Kissed by Starlight (21 page)

“Good. If they catch them, the constable will stop moaning about his empty gaol.” Doctor Danby wedged his small body into the angle of a stone niche and folded his arms as he prepared a dogmatic argument. “Superstition breeds contempt for his betters in the mind of the workingman. I could bring you a hundred examples from the annals of human history, yet...”

“Yes, quite.” Mr. Hales turned from his adversary to Felicia. “You are not hurt, Miss Starret?”

“No. Doctor Danby kept me from harm.” She fixed her eyes on the younger man. “Why did they do that?”

“Some foolish tale, believed by the credulous. As a rational man...."

The doctor snorted. “Has your sort stopped burning witches yet?”

Mr. Hales glared at him. “I, sir, am from Oxford. We don’t burn anyone...unless some doctor deserves it.” His tone softened as he turned again to Felicia. “Some of those persons you had delivered from gaol...”

“What about them?” she prompted.

“Of course, these stories are told at fourth and fifth hand. No doubt the details are garbled.”

“What do they say?”

A third male voice, never to be mistaken for another, came out of the dimness of the cold interior. “Didn’t you hear? They are calling you a witch. Feeding the hungry as a noble endeavor has gone entirely out of fashion.”

“Blaic!” She hurried away from her old acquaintances and went toward him. His eyes were smiling at her with true affection, though his face was grave.

In voice that did not carry, she said, “I wouldn’t have expected to see you here.”

“In a church? In one so old as this, there are ways to enter that do not force me to cross iron, not even a nail.” He let his gaze wander about the plain walls and multi-colored panes of glass in the windows. “This church is built on the foundation of the one that was here in Sira’s time. For all I know, she may be buried here with her husband, her children, and her grandchildren.”

“I did not see her name in my father’s Bible.”

“No, you would not. She is so far in your family’s past that she is little more than a legend by now, I’d surmise. Not even the earth remembers her. I thought the stone might.” He closed his eyes as though listening.

Felicia kept silent, not wanting to interrupt his reverie. A tiny jealousy awoke in her heart. She tried to tell herself it was merely curiosity. What would it be like to have a man love her so much that not even time, the destroyer, could defeat his longing? Yet all the while, she knew it was jealousy, all the more bitter in that the rival had been dead for centuries.

Blaic opened his eyes. In the dimness of the church, lit only by flickering lamps, his pupils were huge, making his eyes seem black and dull. “No. Not even the stone remembers.”

Felicia wondered why neither the doctor nor the reverend had demanded an introduction. She glanced back at them and saw them asleep, their heads dropped forward until their chins rested upon their chests. The doctor looked particularly comfortable, wedged in his niche like one of the saints torn down by Cromwell’s men. Poor Mr. Hales had leaned slowly, slowly forward until he rested the crown of his wig against the wall. He hung there, his arms dangling, supported only by wig and feet.

“No harm will come to them. The crowds will soon disperse, and then we can wake them. This way they need not ask you unpleasant questions about your association with a mere workingman.” He rubbed at a new callus on his forefinger.

“You have hardly avoided their questions. What will happen when they wake?”

“Nothing. They will be more refreshed than in some time, this little doctor especially. He gives himself no rest.”

“He takes his responsibilities most seriously. Though he does not always cure, he eases some people’s fear of dying just by being there. He says that is what priests used to be for and that it’s a great pity England ever gave them up.” She chuckled. “Mind you, he doesn’t tell Mr. Hales that. To hear them talk together, you’d think the Inquisition will come calling at any moment.”

Blaic shook his head ruefully. “The English.”

“But you are English? That is to say, you live in England?”

“For the moment. Which reminds me....” He smiled at her, and the chill of the stone left her limbs. Yet not even Blaic could ease her spirit.

At the back of her mind, fear moved. The thought that someone in the village, someone she might have spoken to and could name, would throw filth at her was too frightful to be thought of. She would put that knowledge aside, remembering that in two days’ time she would be gone. Ten miles might as well be the other side of the moon; few people from the town traveled much outside it. The gossip would reach Tallyford in time, but not before she did.

