he said.
‘What? No. The lane is here somewhere.’
‘The stream has burst its banks. Look.’ He pointed through the copse, where younger and weaker trees were already leaning precariously under the force of the water.
‘No, it can’t. We’re a mile from home. Henry and I played here for years.’
‘Henry?’
But she wasn’t listening. ‘We need to get up higher and then we can see,’ she said, and that was a sensible idea, so he helped her back up the slope, into the shadow of the ruins.
But all they saw was that the stream had indeed burst its banks and roared along what had once been a peaceful channel between fields towards the monastery hill. And instead of diverting around one side of the hill, where a small wall had been set to reinforce its course, it had smashed down the stones and was flowing around them in a full circle. Where the two channels met and thundered off down the lane was a whirlpool of branches, mud and treacherous currents that was evident even in the moonlight.
‘But this can’t…’ Tiffany said, gazing around in confusion and dismay. ‘It’s… I’ve never seen…’ She shivered in her cloak. ‘Perhaps I could draw a bridge…’
Santiago squinted at the raging water. It had filled the lane now, turning their path home into a muddy river. Even if they could cross the moat that surrounded them, the sunken lane would carry them off.
‘To where?’ he said. ‘Can you draw all the way back to the house? The lane is…’
They both stared at the torrent.
‘Here,’ he said, drawing her beneath his cloak. ‘This might keep you … er, keep you from getting any wetter.’
She tried to keep a decorous distance from him, but it was impossible.
‘What do we do?’ she asked, in a very small voice that had begun to tremble.
A few minutes ago she had been unconscious and nearly drowning. He couldn’t let her freeze to death up here.
‘We… Ah, we find shelter,’ he said, glancing at the ruins without much hope.
‘Shelter? The monastery hasn’t had a roof for centuries!’
But she led him to the sturdiest-looking corner, where the rain wasn’t battering them so hard, and Santiago wondered if his cloak could keep them from getting any wetter. And if that would be enough when she was already soaked through.
But Tiffany was looking at the walls of the ruined monastery with a calculating expression, and fiddling in the satchel she had slung across her body, under her cloak.
‘Shelter,’ she muttered. Her gaze strayed to the rough stone walls. ‘Santiago, you have travelled the world. Have you ever had to build a shelter in an emergency? Like… Like the fellow in the Daniel Defoe book?’
He had no idea what book she meant, but he had seen huts made out of everything from palm leaves to slabs of ice.
‘Yes, but what do we have? You can’t draw us a shelter.’
‘No, but I can draw us materials. What do we need?’
‘Well,’ he said, looking at the stone corner they found themselves in, ‘I suppose … some lengths of wood, strong branches or trunks, and … some smaller ones to cross them, and … something to make thatch from? But you can’t—’
Tiffany took a deep breath, rainwater dripping down her face, and drew a packet of coloured chalks from her satchel. She turned to face the nearest wall and pushed her wet hair back from her face.
In the moonlight, she seemed made of liquid silver.
‘Watch me,’ she said.
And he did. For a few minutes he watched in astonishment as she drew sturdy trunks and branches growing out of the stone and loose lengths of wood—and then they came to life. What had been a chalk drawing on stone was suddenly a real piece of wood in his hand—albeit somewhat pastel-coloured, and smudged from the rain.
‘Well?’ she said, as he stared, dumbfounded, at her work. ‘Build something!’
The rain and the mud were soon forgotten as he stacked and propped the wood to form walls, a roof, even a platform off the muddy ground. She drew thick branches of conifer that he used to cover the sloped roof, and to fill in the gaps at the front of the shelter.
She drew a fire pit to his directions, in front of the open entrance. Santiago was fairly sure she’d have drawn a brick chimney if he’d let her. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks pink with a little more than excitement.
She drew firewood. She drew kindling. She even drew a peg on the wall for his lantern.
When she knelt to draw a blanket, the chalk wobbled all over the wall.
‘Are you all right?’ he said, turning from lighting the fire.
‘I am perfectly fine,’ she said, and ten seconds later her eyes were closed.
* * *
For once, she didn’t dream of the pale woman and the squid.
She awoke to warmth and security, and a sort of comfort she had never known before. It was a reassurance, as if everything was being taken care of, as if she was being taken care of. The remains of a dream, perhaps, gathered around her. She breathed in the scent of the fire—hmm, much more like woodsmoke than the usual coal—and of damp wool and leather, and of—
Of—
Cigars, and wine, and cologne, and something underneath it all, too. A scent she didn’t recognise, but wanted to burrow her face into.
