The Witches of Cambridge: A Novel, page 1
Praise for Menna van Praag
“Bighearted, beautiful, and brushed with magic, this novel celebrates life’s moments of joy, possibility, and transformation. Menna van Praag’s writing is bright with sparkles and lovely grace notes.”
—SUSAN WIGGS, New York Times bestselling author of The Beekeeper’s Ball
“Van Praag has a knack for balancing a large cast of engaging characters, and her references to beloved authors and historic scientists are enjoyable touchstones between doses of mystery and magic.”
—Booklist
Praise for The Dress Shop of Dreams
“Van Praag has a deliciously innate capability to weave the totality of characters of The Dress Shop of Dreams into a compelling tale. Each character, from Cambridge to Oxford, augments and refines these dynamics. Ultimately, van Praag cracks the code that deciphers magical fate when it comes to couture and the complexities of love.”
—New York Journal of Books
“[A] brightly colored fabulist confection…sure to delight those looking for a little fairy dust in their romance.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Reminiscent of Love Actually and P.S. I Love You, this cute little book is recommended to readers who want to be charmed by the possibilities of love.”
—LibraryReads
“Dreams, dresses, magic, and mystery swirl in this enchanting novel. The Dress Shop of Dreams is the book to read before turning off your bedside light.”
—NANCY THAYER, New York Times bestselling author of An Island Christmas
“The Dress Shop of Dreams is a dream come true for lovers of romantic tales with a twist of fantasy. Utterly enchanting! Menna van Praag’s imaginative, endearing characters will stay with you long after you close the book.”
—MARY ALICE MONROE, New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wind
The Witches of Cambridge is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Menna van Praag
Reading group guide copyright © 2016 by Penguin Random House LLC
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
RANDOM HOUSE READER’S CIRCLE & Design is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Praag, Menna van, author.
Title: The witches of Cambridge : a novel / Menna van Praag.
Description: New York : Ballantine Books, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2015038060 | ISBN 9780804179003 (softcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780804179010 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Witches—England—Cambridge—Fiction. | Paranormal romance stories. | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Sagas. | FICTION / Romance / Contemporary. | GSAFD: Love stories.
Classification: LCC PR6116.R34 W58 2016 | DDC 823/.92—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038060
eBook ISBN 9780804179010
randomhousebooks.com
randomhousereaderscircle.com
Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno, adapted for eBook
Cover design: Belina Huey
Cover illustration: Tom Hallman, based on a photograph © Fotolia
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Cosima’s Flowers and Herbs
A Few of Cosima’s Favorite Baking Spells
Conversion Table
The Gods and Goddesses
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By Menna Van Praag
About the Author
Reading Group Guide
AMANDINE CLOSES HER eyes as the clock ticks past midnight. She tries to ignore the tug of the full moon and the flutter in her chest as its gravity squeezes her heart. Instead Amandine focuses on her husband’s soft snores and wonders, as she has every night for the last few months, why she feels so numb.
When they met thirteen years ago, she thought him the most beautiful man she’d ever seen and he’s still a handsome man, strong and lean and dark. Amandine Bisset was so passionate for Eliot Walker that tiny silver sparks flew from her fingertips when she touched him. When they made love her whole body filled with white light so bright Amandine believed she might explode. Now she wonders, when was the last time sex was like that. Before the babies were born?
Now they have two rambunctious, full-blooded, glorious boys and hardly enough energy left at the end of the day for a goodnight kiss, let alone anything else. And any intimacy had quickly evaporated, like wet kisses scattered across warm skin. Thirteen years ago, when they were both undergraduates at Cambridge, Amandine’s skin had shimmered at the sight of him. The first time Eliot Walker entered her world she was standing in the foyer of the Fitzwilliam Museum gazing at The Kiss by Gustav Klimt and wondering if, among all the glistening gold, she’d ever be blessed enough to feel the passionate desire depicted in that painting.
A moment later, the thought still lingering in her head, Amandine had heard laughter as bright and brilliant as moonshine. She turned to see Eliot standing alone in front of a van Gogh, his laughter flooding the painting and filling the room. Seized by a sudden urge she couldn’t explain, Amandine found herself walking toward him. When she reached him she didn’t extend her hand and introduce herself.
“Why are you laughing?”
Eliot turned his smile on her. “What?”
She asked again and he shrugged.
“I don’t know. There’s a quirky joy about it, the sky rolling like waves, the moon and stars like little suns. I think the artist wanted us to smile.”
“I don’t think so,” Amandine said, feeling the need to contradict him. “Van Gogh was a depressive. This painting was the view from his sanatorium window. I doubt he was smiling at the time.”
