Witch Finder Read online

  His fingers were cold and very strong.

  ‘Rosa, I brought you here because something happened this weekend. When I heard news of your accident I realized – I couldn’t . . .’ He stopped and swallowed. Rosa held her breath. This was not the Sebastian she knew, the smooth, polished Sebastian carved of marble. It was a strange, new, hesitant Sebastian, whose fingers gripped hers with painful intensity.

  ‘I love you, Rosa,’ he said. He looked up at her, his blue eyes almost as pale as his face. ‘I realize that now. I cannot lose you. I will not lose you. Rosa . . .’

  He knelt on the stone flags. His hair in the moonlight was almost white, ash white. Rosa’s heart began to beat very hard and very fast. This is it, she thought. Dear God.

  ‘Rosa Greenwood, will you marry me?’

  For better.

  For worse.

  Matchenham.

  Freedom.

  Oh God.

  Silence. Silence apart from her beating heart and shuddering breath. Sebastian said nothing, he only knelt, his head bowed submissively, waiting for her answer. Rosa hoped for him to say something – as if his reaction would give her a clue about what to do. But he said nothing. There was no way out.

  ‘I . . .’ Rosa whispered. ‘I don’t – I . . .’

  Sebastian did not move. She clenched her hands, trying to stop herself from trembling. She had no idea what to say – no idea what to do.

  Then she heard a voice, her own voice. It shook.

  ‘Yes.’ Her lips were numb, stiff. ‘Yes, I will marry you.’

  He rose up, his arms around her. His face was fierce and pale and, for a moment, she was afraid that her fear was so obvious that it had angered him, that he knew the battle that had been raging inside her and was hurt, or furious.

  Then he kissed her with a fierce delight, his lips burning against hers, and she realized that it was because of her hesitancy that he wanted her so, that it was her fear and reluctance that excited him, that her uncertainty only made his determination stronger. There is no chase if the fox does not run.

  She had said yes. She had said yes.

  The word pounded inside her and she felt her mouth open to his. His hands were hard and strong against her waist and the back of her skull, holding her so that she could not turn away from him, so that her mouth and body was crushed against his.

  ‘Oh, Rosa, my darling.’

  He was stronger than her. Far, far stronger.

  His lips against hers, his teeth.

  Oh God, what had she done?

  A cloud drifted across the moon and they were alone, in darkness, his hands upon her body, around her waist. She felt his fingers graze the nape of her neck where the skin was bare and she shivered with something that could have been desire, or fear. Was this love? How could she know? She thought of kisses in novels, how the girls grew weak and shook with longing. She felt weak. She felt powerless. But it did not feel like love.

  At last he pulled back, his blue eyes blazing with a fierce, cold desire.

  ‘We will tell them tonight. Let’s go and announce it now.’

  He took her wrist and turned for the door.

  ‘No!’ she blurted, without stopping to think of a reason. It was only when he stopped and turned, one eyebrow raised, his expression hard as stone, that she groped for an excuse. ‘I – I have to tell Mama first. Please. It, it wouldn’t be right to announce it like this, before she knew.’

  Sebastian only stood, his face impassive, like a statue in the moonlight. What was he thinking? She couldn’t read him – Alexis was like a book, his moods written on his face in shades of scarlet and puce. Sebastian was a mystery – as cold as ice. She saw only her own panic reflected in his pale eyes.

  At last he spoke.

  ‘You’re right of course.’ He kissed her gloved hand. ‘But I don’t know how I will wait. You’re mine now, and I want to shout it from the rooftops. Is that so wrong?’

  He smiled, but there was no answering warmth in Rosa’s heart.

  I am not yours, she thought. I am my own.

  But of course that was not true. Married women were barely people at all – by law she would become one with Sebastian; all her property and money, would pass to him, even the least of her possessions. Everything that she had would become his. Nothing would belong to her, except by his gift. Not even her own body.

  You have nothing anyway. No property. No assets. Mama said it herself – you have nothing but breeding and beauty. And what are those worth to you? Nothing. You are nothing.

