Magic in the Stars (27 page)

He sounded as if he’d just agreed to stand before a firing
squad.

***

Women were a calamitous, illogical, impossible solution to
anything, Theo concluded—without objectivity. His mind was a stew of confusion
and fury and . . . He wasn’t certain what that other scream in
his head meant except maybe anguish at losing something precious that he really
wanted.

What
she
wanted was
a man who would
accept
her as she was.
What the devil did that mean? He accepted her! She was the witchy general who
would command his unruly troops, then warm his bed at night. Wasn’t that what
they’d agreed?

They had, until he’d told her that she wasn’t to blame for
harming family. Where had that gone wrong? He ought to be like Erran and quit
talking. Life was simpler that way. He didn’t know what he was saying half the
time anyway.

“Herschel and the other old men in the Society will shatter your
zodiac with mathematics,” he argued aloud. “Then you’ll hate me for doing what you
asked me to do!” He’d known better than to deal with hysterical females.

“That’s my problem, not yours,” she argued. “Let me down
from this animal!”

Even though Theo knew Aster deserved a man who didn’t have
all his problems, he still couldn’t let her go. He couldn’t explain his
irrational decision to carry on with the wedding. It wasn’t because he was so
honorable that he thought they should marry because he’d ruined her reputation.
He was simply smart enough to know that if he let this miraculous woman go,
he’d never find a better one.

“We have to return to the house for a gig and the horse is
faster than walking,” he muttered. “Maybe I should kidnap you like some
medieval villain. A tower would be helpful. We have one in Wystan.”

Her protest over the horse and his irascible musings ended the
moment they rode up to the house to discover an unusual number of horses and a carriage
in front. “I think we should leave for Gretna Green,” he warned.

***

Now that she’d quit dithering and taken a stand, Aster didn’t
want to be tossed back into the turmoil of deciding right from wrong, up from
down. She didn’t want to think at all.

Seeing the carriages, she found Theo’s suggestion of Gretna
Greene to almost be appealing—except she wasn’t going anywhere with him. She
was still angry, although she hadn’t quite clarified why. “You should have let
me go to London,” she corrected. Eyeing the unfamiliar carriages, she added considerately,
“And you should have come with us.”

“Is it too late?” he asked, even as the front door swung
open and dogs poured into the fading sunlight.

“Father is threatening to cut off heads again!” Hartley
shouted from the porch. “Hurry!”

The marquess had come
downstairs
?

Under those extraordinary circumstances, Aster didn’t
protest as Theo swung her to the ground. Picking up her skirts, she raced after
him to the open door.

Inside, a small crowd greeted their disheveled arrival. Confronted
with a lady in an elegant carriage gown, a gentleman in tailored coat, and Mr.
Browne, the steward, as well as Erran, Jacques, and Hartley plus a scattering
of footmen and maids, Aster considered turning around and running back out
again. They all stared at her unfastened attire and bedraggled hair and struggled
not to look shocked.

“What the devil is this about?” Theo thundered, uncaring of
appearances, as usual. Aster pinched his elbow to remind him of introductions.
He performed a cursory bow for the guests and offered his version of etiquette.
“Margaret, Sir George, Lady Aster.”

Oh, dear, these were Theo’s neighbors—hers, should she be so
irrational as to wed an Ives.

Besides being beautiful, Ashford’s ex-fiancée appeared calm,
collected, and haughty. Sir George looked like a portly, grumpy squire,
snapping his riding crop against his tall boots. They did not look very friendly.

Aster dipped a hurried curtsy, painfully aware of her rumpled,
dusty travel gown. She needed to change before she dealt with whatever problem
had arisen now.

If the son of a marquess could dismiss common courtesy, then
so could she. “You’ll forgive me if I run upstairs to right myself. I shall be
right back down.”

With ingrained hospitality, she gestured at one of her new
maids. “Bring tea to the parlor for our guests, please.”

Then, without waiting for explanations, she dashed up the
stairs, feeling her face turning red enough to conceal any bruising.

