A Certain Magic Read Free

treating you? You are looking very fine and not at all provincial.”
    “It suits me,” she said. “It must be the most beautiful city in England, Piers.”
    “Granted,” he said. “But full of octogenarians, I hear. I don’t at all like the thought of your living there. I suppose you have dozens of aged and retired generals and whatnot ogling you and wanting to hire you on as nursemaid for their old age at the cost of a marriage license.”
    Alice was laughing. “Oh, not dozens,” she said. “You exaggerate. No more than half a dozen.”
    “Well,” he said, “I wish you had not left home, Allie. I have no reason to spend time at Westhaven Park any longer. First Web dying two years ago and then you purchasing a house in Bath last summer and taking yourself off. It’s deuced lonely at home without either of you.”
    “Is it?” she said. “But I did not have a great deal of choice once Web’s cousin decided last year to move into Chandlos after all. The house belonged to him. And I am not complaining. It was the only one of Web’s possessions that did not come to me, and he would have left me that, too, if he could. Oh, I could have taken a house in the village, Piers, but I did not think it fair to stay in the neighborhood. There are those who would have said I had been forced from my own home, and that would not have been fair at all. It was better to move right away.”
    “But it was your home,” he said, “all your life. Oh, not Chandlos until you married Web, but the village. Your father was rector there even before you were born.” 
    “Yes,” she said. “But I had to leave, Piers. There was no one left—Papa gone, Web gone, y—. Well.” She smiled. “It was better to begin a new life altogether. How did you know I was here?”
    “Met your sister-in-law at the opera last evening,” he said. “I’m sorry, Allie. Have I upset you, reminding you of Web?”
    “No, not at all,” she said. “After two years I can both think of him and speak of him without dissolving into the vapors, you know.”
    “You did from the start,” he said. “You never did collapse. Only your eyes showed what was going on inside. Well, he was a damned fool for going out shooting in the rain when he was still recovering from the influenza, and I would have told him so, too, if I had been home at the time. I would have wrestled him back into his bed for you, Allie. Anyway, enough of that. You would never guess what is going on in my life.”
    “Perhaps I could, too,” she said. “I have been hearing strange things of you, Piers. You have been attending balls and dancing, too, which is a very strange combination indeed. And attending the opera last evening? And of course, there are the elegant clothes and the, ah, Brutus hairdo. I think perhaps you are losing your grip on your sanity.”
    He threw back his head and shouted with laughter. “Perhaps I am, too,” he said. “Though if you were to talk to Mama she would tell you that I am just being restored to my senses after a very long time, for apparently I have been in a long decline since Harriet’s death, from which sad fate only my recent promotion to Berringer’s heir has awakened me. I am looking for a leg-shackle, Allie. I am looking to be a tenant-for-life again. Though I was not quite that the first time as it turned out, was I? Poor Harriet. It lasted less than two years.”
    “Surely you cannot be as careless about the matter as you appear to be,” Alice said. “Have you met the lady, Piers? And can you like her and even love her?”
    “Romantic Allie,” he said, chuckling. “Oh, no, my dear, not all marriages can be as perfect as yours was, you know. You and Web were companions and lovers. It is a rare combination, I would have you know, my fair innocent. I do not see many such marriages around me. My own was not by any means ideal, though Harriet was quite blameless and I was fond of her. Marriages when