Small Town Girl (42 page)

Jo shrieked and hugged Elise's neck. The elegant lawyer bore her embrace with fortitude and waited until Jo moved on to hug Amy before handing Flint the next folder.

"These papers transfer the Stardust into a company owned equally by the two of you. They include the bylaws and so forth if you intend to expand the business into songwriting and music management. You need to talk to a tax lawyer about copyrights."

"I wish you would set up an office down here," Flint said, flipping through the file. "We'll be needing someone like you around."

Elise shrugged. "I've been spending so much time here, I might make it my second home. Think the town could use a new lawyer?"

Amy nodded decisively. "A woman lawyer, yes. But you'll have to do more than contract law. The women here need a lawyer who will respect them."

Ashamed of her happiness in the face of her sister's heartache, Jo hugged her sister harder. "Evan might come around, honey. Just let him see what a cold, hard world it is without the ones who love you."

A stubborn look that Jo had never seen before set Amy's lips in a straight line. "I'm saying Mama needs a lawyer who can take her disability case to court. I've got my own lawyer already. Evan wants me to sell the roof over the kids' heads! I wouldn't take that sucker back now if you
gift wrapped
him."

Flint squeezed Jo's waist, easing the emotional outburst. "I'll steer both of you and your mama away from wrapping paper," he drawled, "so you're not too busy tying up Evan to hold down the restaurant. Are you ladies planning on helping out for a while?"

"They're my posse," Jo declared, escaping his hold to grab Amy and Elise by the elbows. "You sure you're ready to take on a woman with a posse?" She tossed her head and met his gaze with laughter and defiance.

Flint grinned and kissed her forehead. "Baby, I know what I like."

Whistling "Chantilly Lace," he grabbed her waist again and danced her away from the others and into the kitchen, where they could spread out the papers that would seal their future for the next thousand years or so.

Jo scrawled her signature binding her financially to Flint with the same kind of joy and satisfaction that she'd felt on their wedding day—the satisfaction of trust.

She'd found a man who was far better than fame and riches—a man so cocksure of himself that she couldn't shake him if she tried. She probably wouldn't give up trying, just to watch Flint come after her with that arrogant grin of his, but she figured their badass days were over. Respectable business owners were supposed to act like pillars of the community—in public, at least.

Jo glanced up the stairway leading to the bedroom she now shared with Flint. In private, they could be anyone they wanted. She had lots of creative plans for the future. One of them was to hang guitars on that big blank wall so they could make music and love together whenever the spirit took them.

She planned on making that happen real often.

Read on to catch a sneak peak at

MAGIC MAN

by

Patricia Rice

Available from Signet Eclipse in July 2006

PROLOGUE

Somerset, England, 1737

"No one else wanted the child, Martha. I believe she was sent to us by God in answer to our prayers."

Morwenna Morgan ducked her nine-year-old head and clutched the book in her arms. She was so unlovable that she didn't even have a father who was willing to claim her. The only person who had ever loved her had died so horribly, so suddenly, that she still could not let her mind dwell on it. She sniffed back a tear, refusing to let it fall.

"She's such a lovely child, John!" The plump woman standing in the dark vicarage parlor touched a hand to the wild auburn frizz of Morwenna's hair. "If we brush out all these curls and braid them, she'll look like a proper little princess. May we call you Mora, dear?"

Your name is Morwenna. Never forget it. I will be here if you need me.

"Mama?" Morwenna lifted her head and looked around, hope and love filling her eyes. "Where are you, Mama?"

The plump woman looked doubtfully at the gray-haired man who'd rescued the orphan in Wales and brought her all the way back to Somerset with him.

The vicar shook his head. "It was a very rural, superstitious community. They thought her mother was a witch. I think the fire may have affected her mind a little, but she'll be fine once she's been here a while."

