Merely Magic Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2011, 2000 by Patricia Rice

  Cover and internal design © 2011 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Jamie Warren

  Cover photography © Media Photo, LLC; Stephen Youll

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567–4410

  (630) 961–3900

  FAX: (630) 961–2168

  www.sourcebooks.com

  Originally published in 2000 by Dutton Signet.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rice, Patricia

  Merely magic / by Patricia Rice.

  p. cm.

  1. Witches--Fiction. 2. Northumberland (England)--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3568.I2925M47 2011

  813’.54--dc22

  2010043650

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  To Robin, who had the faith and courage that I lacked, and the supreme self-confidence to act on both.

  Prologue

  “Mama died.”

  “Because she did not listen to me, love.” Smelling of rich evergreen and roses, the old woman pulled her ten-year-old granddaughter into her plump arms.

  “Papa doesn’t want me.” Ninian tried not to snivel as she curled into the first welcoming embrace she could remember receiving.

  “Because you are a Malcolm, and men fear what they do not understand. You’ll see when you are older.”

  “Papa says I am a witch, Grandmama. I’m not a witch, am I?”

  “You’re a Malcolm, dear, and that’s nearly the same. Witches can accomplish great good if they listen to their elders and do as they’re told.” The old woman set her away and straightened Ninian’s shoulders. “Sit up here beside me, and I’ll read you a story.” She patted an ancient leather-bound book in her lap.

  “My mama didn’t want me to be a witch,” Ninian whispered, suddenly frightened as she climbed onto the chair and sensed her grandmother’s determination.

  “Your mama denied what she was, love, and she died of it. Never deny who you are, and you’ll live a long and happy life.”

  “Who I am?” she inquired, snuggling into her grandmother’s powdery embrace, momentarily reassured by her promises.

  “A Malcolm, my dear,” the old lady repeated. “Be proud and grateful for your heritage. We can have anything we want, if we want it hard enough. We must just never deny who we are, as the story tells us. An Ives once tried to force his Malcolm lady to deny her heritage, and it nearly destroyed the village.”

  Ninian loved stories. Happy, she settled down to listen.

  One

  Northumberland, 1750

  Alone on the edge of the clearing, Ninian Malcolm Siddons sat on an overturned stone from the circle that had once dominated this hill and contemplated the bonfire and dancing couples laughing below. It was a very lonely business being a Malcolm. Tonight, she’d much rather dance and sing and shout for joy in the firelight like everyone else.

  She wanted to scream and yell, “I’m here! Here! It’s just me!”

  But there was danger in achieving that kind of attention. She could not indulge her volatile nature and throw tantrums at the unfairness of life; it would only enhance the village’s fear of her. As her grandmother had taught her, she must remember who she was, what she was, and be proud of it. She had a gift and a talent no other had been granted, and she must use them wisely. Making the villagers fear her was not wise.

  She sighed and rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Gifts” and “talents” weren’t quite as valuable or exciting as the magic in fairy tales. If only she possessed real magic, she could summon a lover to dance with her. She smiled as the fantasy formed in her mind. What kind of lover would she summon? Dark and passionate? Fair and loving? One who would give her fat, jolly babies?

  One who would dance with her.

  She’d never even considered sharing her life with anyone until Granny died last winter. Given her circumstances, it didn’t pay to consider it now. She must dedicate her life to the people of Wystan just as Granny had done—or deny her heritage and forfeit everything as her mother had.

  The bonfire leapt higher into the starry May night as someone added new brush to the flames. With the aid of the moon above, the glade sparkled with the silvery glow of a thousand candles, filling the night with enchantment.

  Beltane was a night to celebrate the earth’s richness, to throw off the dark of winter’s cold. She should exult in the promise of spring, not fret over what she could never have. It was time to shrug off her grief over her grandmother’s death and go on with the business of living.

  If only she knew precisely what that was. Tending her herbs, healing the sick, and delivering babes did not hold quite the promise she’d hoped now that she faced those tasks alone.

  Eagerly, she sat up as an excess of hilarity and high spirits buffeted her with the approach of the dancers.

  “Have you heard? Lord Ives is repairing the castle!” Tom, the wheelmaker’s son, crowed as he and several others gathered to catch their breaths.

  “We’ll all be rich!” Alice, a farmer’s daughter, expressed her excitement with glee.

  “This time next year, we’ll have fat pigs in our pens and geese on our tables.” Son of a sheep farmer, Nate passed his cup of ale to the next person.

  The return of an Ives to Wystan after all these years worried Ninian. She’d thought the legend in her grandmother’s storybook little more than a fairy tale and had never feared it, until now, with the recent return of the mysterious nobleman.

