Kissed by Starlight (15 page)

Clarice turned around to look at the lights of Hamdry Manor, growing closer with every beat of the horses’ hooves. “I had such a difficult time escaping all their kindness. I hope you believe that were it not for that, I should have come to tell my tale far sooner. The thought of you languishing in that filthy place...”

Felicia leaned forward and patted her sister’s knee. “I’m glad you came when you did. But in this tale you have woven, isn’t there one thing you have forgotten?”

“Oh, innumerable things! All entirely on purpose, too. Which one in particular are you thinking of?’’

“I’m thinking of the door you heard close as we came down the hall. Someone must know that I went with you; not that I followed you.”

For a moment, Clarice was silent. The carriage made its sweeping turn through the arc of the drive, coming to a stop before the front steps with a spray of gravel from beneath its wheels. The big front door opened, spilling the light of many candles down the stairs.

Clarice said hurriedly, as the coachman came down off the box, “Never mind that. That was Mama. I know all about it.”

In her dirty and exhausted condition, Felicia would have been better pleased to have arrived more discreetly than tooling in this way up to the front door. As it was, she had to run a gauntlet of servants, all clustering around to see the prodigal return. Lady Stavely waited within the arch of the open door.

“Felicia, I am most relieved to learn that we were all so gravely mistaken in what we had seen. Upon reflection, and with my daughter’s testimony, I realized that my suspicions were utterly groundless. Do forgive me.” This handsome apology was delivered in so cold and uninflected a tone as to amount to an insult. Felicia wondered if Clarice had put the meaning, if not the actual words, into her mother’s mouth. Had the restoration of Clarice’s proper personality changed the leadership at Hamdry?

Felicia said, “I am well aware that what you believed yourself to have seen is capable of another interpretation. I have nothing to forgive you for, Lady Stavely.”

The small lines beneath Lady Stavely’s eyes were quite pronounced this evening, and the eyes themselves were red. Suddenly Felicia remembered that Lady Stavely must have spent a good portion of last night and today certain her daughter would die. No one could live under this roof and not know that Lady Stavely, for all her faults, truly cherished her child. Felicia’s next words were warmer.

“I’m so glad Clarice took no hurt from her immersion. I think she’d better go straight to bed, though, don’t you?”

Clarice’s whine might have been from the girl-child of yesterday rather than the self-possessed young lady of the tavern and carriage. “I don’t want to. I’m perfectly well.”

Her mother turned to her, her relief wiping the strain away from her face. “If Doctor Danby were here....  Where is the doctor? I gave him strict instructions to return.”

“He had some business to transact with Justice Garfield,” Clarice said. “I’m entirely well. I don’t need a doctor dancing attendance on me. What I should really like,” she said, pitching her voice so that the servants could hear every word, “is a wing of the chicken we had at noon and a generous slice of Cook’s good mince pie. Aren’t you hungry, Felicia?”

“All I should like is a bath and a bed,” she answered, drooping.

Lady Stavely’s eyes did not warm as she looked over Felicia’s begrimed and bedraggled gown. “Mary. Rose,” she snapped. “You’ve made preparations for Miss Starret. By all means, conduct her thither. As for those clothes ...”

Quite cheerfully, Felicia said, “Oh, the fire for these, without a doubt.”

The following morning, her sojourn in the Hamford Gaol seemed like the remnant of a particularly horrid fever dream. She’d made poor Mary and Rose haul water three times from the kitchen boiler. She had scrubbed and scrubbed herself. They’d poured warm oil scented with jasmine through her hair and combed out any insect that might have been considering making a home therein. The night-shift the maids laid out for her had been washed that very morning and laid out on a bed of newborn rosemary to dry. The scent left behind in the crisp white fabric was freed as soon as her body warmed it.

Her big bed welcomed her and she slept without dreaming, hardly without moving, until sunrise. When she opened her eyes, she lay a long time letting her mind wander where it willed. Then she dozed until Mary brought up her morning chocolate and a more lavish breakfast than one usually saw on a tray.

“Lady Clarice didn’t think you’d feel up to comin’ downstairs. She zaid I should tell you that what you asked the doctor for ‘as been done, whatsomever that means.”

“That’s good news,” Felicia said, sitting up so the maid could put the tray across her knees.

