When You Wish Read online

  SHE LOOKED CLOSELY at it. A green bottle with a chased silver top. There was something inside it. Would it work? It had to work. Only magic could enable her to make the right decision.

  “What must I do? Must I open it in a certain way? Read it in a certain way?”

  “You will read it as it is meant to be read.” The smile was there again as he took her hand and placed the bottle on her palm. “As it is meant to be read for you,” he added.

  Her fingers closed over the bottle. She frowned, wondering what he could mean. A spell was a spell, surely. It could only be read one way.

  She sat down on the bank and with trembling fingers opened the bottle. A scrap of leather, carefully rolled, lay inside. She drew it out, unfurled it, held it up to the bright moonlight.

  To thine own wish be true. Do not follow the moth to the star.

  The girl stared in disbelieving dismay. What did it mean? It told her nothing. There was nothing magic about those words.

  The choice was still hers to make…

  From the Prologue by Jane Feather

  Also by Jane Feather

  VICE

  VANITY

  VIOLET

  VALENTINE

  VELVET

  VIXEN

  VIRTUE

  THE DIAMOND SLIPPER

  THE SILVER ROSE

  THE EMERALD SWAN

  THE HOSTAGE BRIDE

  A VALENTINE WEDDING

  THE ACCIDENTAL BRIDE

  ALMOST INNOCENT

  THE WIDOW’S KISS

  TO KISS A SPY

  KISSED BY SHADOWS

  Also by Patricia Coughlin

  LORD SAVAGE

  MERELY MARRIED

  Also by Sharon and Tom Curtis

  LOVE’S A STAGE

  THE WINDFLOWER

  THE TESTIMONY

  THE GOLDEN TOUCH

  Also by Elizabeth Elliott

  THE WARLORD

  SCOUNDREL

  BETROTHED

  and coming soon

  THE ASSASSIN

  Also by Patricia Potter

  THE SCOTSMAN WORE SPURS

  THE MARSHAL AND THE HEIRESS

  DIABLO

  DEFIANT

  WANTED

  RELENTLESS

  NOTORIOUS

  RENEGADE

  THE MARSHALL AND THE HEIRESS

  STAR KEEPER

  STARCATCHER

  Also by Suzanne Robinson

  HEART OF THE FALCON

  THE ENGAGEMENT

  LORD OF THE DRAGON

  LORD OF ENCHANTMENT

  LADY DANGEROUS

  LADY VALIANT

  LADY DEFIANT

  LADY HELLFIRE

  LADY GALLANT

  THE RESCUE

  THE TREASURE

  THE LEGEND

  and coming soon

  NEVER TRUST A LADY

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE by Jane Feather

  WISHFUL THINKING by Jane Feather

  THE BLACKMOOR DEVIL by Patricia Coughlin

  THE NATURAL CHILD by Sharon and Tom Curtis

  BEWITCHED by Elizabeth Elliott

  FOREVER by Patricia Potter

  THE UNWANTED BRIDE by Suzanne Robinson

  EPILOGUE by Jane Feather

  PROLOGUE

  THE MOON RODE high against the soft blackness of the night sky. The great stones of the circle threw their shadows across the sleeping plain. The girl waited in the grove of trees. He had said he would come when the moon reached its zenith.

  She shivered despite the warmth of the June night, drawing her woolen cloak about her. The massive pillars of Stonehenge held a menacing magic, even for one accustomed to the rites that took place within the sinister enclosure. The thought of venturing into the vast black space within the circle terrified her, as it terrified all but the priests. It was forbidden ground.

  Her ears were stretched for the sound of footsteps, although she knew that she would hear nothing as his sandaled feet slid over the moss of the grove. She stepped closer to the trunk of a poplar tree, then jumped back as she touched its encrustation of sacred mistletoe.

  “Move into the moonlight.”

  Even though she’d been waiting for it, the soft command sent a thrill of fear shivering in her belly, curling her toes. She looked over her shoulder and saw him, shrouded in white, his hood pulled low over his head; only his eyes, pale blue in the darkness, gave life to the form.