  According to the story, long, long ago, Ives and Malcolms had been the nobility of this land, building castles and protecting their people. But according to the legend, disaster de
stroyed their happy land upon the marriage of an Ives lord and a Malcolm lady. Prosperity had fled, the Ives lords moved away, and only Malcolms remained to care for the people as best as they could. As others left to seek riches elsewhere, the village shrank, and there was no need for more than one Malcolm here. So even the Malcolms left. Ninian’s aunts had followed their aristocratic husbands and moved on to better things. Ninian’s particular gift fared better in the isolation of the village, so she had chosen to stay behind.

  Why had a legend walked out of her storybook as soon as her grandmother died? And if this Lord Ives could make the village wealthy, would they need Ninian at all? Or would he bring the tragedy the storybook predicted?

  Clamping down a frisson of fear and blocking out such silly superstition, Ninian watched the unaccompanied bachelors expectantly as the musicians struck up a new song.

  Nate grabbed his companion’s hand, and Gertrude giggled and ran off with him to join the dancers. As the other young men chose partners and laughing couples dashed toward the revelry, leaving Ninian behind—again—her dimples disappeared and her shoulders sagged with the weight of loneliness.

  It shouldn’t matter that they didn’t ask her to dance. They were simple, uneducated village boys, and she was a Malcolm. Malcolms were not only witches, but nobility, educated far beyond the means of simple farmers. She understood. She really did. But the music was so lively and the moon so beautiful…

  An old lady laughed as Gertrude slapped Nate’s face and flounced off. “That one has aught but one thing on his mind,” the old one said to her companion.

  All the village girls knew about Nate’s hot hands and sweet words. Still, even well plied with ale, he danced a fair step, and Ninian wouldn’t have minded one whirl about the fire. Just one.

  It wasn’t as if she expected love.

  ***

  A pagan fertility rite, how appropriate.

  Standing in the deepest shadows of the forest’s edge, Drogo Ives, Earl of Ives and Wystan, crossed his arms and watched as the bonfire in the clearing blazed skyward. The hypnotic notes of flute and fiddle carried on the wind along with the sounds of laughter.

  He’d come to this deserted outpost of northern England in hopes of studying the stars, not human behavior. Heaven only knew, he had sufficient specimens for study in London should he wish to take up the science of people, but he preferred the distance and mathematical precision of stars. At least stars were predictable.

  The bonfire had aroused his curiosity when he’d seen it from his windows. He’d spent a long and grueling day over the estate accounts, correspondence, and decisions regarding his brothers’ latest escapades, and inexplicably, he’d been drawn to the sight of the leaping flames.

  A lone figure lurking in the half shadow between him and the convivial couples in the clearing captured his curiosity. He might not be from these parts, but he had sufficient knowledge of folklore to recognize the village’s celebration of Beltane. As spring fertility rites went, this one was fairly tame. He even recognized the primitive urge within himself to procreate. The warmth of a new May eve, the hum of nature’s nocturnal creatures seeking mates, the gravid fowls and burgeoning plant life of spring stirred even the most stoic of mankind into desiring to create replicas of themselves within a woman’s womb.

  Drogo clanged a steel door shut on that thought as he watched the solitary figure in the clearing.

  Her pale hair glimmered with moonlight, curling in wild ringlets over her shoulders and halfway down her back, uncovered by cap or cloth. He had caught a glimpse of her face earlier as she exchanged words with some of the couples. She had a round face of ivory purity with mysterious light-colored eyes he could barely discern in the silver swath of moonlight.

  And she had a figure men would kill for. He surveyed her ample bosom and trim waist with jaundiced gaze. Country beautiful, built for breeding. Why then was she not a part of one of the amorous couples cavorting around the fire? She should have men dancing attendance at her fingertips.

  He had no intention of becoming so involved in village affairs that he might ask. He craved a solitude he couldn’t achieve in London, and he didn’t need another woman mucking up his life or his mind. He’d do better to return to his studies in the tower or to the tedious stacks of frantic messages from London.

  The silver goddess turned just enough for him to perceive the yearning in her expression, a yearning that so matched his own, the loneliness of it nearly crippled him.

  He wouldn’t feel this way. He had no right. He had far more on his table than he could possibly consume as it was. Asking for the delicacy that wasn’t his was obnoxious selfishness.

  As if sensing his tumult, the moon maiden turned and gazed into the forest where he stood. His sudden fierce arousal at the sight of her starlit features decided the matter. He would not become his father, dancing heedlessly to temptation’s call, following his cock like a tail.

