Bewitching the Baron (40 page)

“Aye,” the boy grunted.

“I think you have done enough in here today,” Charmaine said, indulgence in her voice.

“Aye!” Bertie repeated, with considerably more enthusiasm. He needed no second hint, and was out the door like a shot.

“Be home in time for supper!” Charmaine called after him, and then to Valerian, “The boy is three parts mischief, four parts stubbornness.”

“Why did you not write that you had him?”

“Why did you not write that you were coming back?” Charmaine retorted, and then relented. “We did not know if we would keep him, that is the truth of it. I was afraid that if I wrote of him, the moment I sent the letter all would go sour.”

“But it has not.”

“No.” Charmaine’s mouth twitched again in that hint of a smile. “Not that he has not been plenty of trouble, but he helps Howard and learns quickly.”

Valerian followed Charmaine into the kitchen, where her cousin filled a kettle with water for tea and bent to hang it on the hook over the fire. The smells of the cobbler’s shop and Charmaine’s kitchen comforted her with their familiarity, even as it felt like she had been to the moon and back since last she was here and still felt the unreality of her own presence. “You have rented the cottage?”

“Yes, until summer. You are welcome to stay here with us until then, of course.”

“I know. Thank you.”

Charmaine turned away from the fire, giving her full attention to Valerian. “Are you home for good?”

Valerian bit her lower lip, unwilling yet to give a definite answer. She was like her cousin, afraid that if she spoke of it, it would come to naught. “I would like to be.”

“Nothing has changed since my letter to you. The townsfolk still ask me when you are coming back.”

Valerian could only look at Charmaine, the question that mattered most stuck in her throat.

Charmaine studied her back, then said with more softness than Valerian would ever have expected of her, “But it is not the townsfolk that worry you, is it?”

She shook her head.

“The baron is here,” Charmaine said. “He has been since the first of January.”

Valerian had more than half-expected it, but even so it shocked her, the news like a blow to her chest, the air forced from her lungs. “Has he. . . .” she paused before she could go on, hating herself for needing to know. “Has he asked after me?”

Pity flickered in Charmaine’s eyes, and Valerian answered the question herself. “No.”

She left the village behind and started down the path that led to the cottage, needing to escape from the familiar faces of Greyfriars. After her tea with Charmaine, she had gone to see Sally and discovered that the news of her return had already spread through the village.

The tentative but sincere greetings she received as she walked down the street were followed quickly by requests for treatment, either for the speaker or someone else, and Valerian realized how correct Charmaine had been in her assessment of the mood in Greyfriars. She could have horns sprouting from her head and cloven feet, and she thought they would still ask her to look at their sores and listen to their coughs. John Torrance’s missing hand was a more fearful prospect than dealings with a maybe-witch.

Or perhaps she could thank Alice Torrance for her welcome. The witch-dunking test may have at long last proved her innocence to the entire village, no matter how illogical it was. Whatever the reason for the greetings and smiles of welcome, they were so numerous as to be overwhelming. She almost doubted they would let her leave, if she decided not to stay. It was an unfamiliar, but warming thought.

When she came to the fork in the path, her feet of their own volition took the path that led to the Giving Stone. She was not ready yet to see the cottage, with strangers living in it, rearranging things, doing things differently than she and Theresa had. She did not want to see the garden choked with weeds, or the walls in need of whitewashing. Better, perhaps, to wait until the cottage was hers again, and she could change everything back to how it was.

Oscar cawed and flew by overhead, and she smiled. He looked happy to be back in familiar grounds.

A gust of cold March wind struck her as she came around the final bend to the circle of stones, and she pulled her mantle more tightly about her. The Irish Sea was a grey smudge in the distance, a bank of low clouds obscuring the line between water and sky. The wind and Oscar were the only sounds, buffeting the hills and trees and twisting round the stones. She had almost forgotten how much she loved the rough beauty of this place.

She walked slowly to the Giving Stone, her skirt hem dragging in the damp grass. The stone was bare of offerings, and she sat down upon it, slipping off her muddy shoes and bringing her feet up under the warmth of her skirts, wrapping her arms around her knees. She rested her chin on her kneecaps and half-shut her eyes, listening to the wind, feeling the cold seep into her buttocks from the stone beneath her.

She was dimly aware of Oscar hopping about in the grass, but when he suddenly spoke it startled her out of her reverie.

“Finders keepers! Finders Keepers! Rrrawww!”

She opened her eyes to see him at the base of the stone where she sat, tossing his head, something silvery dangling from his beak. She dropped her legs back over the edge and bent down, reaching for him, but he hopped back, beyond her reach.