  The girl stepped out of the grove onto the moonlit plain. She felt him behind her. The priest who held the power of the Druid’s Egg. She stopped, turned to face him. “Will you help me?”

  “Are you certain you know what you’re asking for?” His voice rasped, hoarse, as if he’d been shouting for hours. The pale blue eyes burned in their deep sockets.

  She nodded. “I am certain.” With a sudden movement, she shook off her hood. Her hair cascaded down her back, a silver river in the moonlight. “Will the magic work?”

  A smile flashed across his eyes and he reached out to touch her hair. “It has the power of desires and dreams.”

  “To make them come true?” Her voice was anxious, puzzled.

  He said nothing, but drew from beneath his cloak a thick-bladed knife. “Are you ready?”

  The girl swallowed, nodded her head. She turned her back to the priest. She felt him take her hair at the nape of her neck. She felt the knife sawing through the thick mass, silvered by the moon. She felt it part beneath the blade. And then she stood shorn, the night air cold on her bare neck. “Now you will give it to me?”

  He was winding the hank of hair around his hand and didn’t answer as he reveled in the richness of the payment. The hair of a maiden had many useful properties but it was a potent sacrifice that few young virgins were prepared to make voluntarily. He opened a leather pouch at his waist and carefully deposited the shining mass inside, before taking out an object of green glass. It lay on his flat palm.

  She looked closely at it. A green glass bottle with a chased silver top. Vertical bands of chased silver flowed down the bottle from the stopper, like liquid mercury. There was something inside it. She could see the shape in the neck behind the glowing glass. Would it work? It had to work. Only the magic of a man who held the power of the Druid’s Egg could enable her to make the right decision.

  She reached out and touched it tentatively with her fingertip. “The spell is within?”

  “You will read it within.”

  “What must I do? Must I open it in a certain way? Read it in a certain way?”

  “You will read it as it is meant to be read.” The smile was there again as he took her hand and placed the bottle on her palm. “As it is meant to be read for you,” he added.

  Her fingers closed over the bottle. She frowned, wondering what he could mean. A spell was a spell, surely. It could be read only one way.

  When she looked up, the priest had gone.

  The Druid’s Egg was hatched by several serpents laboring together. When hatched it was held in the air by their hissing. The man who had given her the spell had caught the egg as it danced on the serpents’ venom. He had caught it and escaped the poison himself. Such a man … such a priest … had the power to do anything.

  Holding the bottle tightly in her fist, the girl turned her back on the stone pillars. She tried to walk but soon was running across the plain, toward the village nestled in a fold of land beside the river that flowed to the sea. She had never seen the sea, only heard tales of a vast blueness that disappeared into the sky. But the river flowing between sloping banks was her friend.

  She sat down on the bank outside the village and with trembling fingers opened the bottle. A scrap of leather, carefully rolled, lay inside. She drew it out, unfurled it, held it up to the brigh
t moonlight.

  Runes were scratched into the leather at the top, and at the sight of the magic symbols her heart leaped. She hadn’t sold her hair for nothing. Here was the incantation she had bought. She squinted at the strange marks and wondered what she was to do with them. Only when she turned the leather over did she see the writing in legible strokes inked onto the leather.

  To thine own wish be true. Do not follow the moth to the star.

  The girl stared in disbelieving dismay. What did it mean? It told her nothing. There was nothing magic about those words. She looked again at the runes and knew in her bones that they were mere decoration for a simple truth. She thrust the scrap of leather back into the bottle and corked it.

  Be true to her own wish. Was it telling her she must face the consequences of her desires? If she wished for the stars, she would burn like the moth at the candle.

  Slowly, she stood up. She held her hand over the swift-flowing water and opened it. The little bottle dropped, was caught by the current and whisked away toward the distant sea. As distant as the stars.

  The choice was still hexrs to make. The road still branched before her. She had sold her hair for the druid’s power and she was left, as always, with only her own.

