The Whisper Witch Read online

  The boy pulled himself up proudly. “I’m in training.”

  “You carry their things.”

  “For which we’re grateful,” Cormac cut in with his charming smile. “I, for one, am quite relieved not to have these ugly sots roaming naked through the streets.” Clothes were not forgiving, and shifting between forms usually resulted in a naked human.

  “We were answering a warning call before you interrupted us, big brother.” Ky fumed. “I’m sure you heard it.”

  “I did.” By contrast, there was no inflection in Tobias’s voice.

  “Some of us don’t ignore our brothers,” Ky sneered. One of the wolves gave a yip like a laugh.

  Tobias kicked his pack over. “Get dressed, little brother. And let the Order handle it.”

  Scowling, Ky shrugged on a pair of breeches with a belt hung with daggers and pouches. “The Order has no business dealing in wolf matters.”

  “You have no way of knowing if this is a wolf matter,” he pointed out with cool and precise patience. “You just want an excuse to run wild, and you’re too old to indulge in theatrics, Ky. Now call off your mongrels,” he added when one of the wolves snapped at Cormac, hackles raised. “You know as well as I do that Cormac isn’t a threat.”

  Ky nodded to the suspicious wolf. “He’s right.” The wolf backed off but didn’t shift back to human.

  “Are you mad to shift?” Tobias snapped coldly. “Anyone could have seen you.”

  “In the park?” Ky scoffed. “And at night? I doubt it.”

  “You know better.”

  “I won’t be shackled like a lapdog, Tobias,” he said. “I’m not afraid of what I am. Unlike you.”

  “You’re a fool, Ky.”

  “And you’re a coward.”

  The air fairly sizzled. Barely leashed magic sparked between them like static electricity.

  “As a Keeper, investigating these matters is what I do, little brother” The brothers were nearly nose to nose.

  “By turning your back on your wolf,” Ky returned, “old man.”

  “Lawless family reunions are always so pleasant,” Cormac said lightly to the boy holding the packs, who cringed, turning his body sideways in subconscious submission. Cormac glanced at Tobias, his expression deceptively casual. “Shall we carry on, Killingsworth? I don’t fancy having one of these beasts piss on my boots. They’re new.”

  Some of the tension cracked. Ky was still sneering and Tobias was cold as a marble statue, but they stepped apart. Ky stalked off, the wolves following him.

  “I hate to add insult to injury”—Cormac clapped Tobias on the shoulder—“but if you mean to carry out your new orders, we have a musicale to attend.”

  “My mother looks as though she is longing to stab me with her fish fork,” Gretchen murmured to her cousin Emma.

  Candlelight gleamed on enough silver to dazzle the eye, along with plates painted with delicate blue flowers, crystal wine goblets, and the fattest pink peonies Gretchen had ever seen. They bobbed their heavy scented heads, looking as bored with the whole affair as she was. Petals drooped over dishes of veal with olives, sweetbreads, stewed celery with beetroot pancakes, asparagus, potted venison, and ratafia cakes. An enormous silver soup tureen sat in the center, handles shaped like griffins with leaping hares all along the edges. As if one wanted rabbits running through their soup.

  The guests were stylish and polite; the ladies ate small morsels, and the men wore collar points, some so starched they could barely turn their heads. Conversation was a dignified murmur over the clink of silver cutlery. It was all very elegant and sophisticated.

  In other words, torture, pure and simple.

  Her mother, the very proper Lady Cora Wyndham, sent her another scolding glance. Even the sharp gleam of her impressive diamonds judged her.

  “Emma, distract my mother. Make it rain from the chandelier or blow that ridiculous wig right off Lord Chilcott’s head, won’t you? Preferably right onto my mother’s plate of sweetmeats.”

  Emma paused to consider. “Better not,” she decided with a regretful grin.

  Lady Worthing, their hostess and a dear friend of Gretchen’s mother, rose gracefully from her chair. “Ladies, let us leave the gentlemen to their port and retire to the parlor.”

  Gretchen leaped up like a salmon fighting its way upstream. Her chair scraped with an indecorous groan across the parquet floor. A footman caught it before it toppled backward. As she passed, her mother rapped her across the knuckles with her fan. Hard. “Decorum, Gretchen, if you please.”

