Read Online Sorcery & Cecelia: Or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia Collins Wrede - Free Book Online Page A

a very little longer and you’d not have left this wood for quite some time.” Right hand over my right hand, he moved to stand behind me. “Hold out your left hand,” he said.
    “Stop that,” I said. “What on earth are you doing?”
    “Rescuing you, silly,” he said. “Hold out your left hand.” Cautiously, I did so. He took it in his and stood so close behind me that I have no doubt that but for the hood of the silken domino I wore, I could have felt his breath stir my hair. The fingers of his left hand laced with mine and he drew our clasped hands forward until our fingertips rested very lightly against my forehead, as though to shield my eyes.
    I stood straight and still, trying to ignore his proximity, as he held me circled in his arms. For the Marquis’s part, he seemed to ignore me in return. In addition to the oddity of our stance, he began to mutter. His voice was a very soft steady repetition of words I could not catch, a droning chant that almost had a tune. After about four bars of this, I realized I could hear the orchestra again, a faint distant music through the trees.
    “There,” said the Marquis. “Nothing elegant, but it ought to do the trick.” His right hand still on mine, he clasped hard and pried it off the bark of the tree. And indeed, when it did come free, it felt to me as though I left every bit of skin on my palm stuck to the bark. It hurt like blazes and I would have liked very much to exclaim aloud, but I did not wish to do so before the odious Marquis. He kept my hand clasped firmly in his right while he fumbled in his pocket with his left. After a moment he produced a silk handkerchief and did a fairly clumsy job of bandaging my hand with it, muttering under his breath the while.
    Perhaps it was the muttering or perhaps the silk handkerchief, but in a few minutes the pain eased and I was able to say, “I can’t think how you knew I was here.”
    “Luckily for you,” he said, “you shed hairpins the way Hansel and Gretel shed crumbs. I followed your trail.” He pressed a half dozen hairpins into the palm of my left hand. “Now let us return to light, safety, and society.”
    He led me out of the thicket back to the little temple, and we found ourselves in the ring of lamplight. In the center of the ring were both Grenville twins, Alice Grenville, Frederick Hollydean, and Georgina, who had her head on Alice’s shoulder, sobbing lustily.
    I glanced back at Thomas Schofield to find him gazing down his nose at me in a most annoying way. “What’s happened?” I demanded. “Is she hurt?”
    “I suggest you ask her,” he replied. “I do so hate to intrude in a family squabble.”
    “Truly,” Georgina was saying, between sniffs and sobs that made the Grenville twins look thunderously upon Frederick Hollydean, “I never meant to flirt with all of you. I never meant to flirt with any of you. I only meant to make Oliver angry. And now it’s all gone wrong, for I sent him a note telling him I would be here and he didn’t even bother to come rescue me from the consequences of my folly.”
    “But Oliver is here,” I said briskly. “I sent him after you. I can’t imagine what’s keeping him. He was quite angry enough to suit even you, Georgina.”
    Georgy lifted her head and regarded me with reproach. “Kate, where have you been ?”
    I looked back at Thomas but the wretch was gone, melted back into the shrubbery. If he guessed what the rest of that particular squabble would be like, I can’t blame him. If I’d known, I’d have gone slinking off myself. At the end of Georgina’s tirade I was finally able to distract her (for she seemed strangely eager to forget her behavior by complaining of mine) by asking, “Yes, but where’s Oliver?”
    And no one knew. We searched the gardens until the lamplighters came to put out the lanterns, without success. The Grenvilles brought us home so late Aunt Charlotte had dozed off in her chair beside the door, so we were able to