  My thanks are due to my brother, Patrick, who at the drop of a transatlantic e-mail provided information on the life to be found in the Lymington salterns in the 19th century, and firsthand details of the gross habits and repulsive characteristics of the axolotl.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Hampshire, England, 1814

  LADY ROSALIND BELMONT strolled up Quay Hill from the town quay, the sun warm on the back of her neck. She was bareheaded, the thick dark hair escaping from its ribbon-tied braids, her feet thrust into a pair of leather thonged sandals. The hem of her gown of sprigged muslin was dark with water, the ruffled edge of her petticoat coated with mud from the estuary. She carried a pail and a net and drew no more than a smiling glance from those she passed. Lady Rosie had become a familiar figure in the little Hampshire town of Lymington during this summer of 1814, where she was visiting the Grantleys in the big red-brick house at the top of High Street.

  Rosie’s bespectacled eyes were on the cobbles beneath her feet as she scanned the ground for anything that might be of interest to the naturalist’s eye. It astonished her mother, her three sisters, and her three brothers-in-law that the youngest member of the Belmont family ever managed to see anything that was more than three inches off the ground.

  Her myopic gaze was drawn now to a red admiral fluttering its mottled wings against the white stone wall of a curio shop halfway up Quay Hill. As she approached, it flew up, perching on the sill of the shop’s bow-fronted window. Rosie, in her customary spirit of inquiry, bent over it, peering closely at its markings, automatically looking for any difference that would classify this particular butterfly as out of the ordinary. But the insect revealed nothing of special interest and eventually flew off.

  Rosie glanced in the window of the curio shop. A collection of silver snuff boxes, a crystal bowl, a decorative assortment of seashells nestled in the window amid an artistic setting of fishing nets and glass weights.

  Old Mr. Malone, the shop’s owner, peered over the window display and smiled, beckoning. Rosie returned the smile, and opened the shop door, setting the bell clanging merrily. She entered, blinking behind her glasses in the dimness after the bright sunlight outside.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Malone. Have you anything interesting for me?”

  “Aye, that I have, Lady Rosie.” The white-haired proprietor beamed at her. He hobbled, leaning heavily on his cane, to the back of the shop. “I got offered this collection of insects from some place called Suriname. Old Lady Watson from the Hall sent them over. The butler said they gave her ladyship the creeps.”

  “Oh, they are most particularly interesting.” Rosie set her pail and net on the floor and picked up the display case, carrying it to the window. “How did Lady Watson get hold of them?”

  “Found ’em in a drawer in a desk in her late husband’s study, apparently. He was something of an amateur naturalist, I gather.” Mr. Malone bent over the case with his young customer. “Can’t see the appeal, myself.”

  “Oh, but they’re beautiful, fascinating.” Rosie gazed, entranced, at the collection of wasps, spiders, fire ants, moths, petrified against a sheet of yellowing parchment. “I must have these.”

  The shopkeeper nodded, smiling to himself. “Thought they might hit the spot. It’ll be three shillings and sixpence.”

  “I don’t have money with me at the moment,” Rosie said absently, still scrutinizing the contents of the case. “But I’ll bring it when I go back to the quay tomorrow.”

  “Whenever, my dear,” Mr. Malone said with an easy smile.

  Rosie’s gaze lifted from her treasure. “You’re most obliging, Mr. Malone. Oh, what’s that?” She reached across a cluttered table and picked up a small bottle of glowing green glass. She held it up to the light from the window, watching the glass become a swirling rainbow of greens and blues. Vertical bands of chased silver striped the bottle, flowing like liquid mercury from the silver stopper.

  “What an exquisite thing,” she murmured, tracing the silver bands with a fingertip.

  “One of the fishermen pulled it up with a crab pot,” Mr. Malone said. “Astonishing, but the silver wasn’t even tarnished by the salt. Not natural … not natural at all.”

  “It’s magical,” Rosie said with a laugh. “A magic bottle made of strange and mysterious materials.” She was not given to fantasy, but something about the bottle fascinated her. It fitted into the palm of her hand. She made to put it back on the table, but somehow it wouldn’t be put down. It was as if it had found a home in her palm, her fingers curled warmly around its sensuous shape.

  “How much, Mr. Malone?”

