Free Magic in the Stars by Patricia Rice Page A

Azenor into straightening out the madhouse he called home.

Seven
    “Think on it, Emilia!” Aster insisted, pacing her parlor
the day after Lord Theo’s visit. “The Marquess
of Ashford —the nominal head of the Ives family. He has wealth and power to
spare! You could build a laboratory on his property and never worry about
funding again. He won’t require anything else of you except to give him an
heir. We could hire all your mother’s displaced widows and Aunt Gwenna’s
orphans!”
    Even a day later, she was still a trifle shaken from Lord
Theo’s masculine presence in her feminine household, so much so that she’d
actually dared ask her cousin to visit again. Aster took deep breaths and tried
to cleanse her mind, but the sensation of his lordship’s muscular arm beneath
her hand wouldn’t go away. Nor did the way he leaned in to murmur outrageous
comments in her ear. Why not , indeed.
She shivered at just the memory.
    She forced herself to focus on Aunt Gwenna’s plea for the
maimed children. If Emilia married the blind marquess . . . The
entire family would have access to his powerful connections. They could accomplish
a great deal of good—
    If she wasn’t bringing them into imminent danger. Her Libra
mind danced back and forth between opportunities and caution.
    “I won’t need a husband’s funds if I marry,” Emilia pointed
out, piercing Azenor’s bubble of hope. “I’ll have my own. And it sounds as if
he needs someone who can act as his secretary and helpmate. That isn’t I.”
    Aster sighed and straightened the mask on the wall. She wished
she knew if Lord Theo had been admiring her decor or laughing at it. She would
like to believe he did not consider her completely laughable.
    “You are so narrow-minded! Not in a bad way,” Aster added
hastily. “I understand that you must focus on your projects. But you would have land for your herb
gardens. You could expand your Pharmacopoeia ,
build your own hospital, carry out experiments . . .”
    “Do
you think your Lord Theophilus could help build a better microscope?” Emilia
asked wistfully.
    “I’m
sure he could,” Azenor agreed, not having any idea how a microscope compared
with a telescope, but determined to help both his lordship and Emilia. “But Lord
Theo needs help with the estate that you can’t give, and the marquess’s chart
is a better match for yours. If you were the marchioness, you could hire the secretaries he needed. And I
could train orphans as servants in the household without becoming too involved
with anyone. Iveston Hall could use an army of help!”
    “It
would be better if you could marry
Lord Theo,” Emilia said. “Besides, you said the marquess isn’t looking
for a wife.”
    “ Yet . He might be
persuaded in time.” There was the other fly in her grandiose hopes. Aunt Daphne
needed help for her widows immediately, as did Aunt Gwenna’s orphans. Could
they wait until the marquess was ready to face Parliament again?
    Perhaps she was getting ahead of herself. “All right, if we
must concentrate on Lord Theo, we really should offer choices from our family
first. I’m convinced we have the most to offer.” Except for that conjunction
with Mars, she corrected mentally. It was just so unlikely for such distant families to affect one another that she
thought surely she had read her charts wrong. “We need to organize his
household so we might introduce him to our family.”
    “We don’t have time to bring in any of our unmarried
relations,” Emilia pointed out. “Only Briana and Deidre are in London right
now, and Deirdre is already affianced.”
    Their younger sisters had their own pursuits and weren’t any
more inclined toward household duties than Emilia, Aster knew. Sometimes this
planning business put her mind in a whirl. She changed direction again. “I’m
not certain our sisters are safe going to Iveston, even if I didn’t go with
them. And they know nothing of organizing households on their