DECIMUS AND THE WARY WIDOW

Pryor Cousins #2

EMILY LARKIN

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Afterwards

Author’s Note

Audio

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Thank You

Octavius and the Perfect Governess

Primrose and the Dreadful Duke

Primrose and the Dreadful Duke

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Emily Larkin

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that Faerie godmothers do not exist.

Chapter One

Decimus Pryor—Dex to his family and friends—enjoyed being the center of attention. He’d never minded being gossiped about. What wasn’t to like about being pointed out as a notable rake? The man who’d seduced the ravishing Lady Winslow from under the nose of a rival, the dashing buck who’d been the first to snare Lady Brereton when she entered the ranks of available young widows, the Lothario with the legendary stamina who’d entertained the Cleweston sisters in their hunting box for one blissfully strenuous week.

A wit had once labeled him le jouet des jeunes veuves. As sobriquets went, it hit the mark; Dex was only interested in young widows, and he was extremely happy to be their plaything. Assignations with the lovely young relicts of deceased noblemen were his raison d’être. Flirtations and stolen kisses and amorous liaisons with ladies who knew exactly what they wanted—and with no need to worry about outraged husbands, because the husbands in question were dead. So, yes, Dex was very happy to be called le jouet des jeunes veuves.

But no one had called him that for several months. The name that followed him around these days was Vigor, and while that nickname could be taken as a compliment, it was not.

Vigor, but no finesse.

An observation that Lady Twyckham—beautiful and viperish—had made about him.

Dex liked making people laugh. Jokester, jester, wag—those were all labels he was happy to own—but while he liked making people laugh, liked being laughed with, he didn’t particularly like being laughed at, and he especially didn’t like being mocked.

That’s what was happening at Wimbledon House this evening. The ball was in full swing, couples whirling around the dance floor while matrons and dowagers gossiped on the sidelines, ostrich feathers nodding in their headdresses. A promising number of young widows were present, but instead of sending him come-hither glances and roguish smiles, they were whispering behind their fans. “Look, it’s Vigor,” he heard one of them say to another. Her companion shushed her, and they both tittered and turned away.

Dex gritted his teeth behind a smile and made a note never to pursue either lady. It was their loss. His stamina—his vigor—was legendary.

Too legendary, alas.

It was four months since acid-tongued Lady Twyckham had made her unfortunate comment about his prowess, but whispers and laughter still followed him. Some of it was friendly laughter, like at his club, where he was openly ribbed, but some of it wasn’t. Those two young widows and their barbs of laughter weren’t friendly.

Both ladies turned back to him, lowering their fans and giving him the sorts of smiles he was used to receiving from young widows, playful and provocative, flirtatious, but Dex mistrusted them. If either—or both—of them invited him into their beds, he rather thought it would be to laugh about it afterwards with their friends.

He aimed an indifferent nod at them, an indifferent smile, and moved on, heading for the far side of the ballroom, where a footman presided over a tureen of punch that was as potent as it was fragrant. Every time the laughter and mockery became too much, his feet led him back to the tureen. The punch was the only good thing about tonight’s ball. It took the edge off his anger. Dex wasn’t used to being angry. He was used to flirting and joking, to making ladies blush and laugh and invite him into their boudoirs. But not tonight. Tonight he was stewing in wounded pride.

His punch procured, Dex leaned his shoulders against a silk-covered wall, trying to look nonchalant, as if he didn’t care that half the ballroom was covertly—or not so covertly—laughing at him.

Hyperbole, he scolded himself, sipping the punch, tasting rum on his tongue, champagne and orange zest, sugar and spices. It wasn’t half the ballroom. It wasn’t even a quarter. It was mostly just the young widows. His sole purpose for attending this ball.

Damn Lady Twyckham to perdition.

He ought to have stayed in the country. The Little Season had seemed tempting when he was buried in Gloucestershire, but now that he was in London he’d far rather be back at his grandfather’s estate, where there were no enticing young widows, but equally there was none of the mocking laughter that so stung his pride.

His gaze drifted over the assembled guests. It wasn’t a crush, but it was full for a ballroom in early September. But then, balls at Wimbledon House were few and far between, invitations highly sought.

A sprightly contredanse was underway, the musicians plying their bows with fervor, young ladies and sprigs of fashion dancing vigorously. Vigorously. Pah. Dex’s upper lip curled involuntarily, angrily. He hid it behind the rim of his glass.

He would probably be able to laugh about this one day, but that day was very far off.

He sipped the punch, his gaze drifting over the dancers. Débutantes held no attraction for him, be they the shy, shrinking ones who dared not meet his eyes or their more confident peers who boldly flirted with him, hoping to snare a duke’s grandson as a husband. He had no interest in virgins and no interest in marriage, just as he had no interest in other men’s wives. Young widows on the other hand, experienced and enticing, unfettered by husbands . . .

Dex sighed into his fifth glass of punch. Or was it his sixth?

If he couldn’t remember how many glasses he’d had, it was probably time to leave.

He scanned the ballroom, unerringly finding the young widows—a cluster of them in the farthest corner, several on the dance floor, the pair who’d given him those coquettish smiles he mistrusted. There, near the door to the cardroom, was the delectable Viscountess Fortrose—or more properly, the Dowager Viscountess Fortrose, given that the current viscount, her late husband’s cousin, had a wife who was also Viscountess Fortrose.