  The shopkeeper frowned, pulling at his chin. He was very fond of young Lady Rosie. She was a frequent visitor to his shop, burrowing around in the dusty corners, triumphantly emerging with some forgotten book of plant illustrations or a display case of butterflies. He didn’t know whether she had much to spend, but she certainly never gave the impression of wealth. However, the bottle was very beautiful and could well catch the eye of a well-to-do visitor. Business was not so good that Mr. Malone could afford to be philanthropic.

  “I couldn’t ask less than ten guineas,” he said after a long pause.

  Rosie looked crestfallen. She could never keep track of her allowance; money seemed to dribble out of her purse. She never knew where it went, but she never seemed to have a surplus from one quarter to the next. Reluctantly, she reached to set the bottle back again. But it seemed to cling to her skin. Her fingers wouldn’t uncurl themselves. “I’ll send the money down with a footman as soon as I get home,” she heard herself saying. She could ask Mrs. Grantley and then apply to her mother to pay back the loan. Elinor Belmont would not refuse her daughter, but Rosie, conscious of the generosity of the allowance her mother made her, was always embarrassed by her inability to explain her constantly impecunious state.

  “I’ll wrap it for you, then.” Mr. Malone beamed with pleasure as he hastened behind the counter to fetch tissue paper.

  “No, there’s no need,” Rosie said, slipping the bottle into her pocket. It lay heavily against her thigh, and again she had the curious sensation that it was supposed to be there. She gathered the display case of Suriname insects against her small bosom, picked up her pail and net. “I’ll send the money within the hour.”

  “That’s all right, Lady Rosie. When you next come past.” He opened the shop door for her.

  Rosie gave him a brilliant smile. “That was a most particularly satisfactory visit, Mr. Malone.”

  “Glad to hear it, my lady.” He stood in the doorway, watching the slender figure weave a somewhat erratic course up the hill, eyes once again riveted to the cobbles.

  Elizabeth Grantley was Rosie’s godmother, and an old friend of Lady Elinor Belmont�
��s. Childless, Elizabeth had poured out all her frustrated maternal instincts on her goddaughter over the years and Rosie was almost as at-home in the big red-brick Georgian house at the top of Lymington Hill as she was in the dower house at Stoneridge Manor in the neighboring county of Dorset.

  The house was surrounded by a mellow brick wall and Rosie made her way to the side gate, entering the stable yard. A handsome carriage with the Stoneridge arms emblazoned on its side panels stood in the yard. The ostlers were releasing the cattle from the traces.

  “Theo!” Rosie said aloud. Her sister had said nothing in her last letter about paying a visit to the Grantleys. She cast a cursory but knowing eye over the horses—blood cattle, as was only to be expected of animals owned by Sylvester Gilbraith, Earl of Stoneridge.

  She hurried through a gate into the walled garden behind the house. “Oh, you’re all here!” she cried, carefully depositing her insect collection, pail, and net on the grass, before running across the lawn to where three elegant young women sat under a spreading beech tree with Elizabeth Grantley.

  “Theo, Clarissa, Emily! What brings you here?” She was lost in the embrace of her older sisters and for a moment the sound of their laughing voices rivaled the dawn chorus in their joyful greetings.

  “Rosie! You are so grubby!” Emily, the eldest of the four, exclaimed when she could stand back for a minute. She was a tall young woman with an elegant figure, glowing brown hair, and clear blue eyes. Her exclamation carried a note of resignation rather than castigation.

  “I’ve been collecting specimens,” Rosie said with an impatient brush at her skirt.

  “But where?” Clarissa asked, laughing. “In a mud pit?” She was thinner, shorter than her elder sister, with darker hair, but her blue eyes were as large and expressive in a dreamy countenance.

  “Along the quay, of course,” said Lady Theodora Gilbraith, Countess of Stoneridge. “What are you studying now, Rosie?”

  “Artemia salina,” Rosie replied to the one sister who would see nothing amiss in her appearance or consider her activities in the least inappropriate. “They’re very rare and only found on the Lymington salterns. But I found two this morning. Come and see.” She took her sister’s hand, pulling her over to the abandoned pail. “They’re brine shrimp and they like extremely salty water. Much saltier than ordinary shrimp. I can’t wait to put them under the microscope. You can look with me if you like.”