Page 8 of Twelfth Night Sorcery (The Cambion Club #2)

“Neither do I.” Valance scowled and scuffed the floor with the tip of his boot. He hated feeling trapped. Probably Miss Grantly hated it even more.

“Besides, you—”

“Don’t say it!” Valance could guess what his friend was about to say, and it was something he had heard often enough from his mother. He did not need to hear it from Peregrine, too.

But Peregrine ignored his warning. “You need an heir. You will have to get married eventually. You might as well marry Miss Grantly, since you have compromised her. It would be the most honorable thing to do.”

“I wish your sister were here,” Valance grumbled. Abigail was every bit as intelligent as her brother and more socially savvy. She understood the rules of the ton quite well, though she sometimes ignored them herself. If there was a way out of the situation, Abigail would find it.

But Abigail and Susan were probably ensconced by the fire in the comfortable morning room at Carrington Abbey, spending time with the rest of the family.

For a brief moment, Valance wished he were in Surrey, too, lounging in his own billiard room or library, without a care in the world.

Except that if he were at Dreadnaught Hall, he would have to deal with his mother, which usually meant a whole series of headaches.

Valance sighed and walked away. What he needed was something to clear his mind. Since Miss Grantly seemed not to be awake yet, he could not speak to her. He might as well spend the time working.

Peregrine used the library as his workroom, and Abigail had claimed the study for her witchcraft, so Valance had taken over the breakfast room as his work space.

He had filled it with bookcases and used the round breakfast table as his work area.

There he went to soothe himself by working on what he called, for lack of a better word, his runes.

As Valance had explained to Miss Grantly, he cast spells by writing words rather than speaking them.

But drawing a single symbol was faster than writing a phrase, and it used less paper.

Therefore, he was trying to develop an alphabet of easily-drawn symbols with which he could cast his most frequently-used spells.

He had mastered the rune for a witchlight long ago, but fire was proving more challenging. If he drew a flame on a piece of paper and put magic into it, the paper itself caught fire. That could be useful in some situations, but he wanted a more controllable flame.

Today, he experimented by drawing different variations of the flame symbol. Some of them didn’t work. Some of them worked in the way his usual fire rune worked: by causing the paper to burst into flames, singing his fingers and leaving scorch marks on the table.

“What are you doing?”

Startled by the unexpected voice, Valance flinched. Miss Grantly stood on the opposite side of his worktable, intently studying his most recent spell paper. He hadn’t even heard her enter the room.

“Why is it so smoky in here?” She wrinkled her nose.

“I am trying to develop a symbol for fire, because sketching a rune is faster than writing out a whole spell. But the spell works a little too well, if you catch my drift. The paper catches fire.” He gestured at the charred paper and ash littering the table.

Valance would have happily continued explaining his rune system, but he knew they had more important things to talk about. “Never mind that. We need to talk about your future.”

“Oh, I don’t think I need to worry about my future anymore.” He had not invited Miss Grantly to sit down, but she took a seat anyway. “The Duke of Belmont will not want to marry me after I have spent a night here without a chaperone. I am thoroughly ruined.” She sounded pleased.

Valance rested his head in his hands for a moment. “So,” he said cautiously, “what exactly is your plan now? Will you go back to your family?”

She shook her head. “I shouldn’t think they would want me back. Not after this. My mother will be extremely angry with me.” He could not argue with that, so he remained silent. “I told you, I am planning on going to Bath to visit my old school. Miss Merton will be able to help me.”

“And I told you that no headmistress in the world is going to hire a woman who has been ruined,” Valance reminded her. “The scandal would reflect poorly on the school.”

She shrugged, not seeming the least bit fazed by this objection.

“Perhaps I will find other work, then. I am good at sewing. I used to make my own dresses. Only for wearing in the country, of course,” she clarified.

“I have never been to London before. In any case, I am sure I can find work as a seamstress if all else fails.”

Valance sighed. “Do you have any idea how little seamstresses make? Or what long hours they have to work? Or what they do when their eyesight begins to fail?” He had heard Abigail discuss the plight of working women many times, so he was well aware of what a pittance most seamstresses earned.

Hat making and lace making were no better.

She frowned. “Eyesight? Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. I do need reading glasses for fine work. I had to leave mine at Belmont Court. I will have to replace them somehow.” She sighed. “I suppose there were a few gaps in my plan.”

“Your plan was nothing but gaps!” Of all the things she had to worry about, she was fretting over her missing spectacles? “You didn’t think any further than getting away from Belmont, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.” She picked up a scrap of paper and began shredding it, steadily looking away from Valance.

“The other day, as soon as he got me alone for a moment, he backed me into a corner and kissed me.” She shuddered.