One needed that qualifier “dowager” when both ladies were in town, but now that autumn had taken hold and the viscount and his wife had retreated to their country estate, it was unnecessary. Such a disconcerting term, dowager. It brought to mind elderly matriarchs, stately and gray-haired and with formidable bosoms, but Eloïse Fortrose was slender, not stately, and her hair was a striking white-blonde. She wasn’t someone you could easily overlook. She was pretty, yes, and the white-blonde hair was unusual, but it was her clothing that really captured the eye. The dowager viscountess favored bold, vivid colors. Rich yellows and deep crimsons, emerald greens and azure blues. Gaudy, the most disapproving of the matrons called her, but they were wrong; there was nothing flashy or garish about Lady Fortrose’s wardrobe. Not that she cared what people said about her. She possessed a cool, aloof confidence that was almost, but not quite, hauteur. She was frosty with rakes, coolly friendly with everyone else, and notoriously picky when it came to lovers. As one Casanova had so aptly observed, “Every time she sees a rake coming, she raises the drawbridge, lowers the portcullis, and sends archers to man the ramparts.”

That comment had led to her being dubbed Lady Fortress.

Dex found the juxtaposition of vivid color and cool reserve intriguing. Eloïse Fortrose was an enigma, a puzzle, a challenge. He wanted to joke, cajole, and wheedle his way into her boudoir and melt her frosty heart.

Unfortunately, the viscountess had rebuffed every approach he’d made—and he’d made a number over the years. Dex hadn’t given up hope yet. He would continue to lay siege to the Fortress, but not right now, when his pride was so dented.

At that moment, Dex discovered that his evening was looking up, for there, having newly entered the ballroom and not two steps from the viscountess, was Lady Swansea.

Lady Swansea’s proximity to Viscountess Fortrose was unfortunate. The viscountess was resplendent in eye-catching pomegranate red; Lady Swansea wore fawn trimmed with blonde lace. Alongside the viscountess she looked mousy, dowdy even. But, unfortunate choice of gown aside, she was an undeniable beauty, a voluptuous treasure, ripe for the plucking. Or at least, she’d been ripe for the plucking four months ago.

He and Lady Swansea had been getting along very well indeed when Dex was last in town, their flirtation rapidly heading towards an affair. They’d been on the brink of a liaison, and if his cousin hadn’t dragged him off to Hampshire in pursuit of a red-haired governess, Dex had no doubt that he and Lady Swansea would have been intimately acquainted by now.

He set aside his empty glass and sauntered across to her. His smile was jaunty, the familiar swagger back in his step.

“Lady Swansea, how delightful. I had no notion you were in town.” Dex bowed over her hand with a flamboyant flourish, kissed her gloved fingertips, then offered an extravagant compliment: “Your beauty is dazzling tonight. You outshine the sun, the moon, and all the stars in the sky.”

Lady Swansea used to blush and giggle when he paid her such fulsome compliments; now, she tittered and said, “You look very well, Mr. Pryor. Very . . . vigorous.”

Dex’s smile congealed on his lips. Was she poking fun at him?

He looked into those blue eyes, discovered a glint there, and realized that she was.

But perhaps it was a friendly glint? They’d laughed together often enough, he and Lady Swansea, before he’d left for Hampshire. Perhaps this was her idea of a joke, some friendly teasing between the two of them?

“Would you care to dance, Lady Swansea?”

“Oh, no,” she said, removing her fingers from his clasp. “Too vigorous for my taste tonight.”

Dex decided that it wasn’t a friendly glint in her eyes. He kept his smile with effort. “Another time, then.” He inclined his head politely, stepped away, and willed his face not to become a humiliated red. His feet wanted to march from the ballroom, but he refused to give Lady Swansea the satisfaction of seeing him leave so soon after her little witticism. So he had a sixth glass of punch, or perhaps it was a seventh, and then strolled out to the vestibule and requested that his carriage be brought round—he was ambling, not running away—and had to wait an interminable fifteen minutes before it drew up at the door. That was the problem with balls at Wimbledon House. One couldn’t just walk home. One had to drive the five wretched miles back to London before one could bury oneself in one’s club with a bottle of good claret and get comfortably drunk.

Unfortunately, Viscountess Fortrose had also decided to leave the ball early, along with her two companions, the diminutive and aging French comtesse with whom she resided, and a stout, gray-bearded Russian baron. Dex kept his distance. He didn’t need a rebuff from the oh-so-ravishing viscountess tonight.

Coaches came, coaches went, and finally it was his turn. He stepped outside to the accompaniment of the lilting strains of a quadrille. The carriage sweep was lit by torchlight and moonlight, dark inkblots of cloud smudging a starry sky.

The coach had a crest on the door and came with a coachman and a footman. Neither the crest nor the servants were his. Dex owned a curricle and a phaeton, but he had no reason to own a town carriage, not when his uncle, the Marquis of Stanaway, and his grandfather, the Duke of Linwood, had carriages and servants to spare.

He climbed aboard and flung himself into one corner, head tipped back, eyes closed, then sat up abruptly and rifled through the roomy pockets beneath either window. Was there a hip flask of whiskey tucked into one of them . . . ? Yes, there was. Excellent.

Dex cracked open the hip flask, slouched back in the corner he’d chosen, and settled in for a good sulk lubricated by strong spirits.

His good sulk lasted all of five minutes before the coach drew to an unexpected halt.

Dex opened the window and peered out. They were on Wimbledon Heath. He saw the dark shapes of trees, the silver disk of the moon, the shadowy figures of the coachman and footman perched high on the box.

“Something wrong?” he called out.

“Highwaymen,” the coachman replied in a low voice. “They’ve stopped a coach up ahead.”

Stopped a coach?

The viscountess’s coach?

Dex flung open the door and jumped down. “How many of them?”

“Looks like three, sir.”