"I suppose, if Mora looks like her mother…"

The vicar finished the sentence for her. "And made herbal remedies, yes. It's an old and sorry tale of jealousy and superstition. Mora will be better off here with us, where we can give her a good education and upbringing. "

The vicar's wife nodded firm agreement and asked sympathetically, "Would you like a big glass of milk and some biscuits, dear?"

"I want my mama," Morwenna replied, tears finally spilling down her cheeks. "She's here. I heard her."

The woman smiled and patted her shoulder. "That's just your imagination you hear, darling, but your mama will always be in your heart."

Her mama wasn't in her heart, she was in her head.

Clutching her mother's most precious book, Morwenna didn't want the voice she'd heard to be her imagination. The voice was all she had of her mother besides the book, and she meant to keep it.

ONE

Somerset, Valentine's Day, 1757

Mora Abbott shoved a rebellious lock of crinkly auburn hair beneath the plain rim of her cap and fought off tears by defiantly opening her beloved book, looking for guidance. The page fell open to
A Spelle for Trubble
.

She longed for just a whiff of the vicar's pipe smoke, or the scent of cinnamon drifting in from her foster mother's apple tart. She'd often rebelled internally against their narrow strictures, but they'd offered her a home when she'd had none, and over the years, they'd made a family together. And now she was without either a home or a family again.

Both her adopted parents had died in the ague epidemic last month.

Orphaned twice and still unmarried at nearly thirty, she was free to do anything she liked now. Instead of letting the freedom terrify or intimidate her, she ought to find some positive use for it.

Why not try the spells she'd been forbidden to use? She could think of no better way to decide what to do next. The receipt her hand had fallen on said it was to be used to call for help in times of trouble. She didn't know what constituted trouble, but homelessness ought to count. She couldn't keep living in the village's only vicarage, and she had nowhere else to go.

Perusing the page of required ingredients, she realized she had goose fat left from Christmas, and salt and thyme, and no one to object should she accidentally burn the pot.
Spirits
were a trifle difficult to obtain since the vicar hadn't approved of alcohol. Perhaps the fermented cider from last fall.

It seemed exceedingly odd to have no one to question her actions, but she supposed she would eventually learn to like living alone.

Puttering around the kitchen, gathering items, kept her from having to think too hard about homelessness. The duke who owned the vicarage was a kind man and would never throw her out, but she couldn't deny the village a new vicar by usurping the only house available for his use. She simply needed to find a new place to live. Somehow. She wasn't precisely the sort of person who fit in anywhere.

She smoothed the page of recipes and mixed the fat and other ingredients over the fire, flinging the salt on the flames as instructed. She couldn't imagine how such humble ingredients could produce anything except the smelly smoke that was traveling up the chimney now. It was very possible her mother had burned up in a fire caused by such foolishness. She had spent twenty years harboring an insane hope that the haunting voice in her head meant her mother was still alive and would come for her. It was time to let the past go.

Still, she murmured the incantation with a whisper of prayer. She knew she didn't belong in Somerset. No mather how hard she'd tried to fit in, she'd never been as honest and good as her adopted parents, or as humble and accepting as the villagers. She always had a little voice in the back of her head urging her to do things differently than she'd been told, telling her there was more to the world than her limited view suggested. If only the spell could tell her where she
belonged
.

In her youth, she had thought being good would make her loved, but no matter how hard she tried, even her adopted parents had come to accept she would never be the proper little princess they wanted. That failure hurt most of all.

At nearly thirty, Mora had to accept that she was cold and unlovable. Most days, it didn't bother her greatly. Practically speaking, though, with her only family gone, it meant she had nowhere to go. No family, no friends, no one who wanted her.

The grease in the pot popped and bubbled, but nothing extraordinary happened. Feeling foolish with the dreadful stench from the burning grease smoking up the kitchen, Mora opened the window and dumped the pot's contents on the garden. So much for witchery. The least the stink could have done was arouse her mother's voice to scold her for playing with fire. But she'd ignored the voice for so long that it had taken to hiding.

A brightly garbed, slender woman stepped briskly through the fog outside the window, and Mora hastily attempted to blow the lingering smell out with a towel.