“Drop it, Oscar!” she ordered.

“Finders keepers!” He spread his wings, then flapped up into the air, carrying his treasure to the top of his favorite standing stone.

Valerian squinted up at him. She should let him have it, whatever it was, except that for a moment she had thought she recognized the thing.

She stood and went barefoot over to the menhir, and climbed atop the fallen stone beside it. If she stood on tiptoe, she could almost reach the top of Oscar’s stone, but not quite. She hiked her skirts, tucking the wet hem into her waistband. She found a foothold in the rough stone and hoisted herself up.

Oscar was surprised enough by her head appearing over the edge of the stone that he fluttered backwards, leaving his treasure trove exposed. Valerian’s eyes widened as she took in the trinket-filled depression atop the stone. So
this
was where all that hat trim ended up, along with pieces of glass, coins, fragments of jewelry, and nameless bits of junk. And on top of it all, the silver bracelet.

She plucked the bracelet off the pile and lowered herself down. She stood upon the fallen neighboring stone, skirts still tucked up, wind whipping her mantle, and looked at the bracelet in her hand. It was the same one Nathaniel had offered to her that day almost a year ago, in payment for her pulling the stitches from Paul Carlyle’s behind. She traced her finger over one of the flowered ovals, remembering.

“Eee-diot!” Oscar cried. “Eee-diot!”

Valerian sucked in her breath, fist closing over the bracelet as she looked up. Nathaniel stood watching her from the other side of the circle. Her heart beat a rapid tattoo, stars sparkling in her vision as a momentary dizziness swept over her. He was as handsome as ever—more so, even, for there was a quiet certainty in his stance that had not been there before.

Her muscles quivering, it was all she could do to untuck her skirts and let them drop over her legs. To climb down from the rock was beyond her. She stood, swaying slightly in a gust of wind, unable to speak.

“Valerian,” he said at last.

“Nathaniel,” she whispered back, the sound carried away in the wind.

“You found the bracelet.”

She looked down at the links in her hand, then up at him again. “Oscar did, in the grass.”

His eyebrows rose, and he smiled slightly, walking forward. “Then he has for once done me a favor. I left it on the stone for you. The last storm must have washed it off.”

“You left it for me?” she repeated stupidly, her thoughts frozen in her mind.

He gave a self-conscious shrug, showing his first sign of uncertainty. “Perhaps I am not completely immune to superstition. I thought that if I left it, someday you might come back for it.”

Her mouth was dry, hope kindling to life in her breast.

He closed the remaining distance between them, looking up at her where she stood on the stone. “You see, it took me a long time to realize that you did not leave because you cared nothing for me.”

“No, it was never that. It was your family, Laetitia. . . .”

“It was more than any of that. Do you not even know yourself?”

She looked down at him, confused, unable to form a coherent thought with him standing beneath her, so close, after all this time and so many hours spent dreaming of him. Why else would she have left him, when it hurt her so badly, if not for Laetitia and his family?

He told her. “You never believed I could love you. You thought that someday I would come to my senses and see what a mistake I had made, and seek to be rid of you. You could not believe I wanted you, just as you are.”

“But you did not, not completely,” she protested. “You admitted as much.”

“I know I did. Like you, and like my family, I could not be sure that Laetitia was not an influence.” He wrapped his warm hands around her ankles, then smoothed his hands up her calves. “I know better now. The past is finished, Valerian. Laetitia is dead and buried, as is my part in that affair. It is you I am asking for, not a salve for a guilty conscience. We can be husband and wife, or we can be distant acquaintances, but nothing in between.”

“And your family?” she could not help but ask, remembering the bitter, angry face of his mother.

“This is our choice to make. Raven Hall is my home now. Make it yours.”

His hazel eyes were deep with emotion, unclouded by doubt or the shadows from his past. He was right, she knew: She had thought he could never truly love her. Had thought that no one could, beyond her parents and Aunt Theresa. She felt the cold shield she had worn around her heart split asunder, the broken halves melting in the heat of the emotion that welled forth.

“I do love you,” she said at last. “I always have.” She held out the bracelet that she had once so angrily rejected. “Will you help me with the clasp?”

She smiled as comprehension lit his eyes, and then she yelped as he pulled her down off the rock and into his arms, spinning with her in mad circles within the circle of stones. At last he stopped, and she tucked her face against his chest, her arms around his neck, feeling her world complete within this warm embrace.

“Ah, Lady Ravenall,” he said into her hair. “I love you, too.”