“You have a blunderbuss?”

“Yes, sir.” The footman flourished it, the barrel glinting dully in the moonlight.

“Loaded?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Stay at the ready, both of you. I’ll shout if I need assistance.”

“But sir—” the coachman protested, at the same time that the footman said, bewildered, “Don’t you want the blunderbuss?”

Dex ignored them both and set off in the direction of the beleaguered coach. Highwaymen generally didn’t harm their victims—but that didn’t mean that people weren’t sometimes hurt, or even killed. If Lady Fortrose was too uncooperative or if the highwaymen noticed her striking good looks and decided to ravish her . . .

He ran towards the dark shape of the coach sixty yards ahead, his dancing shoes almost silent on the hardpacked dirt. The moon was full and currently unconcealed by clouds, its light illuminating the road and himself, but no one noticed his approach. One masked and mounted man held the coachman and footman at gunpoint; the other two ruffians had dismounted, the better to assist their victims in the removal of their valuables. No removal of valuables appeared to be taking place, however. The French comtesse was in the throes of rather loud hysterics, collapsed on the ground with Lady Fortrose attending her, her shrieks shrill and incoherent. The baron was berating the villains in overwrought Russian, arms flailing, voice booming, as stentorian as a watchman, quite drowning out the rogues’ attempts to impose order. One scoundrel was futilely commanding everyone to shut up, while the other was repeating, in rather harassed tones, the standard demand of highwaymen everywhere: “Your money or your lives!”

The French shrieks and Russian oration perfectly concealed the ever-so-faint crunch of Dex’s footsteps. He slowed from headlong run to stealthy tiptoe, slipping silently into the shadows on the far side of the coach, directing his attention to the mounted highwayman first. He appeared to be the least distracted of the three villains, and it wouldn’t do for anyone to be shot.

Dex didn’t have a blunderbuss, but that didn’t mean that he was helpless. Far from it. He was one of only ten people in England who possessed magic—the other nine being his father, grandfather, three uncles, and four cousins—and he could rout a trio of highwaymen with both hands tied behind his back.

He needed to rout them without anyone noticing the magic, though.

Rather obligingly, a cloud drifted over the moon, plunging the road into gloom.

Levitation was the magic that Dex possessed, and he used it now, lifting the mounted highwayman from his saddle, hoisting the man high, flinging him into the clutch of one of the hulking, shadowy trees that lined the road. He floated the blunderbuss from the villain’s grip while he was at it and lobbed it into the dark embrace of the night.

The man yelped, but the sound was swallowed by the comtesse’s shrieks and the baron’s bellows.

One ruffian down.

The coachman and footman were dim shapes on the box, staring stiffly ahead, fearful of the blunderbuss. Dex hurried to them and gripped the coachman’s ankle. The man yelped, much as the highwayman had yelped.

“Quiet!” Dex whispered fiercely. “Hold the horses steady and leave everything to me.”

The highwayman’s mount stood riderless. Dex released the coachman’s ankle, scooped up a stone, and flung it at the horse’s hindquarters, his aim aided by more judicious application of his magic.

The horse bolted down the road at a gallop.

Dex slipped around to the other side of the carriage.

The moon began to reappear, shedding ghostly silver light upon the scene. The comtesse’s shrieks petered out and the baron fell silent. Everyone—robbers and victims alike—was staring in the direction of the rapidly departing and riderless horse.

“Joe? You all right?” one of the two remaining highwaymen called out.

“Help!” Joe wailed from the tree Dex had flung him into.

The two villains exchanged a glance. Both had mufflers concealing their lower faces. One man leveled a pistol at Lady Fortrose and her companions; the other holstered his weapon, strode to his horse, grabbed the reins, and swung up into the saddle. Dex assisted him, his magic boosting the man up and over his horse. He fell in the dirt on the other side with a thump and a squawk.

There was an astonished silence.

Dex chortled soundlessly, and used his magic to relieve the fallen highwayman of his pistol, levitating it from the man’s holster, disposing of it stealthily in the shrubs on the far side of the road. The moon was fully out now, but no one would notice such sleight of hand.

“Harry?” the last highwayman standing said. “What you doin’?”

Harry scrambled to his feet and ran around his horse, belligerent and bewildered in the moonlight. Dex stepped forward to meet him. He punched the man solidly on the chin. A touch of levitation and the highwayman soared backwards across the full width of the road before tumbling into the ditch.

It looked rather impressive.

“Heh,” Dex said, rather pleased with himself. He shook out his fist and turned to find everyone was staring at him—comtesse, baron, viscountess, highwayman.

The sole pistol was pointing at him now, too.

He realized his danger an instant before the highwayman fired. There was a crack of sound, but his magic levitated the bullet, up into the dark sky, where it expended its lethal energy harmlessly.

Dex strode to the highwayman, took hold of the barrel of the pistol, wrenched it from his grip, and tossed it away.

The highwayman uttered a sound that was neither yelp nor squawk but more a bark of astonishment. He put up his fists.

Dex punched him. The blow didn’t connect well, his knuckles barely grazing the man’s cheek, but only he and the highwayman knew that. His magic did the rest: lifting the man off his feet, hurling him back into the carriage with a resounding thud.

The highwayman slid down the side of the carriage as if his legs were boneless and collapsed in a heap on the road.

“Heh,” Dex said again, very pleased with himself. It was rather fun playing the hero. He shook out his fist for verisimilitude and turned to his rescuees. Was that a word? Rescuee? He decided it was.

They were all staring at him, the comtesse lying on the road, propped up on one elbow, Lady Fortrose kneeling alongside her, the baron standing, with his mouth open and his arms frozen in mid-oratory flail.

