Weather Witch (6 page)

He grinned. “Make up thy mind,” he whispered. “Chaperoned or…” He skimmed her lips with his thumb. “… not?”

“Not. But only for a moment longer,” she promised. “Rowen, you know I adore you.”

His back went ramrod straight at her choice of words. “Yes.”

“You are an absolutely amazing and talented man of fine breeding and nearly noble rank. Socially speaking we would make a fine pair, but…”

“I’m sorry. Are you…” His eyes searched her face, confusion plain. “Are you telling me we are … finished?”

She sighed. “Not so much finished as—”

He crossed his arms over his chest and did his best to peer down his nose at her although she was dressed in the high-heeled shoes the wealthy deemed fashionable for such parties. “It’s your seventeenth birthday and you’re ending things with me.”

“No. No. Wait!” She reached for him, grasping at his arm. She could not tug it free.

His chin tipped up in defiance, he watched her struggle with a coolness in his gaze she had never seen before.

“Rowen, I’m confused,” she apologized, wrapping her arms around him and leaning her head on his chest. His stance softened, his arms sliding out from between them to wrap her up once more. “I was so worried you’d ask for my promise and that I wouldn’t be able to give it to you with everyone watching and…”

“Is that all this is?” he asked into the top of her head. “You were in a panic because you thought…” His arms tightened around her. “Be brave, sweetheart. I’d never embarrass you that way—no matter how much I tease,” he promised. “I do have a surprise for you, but it has nothing to do with asking for your promise. Not just yet.” He cocked his head. “I’ve brought you a fine gift…”

“Wait.” She searched his face. “So we are well?”

“Yes, darling girl, we are well. Now for your gift—”

The French doors swung open and the party burst onto the veranda, Catrina and Thomas Dorsey himself at its head, bearing drinks. “You cannot monopolize the party’s guest of honor for the entire event,” she scolded Rowen, handing them both a cup. “Things are about to become quite hot,” she promised, waving her hand so the move ended with her pointing back the way they had come. The ruby on her ring finger flashed.

Chapter Three

Dame Fortune is a fickle gipsy,

And always blind, and often tipsy;

Sometimes for years and years together,

She’ll bless you with the sunniest weather …

—WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED

Philadelphia

Entertainers streamed onto the porch, men and women in parti-colored outfits that clung to their forms in all the most interesting places. It was at once scandalous and delightful—and utterly foreign. Rowen grinned, leaning back against the porch’s railing and taking Jordan with him.

A man wearing a hat that shadowed his eyes with fat fabric tendrils topped by bells stretched into a bow so low only the most supple of dancers might do it. “My lords and my ladies, most gracious hosts and hostesses,” he said in an accent Jordan had only heard the day Rowen dragged her down to the Cutter docks to watch the men make sails and the ships go out, “tonight we will delight and astound you by setting your senses
afire
.” He tugged a lit torch out from behind him and the crowd jumped back.

“I assure you, though, that what we do here may look like magick, but it is merely science, spit, and spark!” He tossed the torch high into the air and tore his strange hat off, throwing it into Jordan’s astonished hands as another costumed performer tossed a second torch his way. Both torches flew into the air and tumbled down, were caught and tossed back up as another was thrown into the fray, so quickly three fiery torches flew before the gasping crowd.

Two of his compatriots jumped in with three more torches, three men juggling nine torches, each in turn thrown to the man in the middle, who then hurled them high, caught them, and spun them back to his friends. He tossed all but one of them away, the other performers extinguishing each in turn. With a fluid movement their leader caught the final torch, and, taking a swig of something from a flask that appeared in his hand, he rolled the lit torch along his open mouth.

The crowd screamed and Jordan pressed the hat close to her stomach, eyes wide.

Flame danced across his tongue and he snapped his mouth shut, snuffing the fire before taking another swig of the clear stuff in the metal flask.

He bent, leaning so far back his hair nearly brushed the veranda’s floor. He brought the flaming torch close enough to his lips he might have kissed it … but instead he sprayed liquid past its flaming head, and the crowd fell back, shrieking, as he breathed fire.

Swinging the torch, he passed it off to be snuffed and the screaming became wild clapping. With a gracious bow he grabbed his gear and he and his cohorts dodged away.