  She insisted on acting as though the only thing of any great importance was training her son to be an earl, marrying her daughter to an earl, and acting like the perfect wife to an earl. Gretchen’s father wasn’t a witch and knew nothing about the secret London Gretchen was just beginning to navigate. Her mother wanted no part of the world of witchery, even though she was born into a family steeped in magic since the fourteenth century. Even now, after her daughter and nieces defeated the Sisters, she pretended it never happened. She was more concerned that Gretchen was unfashionably tanned.

  “What have you done?” her mother snapped, blocking her entry into the parlor.

  “What? Nothing!” Gretchen glanced down swiftly. She was wearing a perfectly lovely silk gown that floated around her ankles. If the dress was meant to be simple and evoke classical lines, why was she forced into constrictive stays? Shouldn’t she be able to breathe? Shouldn’t her liver not be quite so well acquainted with her spleen?

  “Your hem is dirty. And why were you late?” her mother asked. “You will answer me.”

  “I … um.”

  “Gretchen, I have been your mother your entire life. You cause more trouble than a houseful of adolescent boys.” She sniffed, looking horrified. “And you reek of magic.”

  She winced. “It’s only a little magic, Maman,” she said in what she hoped was a soothing voice.

  “It makes you a target, Gretchen,” she snapped, not sounding the least bit soothed. “Surely you must realize that by now.”

  She wasn’t wrong.

  “I think we should pull you out of that school,” her mother added suddenly. “You would benefit more from a proper finishing academy.”

  She was already pretending to attend lessons at a finishing school, instead of the Rowanstone Academy for Young Ladies. To the Beau Monde she was learning how to draw, speak French and Italian, play a harp, and embroider. In reality, she was learning the history of the witching families, how to work spells, and how to send her wolfhound-familiar out into the world. And also, sadly, embroidery. Adding hours and hours of actual curtsying, elocution, and deportment? She shuddered. “You can’t be serious.”

  “What has magic ever done for us?” her mother asked bitterly. “Besides poison my sister’s mind and divide my family?”

  “I know all about Emma’s mother,” Gretchen said quietly. “It wasn’t like that.”

  Lady Wyndham lifted her chin, retreating behind her customary haughty disdain. “She made her choice. And I made mine.”

  Gretchen wanted to say that Theodora made her choice in order to protect Emma, but her mother wouldn’t understand. She’d never see past a baby born on the wrong side of the blanket, never mind to a Greymalkin warlock. “It’s not that simple,” she said instead.

  “I’ll tell you what’s simple, Gretchen. Find yourself a husband before it’s too late. Social power is the only real power left to a woman. Use it.”

  “You can’t keep me from the academy,” she argued. “Maman, I’m a Whisperer. It’s already … uncomfortable.”

  “All the more reason to turn your back on that world.”

  “That’s not an option anymore. Aunt Theodora’s binding spell wore off. I am who I am, now, Maman. Whether or not you approve.”

  She pulled away and slipped into the parlor before her mother responded. Penelope slid her arm through Gretchen’s. “Do you want me to play a pirate’s song?” Penelope was an accomplished
singer and already famous for her performances at the pianoforte. Lady Worthing’s dinner party was to be followed by the arrival of more guests for the musicale.

  “Tempting, but my mother would smack you with more than her fan,” Gretchen said.

  “She didn’t even notice last time.” Penelope grinned.

  “Girls,” Lady Wyndham snapped from the doorway. “Mingle!”

  “Honestly, my mother should work for the Order. She’s worse than a Keeper when it comes to tracking. I’m starting to feel like a wounded deer.”

  Emma snorted, joining them. “Try having antlers on your head.”

  “I thought One-Eyed Joe gave you a cameo for that very purpose,” Gretchen said as they wandered farther into the drawing room.

  “Your mother made me take it off before we went in for supper. She said it wasn’t appropriate evening wear.” She grinned. “I told her neither were antlers, and then she got all quiet and scary so I worked the Fith-Fath glamour to hide them myself.”