A scent that did not belong in her dream.
Something rough gently abraded her cheek. The mattress she lay upon rose and fell. It said, ‘Mi amor?’
She was being held in the arms of a man and he was almost entirely undressed.
Tiffany screamed.
‘Tiffany, don’t panic, it’s me—’
‘Get away from me! Take your hands off me! Unhand me, I say!’
Santiago had already raised his hands in surrender, but Tiffany was tangled up with him and too flustered to know what to do. He’d been holding her in his lap, his cloak wrapped around them both, and she caught herself in it as she scrambled backwards. Under her hands and knees the ground was rough, and only the flickering flames of a fire lit the room—
She stopped, panting, before she scrambled so fast she ended up in the fire. It burned cheerfully in the entrance of their little shelter, the one Santiago had made from the materials she’d created. A tiny room, not quite high enough to stand in, tucked into the corner of the monastery ruins.
Through the opening, she could see rain still falling. Everything else was darkness.
She forced herself to look back at him, kneeling there by the wall, hands raised.
‘You were too cold,’ he said carefully, eyeing her as if she was a wild animal. ‘Your clothes were soaked through. I found you half in the stream, do you remember?’
Tiffany shuddered, and nodded. She’d thought that part had been a dream, too.
‘You could not get warm if you were soaking wet. Wet is the enemy of warm.’
The cold wind blew around her bare calves. Her bare calves.
Dreading what she would see, Tiffany looked down at herself.
She wore her shift, and nothing else.
‘Oh no,’ she whimpered. ‘Oh no, no, no…’
Santiago still had his hands raised. ‘I took your clothes off you because they were soaking wet,’ he said, emphasising the words carefully. ‘Only for that. I promise you—’
‘I will be ruined,’ she whispered numbly. No matter that she didn’t want to get married. She would be an outcast. Women were sent to asylums for less. ‘I am ruined.’
‘No, you are not!’ He seemed horrified at the suggestion. ‘No impropriety occurred. I swear it to you on my own life. On Billy’s life. Please, believe me, mi amor.’
Tiffany didn’t know what ‘mi amor’ meant, and she didn’t want to. It sounded most improper. ‘You were holding me!’ she gasped. ‘In a … in a very improper manner!’ His body had been so warm, so firm, and the way he held her was so comforting…
‘To warm you up! You were freezing! If I had not held you, you could have … you…’
To her shock, he looked as if he might be about to burst into tears.
‘I have seen men die from the cold,’ Santiago said, his dark eyes pleading with hers. ‘I have seen them turn pale and cold, and stop shivering, and barely breathe. I have seen toes and fingers—once a whole foot—turn black and crumble away. I cannot let it happen to you, Tiffany. Por favor, no podía dejarte morir…’
His hands trembled, and Tiffany faltered. He wore his shirt and breeches, and now she could tell they were eveningwear. She had never seen a man in just his shirt and breeches before. Even his feet were bare.
She looked around. Her clothes had been hung over frames he must have made from discarded pieces of wood. She could see the water puddling beneath them.
‘I’m not going to lose any fingers or toes,’ she said, betraying herself by shivering.
He held up his leather cloak. Unlike hers, it was not saturated with water from the stream, and it looked substantially thicker, too. ‘Then come here and stay warm. Please. Please trust me.’
She hesitated. He had been warm. And here, with her back to the opening of their shelter, she felt the chill steal back over her.
But she had been trained from birth in propriety. The only people who ever touched her were trusted servants. Even her nieces and nephews didn’t cuddle her anymore now she was a grown lady.
‘It is so very improper,’ she whispered, and Santiago looked exasperated.
‘More improper than dying? Will they put that on your headstone, I wonder? Lady Tiffany: dead of a fever but thank God her virtue was intact!’ He shoved a hand through his hair. ‘I apologise. Your virtue is safe with me. I promise I will never touch you unless you ask me to. I promise. I promise.’
Too late, she felt the ripple of his promise wash over her. Promise a thing three times and it becomes binding.
‘You have bound yourself to it now,’ she whispered.
‘I mean it,’ he said, his gaze steady on her.
And she believed him. She believed that he wouldn’t take liberties with her being held so close to his body. But it was that body which concerned her.
Tiffany had spent her life avoiding works of art. She had glimpsed the odd classical statue or painting of a fellow wearing very little, but both modesty and her own uncontrolled witchcraft had kept her from any more than a passing glance. Occasionally, she had seen workers in the fields or on the estate, stripped to their shirtsleeves in the summer, and Elinor had always muttered that it was disgraceful and Tiffany shouldn’t look.