“Everyone all right?” Dex inquired.

His rescuees gaped at him.

While they were gaping, the second highwayman, Harry, scrambled out of the ditch and attempted to mount his horse. Dex assisted him magically again, up and over and into the dirt on the other side. He couldn’t repress a cackle. This was rather amusing. He grinned at his audience and repeated his question: “Everyone all right?”

There was a moment’s pause, and then Lady Fortrose said, “Yes. Thank you.”

“My pleasure, ma’am.” He gave a sweeping bow.

Harry made another attempt to climb onto his horse. Up and over he went, landing in the dirt again. Dex decided that three times was enough for that particular trick. He crossed to the confused horse and gave its haunch a hearty slap. The beast took off into the night.

Harry looked up at him from the dirt. His muffler had slipped down below his nose. Above it, his eyes were very round, the whites showing.

“I’d run, if I were you,” Dex informed him.

Harry hauled himself to his feet and did just that.

Dex listened until the man’s footfalls had faded to nothing, then turned back to the carriage. Lady Fortrose and the baron were fussing over the comtesse, helping her to her feet, brushing the dirt from her gown. The footman had climbed down from the box and was gingerly brandishing a blunderbuss at the third highwayman. The coachman sat high above them all, reins in hand, horses firmly under control, commanding the footman to “Hold the fiend there! Don’t let him get away!”

The footman looked as if he wanted to climb back up on the box. He retreated a step as the third highwayman staggered to his feet. The ruffian steadied himself against the coach for a moment, then lurched towards his horse.

“I think not,” Dex said. A flick of his fingers and a stone levitated up from the ground and pinged the horse on its rump. The animal set off down the road with a thunder of hooves.

The highwayman stared after it in dismay.

The footman gingerly brandished the blunderbuss again.

Dex removed the weapon from the servant’s grip. He was likely to shoot someone’s foot off, holding it like that. “Off you go,” he told the highwayman. “Unless you wish to decorate the gallows?”

The highwayman tottered hurriedly into the darkness.

Dex chortled under his breath, very pleased with himself. He turned back to the coach. The viscountess, the comtesse, and the baron were all staring at him.

Dex stopped feeling quite so pleased with himself. Why were they looking at him like that? It wasn’t as if anyone could have seen him use his magic. It was nighttime, after all. They’d think he’d thrown that stone at the horse, not flicked it with his magic.

“Well, that was an adventure!” he declared, rather inanely.

The comtesse and the baron exchanged a glance. Lady Fortrose regarded him with narrow-eyed thoughtfulness.

The footman scurried over to the comtesse and busied himself brushing the most obvious dirt from her gown, the coachman was intent on his horses, but the viscountess, comtesse, and baron were all looking at Dex as if they might possibly have noticed the magic. Which they couldn’t have, because it was the middle of the night and the moon, while bright, wasn’t that bright.

Dex cleared his throat with a disconcerted “Er-hem,” and turned away from those unsettling stares. He gave a piercing whistle and shouted, “You can come along now!”

His grandfather’s carriage came along.

“The rogues are long gone,” Dex assured Lady Fortrose and her companions. “You’re safe now, I promise.”

His rescuees didn’t look completely convinced. In fact, they looked rather dubious. And they were all still staring at him.

Dex decided that those stares were because they doubted their safety. It had been a rather alarming incident, after all. They’d probably been in fear of their lives.

“I tell you what, I’ll ride up on your box with the coachman. I’ll carry this blunderbuss. No one will dare stop us.”

This pronouncement didn’t appear to overwhelm his rescuees with relief. They still showed an alarming tendency to stare at him. They did, however, climb back into their carriage. Dex closed the door and scrambled up onto the box seat, alongside the coachman and footman.

The coach lurched into motion with a clip-clop of hooves. His grandfather’s coach fell in behind.

Dex cradled the blunderbuss on his lap. Wimbledon Heath trundled past on either side—shrubs, bushes, trees. The moon shone down, a bright silver disk, beautiful and indifferent.

All was well in the world—viscountess rescued, highwaymen routed—but he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was wrong.

Chapter Two

“Did you see that, mes amies?” Minette asked, in the dark, swaying closeness of the carriage.

“I saw a number of things,” Ella replied. “Which one are you referring to?”

“That is rather the question,” Arthur rumbled, from his corner of the carriage.

Ella nodded, although it was too dark for either of her companions to see that gesture.

Minette and Arthur had been their usual marvelous unflappable selves, setting up such a fuss that the highwaymen had been on the verge of abandoning them to seek easier prey . . . and then that had happened. Although Ella wasn’t quite certain what that had been.

“His punch sent the fellow clear across the road,” Arthur said. “Five or six yards. Not sure if that’s possible, not without a rope and pulley.”

Ella agreed: she didn’t think it was possible. The highwayman had pitched across the road as if a giant invisible hand had grabbed the back of his coat and yanked.

She’d also seen the same highwayman fling himself over his horse and land in the dirt on the other side, which could conceivably happen if a man were panicked enough, but . . . three times?

Again, it made one think of giant invisible hands.

And then there’d been that stone. She could have sworn that Mr. Pryor hadn’t thrown anything, but she’d definitely seen a stone strike the final horse’s rump.

Which brought one back to invisible hands.

“What happened to le troisième brigand?” Minette asked.

“Who knows,” Ella said, but something obviously had happened to the third highwayman, because there’d been that plaintive “Help,” from back in the trees. What had Pryor done to the man, and how?