Eliot’s own smile deepened, tinged with cheeky triumph. “But he didn’t paint it there, did he? It was done from memory, years later. He might have been laughing then.”
Amandine frowned, not because he was wrong—indeed she knew for a fact that he wasn’t—but because he was so sure of himself, slightly arrogant and argumentative. Just like herself.
“Before or after he cut off his ear?”
Eliot laughed again. “You don’t like to be wrong, do you?”
Amandine’s frown deepened. “Does anyone?”
“Not me,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t matter, because I never am.”
Now Amandine laughed, despite herself. “Everyone’s wrong sometimes.”
“Something you know more than most, I imagine.” Eliot’s eyes glittered.
Amandine was just about to fight back when she realized he was flirting. So she reined herself in, suppressing a smile and giving a nonchalant shrug.
“I’m as wrong about life as anyone, but I’m rarely wrong about art,” she said. “And you’re not even studying art, are you? I haven’t seen you around Scroope.”
“Law. Finalist. Trinity.” He gave a little bow with a flourish of his hand. “Eliot Ellis Walker-Jones, at your service.”
“Ah, so you’re one of them.” Amandine raised a teasing eyebrow, her glance resting for a moment on his thick dark hair. “I should have known.”
“One of whom?”
“A lawyer. A double-barrelled name. A snob.”
“The first charge I already confessed to. The second, I can’t deny,” Eliot said. “But how can you claim the third?”
“Your accent, your name, your knowledge of art even though it’s not your subject.” Amandine smiled, feeling a sparkle on her skin as it began to tingle. “You probably play the piano disgustingly well and row for Trinity. And I bet a hundred quid you went to Eton—”
“Winchester.”
“Same difference.”
“Well, not unless twenty thousand pounds a year means nothing to you.”
Amandine rolled her eyes, finding it harder and harder not to look into his: vivid green with flecks of yellow, bright against his pale skin and dark hair.
“So, you’re an art historian then?” Eliot asked, shifting the tone.
Amandine gave a little curtsy, fixing her eyes on the floor, hiding her desire to know this man more deeply, though she knew him hardly at all.
“Amandine Françoise Héloïse Bisset.”
“Pretty name.”
“Merci.”
Eliot met her eyes. “You don’t have an accent.”
A r
ush of warmth rose in her throat. “My parents are French, but I grew up here.”
“Well, I’m glad about that,” Eliot said. “Your growing up here, I mean. Well, that you live here right now, anyway…”
Amandine stifled a smile. “Yes, me too.”
They stood for a while, both glancing at the floor, then back at the painting.
“It’s very…” Eliot trailed off.
Amandine waited.
“And you—you’re, you’re very…”
And, although he didn’t finish his sentence, this time Amandine knew what he’d wanted to say, because she felt the wave of his feelings fill the air like smoke. Joy. Passion. Desire.
She could feel what Eliot felt just as she could feel what van Gogh had when he painted The Starry Night in 1889. Every artist—painter, writer, musician—put their spirit and soul into their work, along with their emotions, and Amandine had always been able to feel exactly what the artist had when she looked at a painting or read a book. Music was trickier because the emotions of the musician always mixed with those of the composer, and she was confused and cloudy when confronted with conflicting or unclear emotions.
And, amazingly, though he clearly wasn’t a witch, Eliot had been right about van Gogh’s Starry Night, though Amandine was loath to admit it. Besides, she couldn’t say so without also telling him her deepest secret. And she had absolutely no intention of doing that. Even her father hadn’t known about her mother. Héloïse Bisset had kept her true nature from her husband and so Amandine had always assumed that it wasn’t safe to share such things with people who were purely human. It was likely, if nothing else, to shock them so much that they’d never see you in the same way again.
“I don’t suppose…?” Eliot began, tentative for the first time.
“What?” Amandine asked, though she already knew the answer.
“I don’t suppose you fancy taking a cup of tea with a snobby lawyer? My treat.”
“Well,” Amandine pretended to consider, “since you’re not a lawyer yet, I suppose I could make an exception. And if you like van Gogh, you can’t be so terrible.”
“Ah, high praise indeed. I should ask you to write my references,” Eliot said. “And when I am a lawyer, what will you do about fraternizing with me then?”
They began to walk past the paintings and toward the door.
“We’ll still know each other then, will we?” Amandine swallowed a smile.
Eliot paused for a moment in front of The Kiss.
“Oh yes,” he said. “In ten years or so I’ll be a London lawyer and we’ll be married with two kids. Both boys.”
Amandine raised both eyebrows. “Oh, really?”
They began walking again.
“But I don’t want children,” Amandine said, “so I’m afraid that might put a little crimp in your plans.”
“You might not now,” Eliot said, “but you will.”