  Rosa felt her breathing become quick and shallow, and there were spots of flaming light in her vision, bright pin-pricks in the darkness.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she gasped. She groped for a bench and sat, her head bowed towards her lap as Mama had taught her, waiting for the moment to pass.

  ‘Rosa, darling.’ Sebastian sat solicitously beside her. ‘Can I fetch you anything? Water? Brandy? There will be salts somewhere; let me ring for a maid.’

  ‘No, please!’ she managed. ‘It’s nothing, truly.’ She raised her head and tried to smile, tried to act like a girl who had just got engaged.

  ‘You are pale as death. A white rose, not the red one I have grown to love.’ He touched her cheek gently. ‘But wait – there’s one thing you must let me do.’

  From his pocket, Sebastian took a handkerchief and unwrapped it, slowly. For a moment Rosa couldn’t think what he was about to do – wipe her eyes? She wasn’t crying. She had cried for Papa, and Cherry. But she would not cry for this. Not in front of Sebastian.

  Then a flash of fire told her what was to come and her heart seemed to clench and miss a beat.

  ‘This was my grandmother’s . . .’ Sebastian held it out, a great ruby, its smouldering heart like a dying ember, its fire dimmed but not quite extinguished by the cold glimmering moonlight. ‘May I?’

  She nodded and he pulled off her glove, leaving her skin bare to his touch, and slid the ring on to the third finger of her left hand. It hung loose for a moment, until Sebastian whispered a charm. Then it tightened, tightened, and then just as Rosa was about to panic and rip it from her finger, it stopped. She felt the cold metal digging into her skin.

  Sebastian touched it gently, twisting it around her finger until the jewel was centred.

  ‘Léohtfætels-ábíed,’ he whispered, and a bright witchlight ignited in his palm, making the ruby’s fire blaze out in the darkness.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said, and he kissed her hand and then her arm, her throat, the soft hollow beneath her ear, the dip of her collarbone where the silver chain of the locket pooled. ‘As beautiful as you. And as full of fire.’

  She did not feel full of fire. She felt cold, as cold as his lips, tracing across her skin, making her heart race.

  ‘Sebastian . . .’ she said huskily.

  ‘I love my name on your lips.’ His lips dipped to the edge of her corset, where her breasts swelled above the stiff boards. ‘It sounds like a plea.’

  Suddenly she could bear it no longer.

  ‘Stop!’ She pulled free and stood, her heart beating sickeningly fast, her breath coming quick. ‘Please, if someone saw . . .’

  ‘What?’ A smile quirked his pale lips, paler still in the witchlight’s glow. ‘I would have to marry you?’

  ‘Please, Sebastian.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He took her hand, pressed his lips to her ungloved knuckles and the ring. ‘Your innocence is part of what I love about you, but I forget you’re only sixteen. Shall we go back to the ballroom?’

  ‘N-no. I need . . .’ She stopped. Her breath was coming quick and shallow, her chest rising and falling above the corset. ‘I’m sorry, Sebastian. I need . . .’ She searched for an escape. Inspiration came at last. ‘I must get a wrap. I’m cold.’

>   ‘Let me send a maid.’ He stood and moved towards the bell.

  ‘No, truly.’ She moved quickly to the exit, putting herself between him and the bell. ‘I’d prefer to go myself. Anyway, in truth I need a moment to recover. It’s not every day . . .’ The coldness washed over her again, threatening to overwhelm her, but she forced herself on. ‘It’s not every day one gets engaged. I will come back, I promise. But I need a moment to myself. And I’d like to write to Mama. Please?’

  He looked at her for a moment, quietly, speculatively, and she realized that, without intending to, she had asked for his permission and in doing so she had given him the right to refuse.

  She opened her mouth. The word please hovered once more on her lips.

  I will not beg.

  ‘Of course,’ he said at last, with just enough pause to force home the fact that he could have said no. ‘Of course, my darling. Only, don’t be too long. I can’t bear to be apart from you for too long. Not tonight.’