She frowned. Decimus Pryor had singlehandedly defeated three highwaymen. Without a weapon. It did seem rather unlikely. Pryor was a dilettante, not a soldier. He was skilled at flirting, not fighting.

But the alternative, that he’d had help from an invisible person—a giant?—a ghost?—seemed even more unlikely.

“I think . . . I shall invite him to take tea with us tomorrow afternoon.”

“An interrogation?” Arthur inquired.

“An interrogation,” Ella agreed.

Minette gave a delighted clap of her hands. “We shall pluck out his secrets like a worm from its shell!”

There was a beat of silence; then Arthur said, “Snail.”

Chapter Three

As a fifteen-year-old, Ella had stepped out of the schoolroom and into marriage with a man forty years her senior. A man who’d ruled every aspect of her life.

Her husband had chosen the clothes she had worn, her gowns and her bonnets, her shoes, even her underclothes: stockings, petticoats, chemises. He’d decided how her hair was styled and what perfumes she wore, what jewels she adorned herself with—diamonds and pearls only—just as he’d decided when she left the house and when she didn’t, which shops she patronized, which invitations she accepted, which books she read, even what food she ate.

It had almost been a continuance of her childhood—obedience to a stern parent’s authority—except that Francis had been assiduous in asserting his conjugal rights. Not that his assiduousness had been fruitful; Ella had proven barren, her monthly flow so intermittent that it barely qualified as a yearly flow.

Francis had favored cool shades of gray and white, with the occasional foray into pale, icy blues and delicate celadons. After his death, when she’d begun to think for herself, Ella decided that he’d chosen her as his bride because of her coloring: the white-blonde hair and wintry blue eyes.

In the six years of her marriage, Ella hadn’t been allowed to make a single decision. At first, it hadn’t occurred to her that she could. Later, she hadn’t dared. Widowhood had been a liberation, an escape from a cramped and cloistered prison. With Minette and Arthur’s help she’d avoided a return to her father’s house and his power over her, just as she’d avoided being subsumed into the new viscount’s household and the rôle he’d intended for her, that of grateful, mouselike widow.

Ella had been the most meek and obedient of wives, but as a widow she had learned to be colorful, bold, free. No one told her what she could and couldn’t do, what she couldn’t eat or wear or think or say. No one said, “You can’t have marigold and amber and gold all in one room,” or “You can’t wear crimson.” Instead, Minette and Arthur encouraged her to live as loudly and brightly as possible. Her wardrobe brimmed with color and so did her house. There were no diamonds and pearls in her jewelry box, not a scrap of pastel in her wardrobe, just as there were no rooms decorated in cool, pale colors, no whites, no smoke grays or dove grays, no frosty blues, no celadon. Everything was a feast for the eye: clothes that made her feel happy, rooms that were vibrant and welcoming, furniture that was exuberantly comfortable.

Francis would have hated the house and her clothes; Ella loved them. “My life, my choice,” she sometimes whispered to herself when there was no one to overhear, touching fingertips to a sumptuous brocade curtain, a saffron-colored cushion, a flamboyant ormolu clock.

One such clock, with frolicking nymphs and satyrs, was currently gazing down upon Ella, Arthur, Minette, and Decimus Pryor from the mantelpiece in Ella’s second-best parlor. The nymphs and satyrs were all beaming sunnily; Ella was not, because a man she’d sworn never to encourage was sipping her tea and attempting to flirt with her.

It wasn’t that Pryor was repugnant. He was as good-looking as he was personable, which was to say, very—the midnight black hair, the dark eyes, the strong jaw—but he had no substance. He was a bandbox creature, a man with nothing better to do than to look handsome, crack jokes, and talk his way into ladies’ beds.

Ella had held few opinions about men before her marriage. She’d dreamed of being swept off her feet by a dashing hero or a handsome prince, as most schoolgirls did. She had spared little thought as to what the character of that hero or prince might be, other than that he’d be noble and virtuous and, in some nebulous way, perfect for her. By the end of her marriage, she’d wanted nothing to do with men—not to be controlled by them, not to be told what to do by them, not even to be touched by them.

But then Minette and Arthur had swept into her life, bringing with them color, warmth, laughter, joie de vivre. To her astonishment, she’d discovered that life could be enjoyable. Eventually, she’d wondered whether sexual congress could be enjoyable, too. She hadn’t wanted a husband—she never wanted one of those again—but lovers? Why not?

Rakes had never tempted her—who wanted to be a notch among many on a bedpost?—but dandies, with their dazzling appearance, briefly had. She’d quickly learned that color didn’t equate to character. Her preference was for men with more depth than shallow, frivolous popinjays like the specimen currently sitting in her second-best parlor. Men who didn’t look for the mirror whenever they walked into a room and who didn’t surreptitiously preen when they thought no one was looking. Not that Pryor had done either of those two things yet. He was too busy responding to Arthur’s effusive compliments and Minette’s rather less effusive words of praise, while simultaneously drinking his tea and attempting to flirt with Ella.

Ella eyed him over the rim of her cup. Decimus Pryor. Possessor of a handsome face, a glib tongue, and no substance whatsoever. A rake and a dandy, a libertine, a man whose sole purpose in life was to inveigle his way into young widows’ beds.

A man who had put three highwaymen to rout.

Or possibly, one whose invisible companion had put three highwaymen to rout.

Arthur was still in his Russian manifestation, jovial and big-bellied and bewhiskered, taking up most of the three-seater sofa. Minette, petite and elegant, was perched on a sumptuous Louis XV bergère. Pryor had chosen what was Ella’s favorite armchair, a Chippendale with a winged back, red upholstery, and lion’s paw feet. It irritated her, somewhat irrationally, that out of all the chairs and sofas in the room, he’d chosen her favorite.