The maid busied herself about the room, laying out Felicia’s second-best dress, a dark green damask. “You’ll have to wear colors, miss; there be no help for it! You didn’t have but the one black dress that was fit t’be zeen.”

“My father always said, ‘Needs must when the devil drives.’ He wouldn’t mind my wearing colors so soon after his death.”

“That he wouldn’t, never being a man who noticed zuch things. Nothin’ be worse than a noticin’ man, Miss Felicia, and zo I’ve always zaid.”

“Who’s been noticin’, Mary?”

A little sniff, half-contempt, half-interest, prefaced Mary’s remarks. “A new gardener, simly. And him with that fine gentleman’s hand to him! He niver be no make nor manner o’ gardener I ever zeen, and weren’t my ol’ dad one himself?”

“There’s a new gardener?” Felicia asked, plucking these few words from the morass. “And you think there’s something strange about him?”

“Iss, fai! A handsome fellow, he is, with a fine, surveyin’ light in his eyes. That there Lena was all but sittin’ in his lap, she was, the huzzy! An’ Rose not a whit the better for all her years. A-gigglin’, if you can believe it, Miss Felicia. But I been about the world a mite more’n either of them — all the way to Exeter! I zeen his kind afore. Niver a kiss comes amiss with that manner o’ man!”

Felicia sipped her chocolate with a smiling thought for the flutter in the dovecote of the servants’ hall. Little Lena of the laundry would certainly pay attention to a handsome stranger, even if only to set up a heart burning in the bosom of William the Footman. Rose, too, was famous for her soft heart. Then a dark thought occurred to her. Who had hired the fellow?

“Miss Felicia, I niver zee this afore, zurely?” Mary asked. She stood by the dressing table, holding up the white, embroidered bag.

“May I have that?” When it was safe in her hands, Felicia said, “I think I shall dress now.”

* * * *

It seemed that during the signle day she had been in prison, spring had danced over the landscape. The trees were new-leafed in the tenderest shade of green, while tiny primroses and cowslips winked their eyes in the grass. Butterflies and bees were already busy among them. The formal beds were still asleep, for no weedy interlopers were permitted to step over the threshold. But where the wilder plants grew, spring had established a presence that could not be overlooked. While the sunlight fell in bars across the path, she hardly needed the thick, Kashmir shawl Mary had made it impossible she refuse to take.

Felicia looked up as a flight of blackbirds passed, casting their fleeting shadows over her. Somewhere nearby an early lark sent a cascade of notes into the air, apparently from pure joy alone. Bringing her attention to her surroundings once more, Felicia saw a familiar back bending over a flower bed.

Blaic straightened before she had the chance to approach stealthily. Instantly, he looked directly at her, and something near a smile twitched his lips. He immediately suppressed it, but Felicia had seen enough to put a lift in her step as she came nearer. Her anger seemed to have evaporated with the night.

“There you are,” he said, brushing his hands together. “I’d heard you had been freed.”

“Last night. Clarice is cured, Blaic.”

“I’d heard that too. I cannot say how efficient your servants are in their duties, but in the advertisement of your household’s affairs, I’m sure they have no peer.”

“They are not my servants.”

Now he did smile, wryly. “I will further say that they are very good at advertising the affairs of the household to you. Otherwise, how would you have known where to find me?”

Felicia said, “I would have gone to the grotto.”

“You would have had to arise far earlier than you did. I left it with the dawn.” A motion of his somewhat muddied but still graceful hand indicated the canvas apron he wore. It covered him from the base of his throat to his knees and bore upon it some black and crumbling handprints. “You see, I have found employment.”

“I had heard it, but I did not believe it. You are working as a gardener?”

He nodded, performing even that minor action with a princely grace. “I needed some reason for my presence here. As a certain William Beech seems to have vanished from his usual haunts...”

“William Beech is missing?”

“Yes.”

Felicia thought she glimpsed something dark and severe at the back of Blaic’s eyes, but he turned away before she could be certain. “Where has he gone?”

“Where, indeed? The senior gardener — a most strict fellow — would dearly love to know. He says he wants to offer William Beech his week’s wages, but I think a kick may well go with that money.” Changing the subject abruptly, Blaic added, “I have been told that I must weed this bed. Mr. Payton claims that even a fool can tell a weed from a daffodil. Would you care to look at them?”