  The end of the room was cleared of furniture except for rows of chairs facing the pianoforte and harp in one corner. Beeswax candles dripped in silver candelabrums and sconces set into the cream-colored walls. The ceiling was a mosaic of frolicking lambs and rosy-cheeked cherubs. “Gah,” Penelope said, when she glanced up. “That’s ghastly.”

  “Why are there so many moths about?” Gretchen fanned one away from her face.

  “It’s been a bad spring for them,” Emma agreed. “My windows are covered at night.”

  “Insects in the drawing room.” Gretchen grinned. “My mother will turn rabid.”

  It was another half hour before the men joined the party in the drawing room. The other guests trickled in, trailing the scents of rain and the yellow London fog pressing at the windows. When Cormac, Viscount Blackburn, arrived, Penelope glanced at Emma. “If you and Cormac are still trying to pretend you barely know each other, you should probably stop looking at each other like that,” she pointed out. “Not to mention, you’re in very great danger of setting the carpet on fire. I’m positively blushing.”

  “You are not,” Emma said, though her own cheeks were pink. She looked away. Cormac and his friend crossed the room to greet their hosts.

  “Who’s that with him?” Gretchen wondered. The tall blond man looked so icy and proper, she felt an instant need to wrinkle him. His cravat was white and spotless; it may as well have been made out of snow. Despite the chiseled Grecian-statue perfection of his features, there was something slightly dangerous about him.

  “That’s Tobias Lawless,” Penelope said, her long black curls sweeping over her shoulder as she tried to turn subtly on one heel to get a better look at him. “He took off his jacket the night of the fire at the Pickford ball, remember?”

  “No,” Gretchen said crisply. His blue eyes snapped onto hers as if he had heard her. The blasted man was looking down his nose at her. “I don’t.” He looked away dismissively. That was even worse.

  “Pity.” Penelope gave a little sigh. “He has lovely shoulders.”

  “You’re incorrigible.” Emma grinned, nudging her.

  “My mother says the human body is a beautiful miracle to be appreciated.”

  “My mother says the physical body is something a lady ignores.” Gretchen rolled her eyes. “Of course she only says that when my nose is itchy or I’m starving for cake.”

  Emma’s mother, having recently turned herself into a deer, didn’t say much of anything at all.

  “Why is he staring at us?” Gretchen grumbled. “Surely he’s seen the Lovegrove witches before.”

  “He’s not staring at us.” Penelope smirked. “He’s staring at you.”

  “Don’t be daft,” she said, dismissing the very notion. She winked. “I haven’t done anything worth staring at yet.”

  “And you’ll keep it that way, Gretchen Thorn,” her mother snapped from behind her shoulder. “Tobias Lawless, Viscount Killingsworth, is heir to the Starkwood earldom. So if he’s looking at you, you’ll smile prettily.”

  It explained why all the ladies watched him over their fans, but not why he was watching her.

  “And he is unmarried,” her mother announced in a fervent whisper best suited to declarations involving kings and kingdoms.

  “Oh, mother,” Gretchen groaned. She met Emma’s sympathetic glance. Penelope was too busy looking curiously at Tobias.

  “Lord Gilmore is also unmarried.”

  “He’s thirty-seven!”

  “And he has a duchess for a sister,” her mother replied, as if it negated all arguments. “Choose, Gretchen. Or I will choose for you.” She sailed away as conversation quieted and the guests were urged to take their seats.

  Someone’s marriageable young daughter sat at the harp and sang with the enthusiasm of a cat trapped in an icehouse. Her father eyed all the young men hungrily.

  “Hide me, won’t you?” a young man asked, sidling up to Penelope. He glanced imploringly at the cousins. His eyes were strikingly moss green. “He keeps staring at me with his quizzing glass. I feel as though I’m sitting exams again.”

  Penelope chuckled. “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Then Lord Herringdale is most definitely looking at you.”

  “He’s rather fearsome. Am I to assume that is his unmarried daughter currently abusing the harp?”

  “Yes, but she’s harmless.”

  “Good to know. And I do beg your pardon,” the young man added with a bow. He was very handsome. Penelope was already starting to melt. “We haven’t been properly introduced but I was feeling rather desperate. I am Lord Beauregard. And you have quite saved me, Lady …?”

