Fascination -and- Charmed (54 page)

Calum turned away, but Struan caught his arm. “No,” he murmured. “No, she should not be here.”

Calum followed the direction of Struan’s anguished stare. Led by Mrs. Lushbottam, Ella, blindfolded and still dressed in the black velvet cloak, haltingly entered the room. As if a cold wind had passed over the scene, the writhing gradually subsided. Participants in the debauchery slowly eased away from one another and, fastening what clothes they could reach, made a space among them.

“We trust you have enjoyed our little entertainment,” Mrs. Lushbottam said, her lipless mouth parting in what might have been a smile. “Now for a very special treat before I send you home to your beds. Some of you have been awaiting this moment. I had not intended it to come tonight, but”—she looked directly at Struan—“I do believe it is time to begin the bidding.”

“Bidding?”
Struan said under his breath. “By God, she intends to auction the girl off.”

“You might as well understand that I am by no means ready to accept offers for my greatest treasure. However, times are difficult and I must be sensible. Please, those interested should write the nature of that interest—in detail—on their cards and leave them in the crystal dish that has been placed by the front door.”

Utter stillness had fallen again.

“Ella,” Mrs. Lushbottam said, removing the girl’s blindfold, “it is time to take off your cloak.”

The girl’s golden face with its great, dark, almond-shaped eyes turned a paler shade. She clutched the neck of the robe even tighter.

“Ella is an innocent,” Mrs. Lushbottam announced with audible relish. “Such a prize. Take off the cloak, child.”

For another instant the girl hesitated; then she parted the velvet garment, pushed it back from her shoulders and let it fall.

A collective sigh rippled around the room, punctuated with exclamations of awe from women as well as men.

Beneath the robe, a modestly cut gown gained the effect for which it had been designed. Of cobweb-transparent red muslin, rather than cover the astonishing body beneath, the filmy gown cast a rose-tinted glow over golden skin. Dampened, the fabric clung to uptilted nipples that had hardened under the crowd’s scrutiny. The girl’s breasts were perfectly round and provocatively pointed at the tips in a way that sent the tongues of many men present in hungry circles around their lips.

A triangle of black hair showed clearly at the juncture of slender thighs.

When Ella made futile attempts to cover herself, Mrs. Lushbottam turned her around to display her rounded bottom, and Struan took a violent step forward. Calum restrained him. He put his mouth close to the other man’s. “You cannot make a move here. Take my word. Nothing is going to happen. That crone is accomplished with her tricks. She intends to do exactly as she has promised. The stakes will dizzy many heads before she sells this Ella’s so-called untouched charms.”

“I’m going to pay whatever the woman asks.”

Calum groaned. “And you will be paying what has doubtless been paid many times before. Heed me,
please.
I have seen more of this world than you.”

“You do not know how much of this world I have seen,” Struan retorted, and not for the first time, Calum was puzzled by an unaccustomed distance he felt between himself and his boyhood companion.

“Perhaps,” Calum said finally. “That is obviously of no account now. She is leaving. It is my guess that this show takes place from time to time and that it always nets the woman a treasure in attempted bribes. Forget the girl. She could leave if she wanted to. Remember that.”

“It is you who are naive,” Struan said. “There are things in this world about which you know nothing.”

Calum didn’t argue that his eyes were as old as those of any man who had been about in their particular world for four and thirty years.

With the departure of Ella, revelry broke out once more, and Calum, with Struan at his elbow, escaped gladly into the foyer.

Entering from a door behind the staircase, Mrs. Lushbottam joined them. To Struan she said, “No doubt you will be leaving your card, sir. It’ll take a generous man to win my Ella. Remember that and plan accordingly. Your parties have returned, Mr. Innes.”

Calum frowned, then registered what she’d said. “Very well. Come, Struan, it’s time.” It had been more than an hour already. One look at his companion’s face promised more trouble to come unless he could be persuaded to forget Mrs. Lushbottam’s succulent “offering.”

Struan climbed the ten flights of stairs to the top story quietly enough. Perhaps he would regain his senses more rapidly than Calum feared he would.