The only man she had ever seen in a state of undress was Santiago, that day they had rescued him from the beach. The memory of his golden skin, dusted with dark hairs and imprinted with black ink, warmed her dreams.
I want to know what his skin tastes like.
The thought shocked her, as it had earlier in the day when he’d stood there all dishevelled and sweaty from his ride.
‘Tiffany?’
She let herself look at his face, and with a sigh she allowed herself to acknowledge how extraordinarily handsome he was. His jaw so finely cut, his lips so perfectly made, and his eyes … she could lose herself in their dark depths.
What was wrong with her? Perhaps she did have a fever.
‘Do you trust me?’ he asked, and she nodded.
She knew it was a bad idea, and would haunt her dreams for months, and it was terribly, terribly improper, but she shuffled over to him and sat beside him. She in her shift, he in his shirt. She could feel the heat radiating off him even before he drew her into his arms and pulled his cloak over them like a blanket.
Did all men feel like this? Beneath their layers of careful tailoring, did they all have strong shoulders to lay your head on, and hard chests to wrap your arms around? She had never met a man whose skin she wanted to lick before, but Santiago’s scent was making her light-headed.
He turned his head as he fiddled with the cloak, and the roughness of his jaw gently abraded her cheek. Tiffany had seen labourers with unshaven faces, but never a gentleman. She had never thought about what it would feel like against her skin.
‘Better?’ he murmured, and she nodded, unable to speak. ‘Are your feet tucked in? Your boots were soaked, I thought it best to take them off…’
She really wished he’d stop reminding her how unclothed she was. ‘I am perfectly … fine.’
He stopped fussing with the cloak and hesitated. ‘May I?’ When Tiffany nodded, he put both his arms around her, his hand carefully placed on her shoulder. She was wrapped up in the warmth of him, the comfort, the security. This was what she’d been dreaming about just before she woke. It wasn’t a childhood memory. It was Santiago, holding her with such care and tenderness it brought tears to her eyes.
‘We should get some sleep,’ she said, to distract him. ‘If we rise at first light, we can probably get back to the house without anyone realising we’ve gone.’
She had to believe this, or her reputation would be more than tattered.
‘They might realise I have gone,’ said Santiago. ‘I said I was returning to my room for something. Perhaps I can say I decided to go to the village tavern.’
Tiffany suddenly remembered the burning effigy and the ghouls and the angry villagers. ‘That might not be the best idea,’ she began, but she couldn’t think of a better one. She was so tired.
‘Why? Does it have a bad reputation? That doesn’t seem to bother anybody. I have noticed,’ he said heavily, ‘that a gentleman can get away with behaviour ladies are not even supposed to know about.’
‘I believe they’re positively encouraged,’ she said, smothering a yawn.
‘Yes. You were right, of course.’
‘Was I? About what?’
He rested his cheek against her hair. Tiffany’s stomach turned over. ‘That the life of a gentleman offers much more than the life of a lady. There is so little you are allowed to do. Or to be.’
He remembered that? ‘But now I am a witch,’ she said, as lightly as she could. ‘And perhaps that means I do not need to marry and rely upon a man. Perhaps I can be like Aunt Esme, and live independently, and simply do and say and wear what I wish.’
He was silent for a moment. Tiffany felt her eyes closing.
‘That is truly what you wish?’ he said, and there was a tone to his voice she couldn’t quite identify.
‘It is,’ she said firmly, and ignored the little voice inside her that said independent ladies did not get to lay their heads on strong shoulders and be held as they fell asleep.
‘Then I wish you joy of it,’ he whispered, and as Tiffany succumbed to sleep, she thought she felt his lips brush her forehead.
* * *
The rain had stopped by the time they woke. Santiago knew this because their makeshift shelter had melted away overnight, and he was woken by a cool breeze and the sun in his eyes. It was a little past first light.
Tiffany slept in his arms, her pale head tucked into his shoulder. She had snuggled against him as if she had been made to fit there, her luscious curves a temptation he had spent most of the night resisting.
He rested his head back against the rough stone wall and idly fantasised about waking her with a kiss, laying her down on his cloak and baring her to the morning sun, caressing her pale skin with his hands and lips and making love to her until they were both boneless.
But he could not do that.