  ‘I will hurry back,’ she promised. ‘You go, back to the ballroom. People will be wondering where you are. Our absence mustn’t cause talk – not yet.’

  ‘Very well. But I shall expect you at the supper table and I shall come to find you if you’re not back by then.’ He kissed her again, softly, tenderly, and then closed his fingers, extinguishing the witchlight in his palm, and turned to leave.

  The darkness drifted back.

  The smell of smoke hung in the air long after he was gone.

  The night air was cold as Luke walked across the darkened yard and so fresh he could taste its clearness on his tongue, like water. Above him the sky was speckled with an impossible number of stars; not the few dozen that managed to pierce the London smog on clear nights, but a hundred thousand more, like a drift of white sparks dwindling into the darkness. They were myriad, uncountable. How had he not known they were there, behind the smoke and clouds?

  And yet he missed London – in all its sooty, dirty glory. Here there was nothing but the stars, and the moon like a great white lantern. In London the moon would have been a sickly yellow thing, if its light had pierced the smog, but there were other lights to guide you. The flaming warmth of braziers at street corners, roasting chestnuts and apples. The packing fires lit by the homeless drunks, too debauched for the workhouse, who clustered around the markets, scrounging the rotten food and the waste to make a life in the narrow streets and homes in the sooty arches beneath the railway.

  Where there was life and people there was light and warmth – even in the meanest hovel. Somehow they would find the means for a fire, the tallow for a candle. Here there was nothing but the cold, dead light of stars and moon and, bright though it was, there was no life at all in its beam, and no warmth either.

  He sighed, his breath a cloud of white in the moonlight. He had come out here to clear his head, to try to think what to do, away from the clamour of the servants’ hall and the good-natured teasing of the other stable-hands and the housemaids’ chatter. But he was no closer to deciding. If there was an answer, it was not out here, in the darkness. Perhaps it lay back in London. Well, if so, he’d find out tomorrow, for better or for worse.

  He turned, intending to cut back past the stable block and in by the side door, slip away to his room before anyone could draw him back into the throng. But then he heard a sound coming from the stable block. It sounded like a sob.

  For a moment he hesitated. It was none of his business. Whoever was there had chosen to be alone. But then came a low whinny and it sounded like Brimstone. He turned back. He’d just check that whoever was there wasn’t harming the horses, just peer through the door, and then he’d leave them alone.

  The door was ajar and he stood outside for a moment, holding his breath and letting his eyes adjust to the darkness within. At first he could see nothing and then he caught sight of a white shape, like a ghost, huddled on the floor of Cherry’s stall. It was a girl. Her hands were over her face, but he would have known her anywhere, by the wild red hair that tangled down her throat and the glowing flame of her magic, hot with agony.

  He must have made a sound – perhaps the door creaked – because all of a sudden she leapt up, her face wild and white with fear, and then she saw him and it changed to something like fury.

  ‘What are you doing here? Were you spying?’

  ‘Spying?’ He was taken aback by her anger, but he took a step forwards into the darkness of the stall. ‘No, I was coming to check on the horses. What are you doing here? Why are you crying?’

  ‘Leave me alone.’ She went to push past him towards the door, her ungloved hand against his chest, and suddenly he saw it, a flash of fire in the darkness. Before he could think, he’d caught her wrist.

  ‘What’s this?’ He turned her knuckles to the light. The ring glowed like an ember on the third finger of her left hand and a great wash of coldness came over him. She’d done it, she’d accepted him, she was lost. ‘Rosa . . .’ It was like a pain in his chest, as if something were twisting, bending, breaking. ‘Rosa, no.’

  ‘What business is it of yours?’ She wrenched back her hand, her face pale with anger. ‘How dare you!’

  ‘You’re marrying a man you hate and fear.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’

  ‘I saved your life!’ There was a catch in his voice and he hated himself for it. ‘Doesn’t that mean anything?’