  “Penelope Chadwick,” Penelope replied. “And my cousins, Lady Emma Day and Lady Gretchen Thorn.”

  “I am in your debt.” His brown hair tumbled over his forehead and his crooked smile was charming. He bowed again, wine sloshing over the rim of his glass. Drops splattered onto Penelope’s pink gloves, staining them across the knuckles. He flushed, mortified. “I am very sorry, Lady Penelope,” he apologized. “I have the manners of a beast. Please, allow me to have those cleaned for you.”

  Penelope only smiled. “They’re only gloves, my lord. I’ll have them dyed burgundy and start a new fashion.”

  “You are as kind as you are beautiful.”

  Penelope blushed. Emma and Gretchen grinned at each other behind her back, turning slightly away so as not to intrude. After a few minutes, Emma drifted away, mumbling something about tea, and Gretchen eased back into the shadows of a large potted palm tree.

  By the time Penelope took her turn at the pianoforte, Gretchen had reached one of the side doors. She stepped back swiftly into the safety of the hall, narrowly avoiding knocking over a passing footman. “I’m very sorry, miss,” he said, even though she was the one flying out of nowhere.

  She helped him steady his tray before vanishing into the library. It was full of leather-bound books and shadows. A candle burned in the far window, and another on one of the tables. The scent of dust clung to her as she eased deeper into the comforting darkness.

  She didn’t hide in libraries because she was a bluestocking like Penelope, forever prattling on about poetry, but rather because at most musicales and balls, it was the room least likely to be occupied. Couples were more interested in stealing kisses in conservatories, and old ladies sleeping off too much brandy generally escaped to the parlors, which left the libraries blessedly abandoned.

  And luckily she knew the Worthing library as well as her own, right down to the popular novels hidden on the back shelf by the balcony. Good thing too; just last week she’d been trapped in the Brookfield library for hours with nothing to read but tracts on sheep shearing and the benefits of rotation crops. She’d fallen asleep somewhere between lentils and Egyptian onion farming.

  The contrast between fighting off the Rovers and pasting a polite smile on her face for the single sons of earls was too stark. Residual magic, burned through her
. She was surprised the air around her didn’t crackle. Her mother shouldn’t begrudge her a stolen moment in the library, not if the alternative involved magic shooting off the ends of her hair. Hardly subtle.

  Not to mention hardly marriageable material.

  On second thought …

  Better not. She’d already pushed her luck by going off with Godric.

  Egyptian onion farming it was then. She walked along the book shelves, reading titles and glancing into the glass-fronted cabinets displaying painted globes. It was dull and dusty and soothing. Her witch knot stopped aching.

  Until someone grabbed her arm, yanking it behind her back and spinning her around. Her cheek pressed to the cold glass of a curio cabinet. Pain shot up to her elbow when she tried to move. “Who are you?” a man asked, his voice quiet and cold in her ear.

  “Who am I?” she barked back. “Who the hell are you?” He evaded the kick she aimed at his most sensitive parts. Her skirts wrapped around her knees, hobbling and infuriating her. He turned her roughly around.

  Tobias Lawless.

  She wasn’t sure which of the two of them was more surprised.

  Someone so chilly and perfect and wearing such a flawless cravat shouldn’t be mauling ladies in dark libraries. He also shouldn’t have several short iron daggers tucked inside his cutaway coat. It probably said something unsavory about her character that the sight of those daggers made her like him a bit more. But only a little bit.

  “Let me go.” She yanked down savagely, breaking his hold. He didn’t move back, and his body continued to block her against the cabinets. The glass rattled.

  “What are you doing?” He stepped closer still. She had to tilt her chin up.

  “I am currently being accosted,” she snapped, driving the heel of her shoe into the top of his foot. He fell back a step, growling in his throat. Growling. He really didn’t seem the type.

  She made a proper fist, not like the ones girls made when they hadn’t practiced before. She’d already punched a Rover tonight. She was very comfortable punching Tobias, Lord Killingsworth. Eager, in fact.

  “What is wrong with you?” she asked finally. “Are you drunk?”