“Stunning,” Rowen murmured.

Jordan looked up at him. “It was a brilliant display.”

“I was referring to
you,
” he corrected.

She rolled her eyes.

His gaze drifted from her eyes to the place on the veranda occupied by a well-dressed man sporting a leather mask in the form of a fox’s face. At his side stood an attractive female assistant in a fine silk robe decorated with rolling waves. Her hair was long, straight, and as dark as ebony and her eyes were slanted in a distinctly Oriental style.

Between them rested a large and colorfully painted wooden trunk.

“So what is this, do you suppose?” Jordan asked, motioning to the man and woman. The crowd had quieted, seeming to wonder the same thing.

“Good evening, friends. I am the Wandering Wallace,” the man said, his arms sweeping wide to encompass the entire crowd as if they were all personally invited by him. “Tonight I will entertain you and challenge your senses and powers of observation with tricks that will both astonish and amuse.”

There was no response from the crowd. They withheld judgment, cautiously waiting. He looked suspiciously like something one would have seen before taking the boat to the New World. With his trunk painted brightly with stars and strange symbols and his beautiful assistant with her foreign features, he nearly stank of something they knew better than to become entangled with.

Magick
.

“Let me first assure you that the tricks I perform tonight to entertain such fine folks as yourselves include no magick at all. Nothing will truly disappear and nothing will actually manifest. These things are but simple illusions brought to you as the result of years of training in sleight of hand. Can I make it appear that something has manifested out of thin air…?” He slid his hand across the empty space before them and opened it, a ball popping into existence between his finger and thumb.

A few ladies in the crowd jumped back and a few men bristled. Some even turned their faces to the rumbling sky overhead, disapproval obvious. “Yes, yes. But wait,” he instructed. “When I slow the move down…” He turned his back for a mere moment before starting all over again, hand flat and before them. “… and loosen my fingers…”

The same ladies who had gasped before gasped again, but this time in delight, as his fingers parted and they glimpsed something the color of the ball between them moments before he slipped it sloppily into his palm and showed them how it appeared in its final position. “I use no magick in my performances, merely well-practiced sleight of hand.”

The crowd clapped.

“But, as the hand is quicker than the eye”—with a flash of movement he launched three doves into the air and people shrieked—“I think I might yet be of some entertainment value.”

Rowen brought Jordan a little closer, getting comfortable for the show.

He grunted when something jabbed his ribs. “Oh.” Jordan’s mother withdrew her closed fan from his side and flicked it open before her face, leaving only her glaring green eyes visible.

Rowen corrected his slouched position.

She raised both her eyebrows and fluttered her fan slightly.

Rowen scooted Jordan a little away from him.

With a wink that made Rowen straighten further, Lady Astraea stepped back into the crowd.

“Some simple trickery now—my lady.” He beckoned to Serafina duBois. “You seem a clever lass. Might you assist me?”

Serafina nodded, flouncing her way to the illusionist.

Jordan stiffened, watching her. Of all the girls in Jordan’s circle of friends it was readily agreed that Serafina was the prettiest. With her rosebud mouth, petite nose that turned up perfectly at its tip, and a head full of soft golden curls, she looked as angelic as her namesake. It could not be denied that Serafina was lovely to look upon. But clever? Hardly. This was the girl who had drunk ink, mistaking it for tea. If the illusionist could make Serafina appear clever it just might be the finest illusion ever witnessed.

Serafina dipped a little curtsy to the crowd and all the young men clapped.

Even Rowen.

Jordan’s too-wide lips pressed together in a frown.

Catrina tapped her own forehead lightly, her gaze drifting to Jordan, who forced herself to relax and erase the faint crease of worry that would eventually deepen into a wrinkle. Sighing, she focused on Serafina.

The illusionist’s assistant pulled a piece of paper from the decorated trunk, passing it to her master with a flourish. It was the same stuff used to wrap packages at Wilkinson’s. Nondescript, brown, and of a sturdy weight. Rectangular in its proportions. Another flourish and scissors were handed to the illusionist, their handles and body black except for the silver sheen of the blades themselves.