The door Calum sought was at the end of the narrow hallway where the ceiling beneath the attic sloped down far enough to make it necessary for him and Struan to bow their heads.

Calum knocked, and jumped when the door flew open and he was faced with the stooped, white-haired form of Milo, the Mystical Healer, Detector of Ills, Bearer of Forgotten Powers. Calum knew this title from the painted boards he’d seen displayed on the sides of the cart Milo and his sister, Miranda, used for their unending round of the fairs of England, Scotland and Wales.

Milo peered up at Calum from beneath jutting, shaggy brows as white as his hair. “You,” he said, his mouth turning down. He attempted to slam the door shut, but Calum’s booted foot happened to be in the way. “We told you not to come back,” Milo said. “You can do us great harm and we cannot help you further.”

“Is it him, Milo?” a querulous voice asked from the dim recesses of the room beyond. “Is it the child?”

“Sleep,” Milo ordered, frowning ferociously at his visitors. “Go. Now. My sister is exhausted. Our life isn’t easy. We don’t need your meddling to make it worse.”

“Miranda is ill?” Calum asked, feeling some guilt at knowing that his primary concern was the possibility of losing his one definite source of information.

“She’s tired, is all,” the man said. “Go away.”

“Red-haired one?” the woman called. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” Calum said, forcing his way past Milo. “Come, Struan, and meet my friends Milo and Miranda. They travel around the country with fairs and sometimes with troupes of traveling players. They make marvelous potions that help all manner of ailments, and wherever they go, people await their coming with great hope.” He noted a softening in Milo’s stance and approached a narrow bed on the far side of the small room.

“It is you,” the woman in the bed said. Unlike her brother, her sand-colored hair had not begun to turn gray. She appeared still young, although closer inspection revealed a network of fine lines on her handsome face. “Who is with you?”

“This is…” Calum hesitated, looking at Struan.

“I am Struan, Viscount Hunsingore,” Struan said without hesitation and offered the woman a polite bow. “Calum has told me about you. I wanted to come with him. He tells me you know about the place and circumstances of his birth.”

“Say nothing more.” Milo spoke loudly and shuffled to the side of the bed. “I told you, Miranda. Say nothing more, or we shall be punished.
She
will punish us.”

“It is so long ago now,” Miranda said, making an effort to sit up. “The time has come for justice to be done, just as I always knew it would.”

“She warned you to say nothing,” Milo insisted, wringing his bony hands.

“Hush,” Miranda said, but she smiled gently. “No one has seen her since…Not since she left.”

“They’ve seen Guido and he insists she lives still, and that she wishes only to forget.”

“Then she should have considered her actions before she committed such a crime,” Miranda said. “There are evil things I am powerless to change. But it is time to right this wrong. I feel it. I have felt it ever since the child found us.”

“Child?” Struan said, clearly puzzled.

“The child who was brought to the camp beneath the hill where Franchot Castle stands,” Miranda said.

Struan frowned deeply and met Calum’s eyes.

“Sores,” Milo said, his voice rising to a wail. “Wounds and festering. Bones that break at a touch. Fingernails and toenails that fall out in the breeze. Eyes that will no longer see. All these were promised to us if the silence were ever to be broken.”

“Rachel is no more!” Miranda said sharply. “She has not been seen in many years, not since the boy was sick and she took him to find help.”

Rachel.
Calum heard the name and took it to his heart.

“I tell you she is not dead,” Milo declared with desperation. “I tell you that if you break the silence, she will find us and torture us. And there are others to whom even Rachel answers who will finish what she starts.”

“Guido told this?” Miranda asked.

“Yes,” Milo said with finality. “It is already rumored among the players that the boy who was left in Scotland did not die and—” He clapped a hand over his mouth, and veins stood out in the papery skin at his temples.

“The boy who was left in Scotland,” Calum said, dragging air into his aching lungs. “What boy who was left? Miranda told me of a baby who was brought to your camp near Franchot Castle in Cornwall. She said the baby came after the Duchess of Franchot had given birth and then died within days of that birth. Then Miranda would say no more. I implore you. Tell me all you know. I shall have no peace until I can understand everything.”

“We cannot help you,” Milo said. “Go away and leave us alone.”