  ‘Of course it does.’ Her voice was low and he heard the shake in it. ‘But it doesn’t give you the right to dictate what I do.’

  ‘No. You’re giving that right to Knyvet instead. For God’s sake, Rosa, don’t do it. He’ll break you.’

  Take the other path – that one will break you. He heard it again in the witch-woman’s mad shrieking voice.

  ‘Do you understand?’ He touched her hand, where the ruby burnt. ‘He will beat you and break you like he beats his dogs and his horses.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about it.’ She looked up at him and her eyes were full of a weary self-hatred that made him flinch. ‘There’s no other way. If I don’t accept him, my life won’t be worth living anyway. Mama and Alexis will make sure of that. I was sent here to snare him – he can save Matchenham and get Alexis a place at the Ealdwitan—’

  ‘Why should you care about Alexis?’ Luke cried. ‘He’s a man! He can make his own way in the world – what kind of man sells his own sister to buy himself a short-cut?’

  She didn’t answer that, but set her jaw.

  ‘I will not see Matchenham sold. I can’t. It would break my heart.’

  ‘It’s just a house, Rosa. As long as you’ve a roof over your head and food on the table, what does it matter where it is?’

  ‘It matters to me!’ she cried. ‘Everything I ever loved, anyone who ever loved me – Cherry, Papa – they were all there. And they’ve gone, and all I have left is Papa’s house, the bricks and stones and timbers. What kind of daughter would I be if I let it all go when I could save it?’

  ‘But if Knyvet buys it back for you, it won’t be yours, it will be his. And so will you.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, her voice suddenly quiet. ‘I know. And I know that when I marry him, there will be no way out, only death. Mine or his.’

  The words sent a shiver through Luke. They were so close to his own thoughts just a moment ago.

  ‘Rosa,’ he said desperately. There were tears in his eyes, and in his voice. ‘There are other people who love you. There must be.’

  ‘Really? Who? Don’t say Mama, for you know it’s not true. Nor Alexis. My nanny who brought me up from a child went away when she got a better offer from another family. No one has ever loved me, no one has ever wanted to marry me, no one has ever even wanted to kiss me, before Sebastian. Forgive me if—’

  Luke took hold of her shoulders, more roughly than he meant. />
  ‘That’s not true.’

  She turned her face up to his. Her eyes were wet. Her lips were parted in surprise, mid-sentence. Luke felt her magic around them, flooding him with its fire.

  He knew what he was about to do was very, very stupid. But he had nothing left to lose. And he had never wanted anything more.

  He bent and kissed her.

  For a minute she did nothing, just stood, limp in his arms, her lips soft and unresisting beneath his. Luke knew, suddenly, that he had made a terrible mistake. He was no better than Knyvet, forcing himself on her – except that she could blast him through the stable wall behind him, if she chose.

  He began to pull away.

  ‘I’m s-sorry . . .’ he stammered.

  And then her arms went around his neck, in a grip so fierce he gasped and almost stumbled. Her lips against his were firm and hot, her fingers in his hair, gripping him so that he could not have pulled back, even if he wanted to.

  ‘Rosa . . .’ he tried, but his words were lost in her kiss – and then his mouth was on her jaw and her throat, kissing her as he had never kissed a girl before, as he had wanted to for so long. She was light and fierce in his arms, her magic a cloud of flame around them, consuming him, burning him up from the inside.

  ‘What. Is. This?’

  The words came from behind them, hissed low, but shockingly loud in the silence of the stable.

  They sprang apart, Luke’s heart beating hard in his chest. He reached for Rosa’s hand, but she was not there. She had taken a step forwards, towards the man. He was nothing but a black silhouette in the moonlight, but Luke knew who it was before Rosa said, ‘Sebastian, it’s not what it looks like—’

  ‘Be quiet.’

  ‘Seba—’

  She never got to finish. Knyvet threw out a blast of magic that sent her flying backwards, sprawling across the stone floor to crash into the stable wall with a force that made Brimstone give a neigh of alarm. He reared up, his hooves beating against the partition between the stalls.