She was not married yet. She had just cast aside any claim
to a position in the household. With her chaperone gone, she was in a very
precarious position—and the marquess stood scowling in the intersection blocking
access to her room.

Ashford or his valet had tugged on his coat but not his
neckcloth. He wore slippers and not boots. But his ferocious expression would
blind all onlookers if he went downstairs now.

“Who’s there?” he barked.

“Just me, my lord. If you would shift a little to your left,
I’ll be out of your way. I’m not dressed to meet your guests. Don’t cut off any
heads, please, until Theo can find out what’s wrong.”

She thought a smile tugged at his grim lips, but she wasn’t
in any humor for Ives eccentricity.

“Good, Theo can cut off their heads. I’ll not have them
accusing my steward of any wrongdoing if it’s that witch Maeve who is causing
trouble. I should have flung her off the property long since. Hugh is asking
after you. Go reassure him.”

He stalked back to his chamber with his hand against the
wall. Aster winced and bit her lip as he whacked a statue of Pan in a niche. He
merely halted, felt around a bit, then deliberately knocked off the riding cap
adorning the imp and continued on.

The twins! How could she have forgotten them? She hurried to
their chamber and peered in. “I have to save your uncle from beheading,” she informed
the boy in the bed. “Do I need to send Hartley up?”

“Lady Aster!” Hugh cried in relief. “I thought you’d run
away. May I get up now? It’s very boring lying about in bed.”

Unable to tell him that she meant to flee, she studied the
raw redness of the abrasion and swelling bruise on his poor face. She truly
wanted to believe this would have happened whether she’d been around or not,
but she was pretty certain that ordering the pail of water had been the trigger
to the rock throwing.

But maybe . . . maybe that was just human
error? And not the fault of fate or the planets or anything else? How did she
sort one from the other?

“Boring is good,” she said, entering the chamber to dip a
cloth in the basin of cold water beside the bed while she fretted over what was
best for herself as well as this family. She applied the compress to the
swelling and made him hold it. “Boring is safe. Be boring for just a little
while longer. Give me time to clean up, and I’ll send Hartley to entertain you
with tall tales of mighty mice.”

“Mighty mice?” he called after her, but Aster was already
hurrying off.

She came from a very long line of women who went their own
way. She
could
return to London and
confront the Society and live down the gossip about her reputation. It would be
awkward but not impossible. The question became—what did she want most?

And what she wanted most—she swallowed a large lump—was
Theo
. She wanted a family and babies and
a man who believed in her. It was that last part that remained uncertain. He
wanted her. He needed her. Those things, she understood. How could she make him
accept that she had an unusual gift when he wouldn’t even listen?

She had to make Theo and his family and his daunting
neighbors downstairs understand and appreciate her family’s wayward tendencies.
If she really, actually, meant to marry and live here . . .

That probably meant she was insane. But she must start as
she meant to go on. Looking around her bare chamber in horror, she thought she
might be meant to go on as a ragged hoyden. Her sister had taken her clothes
back to London.

She ran from room to room, scavenging sufficient pins to
shove in her hair, even if it curled in wisps every which way for lack of a
brush. She adjusted her scarf to cover her wrinkled bodice.
Sartorial
disaster was not the sort of
thing she looked for in her charts.

By the time she sailed down the stairs again, the grand
rotunda was empty, and she slowed to listen for gunshots or screaming. Loud
male voices roared from the rear office. Surely the very proper-looking Miss
Caldwell would not join the men. Aster glanced at her confused footman, who
indicated the drawing room door.

“Very good,” she assured him as he opened the door for her.
She still had servants to train.
She must
remember her goals and weigh them against potential disasters. Wouldn’t the
poor people in the workhouse suffer disaster if she didn’t train them?

Donning the casual authority of the earl’s daughter that she
was, Aster swept into the drawing room as if she owned it. Her petticoats were
too limp to rustle. Her traveling gown was too stiff for elegance. All she had
was attitude, and though she seldom wielded it, as an earl’s eldest daughter, she
knew how.

“Miss Caldwell, we have not been properly introduced.”

