Shannon Delany - Weather Witch

“You cannot take her,” he repeated, fiercer than she’d ever seen him.

His mother stepped forward, resting a hand on his arm.

He shook it off and took another step.

“Do not act the madman!” his mother scolded. “Let her go.”

Jordan raised an eyebrow. So that was how it would be now, yes? The accusation made, her family’s reputation already tumbling to ruin not even ten minutes since the Wardens’ arrival.

A few guests slunk toward the door the Wandering Wallace’s assistant held open for their escape. Best not to be remembered as having attended this particular party. Rank by association meant being part of the wrong group at the wrong moment might mar your standing irreparably.

Jordan should not have blamed them, as she herself would have been among the first to sneak away in similar circumstances. Still, she blamed them whether she should or not.

“You cannot take her,” he insisted. “I haven’t given her her birthday gift yet.”

Don’t do it, she thought, scrunching her face up to be as unappealing as possible. Don’t dare ask for my promise now—it would be social suicide …

With one more step he was toe-to-toe with her. He leaned in—down, she realized, suddenly struck by Rowen’s height. She was certainly no delicate flower but Rowen was … a tree by comparison. His shock of blond hair brushed against her forehead and his lips found hers with a homing ability she would have never imagined in someone who got turned around window-shopping!

When his lips moved against hers the panic filling her head died away to nothing and she was left with only silence. And sensation.

That was when he sneaked his fingers into the heavy folds of ruffled lace trimming her sleeve and pierced the fabric there with something cold.

Her eyes popped open and she gasped but he hardened his kiss as his hands drifted back down her arms and paused to clasp her wrists. Pressing his cheek to hers he whispered, “When you are alone and only then—look. Someday you will learn to more readily wear such a thing in such a fashion.” He broke away then, resting his forehead against hers, his eyes searching her own.

“Now,” the Tester snapped, and they dragged her out the front door of her family’s mansion.

The last glimpse she had of her seventeenth birthday party was of Catrina stepping up to Rowen and slipping her hand around his to lead him away from his view of Jordan.

His taste on her lips, Jordan understood a new way Rowen might yet prove worrisome.

The doors closed behind them and Jordan’s vision faded in the grip of night. She stumbled on the wet herringbone walkway, only held up by the Wraiths’ fierce and biting fingers. They tugged her forward a moment until she remembered the quality of her shoes and forced her feet to catch up with the rest of her so as to not scuff their brocade satin.

The smell and the impatient stomp of a beast with shoed feet announced another presence even before she glimpsed them under the soft glow of the street light.

Horses.

A carriage was hooked to them, its body rounded and trimmed in molding that reflected the wavering light. Tall wheels and high windows glinted.

Even she had only ridden in a carriage drawn by real horses for weddings and funerals. Horses were a dangerous commodity with the Wildkin War still raging. Their meat was a Merrow delicacy so few made it over the sea in anything but a Cutter or an airship. And any that had the misfortune of grazing near a body of salty water … Jordan shivered. Bloody trails marking the disappearance of an entire herd of horses by the bay made it known that Merrow—at least when hungry—could slither more than a quarter mile on land to pull a horse back to a watery end.

When the other water-loving Wildkin joined the Merrow cause in some strange sense of watery camaraderie, not even freshwater was safe. There might be no magicking allowed in the New World, but the beasts that existed here naturally (or stowed away to cross the Pond) seemed happy to thrive as fiercely as if magick had given them birth instead of the natural world.

Jordan watched the horses—might one be something more sinister in disguise? It had happened more than once according to Catrina. Wealthy men had lost more than pride when a Pooka replaced a horse in a herd and allowed itself to be ridden or hooked to a carriage.

But, noting the heavy adornments of metal and bars on both doors and windows, Jordan realized her transport was both carriage and cage.

Philadelphia

The doors closed and Rowen looked down at his hand, his gaze lingering on Catrina’s fingers, wrapped round his own. He yanked free of her and, taking a step back, nearly trod on his own mother.

“We really must be going,” his mother said in a stage whisper so loud the entire party heard. “It is not appropriate for us to be seen in the company of such…” She paused, letting the sentence hang so anyone might fill in the blanks.

Rowen stepped away from her as well.

“She nearly ruined your future, Rowen!” she scolded, no longer wasting good graces on a gentle tone of voice.

He shook his head.

“She lied to you, Rowen,” his mother said, the pitch of her voice rising.

He shook his head again. Jordan would have teased that if he did that much more people would surely hear rocks rattle.

Damn it.

Jordan’s mother sniffled by the servants, eyes and nose running as Chloe tried to dab the moisture away and was swatted at for her attempts.

Lady Astraea’s husband had stalked from the room, glowering, after tearing her modest silhouette from the foyer wall, the accusation of Jordan being a Weather Witch impugning his wife’s morality. She must have slept with someone with a tainted bloodline to conceive Jordan. She had betrayed his trust and their vows. She was an adulterer. A fornicator. And having been intimate with her, his reputation was ruined as well.

None of it made any sense.

Rowen’s brow furrowed in thought.

Lady Astraea was as blindly faithful as a wife could be. She overlooked all her husband’s imperfections—the squirrel hunts that never resulted in squirrels being brought to the kitchen but inevitably required the servants to help walk a tipsy Lord Astraea to his bedroom, the money that disappeared whenever he and the boys played cards but never (“I swear on my life, Cynthia, never!”) bet, the fact he still could not dance a proper waltz. It seemed to Rowen she loved Lord Astraea even more for what was certainly only the abbreviated list of quirks he had observed or been told of by Jordan.