“I shall now issue a challenge,” the Wandering Wallace declared. “If anyone here can cut a perfectly proportional five-pointed star from this paper without drawing a single line and using these scissors, I shall allow him to choose any item from my trunk of tricks.”

His assistant gasped an obviously rehearsed response, her slanted eyes widening and her small mouth drawing into a perfect
o
in a parody of shock.

No one had successfully taken the illusionist’s challenge.

But, wine flowing freely and Rowen’s friends in attendance, it was only a moment before the challenge was accepted.

And lost.

Another accepted, another piece of paper was butchered, and another young man returned to the crowd perplexed.

They grew still and the illusionist grinned, waving another piece of paper, taunting them. “Is there no other taker? No other among you to take my challenge?”

“It cannot be done,” a disillusioned member of the aristocracy declared. “A perfectly proportioned star is too difficult a shape to construct without the aid of proper tools and appropriate mathematics.”

“That is nearly precisely the argument our country’s founding fathers used against dear sweet Betsy Ross when she suggested five-pointed stars to adorn our nation’s flag! But Mrs. Ross was an enterprising soul and, in the same spirit, with my help, the good lady—”

“Serafina,” she volunteered.

“The good lady Serafina,” he said, “will help me show not only that it can be done, but it can be done with only a single cut of the scissors!”

Skepticism flooded the crowd in barely audible gasps as the Wandering Wallace took one last piece of paper, waving it before the crowd. He handed it to Serafina.

“Now we shall fold this paper. Here,” he instructed, adjusting Serafina’s fingers on the paper. “And here. Now unfold … Now fold here … And here and here … Here, unfold. Here. Unfold. And cut from here to there!”

Serafina did each thing as he prescribed and with a hiss of the scissors and a moment of unfolding, the promised star was produced. Everyone clapped, and Serafina curtsied once more and danced her way over to Jordan. “For the true star of the evening,” she said, handing over her paper prize.

Jordan smiled, finding Serafina quite clever indeed. Gently, Jordan refolded the star and slid it up her sleeve.

The illusionist, finishing some card tricks and a few more bits of bird work, glanced at Rowen, and cleared his throat.

Rowen leaned over Jordan, whispering, “Back in a moment.”

She tilted her head and watched as he strode out of the crowd and stood front and center with the illusionist.

Lightning crackled in the clouds overhead.

Rowen cast a wary look at the sky but grinned for the crowd. “I have studied with the Wandering Wallace and have learned a few things from him, but not, of course, the face of the man beneath the mask. Some things, it seems, are to remain secrets—but not all,” he said. “And this evening, as a tribute to the lady who has me bewitched—”

The crowd gasped.

Micah laughed at them, saying, “He speaks figuratively, not literally. Had he truly been bewitched he would be unable to talk about it. Everyone knows that.”

Rowen smiled, adding, “She has bewitched my imagination, and so I shall share with you a special trick.” He motioned to Jordan. “Please step forward.”

Lowering her head, she did so.

Rowen threw a hand out to her and, as she took it, he proclaimed, “My lovely assistant!”

The crowd clapped and Jordan raised her head, straightened her spine, and put her shoulders back.

“I said I had a surprise for you.”

“Rowen.” Her eyes darted to the crowd and back. “Not here…”

“Have a little faith,” he said, the words tight. He grinned at the crowd, all showman, and said, “That is a lovely hairdo. Do you fine people not agree?” Clapping answered him. Rowen stepped up beside her to seemingly examine her hair. “Elegant. Wrapped very tightly and yet with so much body to it … Colorful ribbons weaved in…” He reached up and tugged one slightly, his grin tilting when the ribbon bounced. “But what’s this? One seems different…” He turned her so one side faced the crowd and his hand closed gently around one ribbon and then he yanked his hand back, trailing a long set of colorful handkerchiefs after it.

Jordan’s hands flew to her mouth and the crowd rioted with laughter.

“Look at you,” Rowen mused, “you’re so beautiful there’s beauty wrapped up inside you that no one has glimpsed until now.” He looked away from her then, addressing the crowd once more. “What would a young lady want on her seventeenth birthday but…” He drew the last word out so it became the longest single syllable ever uttered as he bowed before her and, on the ascent, produced a bouquet of “… flowers.”