He could take her home, make some noise as they approached the house and cause her family to see them, and then that would mean he’d have to marry her. She would be upset, of course, but perhaps once he started making love to her…
No. He couldn’t do that to her, either.
He could take her safely home, see her back into her room in secret and keep their night together from everyone else. And then, perhaps after another day or two at the party, he could go to her brother and ask if he would give his permission to propose to Tiffany…
He sighed, and closed his eyes. It didn’t matter how he did it, Tiffany didn’t want to get married and that was that. He would have to keep her at arms’ length for the rest of his life. Perhaps an independent lady could have gentleman friends, or perhaps he would only see her at social events. Which he would attend in search of his own wife. He would find a suitable young lady, marry her and beget heirs, as was his duty, and maybe one day he would look back and remember the time he was infatuated with a witch who looked like a mermaid, and laugh at himself.
It didn’t seem so very long ago he’d come to England intending to claim the dukedom, hand over responsibility to someone else, and then go on about his life exactly as before. And now here he was, contemplating marriage and heirs.
I don’t want to marry some suitable young lady.
But had a duty to. The dukedom wasn’t just a title. Tiffany had helped him see that, dammit.
He stared at the dawn as it rose over the fields. The monastery was no more than a pile of rocks, and they were sitting on wet, muddy grass. The cosiness of last night, the intimacy, was all gone.
He leaned down and allowed himself to brush his lips over Tiffany’s hair, and then he squeezed her shoulder and said, ‘Wake up, mi amor.’ He had to stop calling her that. ‘It is time to see if the waters have receded.’
She didn’t fight him this time. She simply blushed a deep pink and scuttled away to check her clothing, which of course had now fallen to the ground.
‘It is very damp,’ she said, squeezing a fold of her dress, ‘but it will have to do. It isn’t far to the house.’
Santiago tried to keep his eyes off her as she bent over, tried not to gaze at the way her shift draped over her hips, at her pretty lower legs revealed by the shortness of the garment, at—
He turned away abruptly, before her maidenly innocence was corrupted by the sight of his desire for her in very thin silk evening breeches, and pulled on his boots.
‘I will go and check the levels of the water,’ he said, and she nodded, still without looking at him. Santiago strode away, letting the fresh morning air cool him down, and wondered if he could throw himself bodily into the stream.
The water had receded. He walked all the way around the hill, and saw that while the force of it had knocked down the retaining wall that was meant to divert it, the torrent had drained away and the lane was accessible, at least if one didn’t mind getting one’s feet wet. He waded through the puddles a few times, and it barely came up to mid-calf.
He glanced back towards the ruins, silhouetted from this angle against the rising sun. Would she be dressed yet? He had to get her back before the household began to wake. Or at least, before the upstairs part of it did. There would be maids rising already, but with any luck their attention would be focused on the inside of the house.
He made a meal of approaching Tiffany again, stamping about and coughing loudly so she knew where he was, and she approached after a moment, eyes still diverted from him.
Her dress was a plain affair, and it didn’t look as if she’d been able to fasten it properly, but the plain dark blue suited her translucent complexion. Her pale hair fell in strands around her face, blanketing her shoulders with white gold. Her cheeks were pink, and her skirts muddy.
She was quite the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
‘I have nothing to fasten my hair with,’ she said abruptly. ‘All the pins… I don’t have time to put them back in and anyway… Do you have a piece of string, or something?’
He wanted to touch her hair, quite desperately. Wanted to lift it and feel its weight in his hands. Stroke it and see if it felt like moonlight.
He cleared his throat and patted his pockets. ‘Ah, no. Wait, I have my neckcloth?’ He held it out, limp and creased.
She frowned, but said, ‘It will do,’ and used it to tie her hair at the nape of her neck. ‘We had better get going,’ she added, and started down the hill past him.
He found her at the bottom, staring down at six inches of muddy water as if it held the mysteries of the cosmos.
‘What is it?’ he said, and she said, ‘Nothing,’ far too quickly.
She allowed him to help her through the puddles, and marched off down the lane, a woman on a mission. It was only a few minutes before the house came into view.
‘When we get back,’ he said, hurrying to keep up with her. ‘Your room overlooks the stables, yes?’
‘Yes— Wait, how did you know?’
Santiago cast about for an excuse. But he was cold, tired and aching, and he was madly in lust with Tiffany, and so he just said, ‘I went looking for you. If we try to get back over the roof that way, there’s a good chance someone will see you. Do any of your family go riding early?’