Lady Astraea was not the type to fall under another man’s spell.

And Jordan had never manifested powers—or even shown the slightest affinity with the weather—until tonight.

None of it made any sense.

Catrina’s hand once more found his and with a growl Rowen shook her off and vaulted across the distance to Lady Astraea.

Wide-eyed, she stumbled back, but Rowen caught her sleeve and, closing his eyes (and trying to equally close his ears against the screeching of his mother), pulled the disowned Lady Astraea into his arms.

He said exactly what she needed to hear—a lie.

“It will be all right,” he assured as she snuffled into his shirt.

“Rowen Albertus Burchette!” his mother shrieked, and he jerked upright, hearing his middle name invoked in public.

The clomping of her heels across the glossy marble tiles only gave him a moment’s warning before her hands caught his arm and she tried to wrench it away from Jordan’s mother.

Rowen stood his ground, tucking his head closer to Lady Astraea’s and whispering the lie again.

“This is unseemly!” his mother declared, grasping Lady Astraea’s arm instead.

Lady Astraea yelped, but hid in the shelter of Rowen’s arms with more determination.

Rowen’s mother snapped her fan shut and began smacking the whimpering Lady Astraea about the head and shoulders.

Rowen bellowed, whisking Lady Astraea to safety behind him as his mother rained slaps of her fan all across his shoulders and chest.

Lady Burchette was relentless. “You. Will. Obey. Your. Mother!” she howled. “Now!”

Rowen leaned down to look his mother in the eye, rebellion still seething deep inside him.

She flicked his nose with the fan and stood balanced on tiptoe to be nose-to-chin with her greatly taller son. “You will obey me.”

“I will—”

“Or you will lose more than this supposed family. You will be disowned by your own.”

“Now Millie…” Rowen’s father began but she turned his direction so fast he swallowed the rest of his words and grew so pale it seemed he might in a moment vomit them back up.

She swung back to Rowen, focusing the full force of her glittering gaze on him. “Now, young man. We are leaving.”

Rowen looked to his father, but cowed, he was already walking toward the door. He looked round the foyer, but everywhere eyes turned away from him. Catrina waved him in her direction, looking as kind as she ever had.

She mouthed the words, “Come now.”

“Rowen!” his mother bellowed.

He blinked, swallowed, and straightened, releasing Lady Astraea. “Yes, Mother.”

Chloe snatched Lady Astraea into her arms. “So that’s why you carry such a large handbag,” she said to Lady Burchette, “you have to fit two pairs of balls in there along with your rouge.”

Lady Burchette gasped and whisked her fan open to better behave as a proper lady should at such talk. Then she snapped it shut again and jabbed Rowen in the gut. “Move.”

He did, raising his chin as proudly as a young man could when being ordered about by his mother.

“Rowen Albertus,” Chloe chided. “Love, you need to grow a pair. No one would bother having you without them—no matter your rank.”

Lady Burchette gasped again, poking both her husband and son as she hurried them toward the doors. “I would watch my tongue, were I you,” she warned Chloe. “I only need to say a few words and you’ll never find work again.”

Chloe balled her hands into fists and set them on her hips. “Your threats mean nothing, Burchette. We all know what happens next. Threats and words—kind or unkind—truth or lies—will not shift the path of the juggernaut now rolling.”

Lionel, the Astraea butler, yanked the door open and cleared his throat. “The door,” he said pointedly to the Burchettes. “As it seems you are having difficulty finding it quickly enough for my lady’s piece of mind.”

“Why thank you, Lionel,” Lady Burchette said with an arrogant sniff.

“Oh, dear,” Lionel said. “You misunderstood. Not surprising, I would guess … My lady is Lady Astraea. She always has been and always shall be. And you have offended her. You must go. Now.”

“Why I—”

“Do not say ‘Why I never’ as if no one has expressed a similar sentiment in which to hie you from their residence,” he responded with a snort. “Given your attitude I expect you have been encouraged away from the homes of good people many times.”

Lady Burchette took one long spin around to look at the few people who remained—mostly servants. “Catrina!” she snapped. “Come with us, darling, your uncle can join us when he—reappears. But this is no place for a proper lady.”

Catrina clicked her way across the floor to join Rowen’s family. Rowen let out a loud sigh.

“A proper lady?” Chloe snorted. “I daresay it would require a lady of higher standing than you to determine such a thing.”

Before they were fully out the door Lionel began to close it on them, much to Lady Burchette’s consternation.

The door shut and nothing but the remnants of the Astraea family and their servants remained within walls far too quiet to contain what began as a birthday party for one of the city’s most eligible young women.

“Now it is time to clean up this mess,” Lionel announced, securing the doors.

Chloe nodded, looking at the youngest of their number. “Laura, escort her ladyship to her chambers. Test the adjoining room’s locks and bolt the doors on her side. Cynda will replace you shortly.”

Laura’s eyes were wide. “Lock his lordship out of her chambers?”

Chloe signaled Laura nearer to her and placed a hand on each of her shoulders. “Men have been known to do horrible things when they suspect a woman of infidelity,” she confided. “Lady Astraea may never again be safe with him. We need to wait. To see. And, most importantly, to allow for no unhappy accidents.”