Again the Magic (Wallflowers 0.5)(24)

Memories of Aline had tormented him forever. Certainly he did not love her—that illusion had faded long ago. He no longer believed in love, nor did he want to. But he needed to satisfy the raging need that had never allowed him to forget her. He had seen Aline’s eyes, her mouth, the turn of her jaw, in the faces of a thousand strangers. The harder he had tried to ignore her memory, the more persistently she had haunted him.

“What if she gets hurt during this so-called exorcism?” Gideon asked. His tone was not shadowed by any form of judgment. It was one of Gideon’s better qualities, his ability to look at things without filtering them through an ethical prism.

Reaching inside the glass, McKenna fished out a shard of ice and popped it into his mouth. He crunched it between his strong teeth. “Perhaps I want to hurt her.”

That was an understatement. McKenna didn’t intend to merely hurt Aline. He was going to make her suffer, weep, scream, beg. He was going to bring her to her knees. Break her. And that was just the beginning.

Gideon stared at him skeptically. “That’s a rather strange attitude, coming from a man who once loved her.”

“It wasn’t love. It was a mixture of animal passion and youth and idiocy.”

“What a glorious concoction,” Gideon said with a reminiscent smile. “I haven’t felt that way since I was sixteen and became infatuated with my sister’s governess. An older woman, being all of twenty…” He paused, and his smile became brittle, his blue eyes darkening.

McKenna plucked another piece of bourbon-washed ice from the glass. “What happened to her?”

“We had an affair. And I seem to have gotten her with child, though she never told me about it. I believe it was mine, as there was no reason to think otherwise. She went to some fraud of a doctor who ‘fixed’ these things in his backroom. Bled to death. A pity, as my family would have compensated her for the child, had she told them about it. We Shaws always take care of our bastards.”

Although his posture was relaxed as usual, Gideon could not hide the bleakness in his eyes.

“You’ve never mentioned her before,” McKenna said, staring at him intently. They had known each other for more than ten years, and he had thought that he knew Gideon’s every secret.

“Haven’t I?” Seeming to recover himself, Gideon stood and brushed some imaginary dust from his hands. “Something about this place is making me maudlin. Too damned picturesque.” He motioned to the door with a nod of his head. “I’m going to have another drink. Care to join me?”

McKenna shook his head, standing also. “I have some things to attend to.”

“Yes, of course. You’ll want to make the rounds—no doubt some of the servants here will remember you.” A mocking smile touched Gideon’s lips. “A lovely place, Stony Cross. One wonders how long it will take for its residents to realize they’ve let a serpent into paradise.”

Seven

Without question, the best-smelling room in the manor house at Stony Cross Park was the storeroom, a chamber next to the kitchen where Mrs. Faircloth stored blocks of soap, candles, crystallized flowers, and fancy edibles such as bottled fruit. Today the housekeeper was unusually busy, with the household filled with guests and servants. She left the storeroom, her arms filled with heavy bricks of newly made soap. As soon as she carried the bricks to the stillroom, a pair of housemaids would use string to cut the soap into hand-sized cakes.

Preoccupied with the multitude of tasks yet to be done, Mrs. Faircloth became vaguely aware of the large bulk of a footman as he followed her along the narrow hall. “James,” she said distractedly, “be a good lad and take these things to the stillroom. I have need of a strong pair of arms. And if Salter takes exception, you tell him that I bade you to help me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” came the obedient reply.

The voice did not belong to James.

As Mrs. Faircloth hesitated in confusion, the burden was taken from her, and she realized that she had just issued orders to one of the master’s guests. His well-tailored clothes proclaimed him to be a man of privilege—and she had just ordered him to carry something for her. Servants, even upper ones, had been dismissed for less. “Sir, do forgive me…” she began in distress, but the dark-haired gentleman continued to the stillroom, hefting the weighty soap bricks with ease. He set the soap on the slate-topped table, turned from the openmouthed housemaids, and regarded Mrs. Faircloth with a rueful smile.

“I should have known you’d start giving commands before I had the chance to say hello.”

Staring into his glowing blue-green eyes, Mrs. Faircloth pressed her hands to her heart as if to stave off the threat of apoplexy, and blinked with sudden tears of astonishment. “McKenna?” she exclaimed, impulsively holding out her arms. “Oh, good Lord…”

He reached her in two strides and caught her stout form against his, briefly lifting her off her feet as if she were a slight-framed girl. His gruff laugh was muffled in her silvery curls.

Dumbfounded by the emotional scene involving their normally stoic housekeeper, the maids in the stillroom drifted into the hallway. They were followed by a gaping scullery maid, a kitchen maid, and the cook, who had worked at the manor for only five years.

“I never thought to see you again,” Mrs. Faircloth gasped.

McKenna tightened his arms around her, basking in the never-forgotten maternal comfort of her presence. He remembered the countless times that Mrs. Faircloth had saved extra food for him—the heels of the bread loaves, the leftover tea biscuits, the flavorful dregs from the stew pot. Mrs. Faircloth had been a source of necessary softness in his life…someone who had always believed the best of him.