Aster held out her hand and waited for the baronet’s
daughter to stand and acknowledge her. She could tell it grated on her guest—who
had probably been lording it over country society for years—but Aster wasn’t
feeling friendly to a woman who would abandon her betrothed when he most needed
her—

As she meant to abandon Theo. She tried not to wince at that
realization.

Jacques stopped pacing the hearth at Aster’s entrance and
bowed. “Lady Azenor, our neighbor, Miss Margaret Caldwell. Maggie, this is
Theo’s betrothed. Or I think they’re still betrothed. I don’t keep score well.”

Aster sighed. “One of these days, I will teach the lot of
you proper manners. Until then, would you fetch Hartley and send him up to
Hugh, please? And I think the marquess has been diverted from beheading, but
you might want to go up and see what he has to say about the widow who struck
the boy. I doubt that Theo knows her.”

“Maeve claims she was only defending herself,” Miss Caldwell
declared. “You and Mr. Browne have no right to throw her out of her home. We’ve
settled her into a cottage on our place and have come for her cow.”

Aster donned her best smile. “If that’s all this is about, I
shall straighten out the story myself. Do have a seat, Miss Caldwell. If we are
to be neighbors, the least we can do is get to know each other over a cup of tea.”

If she couldn’t immediately flee back to London, she might
as well make herself useful.

Jacques looked from one to the other of them warily, then
escaped with obvious relief at Aster’s nod of dismissal.

Aster took one of the newly cleaned arm chairs and poured
the tea from a mismatched set of china. “The widow owes us a cow for nearly
putting out Hugh’s eye and causing such a violent disturbance that it dragged
Mr. Browne and one of our tenants from their work, not to mention bruising me
on the eve of my wedding. An adulteress and a woman who would sell herself for
a
cow
receives no sympathy here.
Would you care to explain what is really happening?”

The lady scowled and studied her teacup. She seemed to be a
few years older than Aster and far more poised and polished than Aster ever
hoped to be. Margaret looked the part of marchioness with her elaborately coiffed
ringlets and artfully applied cosmetics. Aster wished she knew the lady’s
birthday, but she would place her wager on Margaret being a Virgo.

“I’d meant to take out that wall of windows and replace them
with doors onto the terrace,” the lady said, not answering the question.

“First, there would need to be a terrace and not a lot of
broken stones and crumbling benches,” Aster retorted. “Were you intending to
marry his lordship for his house?”

The lady shrugged. “At least it would have been my own, to
do with as I wish. How is he?”

“Furious. Beyond furious. And you score no points with his
brothers. Theo is marrying me simply to return some semblance of normality.
Crying off was not well done,” Aster said crossly.

“I nursed my mother for years. I do not have the heart to
nurse a husband and all the other Ives who will inevitably spill through here
when they need help.”

The lady wrung a lacy handkerchief, then continued. “Did you
know that when Duncan and his brothers were very young and attending Eton that
they were sent home when the school closed from an outbreak of measles?”

Aster shook her head, soaking up any information that might aid
her.

“Their father was in London. Their younger uncles were at
Oxford or out carousing. Their older uncles had left the household. There was
no one here to greet the boys except a few footmen and kitchen staff. When
Erran came down with spots, Duncan had to ride out in search of a physician.
The three of them took care of each other until the physician finally realized
their plight and sent for their father. Nursing Ives is a never-ending
process.”

Aster sat in horror trying to imagine such an appalling lack
of concern for family. They had been raised like wolves! No wonder Theo was
desperate for her small help.

“Do not feel sorry for those little boys,” Miss Caldwell
warned, reading Aster’s expression rightly. “For they have grown into men who
are equally negligent. They care for nothing but themselves and their own
pursuits. Duncan has already abandoned parliament and the work he was doing
there to nurse his wounds. Theo will ultimately abandon the Hall when denied
the observatory he wants. You would do well to go home, my lady.”

Having delivered her horrifying message, Miss Caldwell
brightened. “Montfort’s place will suit me far better than this gloomy Hall,
and he said we might live in London. I think I shall enjoy that.”