He slowed down.
Damn.
Keep walking. Keep walking.
She wasn’t wearing her mantle any longer, and even from this distance he saw the way her full breasts pushed against the fabric of her light blue gown. The way the material clung to the curve of her hips when the wind caught it, as the breeze did now, chasing up the folds of the cloth, molding the fabric against her shapely body, then moving to frolic in her long chocolate tresses, which had once again escaped their confinement. Her dark hair swirled about her milk-white face, reminding him of the beautiful enchantress from his nanny’s nursery tales. She used fairy magic to bewitch mere mortals.
Damn. He sounded like a lovesick poet—the kind of inane fop he’d detested at Cambridge.
He sped up again, closing the distance to the stable.
The stocky boy with whom he’d left Destrehan saw him coming and rushed inside. “One minute, yer lordship. One minute.”
While he waited, he couldn’t resist a last glance at Francesca.
She was gone.
He blinked once, certain his eyes were deceived. He tensed and scanned the estate, but saw only empty lawn. She’d disappeared into the dusk.
“Eerie how she does that,” the stable boy said from beside him. “She seems to disappear on you, but she’s no witch or anything.” He pointed across the yard, and Ethan saw her entering a small white building. She opened the door, the warm glow of a lantern illuminating her briefly.
He relaxed. She was safe.
“Though she does have a way about her,” the groom commented as Francesca closed the door behind her. He gestured vaguely, unable to find the words, but Ethan knew what he meant.
She was part of this place. Not just the people, but part of the hills, the trees, the fields. Even the landscape seemed to welcome her as it might an old friend, giving her strength and power. Shewasan enchantress, working her spell over everyone and everything she encountered.
The groom held Destrehan steady while Ethan mounted. He spurred the horse toward Grayson Park and didn’t look back as he rode away. He’d seen the last of Francesca Dashing. She wouldn’t cast her spell over him.
Ten
Francesca, her terrierpuppy, Lino, trotting behind her, strolled past a cluster of bright saffron crocuses she’d planted earlier that year in front of the small white building. She pushed open the door and, with a smile, entered her sanctuary. Her hospital.
Warmth and love reached out with affectionate arms to embrace her from every corner, just as they had the first time she’d entered. She’d been shocked and overwhelmed by her parents’ gift of the remodeled old bake house six years ago.
The hospital wasn’t as vibrant and new as it had been that first day. It smelled more like the lye soap she used to scrub it down than fresh flowers now, and the paint on the pale yellow walls—once shiny and bright—peeled in places. The pattern of tiny sprigged flowers on the butter-colored curtains had faded, and the lace sweeping the material back from the window was frayed at the edges.