“You think I was that baby, don’t you?” Some of this had been all but admitted. Now Calum wanted absolute confirmation. “Was I brought to the camp by the woman Rachel?”

“Do not say another word,” Milo implored his sister. “What is finished is finished.”

“I shall have to think,” Miranda said, and she fell back onto her pillows. “I have been ill with a fever. Now I must gain my strength again.”

“Tell me if this Rachel brought a baby to your camp in Cornwall thirty-five years ago.”

Miranda closed her eyes and said weakly, “Yes. Now leave me.”

“Go,” Milo insisted.

“Why did you think I was the Duke of Franchot?”

“For several years the child grew among the players and the performers,” Miranda said. “He grew strong and happy. We all cared for him. He carried the pan among the audience and they gave generously because he made them smile.”

Calum turned aside
. Colored cloth. Stars in dark skies. Fires. The scent of smoke and the crackle of sparks. Costumes that swirled, red and yellow and gold. Coins on headdresses. And
coins that clinked against metal in the pan he held. Laughter. “You are young to be so sure of yourself, my boy.” “See how he holds himself? Like a prince strutting among his subjects rather than a beggar-boy among his betters.”

The pictures and the voices did not come often to his mind, and never had they been as vivid as in the moment just past. “You traveled to Scotland, didn’t you, Miranda? The boy traveled with you.”

She tossed restlessly.

“Can’t you see she is exhausted?” Milo said, and Calum heard genuine concern in the old man’s voice. “Leave us, I beg you, so that I may tend her.”

“Let me help,” Calum offered. “Let me arrange a more comfortable place for you. And good food and warmth.”

“We are warm here,” Milo replied. “I thank you. But I am well equipped to tend my sister’s sickness.”

Calum looked dubiously into Milo’s bright blue eyes. “Answer me one question, and then I will go. For now. I was told by certain people in Scotland that a boy was seen with a traveling troupe near the village of Kirkcaldy. They were not expected there, but had chosen to stop because one of their number was exceedingly sick.”

“I cannot speak of this.”

“The sick one was the boy,” Calum persisted. “And he was taken to Castle Kirkcaldy and left in the stable yard because it was feared that he was dying. Someone cared enough about him to hope that the people at the castle would take him in and somehow save him.”

“No.”

“That child had come into the camp near Franchot Castle five years before, and Miranda has reason to believe he was heir to the then Duke of Franchot, but that he was stolen from his cradle.”

“
No,
I tell you.”

“Yes.” The voice, Miranda’s faint voice, came from behind Milo, and they all turned to look at her.

“Tell me,” Calum begged.

“The baby may have been a noble baby,” Miranda said. “And that baby became the boy who was left at Castle Kirkcaldy.”

“And
I
was that boy,” Calum said, making fists at his sides. “I ask only for a chance to know for sure who I am. Perhaps then I can find peace.”

“Or the beginning of a quest that may cost you your life—if you don’t lose it tomorrow morning,” Struan said, ramming his fingers through his hair. “I beg you to come with me, Calum. This night is going to cost us both dearly.”

Calum knew his friend was seeing a silent, dark-haired beauty, yet he could think clearly of nothing but the closeness of the truth about his identity.

“You must go now,” Miranda said, her voice stronger. “I have told you I will consider all these things, and I will. If I decide it is wise—and safe—I will help you.”

“When?” Calum asked in desperation.

“That will depend upon a great many things. We must discover for sure whether our lives will be in danger if we tell you more.”

“Where is this Rachel?”

“Ah,” Miranda said, smiling a little. “You have realized that she is the answer. But I cannot tell you where she is, or if she is anywhere at all. For the first, if she still lives, we may never come to you. If she does not still live, our coming to you may be fruitless in your cause. In the end, only Rachel can prove if you are who you think you may be.”

“But is there nothing you can do to help me without her?”

“There was something, something Rachel would not have dared to destroy. Perhaps we can discover where it is. It might be proof enough, or it might not. But do not press me further now.”

Calum looked at the stained ceiling. “What is this something?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“Very well.” He could not continue to fight, not tonight. “Tell me one thing and one thing only, and we will leave.”