Page 45 of A Lullaby for Witches

“You’re wrong,” he said, his voice holding a hard edge. “I can’t marry you because I am already engaged.”

I stared at him, at the beautiful high cheekbones, the muscles and bones and flesh that made the man I loved. The salt air sharpened at his revelation, yet I felt as if I was a thousand miles from the rocks. I had been wrong to think that I didn’t care, that I could live without Jack. I suddenly realize I cared, I cared very much that I could never have him.

He spared me the need to ask who, though of course I already knew. “Lucy Clerkenwell,” he said. “It was a foolish, rash decision, made in the haste of youth after we had lain together when we were sixteen years of age. She was not with child, thank God, but I made her the pledge all the same.”

“You’ve been engaged to her foryears?” I couldn’t have felt like more of a fool if he’d informed me that he lived on the moon. “You pursuedme. You lay withme. You told me you were going to speak to my father, to your parents. Was it all a ruse? Did you ever have even the slightest intention of marrying me?”

His jaw was tight, his eyes downcast and wet, and I realized with horror that he was fighting not to cry. “I thought that if I ignored it that it might simply go away. I prayed that Lucy might let me go once we were older, but she has no wish to sever our engagement, and I am honor bound to marry her.”

A laugh escaped me. “Honor. What a fine word to bandy about in a situation such as this. There is nothing honorable about your conduct, toward meorLucy. You’re weak. You wanted to travel the world, yet you gave up your dream so that you could stand behind the counter at your parents’ shop. You love me, but you would rather placate Lucy Clerkenwell and stay despite your changed feelings. You’re a coward.”

At this, he took me roughly by the shoulders, yet I was still not afraid of him. He was strong, and he could have easily pushed me over the edge, could have dashed my bones amongst the rocks below. Taking my chin in his hand, he forced me to meet his flashing gaze. “I am not a coward,” he said hoarsely. And then, as if to prove his point, he claimed my lips in a savage kiss. My body responded, betraying me by pressing against him. Pulling back, I slapped him and he stopped, but he was grinning now. “This,” he said. “This is what I will miss.”

“Wretch,” I hurled at him. But my blood was pumping, my heart afire. I would be lying if I said that I would not miss the passion, the danger that I felt when I was in his arms.

I turned on my heel and left him there still panting with desire. He was a coward, and I had nothing to fear from him except breaking my heart. Or at least, that was what I thought. As the night creatures stole on soft feet and the cowering moon slid behind the clouds, I made a pledge: Jack Pryce would pay for what he had done, for the fool he had made of me. If not in this life, then in the next.

I would raise my child, live on my own, and I would be the disappointment and curiosity that I had always been destined to be. I cared not a button for Jack Pryce or the people who had all these years pretended to be my family. I would not deign to live with Henry in whatever taboo relationship he had schemed up. I would go my own way and I would harden my heart somewhere that Jack could never find me.

27

Augusta

The house wasrestless, expectant when Augusta came in Monday the next week, a quiet energy stalking through the empty rooms. Silk flowers quivered in their vases, the barren hearths yawned, hungry. How had she never realized how alive the house was, how it pulsed and clenched and waited, waited, waited? All of the bravado and determination Augusta had felt while seated in the safety of the coffee shop next to Leo faded as she sat down at her desk, a pensive aura wrapping itself around her.

With her spreadsheet of object catalog numbers open before her, Augusta eventually fell into the rhythm of updating the objects that needed to be assessed for conservation. Usually the monotonous task was the last thing she wanted to tackle on her to-do list, but today it was a license to let her mind wander all the familiar, well-worn paths: Leo, her mother and their fights, and, of course, Margaret.

Was Margaret some kind of guardian angel? If she really had come to Augusta’s rescue and knocked the painting off the wall, then she must be. It was still hard to wrap her head around the fact that she was now someone who apparently believed in ghosts, but if she understood her episodes for what they were—visions of the past—maybe accepting the existence of ghosts was the next logical step.

The fact that she had been anticipating it made it no less frightening when the columns of numbers began to blur and fade. Closing her eyes, she let herself fall into the vision, no less scared than she had been the first time. But she was here now, and there were answers, if only she could find them.

It was the air that changed first, a clean sharpness with the faint scent of lemons and grass, spreading and swirling like milk poured into coffee.

Forcing herself to get up from her seat, Augusta moved as if in a trance through the now-familiar shadowed halls of the house. She found herself outside, a mild autumn breeze lifting the curls at her neck, coal smoke hanging in the air. The distant murmur of the ocean carried to the rocky garden—gulls crying, boats alerting one another of their presence with baritone horns. But there was another sound, closer, softer. The sound of human breath and footsteps.

Aside from the dream of Margaret in the mirror, she had never seen another person in her episodes before. Would they be able to see her? Would they speak to her? The idea was both thrilling and terrifying. If she was truly in the past and it wasn’t just a hallucination, could her interaction change the course of the present? Watching the past unfold as if a movie was one thing, and it was strange enough, but being a player in it was another thing altogether.

As the figure loomed closer, her heart began to hammer against her ribs, her hands clammy and cold. This was it. She felt as if she was staring down Death himself.

But the face that came into view wasn’t that of Death, or even that of a stranger. It was a pleasant face, with dark eyes and hair that was greased and parted. It was a face she had seen before, she was sure of it, but she couldn’t place him. The man looked as if he had walked off a movie set, dressed in a single-breasted coat with striped trousers and a loosened ascot. Every pore, every bristle along his jawline was sharp and hyper-focused. Swallowing, she waited for him to either walk through her or to demand to know who she was. Instead, he stopped short, peering at her. “Maggie, are you all right? You look like you saw the devil himself.”

“George,” Augusta said in a breath. It was Margaret’s brother. He looked just like the portrait of him in the sitting room, and a younger version of the photographs Augusta had seen of him as an old man in the 1920s.

“The one and only. You always know how to make a fellow feel wanted. Come, sit with me a moment.”

Before she could do anything, he was taking her hand in his, and leading her to a wrought iron bench overlooking the terraced garden.

Full skirts swished around her ankles, and the tight laces of her boned corset molded to her ribs. Her full hips swayed, her posture fluid and easy despite the constraints of her dress. It was Augusta’s body, but Margaret’s movements, Margaret’s confidence. Why didn’t he realize that she was not his sister, but a stranger from another time?

“I know how you like this spot,” he said, pulling her down with him so that she was practically in his lap. “Remember when you were little and you used to sit out here, throwing apples down the terraces? Our old nurse—what was her name?—she used to have a fit trying to gather them all up again.”

Augusta didn’t know what he was talking about, but felt herself nodding.

“Now,” he said, taking her hand in his and gently rubbing her wrist with his thumb, “will you tell your favorite brother what is troubling you?”

She could feel the feather-soft touch of his finger on her skin, his dark eyes gentle and warm as they searched her face. What were they seeing? Someone unsure of her place, of her own body? Or a beautiful woman who moved with the rhythm of cresting waves and spoke like the moonlight shafting through pine needles?

Augusta opened her mouth to tell him that there was something wrong, that this was all a mistake, but the words that came out were not hers. They were soft and husky, musical. “Oh, George, if only all men were half so good as you.”

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