Page 63 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
It sounded like a dismissal, and Cordelia’s mind was such a whirl that she was grateful for the excuse. “Yes,” she said, getting to her feet. She curtsied to both of them and hurried toward her room, hoping that she could read enough of The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette to know what to do before the offer arrived.
“Clever,” said Richard, as the door clicked shut behind Cordelia. “Not kind, but clever.”
Hester swallowed. She’d seen the flash of anger across his face earlier, and watched as he had very deliberately set it aside so as not to frighten Cordelia, but she’d suspected that it was still there. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make you think that I was asking you to propose to me.”
He shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “I should have known better. You’ve made it abundantly clear that marriage to me would be a poor second to the life you want.”
“Richard…” His name felt as if she were hacking it out with a dull blade. Ten years, and you thought you’d really given him up? Ten years and you thought you could beg him to come to your rescue and not have it tear your heart out?
She could have endured that, perhaps, but not the guilt of having torn his heart out in return.
“I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely. “It was never you that I didn’t want.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and went to the window, staring out. The shadows had grown under the trees and dusk was being dragged down into dark. “You’ve arranged everything so neatly. Your old friend gets a bride and your young friend gets a husband. Very tidy.”
“It’s not like that!” Her voice was too loud and she slapped her hand over her mouth, angry with herself, but he didn’t turn away from the window. “I don’t mean for you to really go through with it. I told you that.”
“You know that I would do anything for you.” She hated how bleak his voice sounded when he said it. It wasn’t a promise, just a statement of fact. A fact that she had taken shameless advantage of. “Of course I’ll do this too, if that’s what you want.”
“You understand why, though?” Hester rubbed her hands over her face. “You believe us, don’t you? About what that woman is. I know it sounds like a fairy tale.” He has to believe us. Otherwise… what? He thinks I’m lying or deluded, but he’s doing it anyway because I’m the one asking him?
The force of his loyalty was a sudden weight on her chest, pressing down, and she did not know how much she could bear.
“Yesterday I wouldn’t have believed it,” he said, still staring out at the trees. “But after I spoke with Parker… yes. All right. It makes more sense of what I saw than anything else. The way he choked when he tried to talk about her…” He turned back, and even through the rush of relief, it struck Hester that the lines of his face were much deeper than she had ever realized.
Richard, old? How could that happen? It was a few lines of silver, nothing more. He can’t be this old. It must just be exhaustion from a hard ride, that’s all.
“I didn’t want to say how bad it was in front of the girl,” he admitted. “It was terrible. He was biting his own lips and tongue as he tried to get the words out. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He rocked on the balls of his feet. “And yes, perhaps I would rather believe in sorcery of that caliber than that a man would murder most of his family with an axe for no apparent reason, or that Penelope would stab her maid and then throw herself over a balcony.”
Hester exhaled with slow relief. “Good. I’m glad.” She gave him a wan smile. “I wasn’t looking forward to trying to convince you.”
“Have you told anyone else?”
She shook her head. “Imogene knows that something’s going on. I imagine I’ll have to tell her soon. But you’re the only two I’d trust.”
His smile was pained, but he reached out and took her hand again. “I’m sorry for yelling,” he said. “Just… next time warn me before you’re about to marry me off to someone else.”
“It’s my fault, and believe me, I hope I’ll never have to ask you to do this again.”
“I wouldn’t mind one more time,” he said, lifting her hand to his lips. “If it was the right woman.”
He rose and took his leave. “I suppose I should go wash the dust off and congratulate Samuel. What a day this has been…”
Hester nodded, trying to pretend that she couldn’t still feel the warmth of his breath against her skin.
CHAPTER 22
Hester had settled into the library with three shawls and a tea tray, feeling rather like a burrowing rodent in her den. One of the big chunky ones that settle in for the winter. A woodchuck or a groundhog, perhaps. Unless those are the same thing. She couldn’t remember, if she ever knew. Normally she would have looked it up, since she was already in the library, but she had bigger problems than rodent nomenclature.
She needed to know how to stop a sorcerer.
Sadly, the family library had a number of books on architecture, a few on etiquette, and a positive treasure trove related to horse breeding, but possessed a very limited selection of books on sorcery. There were several religious texts, none of which had offered anything useful, beyond decrying it as frivolous at best and sinful at worst. There was an old book of fairy tales, which at least took sorcery seriously, but had no good solutions. Evangeline was not likely to hold still long enough for anyone to push her into an oven, and Hester had her doubts that nailing the woman’s shadow to the floor would rob her of her powers.
Even if it did, I’d need nails of meteoric iron. Where in blazes do you get meteoric iron these days? I can’t even get embroidery floss that’s dyed the same color twice.
She’d eventually found herself with the only two books in the library that might help her. One claimed to be A True Accounte of Divers Remarkable Sorceryes and Devilreys of This New Lande, by an author with more adjectives than facts at his disposal. The other was an elderly almanac.
Divers Remarkable Sorceryes spent a great deal of time telling the reader how brave the author was for having written it, as he could now expect reprisals from the Authores of Such Devilreys, who would “come down with Great Wrath upon him” for attempting to “make suche a Distillation of the Truth from the Cloudy Liquors of Rumor and Fancye.” (Hester was beginning to think that readers of the book were even braver.)
