“You are her sister,” he said, stopping before her and looking down. She was tiny, ancient, and bent over with age. In his memory, she had been so large.
He felt his legs begin to shake with fear. His hands were clammy inside his riding gloves, and they shook as he removed his hat.
“Verra good. Ye’ve been expecting me, aye?”
Rory felt his breath catch in his throat. “I’m the only one who hasn’t received part of the spell.”
“Ye dinnae remember the words I spoke that night?”
He shook his head and sank to his knees. “I’m sorry,” he said, feeling the sting of tears behind his eyes. “I know I can’t ever undo what I did—what we did—but I can try to make it right. Is your sister still alive? I can repay her—”
“I ken ye’re sorry, Emory Lumlee. Ye dinnae mean for it to happen. And ye paid the toll for yer wrongdoing. There is a way to undo it. Ye have perhaps lost the most of any of the three boys. Ye, most of all, will want the last of the spell.” She held out a hand, knobby with age and arthritis. Her skin was pale, the blue of the veins visible through the translucent skin. She uncurledher fingers to reveal, nestled within the gnarled depths of her palm, a yellowed piece of paper.
Rory swallowed, the cold and wet of the earth seeping into his breeches. He didn’t rise. He merely reached out one trembling hand and took the paper. It made a soft rasp against his gloves as he opened it. The light was poor, and he had to stare at it for a long moment before the words, written in a curling script, were legible.
But beware! The price of my offer maybe
Too great a cost for these men of ten timesthree.
He blew out a breath, the wordbewaresending shivers up his spine. He didn’t need any explanation for his part of the counter-spell. Clearly, it was a warning that the price for undoing the curse might be too high. Well, he hadn’t really thought he could snap his fingers and make it all go away. Of course there would be a price. Henry’s part of the spell had mentioned returning to the start.Startwas a rather vague term. Did it mean the dining hall where they’d hatched the plan? The old witch’s hovel? Surely that didn’t still stand.
“Madam, if I might—”
But when he looked up at the witch’s sister, she was gone. Rory looked right and left. She wasn’t there. He stood and turned, looking behind his shoulder and peering into the fields surrounding him. The ground had been shrouded in mist earlier this morning, but most of that had burned away. Even so, no person could disappear into it.
“Madam?” Rory called. His voice echoed, and behind him, his horse blew out a breath. Rory looked down at the paper he’d crumpled in his hands. He hadn’t imagined the paper. It was still there. He swallowed the lump in his throat and walked back to his mare, glancing over his shoulder several times. AndGenevieve said she didn’t believe in magic. How the devil would she explain a woman disappearing like that? She’d believe well enough if these sorts of things happened to her.
He returned to the house directly and went straight to his library, muddy boots and wet breeches and all, then sat at his desk and wrote to Henry and King with the last part of the spell. He sealed the letters, delivered them to a footman, and told him to see them dispatched posthaste.
The three of them would be together again in a fortnight.
Chapter Twenty-One
Genevieve spent theday before their journey with her mother. She worried that with the colder weather coming, Mama would fall ill again, but fortunately, she seemed hale and hearty. When Genevieve mentioned her recovery, Mama said, “I wish I could say the same for you. Does the man never let you sleep?”
Genevieve colored.
“I was a bride once,” her mother said. “I know how—shall we say exciting?—the first weeks after the wedding can be.”
“I wish that were the reason for my exhaustion. I fear the problem is my anxiety about this journey.” Genevieve hadn’t told her mother about the curse and the counter-spell, only that the three men were meeting again at the Duke of Carlisle’s home near the border then traveling to Scotland together.
“You know you can leave Frances with me. I’ll never forget the time—”
Genevieve raised her hand. “Please tell me this is not the story about the time you had to travel to Lyme Regis with Georgiana, Charles, and me, and Georgiana and I became ill and cast up our accounts all over the coach and the other passengers only three hours into the journey.”
Mama crossed her arms. “I won’t recount it then. But if I can survive that, you can survive a journey in your own well-sprung coach to a ducal residence.”
Genevieve smiled. “You’re right.” She couldn’t tell her mother that it was the witchcraft at the end of the journey that scared her.
“What else is troubling you?” Mama asked.
Though Genevieve didn’t want to mention the witchcraft, that wasn’t all that troubled her. “I have this…lingering unease,” she said, leaning forward. “I can’t put a name to the cause.”
“Is it regarding Frances?”
“No. It’s Rory. I can’t help but fear I’ll lose him.”
“Oh, sweetheart. Never fear that.” Her mother grasped her hand, and Genevieve put on a brave face.