The bed behind him was filled with bright green rapiers of foliage, the flowers no more than swellings at the tips of the stems. Though she knew perfectly well the bed had been full of daffodils since long before her first spring at Hamdry, she asked, “Are they daffodils?”

“So I have been reliably informed. Shall we make certain?”

He raised his hand, and Felicia saw a rippling motion among the leaves, as though every plant had suddenly snapped to attention. She threw out her hand and said, “No!”

“No, again? Will you always try to stop me from being what I am?”

Tartly, Felicia said, “You may be what you like, sir. But these daffodils are Mr. Payton’s own precious beloveds. If they were to bloom so soon, he would be heartbroken if a frost should come to kill them. Let them, I pray, bloom in their own time and way.”

He bowed to her — as always, a thought ironically. “Your wish is my pleasure to perform. Or not.”

“That reminds me.” She reached through a slit in her dress into the pocket sewn to her petticoats. “You were kind enough to lend this to me yesterday. At least, I must assume it was your doing.”

She held out the bag, dangling from its closure. He reached out and took it, then stood staring down into his hand. “What’s wrong?” Felicia asked. “Isn’t it yours?”

“You...you’re giving it back?”

“Of course.” She smiled at him, still a trifle weary. “I believe you saved my life. I shouldn’t have been able to eat a morsel in gaol — the food must be seen to be believed. Your gift could not have been more thoughtful. The others felt that way too.”

Blaic stared at the bag in his hand as though it were something she had conjured up for him. Then his gaze traveled to her face. He could see the marks of strain and worry beneath her fine eyes and a pallor in her cheeks that became her little. The red shawl cast some color into her face, but it was as false as rouge.

Unused to feeling anything very much, he was startled for the second time in two days by the flood of anger that rose up in his body. It was more than a mere emotion; it was like hot water against his skin. Blaic found himself picturing the destruction of the people who had thrown Felicia in that dreadful place he’d visited so briefly.

He fought to dam the flood of rage. Instead of its growing easier with practice, he found it even more difficult today than he had yesterday. He told himself that these feelings were primitive, unworthy of the People, disgustingly human in fact. He told himself that he did not really wish to see Lady Stavely or that lard-bellied constable dead by way of any of the picturesque methods he’d seen during an eternity of witnessing mortal cruelty. Yet when he thought of Felicia, dirty, hungry, and alone, he had to rebuild that dam all over again.

Blaic realized she’d stopped speaking to take a deep breath of the spring air. She released it in a happy sigh and smiled up at him. He thought for certain she’d speak of her freedom. Instead, she said, “I want to apologize, Blaic. Oh, I suppose I shouldn’t call you that. What do you call a prince in your world?”

“Then you believe? In me?”

“I believe in what you have told me. Surely, only what you’ve told me could explain...well, everything. I want to apologize for not believing you. I only wish I could thank you properly for helping Clarice.”

“No thanks are necessary.”

“But you must let me tell you how I feel. She’s completely cured. Oh, she’s not just the same as when she went away; she’s not thirteen anymore. It’s as if that whole       episode never happened. She’s exactly what she would be, I fancy, if the course of her life had never been interrupted.”

“When the curse was removed, everything became as it should have been. That’s part of it.” Though he didn’t look down, the weight of the bag in his hand was a constant reminder that she had returned it to him.

The gift had been freely given — a gift that had been keenly desired and bitterly fought over by a good half of the humans who had ever met one of the People — and it had been as freely returned. Everything he knew about mortals said that she would keep Bramar’s Hunger Sack forever. Even now, he was not certain why he’d given it to her —pity, perhaps, though that was an emotion dangerous to him; anger, certainly.

He had found one of the People’s doorways quite near to the gaol. He had leapt between her cell and the treasure chamber in Boadach’s palace in the wink of an eye. Without stopping to consider the wisdom of his action, he’d seized the Hunger Sack and gone back to drop it, invisibly, into her lap as she slept.

Upon reflection, he’d regretted the hastiness of his action. This century was not a time that could accept such a seeming miracle. Still, the Sack had served her. And now she had returned it. He could not seem to make himself understand that.