Arthur was currently extolling Pryor’s bravery in thickly accented English speckled with the occasional Russian word, a pastiche that rolled off his tongue as easily as if he had been born in Saint Petersburg, not Bristol.

Pryor appeared rather disconcerted by the deluge of praise but, disconcerted or not, he was also throwing out lures to Ella: laughing glances and playful little smiles, compliments turned deftly away from himself and presented to her instead—forays into flirtation that Ella was ruthlessly ignoring. She had no intention of inviting Pryor into a dalliance, however good-looking he might be and regardless of whether they had the same taste in armchairs. He met none of her criteria in a paramour. He had no substance, no seriousness. Ella had so far had four lovers—an earl’s son who wrote poignant sonnets, an aristocratic sculptor who was fascinated by the female form, a quiet baronet who painted watercolors, and a gentleman scholar who wrote essays on emancipation and civil society—all earnest, erudite men, men who held women in high regard and didn’t reduce them to playthings and conquests.

Unlike Decimus Pryor.

“But you were not alone, no?” Minette said. “Who was your companion?”

Pryor stopped looking at Ella and returned his attention to Minette. “My companions? You mean the coachman and footman? They were behind—”

“No, no. I mean the person who helped you to fight les brigands.”

Mr. Pryor’s smile began to look wary rather than playful. “I assure you, ma’am, I was alone.”

“But you were not. There was someone to help you.”

“It was a frightening experience, ma’am,” Pryor said, his manner becoming slightly condescending. “You were overwrought—”

“Bah! I was not overwrought. Moi, I see everything, and I see a man fly across a road as if he has been seized by an invisible giant.”

An expression that could almost be alarm flitted across Pryor’s face, and was immediately replaced by a charming smile. “Ma’am,” he said, his tone light and amused and still with that hint of condescension. “I can assure you that there were no invisible—”

“I saw it, too,” Arthur put in. “Thought perhaps it was a ghost. Was it?”

Pryor chuckled, a sound that was probably meant to be merry rather than uneasy. “I assure you, sir, there were no invisible men or ghosts with me.”

“Then who threw that stone?” Ella asked.

His gaze flicked to her.

Ella gave him a steely smile. “The stone that hit that last horse on the rump . . . who threw it, Mr. Pryor?”

Pryor put down his teacup and uttered another uneasy laugh. “I did, of course.”

Ella shook her head. “No, you didn’t.”

“Someone else threw it.” Arthur leaned forward on the sofa, ponderous and dignified, pinning Pryor with an imperious stare. He was channeling one of the many kings he’d played on stage. “Just as someone flung that highwayman across the road.”

“An invisible person!” Minette declared.

“Or a ghost,” Ella put in, although she wasn’t certain she believed in ghosts.

“There was no ghost,” Pryor said emphatically. “And no invisible person.”

“Then it was . . . how do you call it? . . . la magie?”

“No, of course it wasn’t magic.”

Pryor’s voice was just as emphatic, but his pitch was a little higher, a little sharper, his cadence slightly staccato.

Arthur had spent years treading the boards, pretending to be people he wasn’t, surrounded by other actors who were also pretending. He was good at hearing when something didn’t quite ring true. Ella didn’t have that skill, so she glanced at him to see what he thought of the change in Pryor’s voice.

Arthur looked dumbstruck. Which meant . . .

That Pryor had just lied?

That what they’d witnessed last night had been magic?

Ella glanced at Minette, so that they could share a moment of shocked incredulity, but Minette was looking at Pryor, her eyes narrow with speculation.

Arthur recovered his voice. “Aha!” he cried. “It was magic!” He forgot his Russian accent in his excitement, but Pryor didn’t notice.

“Nonsense! Magic doesn’t exist.” He slipped his watch from its pocket in his waistcoat and glanced at it. “Oh, is that the time? I really must—”

“All three of us saw it, monsieur,” Minette said.

Mr. Pryor shoved his watch back into his pocket and stood. “It was dark and you were overwrought and—”

“I was playing la dame hystérique and Arthur was playing l’homme frénétique, but we were not overwrought and we were not blind,” Minette told him rather tartly.

“It’s not magic!” Pryor said. He’d lost his duke’s-grandson cockiness and the rakishness. Gone was the suaveness, the playfulness, the swagger.

“Does your grandfather know?” Ella asked.

Minette seized upon that idea. “But of course! We must visit le duc and ask him.”

“Excellent notion,” Arthur said, his Russian accent firmly back in place. “Where does the duke live? Here in London?”

“Gloucestershire,” Ella informed him. “Linwood Castle. If we leave at first light tomorrow, we’ll be there by—”

“Don’t!” Mr. Pryor said, putting up both hands in a gesture that shouted Stop! “Please, don’t.”

“Does he not know about la magie?” Minette enquired.

Pryor parted his lips, and then closed them again without speaking. He looked worried, hunted, harassed.

Ella was conscious of a prick of conscience, a prick of guilt. Pressing him like this wasn’t kind; it was, in fact, akin to bullying.

If Pryor did indeed possess magic, it was a sizable secret to have. A potentially dangerous secret. A secret that he would naturally be afraid to share with anyone.

“We’re very good at keeping confidences,” she assured him.

Pryor’s glance was sardonic and mistrustful and more than a little bitter. A corner of Ella’s brain noted that he was surprisingly attractive when he looked at her like that. Here was the substance that she liked in her men, the authenticity, the absence of affectation and calculated charm.

