Page 27 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
“Yes, I know. If he does, send for me at once.” She closed her eyes, grimly anticipating stomping down the stairs at high speed to try to reach the room before her brother did anything foolish, like declare his undying love. Her knee twinged just thinking about it. “If we can get through the next few days, the house party should help provide a buffer. I hope.”
Willard nodded, then said, reluctantly, “Or provide witnesses, if we aren’t successful.”
“I know. I thought of that, too, but…” She spread her hands helplessly. “We have to jump in some direction. Perhaps with a little more time, we can find some weakness. I’m not above blackmail, you know.”
The butler’s lips twitched in amusement. “I should be appalled, I’m sure.”
“You should be. I don’t suppose she’s left anything useful lying around? Incriminating letters? Enormous piles of debts?”
Willard shook his head. “Nothing. Well… no, nothing.”
“What is it?” Hester frowned at him. “Anything might be useful at this point.”
“Gossip, though I doubt it’s useful. One of the chambermaids is stepping out with a stable lad, and apparently Lady Evangeline’s horse is much discussed there.”
“Good horseflesh?”
“Let us say, uncanny horseflesh. I am told he has green eyes.”
“Unusual, but not unnatural.” Hester had done a great deal of reading on livestock breeding when she was working on her geese, and had run across the discussion more than once. “Particularly in a white horse.”
“As I said, it’s probably nothing.” Willard looked uncomfortable. “Stablehands are a superstitious lot. But they do not like her horse. He doesn’t act quite right. There’s even a rumor that he is enchanted somehow.”
“Enchanted!” Hester sat back. “No, I can’t believe it. She’s as poor as a church mouse. She would hardly pay a sorcerer to cast some glamour on a horse, of all things, and if she were capable of such illusions herself, I doubt we’d know that she only had two or three dresses to her name.”
Willard nodded. “I shall keep an ear to the ground for anything more solid, but this, I believe, is not.”
“Please do,” said Hester. She paused then, and met his eyes. “Tom—I swear to you, I’m not just thinking that I don’t wish to lose my place here. It isn’t jealousy.”
He reached out and took her hand in both of his. “Hester,” he said kindly, “I never thought so.”
The message said to wait upon her mother an hour before noon. Cordelia went to the Blue Drawing Room with her heart in her throat. She was wearing a gown that she didn’t recognize, which she suspected that Lady Hester had had someone alter to fit her. Alice had laid it out in the morning without comment and Cordelia had been too flustered by the message to think too much about it.
A servant came with her, left, and was replaced by another bringing tea. “Would milady like something to eat?” murmured the maid, pouring.
“No, thank you,” said Evangeline.
“Cook has prepared some very fine pastries, if—”
“No, thank you.”
“May I bring you anything else, milady?”
“No, thank you,” her mother said, her smile sliced so thin that Cordelia half expected it to cut her lips. “That will be all.”
The maid curtsied and left again, shutting the door behind her. Evangeline waited two breaths, then slumped against the back of her chair. “These servants,” she announced, to no one in particular, “are going to drive me quite mad.”
Cordelia took her teacup and held it between her hands. “They seem very attentive,” she said, which was a neutral enough statement that she didn’t think it would get her in trouble.
“Attentive! They are impossible. Every time I turn around, these past few days, there’s a maid or a footman or that horrible butler. I can scarcely get five minutes alone with the Squire without one gliding in to interrupt. There is no privacy.”
The sheer scope of this hypocrisy took Cordelia’s breath away, but fortunately her mother was warming to her subject and didn’t notice.
“Do you know how difficult it is to seduce a man under these conditions? No, of course you don’t.” Evangeline reached up as if to clutch at her hair, recalled her elaborately coiffed locks, and began running her nails fiercely over the velvet arm of the chair instead. “The kind of magic I need to do is hard enough without so much interruption.”
Dread sank into Cordelia’s gut. She was suddenly glad that she hadn’t been able to eat anything that morning. “I… I thought you said you couldn’t use magic to make someone marry you…”
“Not to compel him, obviously.” Her mother rolled her eyes. “But there’s a world of subtle magic available, if you know what you’re doing. Just a little touch to make him notice you. A touch to call attention to your lips or your breasts or what have you.”