‘Not usually,’ she said, and her shoulders slumped a bit. ‘But we have a household of guests.’ She straightened. ‘It’s all right. I can make myself unnoticeable.’
‘Un—’
‘I am a witch,’ she said impatiently. ‘You don’t need to worry about me. Just get yourself back, and make up whatever excuse you like. As you said, a gentleman can—’
She broke off abruptly and turned her head towards a sound. Then Santiago heard it too: hoofbeats, coming down the lane.
He swore, and looked around for cover. The sunken lane had high sides with little chance of an exit, unless they were to scramble up the exposed roots of a tree.
He glanced back at Tiffany. But she had vanished.
I can make myself unnoticeable.
Right. Well, that was disconcerting. He nodded, cleared his throat, and began to swagger. When the horses came around the corner, they were bearing the Greensword nephews.
‘Good morning,’ he called, reaching up to touch a hat he wasn’t wearing. Shirt unfastened, neckcloth gone, riding boots with muddy evening breeches—he surely looked extremely dissolute. But on the other hand…
‘Your Grace,’ they both said, touching crops to hat brims.
… on the other hand, he was a duke.
‘Frightfully early for a ride,’ he yawned.
‘Frightfully early to be out and about. You disappeared after dinner,’ said one of the nephews.
‘I did. Very rude of me. Must apologise to the host. I had some…’—he allowed a small smile to touch his lips—‘pressing business to attend to.’
From the looks they gave each other, it was very clear what they thought that business was, and he didn’t disabuse them of the notion.
‘I must get on,’ he said, gesturing to the house. ‘Is it too early for a stiff brandy?’
‘Never,’ laughed one of the nephews, and they trotted on.
Santiago breathed a sigh of relief and sauntered on, tense as he waited for the horses to pass out of earshot. The moment after they had, Tiffany said, ‘You do a good impression of a dissolute young aristocrat.’
His pulse leapt. She was right beside him. ‘It is all an act,’ he reassured her.
‘I am sure. But one wonders where you found your inspiration.’
He smiled. ‘Oh, I have witnessed some sights,’ he said.
‘From very up close?’ she asked innocently.
‘Intimately so,’ he teased her.
‘It is a wonder you find the time, Your Grace,’ she said, and his face fell a little at her use of the title, ‘to interrupt your busy schedule of brawling…’ She smiled a little, and added, ‘And rescue maidens in distress.’
The imprint of her body seemed to still be pressed against his. ‘Were you very distressed?’ he asked softly.
Her expression was fierce. ‘Distressed is perhaps not the right word. I had just been performing more powerful magic than I ever had before.’
‘You had?’ His mind reeled. ‘Before you made the shelter?’
‘You made the shelter,’ she reminded him. ‘I merely provided the materials.’
‘An entirely ordinary thing for a young lady to do!’ She shrugged. ‘But before that, you were performing some other feat? Tiffany—why did you go to the village?’
She hesitated, so he stopped, and turned to face her.
‘I…’ she began, and her gaze darted away again. Then she lifted her chin. ‘I was helping someone who needed to be helped,’ she said.
‘Alone? In a rainstorm?’
She tilted her head defiantly. ‘It was not a rainstorm when I left.’
Santiago felt his eyes widen. ‘Did you make it a rainstorm?’
‘No! I—’ She broke off, as if suddenly considering that she might have.
She was looking upwards, her remarkable bright blue eyes filled with wonder and speculation and excitement, and the breeze lifted her hair and blew her cloak back away from her bosom, and Santiago could no more have stopped himself from moving closer to her than he could have changed the tides.
‘You are so extraordinary,’ he breathed, and she looked back at him in surprise.
‘Me?’
‘Yes, Tiffany. You.’ He lifted a hand to brush the hair from her face, a gesture far less intimate than anything that had passed last night and yet somehow so much more. Her lips were pink and full. His need to taste them was almost overwhelming.
‘I—I only did what you have done,’ she whispered.
Dazed, he could only shake his head.
‘Helping people. You are remarkable, Santiago,’ she said, and as she swayed closer to him her breasts brushed his chest and he groaned, because he had to have her now, had to kiss her, and she was swaying towards him in search of a kiss too, and—
‘Lady Tiffany Worthington!’
The fire in his veins turned to ice so quickly it hurt.
‘Is this what you call a headache?’ hissed Lady Greensword, and they both turned to see her standing in the lane with the Belmont sisters and Lady Cornforth. All of them staring at Santiago mere inches from kissing Lady Tiffany.
‘Mierda,’ he breathed.