From the first time they'd met, Mora had felt a connection with the wealthy young woman who had married the duke. She supposed it was because the duchess Christina had book learning to match Mora's, even if she tended to be more athletic than intellectual. Mora counted Christina Malcolm Winchester, Duchess of Somerset, as her only friend. An eccentric one, perhaps, but one who did not question Mora's unmarried status or oddity as every other person in the village felt free to do.

She opened the door to the damp spring air before Christina had time to knock. "You really must learn to use the front door or scandalize Mrs. Flanagan with your lack of ceremony," Mora warned her.

Christina breezed in, unfastening her rich cloak with a dramatic sweep that scattered droplets in her wake. "I have already scandalized her. I do not know how you hold your tongue so politely in her presence. It is more than I can do."

Taking the duchess's cloak, Mora ignored the old complaint. As the daughter of the vicar, she'd never had any choice except to be polite. Holding her tongue so often had fed her hidden mutinous nature—not to mention raising calluses on her tongue.

"The grocer just brought me a tin of his new tea shipment." Hanging up the cloak, Mora took the faded teapot down from its shelf. "Have some before you tell me who needs aid now."

"Tea would be lovely. Douglas refused to eat his porridge this morning, and it is now decorating the nursery ceiling. I could not abide his nanny's scolding any longer." Christina roamed the kitchen rather than settle in a chair.

"Are the maids blaming ghosts or Dougie's unnatural abilities today?" Mora asked in amusement. A one-year-old who flung porridge onto a twenty-foot-high ceiling made for much speculation.

"Both. You do not want to hear what admirable potty traits he's developed lately." Christina came to an abrupt halt.

Her unusual stillness alerted Mora. Cursing herself for not hiding her mother's peculiar book, Mora set down the tea tin, but it was too late. Christina had already opened the cover. "Let me put that old thing away." Feeling oddly protective of the ancient tome, Mora reached to take it from the counter.

Christina caught her hand. "No, wait. This is fascinating. My family keeps journals just like this." She flipped the old vellum to the title page. "A
Journal of Lessons
, by Morwenna Gabriel.
Wherever
did you find this?"

Mora attempted to wrestle the tome from the duchess's grasp, but the duchess pressed her hand against Mora's, preventing her from closing it. "It belonged to my mother," Mora admitted reluctantly. "Her name was Brighid Morgan, so I do not know who owned it originally. I had hoped 'Morwenna' might be a distant relative." As a child, she had dreamed of having a real family, and the imaginary Morwenna Gabriel had often played the role of fairy godmother. But she wasn't a child any longer. "It's mostly foolishness, but there are some excellent recipes—"

"But wait! There is something appearing beneath our hands. Lift your thumb. Look."

Mora reluctantly removed her palm from the page. In the weak light from the window, she could see nothing unusual. "It's stained, that's all. It's a very old book."

Christina lifted the page closer to the window. "No, there—it's writing, just where our hands met. I'm sure of it."

Mora strained to see. She wasn't short, but Christina was taller than most women, and Mora had to stand on her toes to get closer to a page she had seen a thousand times over the years. "It's impossible."

"Heat," Christina replied abruptly, bringing the book back to the sink. "The heat from our hands brought out the letters. Hold the tea kettle behind the page."

"That will ruin it!" But Christina was a duchess, and years of serving the church and her adopted family had taught the efficacy of obedience. Mora brought the steaming kettle to the sink.

"Gently, now. I'll hold the page, you hold the spout behind it." Christina held up the book.

Trying not to harm the brittle pages, Mora swung the steam back and forth. At Christina's cry of triumph, she set the kettle down and peered over her shoulder.

The neat outline of a masculine hand appeared in aging brownish yellow script right beneath the author's name.

"It's an old trick," Christina explained. "My sisters and I learned it from one of our mother's books when we were little. You write with lemon juice and it is impossible to read. Add heat, and the writing appears."