“And he kept doing it after I told him to stop. No, I didn’t think further than getting away from him before he tried that again. ”

“What a blackguard,” Valance said, though the word hardly seemed adequate for the duke’s villainy. “Someone ought to call him out.” Such an assault did explain the haste with which Miss Grantly fled the masquerade. No wonder she’d been so desperate to leave!

She shook her head. “My brother is only ten, so I’m afraid I would have to wait a long time for him to avenge my honor. In the meantime, I will find some way to sustain myself.”

“If you don’t come up with a better plan, you are going to end up in the river,” Valance grumbled. The river was where fallen women were said to drown themselves.

“What a nasty thing to say!” She stared at him, her eyes wide. “What have I done to deserve that?”

Frustrated almost past the point of speech, Valance threw his hands in the air. “What have you done? First, you tried to seduce me! Then you ran off with me. And now you’re ruined. Do you really think this is going to end well for you?”

He had looked all the consequences of last night’s folly squarely in the face, and he did not like what he saw.

The aftermath of the masquerade would be only marginally better for Valance.

Men’s reputations were not as fragile as women’s, but there were some things a gentleman ought never do, and absconding with the daughter of a baronet was one of them. He would be labelled a rake.

Miss Grantly crossed her arms in front of her chest and frowned. Even her frown was graceful. For some reason, this irritated Valance to no end. How could she look so perfect and yet behave so obstinately?

“I think it will end better than marriage to Belmont would have ended,” she replied. “Everyone says he killed his first wife and made it look like an accident. And the second one died in childbirth. And the third one . . .”

Valance interrupted. He’d heard all the rumors, too. “They say he refused to call a physician because he thought she was faking her illness. By the time he realized the truth, she was too ill to be cured.”

The third Duchess of Belmont’s death had been the talk of all the clubs a year and a half ago. But, as no one could prove Belmont had behaved with deliberate cruelty, he had suffered few social consequences. Thanks to his rank, he was still widely received in society.

“Yes, I see perfectly well why you wouldn’t want to marry Belmont,” Valance admitted. “But why didn’t you just turn him down when he proposed? He can’t marry you against your will.”

She tightened her lips and shifted her eyes. “My mother insists I accept him, and she has leverage over me.”

“Leverage?” he repeated, mystified. Did Miss Grantly have some unexpected secrets in her past? A previous affaire, perhaps, that had been hushed up? That might explain why she was bold enough to tryst with a total stranger.

“I can’t say more than that.” Now she sounded miserable rather than determined.

“Except that if I don’t do what my mother wants, there is someone else who will suffer.

Someone I care about. My mother was trying to use that leverage to force me to marry the duke.

Refusing him would not work. I needed to make myself unmarriageable.

” She tilted her chin up boldly and locked eyes with Valance.

“Which I have done, thanks to you. I am very grateful for your assistance, my lord.”

Valance furrowed his brow as he considered the implications. “What makes you think this person you care about will be safe now that you are unmarriageable?”

“My mother is manipulative, but I don’t think she is evil.”

Valance snorted. Any woman who would force her daughter to marry the Duke of Belmont, knowing he might have caused the death of two of his previous wives, seemed evil to him.

“I don’t think my mother is malicious,” Miss Grantly clarified.

“Merely ambitious. She would like to move in the finest social circles. Her father was a baron, you see, and I think she always felt that she lowered herself in marrying a baronet rather than a nobleman.” She shook her head.

“Naturally, Mama’s social credit would increase if her daughter became a duchess. ”

“I see.”

Valance remained quiet, considering the options before him. He did not particularly like any of them. He studied Miss Grantly’s face as he ruminated. For a woman in a terrible situation, she seemed remarkably calm. That was, he supposed, to her credit.

Moreover, she seemed to know enough about magic not to be uncomfortable living with a magician.

Miss Mansfield, who came from a non-magical family, had been scared of Valance’s sorcery.

When he proposed, she had told him she would marry him only if he gave up magic.

It had taken Valance only an instant to choose sorcery over matrimony.

The experience had rather soured him on the process of courtship.

But Miss Grantly was the daughter of a sorcerer, so she must be used to having magic about the house.

She had been curious about Valance’s sorcery, not frightened.

And anyone who could talk intelligibly with Peregrine about his meteorite scheme would likely understand Valance’s own less complicated magical work.

Really, Valance might do worse. Beautiful young women who came from respectable magical families were scarce, even among the ton. And if he married Miss Grantly, his mother would quit trying to set him up with the daughters of her friends. That was worth something.

The silence stretched out uncomfortably until Valance made his decision. He tried to keep his voice light, calm, and conversational, though his heart had already begun to pound. “Of course, your mother’s social credit would also increase if you married a viscount, wouldn’t it?” he pointed out.

Miss Grantley wrinkled her brow. “What are you talking about? Which viscount would I marry?”

Valance bowed, trying to hide his uneasiness beneath formality. “Me. Since you ran away with me and spent the night here, I am afraid you are going to have to marry me.”