Dangerous Magic Read Online Free Page A

subdued Lark scrubbed the floor at her feet.
    "But how are we going to make her marry me?" Lester said a bit miserably. "You heard her this afternoon. She's not interested."
    He whittled off another piece of wood. This one missed the fire, instead ricocheting off the mantle and to land back at his feet. "She'd rather stay up there in the woods dealing with sick peasants. Most women I could at least see at church, but she doesn't even come to services."
    Gertrude, who'd been kneeling down to stir the dying coals of their fireplace suddenly stopped and looked over her shoulder, the thoughtful expression on her face slowly replaced by a mean, calculating smile. She put the poker aside, stood and started to pace the room. She tapped the side of her beaklike nose with her finger as she walked. Lester knew what that meant; his mother was scheming.
    "Reverend Pratt's wife came in today, along with that gossipmonger Constance," she said. "Before they left we had a conversation that I didn't think much of. But now, in light of Lark Willoughby's arrogant actions..." Her voice trailed off.
    "Well, what did she say, woman?" Lester found his mother's attempts to be mysterious irritating.
    Gertrude glared at her son. "Don't take that tone with me, boy. I didn't brook it from your father and I won't brook it from you!"
    Lester drew back, intimidated. "Beg pardon," he mumbled, looking down at his feet.
    Gertrude smirked at her son's ready compliance and continued. "I asked her what Reverend Pratt's sermon topic would be for this Sunday morn and she said he would be discussing 'the devil in our midst.' There is, she said, a growing fear that some unsavory religious practices have followed some families from across the sea to take root here."
    She turned to Lester. "There are those among us who are practicing the Dark Arts in cooperation with Old Nick himself."
    Lester looked at his mother, his expression indicating he was clueless to what this had to do with his current dilemma. "How's knowing the topic of a sermon going to help me get Lark Willoughy to marry me?"
    Gertrude gave him another moment to make the connection before snorting in derision and cuffing him on the side of the head.
    "Sometimes I think you're as slow and stupid as your father, God rest his soul," she said. "Isn't it clear? Lark Willloughby is different. She always has been, with her strange herbs and unnatural beauty. She doesn't attend church services and cures where the doctors can't. Clearly this is the work of the devil."
    Lester wondered how healing sick people was the work of the devil, but knew better than to ask.
    "Go on," he said.
    "So we go to Reverend Pratt with our suspicions," she said. "And then when she is formally under suspicion we - as good Christian folk - offer her the chance to clear her name by entering a respectable marriage to a good Christian man."
    "And that would be me, right?" Lester asked.
    His mother cuffed him on the other side of the head. "Of course," she said. "Oaf!"
    She began to pace again. "And after you are married and her property is yours we shall dig up every inch of the place to find the gold."
    "They say if there is gold it may be under fairy enchantment," said Lester, returning to his whittling. "Touching it will turn us into rocks or something."
    "Don't say such a thing!" his mother screeched, wringing her bony hands. "We must not even pretend we believe in fairies and sprites and the like. They are of the devil!"
    Lester cowered, fearful that his mother would strike him again. When she did not, he ventured a timid look at her. "But just how are we supposed to raise suspicions and then offer her protection? Won't it look suspicious? Knowing Lark, she'd rather spend her life in a stone cell than marry the man that informed on her."
    Gertrude smiled. "Oh, I think not. From what I hear, the penalty for consorting with the devil through the old religion is punishable by death. Specifically, burning."
    Lester gawked at his mother,