Amandine laughed. “Now you’re taking arrogance to a whole new level. But I’m afraid you’re wrong this time. I admit I might change my mind in many ways in the next ten or twenty years, but not about that.”
“Ah, but I told you,” Eliot said, still smiling. “I’m never wrong.”
And then, with one bold move following another, he reached out and took her hand in his. Amandine almost flinched, thinking perhaps she ought to be shocked, affronted at his arrogance again. But she wasn’t. So she let her hand soften in his and, as they walked together, Amandine wished that her mother had given her psychic powers along with extraordinary empathy, so she could know whether it was possible that this man might be right.
—
Now Amandine lies in bed next to her husband, who has changed so much, from being the light at the center of her life to someone currently trying to hide at the edges. Lately there’s something else Amandine has begun feeling from Eliot, emotions coming off him in swells so strong she could swear she can almost smell them. Wafts of guilt and fear float around the house in great ribbons, trailing through corridors and lingering in the air so Amandine could track his every movement if she so chose. Her first assumption, of course, was that he was having an affair. It wouldn’t be difficult. He commutes to London every day and often works late and on weekends, no doubt spending time with a wide variety of ambitious young paralegals who might set their sights on a successful and handsome barrister.
However, if Eliot’s having an affair then he’s as careful and cunning as an MI5 agent. No emails, no texts, no phantom phone calls. Amandine’s routine investigations have failed to unearth anything remotely suspicious and she’s sure he’s neither discreet nor deceptive enough to hide such an obvious secret right under her nose. Eliot Walker is clever, certainly, and as a lawyer he has probably pulled off a few tricks in his time, but as a husband and father he’s always been transparent and true. It’s just a shame that her gift for feeling what other people do isn’t accompanied by the ability to know their thoughts. Empathy balanced with telepathy would make sense. It would provide the whole picture. Without it, sadly, Amandine is left knowing how people feel but not knowing why.
—
Noa Sparrow has never been much liked by people and she doesn’t much care. That isn’t strictly true, of course. She tries not to care, she pretends not to care, but she doesn’t do a very good job. The problem is that most people don’t like to be told the truth. They prefer to hide things from themselves, to act as if everything is okay, to pretend that stuff doesn’t bother them when it does. They think, rather foolishly, that what they ignore will simply disappear.
Noa can’t help it that she’s always been able to see the truth. What’s worse, though, is that she’s unable to keep silent about what she sees. The words escape her lips, no matter how hard she tries to clamp them tight shut. How often she longs for the ability to feign and fake, to be two-faced, to be a bold and brilliant little liar. Most people seem to manage it easily enough, but sadly it’s never been one of Noa’s gifts.
She was twelve years old when her need to tell the truth ruined her life. It was two weeks before Christmas and Noa was sitting at the dinner table with her parents, wondering what she’d get in her stocking that year, while they talked about fixing the dripping tap in the sink, when she saw something—a dark truth snaking beneath benign sentences about faucets and the price of plumbers—that she couldn’t keep secret. Every day since, Noa has cursed her awful truth-telling Tourette syndrome, wishing she’d been able to keep quiet on that dreadful December night. But, since she can’t undo the past, she’s spent every day instead hating herself.
Diana Sparrow didn’t speak to her daughter for three months after Noa, reaching for more potatoes, suddenly burst out with the fact of her mother’s affair with her tango teacher. The shocking secret had just slipped out. Noa clamped her hand over her mouth as the words tumbled into the air, but it was too late. Both her parents had turned to look at her in shock and the stunned guilt on her mother’s face was unmistakable.
In the months of earsplitting, heart-shattering pain that followed, Noa prayed every night that she’d be struck down and her “gift” for seeing and telling the truth would be stripped from her. She cut off her long blond hair in penance and denied herself any treats. She took a vow of silence, not opening her mouth to say anything at all, so no hideous, undesirable truths could sneak out. Noa watched, helpless, while her mother relocated to the sofa, then moved out altogether. She listened to her father sob behind his bedroom door in the early hours of the morning. And all the while she said nothing. Not a single word.
Noa had hoped she would somehow be able to go through the rest of her life like that, silent and unseen, never upsetting anyone again. But Noa found that her teachers weren’t willing to let her tiptoe through her education undetected, especially when they noticed the quality of her written work. Seeing they had someone rather special in their school, they encouraged her to participate in class, to join in with everyone else. So, in spite of her desperate efforts to remain anonymous, Noa was frequently forced into class discussions, team projects, and group assignments. And, although she tried desperately to monitor her words very carefully in her mind—planning them once and checking them twice—before she let them out of her mouth, every now and then someone’s secret would break free. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Noa’s childhood passed without the comfort of friends.