She ignored that observation, just as she was ignoring the fact that they had the same taste in armchairs. “How about a bargain, Mr. Pryor? We give you one of our secrets in exchange for your secret.”

Everyone in the room frowned at her—Arthur, Minette, Pryor.

“We’re asking him to trust us,” Ella told her companions. “Therefore, we should show him that we can be trusted.”

Minette and Arthur exchanged a dubious glance. Ella understood their concern. The secrets the three of them shared were mostly Arthur’s and Minette’s, not hers.

Arthur stirred uneasily on the sofa. Minette plucked at the rings encrusting her thin fingers. Pryor’s gaze flicked between them. His eyes were narrow and he was clearly wondering what secrets a French comtesse and Russian baron could possibly be hiding. Then his attention shifted to her. There was nothing flirtatious in that gaze, just pure suspicion.

Ella noted again that he was very attractive when he wasn’t playing the rake.

Arthur inhaled a deep, bracing breath and reluctantly opened his mouth.

“I’m not a comtesse,” Minette declared.

Pryor blinked, and looked away from Ella. He frowned at Minette. “You’re not?”

Ella understood his doubtfulness. Minette occupied the Louis XV bergère as regally as if it were a throne. Her silvering black hair was immaculately coiffed, her posture was proud, the thin arch of her eyebrows supercilious, her nose patrician. She was elegant and aristocratic from the crown of her head to the very expensive tips of her shoes.

“Non. Me, I am an opera dancer.”

Pryor’s frown deepened, eyebrows drawing together until they almost touched. He had the expression of a man who believed his leg was being pulled.

Minette smiled at him, aloof and haughty, every inch a comtesse, and then she tilted her head slightly and the smile became saucy and more than a little wicked. The comtesse was gone; seated in Ella’s second-best parlor was a retired opera dancer.

Pryor uttered a startled, uncertain laugh. “Good Lord. You mean . . . it’s true?” He glanced at Ella, as if for confirmation.

She nodded.

Pryor’s bemused gaze returned to Minette.

Minette’s smile become roguish, almost vulgar. She winked at him.

Pryor rocked back on his heels and gave another of those uncertain laughs. He looked quite nonplussed.

Ella waited for his bemusement to reshape itself into outrage. He was a duke’s grandson, after all. He wouldn’t approve of a French opera dancer infiltrating the ton.

Pryor let out a guffaw, so loud and unexpected that Ella jumped in her chair. “Bravo, madam,” he exclaimed, clapping his hands. “You must have set the stage on fire.”

“I was très magnifique,” Minette said, with no modesty whatsoever.

“I don’t doubt it. I’m sorry I never saw you perform.” And he did indeed look sorry to have missed that spectacle.

Ella eyed him. Decimus Pryor clearly had more depth than she’d thought, but that didn’t mean that she liked him. “A secret for a secret, Mr. Pryor?” she reminded him.

Pryor lost his grin.

“You can see for yourself that we know how to keep secrets.”

Pryor glanced at Arthur, as if wondering whether the Russian baron wasn’t who he claimed to be either.

Arthur gave him an inscrutable smile.

“La magie,” Minette prompted.

Pryor shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He clearly didn’t want to reveal his secret to them. He looked at Ella, nothing flirtatious in his gaze, just . . . worry.

Botheration, there was the substance again, making her almost like him, making her want to reassure him that whatever he told them wouldn’t leave this room, that he was safe from exposure.

“I won’t reveal your secret to anyone,” Ella told him. “I give you my word of honor.” If she’d heard the lie in Pryor’s voice earlier, she hoped he heard the truth in hers now.

Pryor stared at her for several seconds, then pressed his lips together and sat. He picked up his teacup, frowned at it, and drank what was left.

No one prompted him to divulge his secret. They all knew surrender when they saw it.

Pryor put the cup back in its saucer with a clatter. He lifted his head and looked from Arthur to Minette, his expression close to scowling. “I must have your words of honor, too.”

“Je te donne ma parole d’honneur,” Minette said, laying a hand over her heart.

Arthur made the same gesture. “You have my word,” he said, his Russian accent firmly back in place.

Pryor’s almost-scowl didn’t abate. Ella preferred it to the many times he’d tried to flirt with her. This was the real man, harassed and uncertain. Not flippant, not cocky, and definitely not swaggering.

Pryor blew out a breath and rubbed above one eyebrow, as if a headache gathered there. “You weren’t supposed to notice, any of you,” he said accusingly. “You were having hysterics and you were pounding your chest and shouting and you were being a ministering angel—”

“Appearances can be deceptive,” Arthur reminded him.

Pryor harrumphed and rubbed his forehead again.

“Were you alone last night?” Ella asked.

He glanced at her and nodded.

“So . . . it was magic?”

He grimaced, then nodded again.

“How?” Ella asked.

“Yes, how?” Minette leaned forward, alert and expectant.

Pryor pulled a face. “You won’t believe me.”

“Don’t make assumptions, young man,” Arthur told him.

Pryor huffed out another breath, rubbed his forehead again, and said, “I have a Faerie godmother.”

Ella barked a laugh of disbelief, clapping a hand over her mouth too late to muffle the sound.

Pryor tipped his eyebrows up, a sardonic I knew you wouldn’t believe me on his face.

Ella liked him even more. She lowered her hand. “How is that possible? A Faerie godmother!”

Pryor shrugged. “No one knows. Lost in the mists of time.”

“What does she look like?” Arthur asked, at the same time that Minette said, “Did she give you three wishes?”