  Let her find another partner for this night of amour. He had nothing to offer.

  ***

  Thinking she saw a shadow slip into the darkness, Ninian shivered. Perhaps Satan walked on a night like this, as her grandmother warned, for only a soulless devil could escape her notice. Her gift for sensing human emotion might not include understanding what she felt, but it gave her the ability to discern someone’s presence.

  Granny had taught her how to deal with external devils, like dangerous men. Ninian wished she’d taught her how to deal with internal devils, like doubt and loneliness. Granny had thought everything easily cured by herbs and amulets, but as far as Ninian was concerned, amulets couldn’t cure anything. Still, she would respect her grandmother’s memory and keep an open mind. Granny had known a great deal more than Ninian could ever hope to learn.

  The music changed, and laughing couples drifted from the fire. Instead of leaving as she ought, she lingered, hoping against foolish hope that at least one of the men would dare ask her to dance, now that they had more ale in them. She tried her best to smile naively as the other maids did.

  “They say the earl has three wives.” Nate laughed as he approached, his arm once more wrapped firmly around Gertrude’s shoulders.

  “They say all Ives are devils who only walk the night.” Tom grinned as Alice shrieked in horror and cuddled closer under his arm.

  Perhaps Ninian wasn’t the only one who’d noticed a presence at the forest’s edge. She glanced over her shoulder again, but the shadow had disappeared.

  “You know what they say happened the last time an Ives walked this land,” Nate whispered in the ominous tone of a man relating a ghost story. “He mated with a witch, and the entire valley flooded.”

  All heads turned in Ninian’s direction.

  Ninian’s stomach soured as the attention. No matter how hard she tried to be one of them, the curse of her heritage always erected barriers. She didn’t know why she had joined them tonight, except that sometimes, the cottage echoed with loneliness.

  Harry, the shoemaker, shifted attention back to himself. “Since this Ives already has three wives, he’s not likely to need more, is he?”

  The lads guffawed. The women tittered.

  Grateful for Harry’s diversion, Ninian clung to her dimpled smile and watched the dancing as the conversation swirled on without her.

  Even Harry, who’d defended her verbally since she’d set his broken finger, would never do more than nod his head in her direction. It would take a brave man, indeed, to court a Malcolm witch. She should be used to rejection by now.

  The villagers’ superstitions about her origins didn’t cause her undue concern. England hadn’t burned a witch in—oh, a hundred years or more. They hadn’t hanged one in twenty or thirty. They had more civilized methods of destroying witches these days. A wrong word or look, and she’d see nothing but their cold backs. And with the poor harvest of these last years and after the bad winter—sh
e couldn’t blame them. Unlike Granny, she couldn’t convince people to do what was good for them with amulets and promises. She could only heal the sick with her knowledge of herbs. Her gift for empathy was singularly useless and more nuisance than help.

  She wished things could be different. Just once, she would like someone to accept her as she was, to hold her close and dance with her in the firelight, like normal people.

  And she was normal, she told herself fiercely. She just knew a little more about herbs than most, had an unpredictable ability to sense what others felt, and the intelligence to apply both. She wasn’t a witch. She was a Malcolm.

  Yet in the minds of many, there was no difference.

  With a wistful sigh, Ninian drifted from the glade into the forest, away from the celebrations, away from the sight of the others slipping pair by pair into the shadows of the grass and trees, there to create the bumper crop of babies she would deliver come winter. Babies she would never have. The ache at that thought was best excised with work.

  Strolling among the trees, putting the bonfire and the amorous crowd far behind, Ninian sought the babbling burn where the herb she required grew. In the full light of the moon, the agrimony should contain all the power she needed for the morrow’s work. She wished the stream ran through her grandmother’s property so she needn’t stray so far to obtain it, but no one had ever complained of her trespass on Ives’ land. Of course, until recently, there had been none to do the complaining.

  Lord Ives had certainly stirred a controversy by returning after generations of neglect, but Ninian didn’t indulge in gossip. Surely, no man could legally have three wives. She knew enough of human temperament to doubt even his ability to have three mistresses under one roof, although contemplating the nature of such a man aroused dangerous fantasies.

  Deliberately turning her thoughts to the herb and the best means of persuading Mary’s little boy to drink an infusion of it to soothe his aching throat, Ninian didn’t catch the presence following her until it was too late to hide.

  She knew at once who it was and why. Nate. Even as she caught the strength of his arrogance, coupled with his muddled anger and a whiff of fear, he staggered into view from around a bend in the road.