Free UNDER A CHRISTMAS SPELL by Barbara Monajem Page A

guest.”
    Valiant opened the paper. “At the estate of Viscount Westerly.” He gave another internal shudder. He could well imagine it—idiotic traditions that must be adhered to no matter how antiquated. It would be just like being back in the family fold.
    He shook his head. “Lord Westerly detests me. He won’t want me at his party.”
    “I trust you’ll find your way around such a trifle as that,” the master said.
    The private parlour of an inn on Grub Street , London , also in December
    “My dearest Lucille,” said the Mistress of the British Succubi. “How kind of you to visit me.”
    “ Oui , I am extremely kind.” Lucille Beaulieu rolled her eyes. “To come here, I had to postpone some very boring plans. Life is moving at the pace of a stubborn donkey. I hope you mean to give me something interesting to do.”
    The mistress’s eyes twinkled through the slits of her mask. She was almost pleasant to deal with now that the war was over. The mistress had been extraordinarily kind to her, helping her establish herself in English society, and Lucille made a point of paying her debts.
    Except one, which she could never repay. Thoughts of it—fears, as well—still kept her awake at night. She had finally begun to feel safe, but one persistent enemy was all it took.
    A maid entered with a tea tray. When the girl had gone, the mistress poured Lucille a dish of steaming hot bohea. “You are to arouse a certain nobleman’s interest in sensuality,” she said.
    Lucille made a tiny moue. “I do that merely by being myself.” At twenty-eight years old, she found herself almost yearning for the approach of age and the loss of sensual appeal. Not that she would be entirely useless after that, for she would never lose the seemingly magical ability to send erotic dreams. But such dreams were a gift, bestowing harmless pleasure on the recipient, whilst seduction often led to irreparable harm.
    “Yes, my dear, but this man is a difficult case. He is a peer lately returned from the war.”
    “A soldier?” Lucille barely managed to keep the dismay from her voice. Soldiers had taken her parents away to prison and the guillotine when she was only four years old. As a rational adult who had spent years in the proximity of armies, she should be accustomed to soldiers, but...no.
    “Not any longer, for he has sold out,” the mistress said. “He is thirty-one years old—an appropriate age to marry, but he refuses to do so.”
    The tea did not taste quite so delicious anymore. “Surely you don’t expect me to wed him.” Lucille had already been married five times. Some of the marriages had been legal and some not, but all of the husbands had been disposed of—although not by Lucille—when they had ceased to be useful to the powers that be. She hadn’t loved any of them, but nor had she wished them dead.
    “No, for we should be obliged to kill him, should we not?” The mistress laughed.
    Lucille didn’t. She had joined the British Succubi as an angry young woman. At first she had been quite bloodthirsty, using her skills of seduction to do whatever was needed...but seeing one’s husbands done away with—not to mention many others one encountered during the war—had changed that. She wished there were ways to use her talents to help others rather than to harm them.
    The mistress patted Lucille’s hand. “Merely a jest. Those days are past. You are free to marry whomever you choose.”
    Since the only man Lucille would consider marrying despised her, this was unlikely.
    “Marriage might be just the thing to relieve your boredom, but probably not with Lord Westerly.” The mistress stirred sugar into her tea. “To return to the matter at hand, he is an upright and intelligent man. He was one of Wellington’s aides-de-camp and a brilliant code-breaker, but the unpleasantness of war affected him so badly that he has well nigh become a hermit.”
    The unpleasantness had taken its toll on Lucille, too, but in