Pryor glanced from one to the other. “She looks rather like you, ma’am, except that her eyes are pure black and her teeth are as sharp as a fox’s. She gives us one wish each, on our twenty-fifth birthdays. I chose levitation.” He looked at Ella as he said those last words, as if challenging her to scoff at his choice.

“You can fly?” Arthur asked.

“After a fashion. And I can make things fly. Any person or object.”

“Les brigands!” Minette cried, clapping her hands.

“That stone,” Arthur said.

Pryor nodded.

“So, when that highwayman leaped right over his horse three times . . . ?” Ella asked.

Pryor grinned, a startlingly attractive flash of amusement. “That was me.” A hint of cockiness returned in the tilt of his chin.

“Who else in your family can do magic?” Arthur asked.

Pryor lost his grin and that cocky chin-tilt. “A few of us. Not everyone.”

“The duke?” Ella asked.

Pryor hesitated, and that hesitation was as good as a Yes.

“What can le duc do?” Minette asked eagerly.

Pryor hesitated again. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, ma’am, but it isn’t my secret to tell.”

Minette accepted this with a nod. “But of course. You must protect your family.” She leaned across to pat his hand. “You are a good boy.”

Pryor went faintly pink at this praise.

“So you were alone when you vanquished les brigands last night? Bravo! You are un héro. Tell us it all, from the very beginning.”

Pryor became even pinker, ducking his head a little and glancing at Ella again. He looked bashful and boyish and not at all rakish. Ella had to remind herself that she didn’t like him. Decimus Pryor was a dandy and a flirt, and as soon as he recovered from his uncharacteristic and momentary bout of modesty he’d resume his attempts to cajole his way into her bed. That, or look for a mirror to preen in.

He told a good tale, though. Ella found herself leaning forward like Minette and hanging on his every word. She listened raptly to Pryor’s account of the previous night’s events, from the moment his own carriage had halted to the stone that had encouraged the final horse to gallop away.

In the middle of the recital, Pryor mentioned the bullet he’d turned aside.

Ella had forgotten about the bullet. Pryor’s magic wouldn’t have protected him if that bullet had struck him in the heart. Or the face. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

He could have been maimed, or worse, killed.

It was a horrifying thought. Decimus Pryor might be a peacock and a libertine, but he’d come to their aid last night, had confronted three armed highwaymen, had saved them.

Ella was uncomfortably aware that she might have misjudged him. Pryor wasn’t the lightweight she’d thought him. Not if he’d hidden a secret of this magnitude for years. Not if he was prepared to risk his life for people he barely knew. The cockiness had fooled her, the swagger, his incessant need to flirt. Beneath the frivolous veneer was someone who possessed discretion, ingenuity, and courage.

She poured fresh cups of tea all around, listened to Minette and Arthur’s eager interrogation, and tried to ignore how attractive Pryor was—that mobile mouth, the laughter in his eyes, his hands.

Hands were one of the things Ella always noticed in a man, and Pryor’s hands were just about perfect: broad palms and long fingers and blunt, clean nails. Masculine hands, strong and capable. His calves and his shoulders were good, too, no padding there. The nape of his neck was fortunately hidden beneath shirt and neckcloth, waistcoat and tailcoat.

Napes were her Achilles heel.

There was something about the bare nape of a man’s neck that plucked at her heartstrings, something vulnerable. Ella had only discovered this weakness in herself recently and she was determined not to indulge it. Men were anything but vulnerable, bare napes or not, and imagining that they were vulnerable was the sort of thinking that made women fall into the trap of marriage.

Her motto regarding matrimony was simple: Never again.

“Could you lift me up to the ceiling?” Arthur asked.

Pryor shrugged. “If you wish.”

Arthur stood with alacrity.

“Ah . . . the servants?” Pryor glanced at the door. It had no lock. Few of the doors in the house did.

“The servants won’t enter unless we ring for them,” Ella said. “I told them we weren’t to be disturbed.”

Pryor nodded, and turned to Arthur. “Are you ready, sir?”

“Da!” Arthur said, grinning and bouncing on his toes. He looked as excited as a boy.

Pryor made a gesture, a turning up of his palm.

Arthur rose from the floor. He ascended gently, slowly, until his grizzled gray hair almost brushed the ceiling. The polished toes of his shoes dangled above the sofa he’d been sitting on.

Ella gazed up at him, open-mouthed and amazed.

“Make him fly!” Minette requested excitedly.

Pryor waited for Arthur’s nod, then obeyed this decree. Arthur canted in the air, his legs rising until he lay almost flat, his not-insubstantial belly bulging downward, gravity warring with his corset. After a moment, he put his arms out like wings.

“Ready, sir?” Pryor asked.

Arthur grinned down at them. “Ready!”

He began a slow circumnavigation of the room.

Ella discovered that she was holding her breath and clutching her hands to her breast.

“Faster!” Arthur cried.

Pryor obeyed that decree, too. Ella watched, open-mouthed, hands still clutched to her breast, as Arthur began to glide more swiftly—to fly—swooping around her second-best parlor like a great gray-haired, big-bellied bird.

She hoped he’d glued his wig on well. Otherwise he might become a big-bellied bald bird.

Arthur was hooting with laughter. Ella discovered that she was laughing, too. This was absurd and impossible and breathtaking and it was happening in her parlor.

Magic. Flying.

She wanted to fly, too.

“A figure eight!” Arthur cried, so excited that he’d forgotten his Russian accent again.

Pryor obliged, steering Arthur into a figure eight, once, and then twice, and then he brought Arthur low, his belly barely skimming above the tea table, a swift swoop that made them all shriek with alarm—including Arthur—then shriek equally loudly with laughter.