Blaic said, “I believe that I will go with you to this new place of yours.”

“Go with me? Why?”

Blaic asked himself what reaction he had expected. Joy? Though she seemed to be at ease with him, accepting him for what he was, she did not truly know him. He reminded himself that it was better so. He said, “My presence would be displeasing to you, Felicia?’’

“No, of course not,” she answered, backing down as he hoped she would. “You are welcome to accompany me if you think it necessary.”

“Doesn’t the reaction of these foolish mortals to your generosity prove it necessary?”

“Once I am away from here, there won’t be any such demonstrations. No one has ever thought well of me here.”

The last words were said softly, as though with regret. Blaic felt a flame of anger in his heart. He had brought William Beech back, chastened and humble. Before he left with Felicia, he meant to see that several others suffered their just punishment. Folly to look on her pure face and see evil!

Felicia asked, “What’s wrong? You look....”

“How do I look?”

“As if you were angry at me.”

“Not at you. At myself, perhaps.” He wanted to hold her so badly that his arms felt hungry. Between the pangs of anger and yearning, he couldn’t help being brusque. Better to keep her at a distance, lest the temptation of her nearness prove to be too much. He looked around him. “This is a dreary place. I prefer your ancestors’ method of worship, out under the open sky with no stone walls between the soul and God.”

She did not seem hurt by his sudden change of mood. Rather, she seemed to welcome it. “You’re forgetting our irregular climate. Open-air worship might do very well in midsummer. But come winter’s blasts I am grateful for these walls. So long as there is a comforting brazier to warm my feet!”

She smiled at him, inviting him to share her humor.

When he did not respond, she sighed. “There is also something to be said for a sturdy oaken door. I am not the first to seek refuge here from a harsh world.”

Blaic almost did not dare to look at her —how could she fail to read his eyes? Instead, he cast his thought forth and searched the greensward outside the church. “They’ve all gone. You could walk out now without fear of being molested.”

“Yes, I should be on my way. No doubt Lady Stavely ordered the coachman to drive on when the discord broke out.”

“Well, she is certainly not there now.”

Felicia raised the hem of her full skirt to look ruefully at her shoes. “Such is the price of vanity.”

“Vanity?”

Her face, he noticed, had increased in rosiness. “I wanted to look especially well-turned-out, so I put on my best shoes. They are pretty, but they pinch.”

He looked, not at the black shoes with the ribboned roses on the toes, but at her neat ankles and high-arched feet. Her white stockings clung to them, hinting at the lengths hidden behind her black skirt. Blaic found he had to clear his throat before saying, “Charming.” Then he thought to ask, “Why did you care what you looked like? Do you wish to leave a good opinion of yourself behind you?”

“Yes. That’s it exactly.”

But he knew she lied. Was it for him that she had dressed with care? Or for another?

He sent a glance of black suspicion toward the immobile reverend. His wide-sleeved surplice was slipping from his shoulders, now that he hadn’t the will to keep his body square and upright. A lank-limbed spindle-shanks, Blaic thought, pronouncing his judgment. Yet he must have a ready tongue to be in holy orders. Perhaps Felicia responded to his wit.

“Poor Mr. Hales,” she said with something like a laugh in her voice. Blaic suddenly felt less critical toward the man. Felicia said, “You should let them go. They are very good men, both of them. They, at least, mean me no evil.”

“Will one of them see you safely home?”

She opened her mouth as though to protest but thought the better of it. “I would have said yesterday that I was as safe walking to the manor as a babe in her mother’s arms. Today, I do not believe I should vouch any such faith. I don’t know whether it is the world that has gone mad or I myself.”

“Not you.”

“No?” She glanced at him, leaving him to wonder what she was thinking. How easy she would have been to figure out were she any other mortal. But her strain of fay blood, dilute and distant though it might have been, protected her from any such intrusion. He was left the same as any man, blind and groping in the dark for a clue to a woman’s thoughts.

She said again, “Let them go, please. I will ask the doctor to see me safe. If his wife objects, then I will ask the reverend.”

“Don’t trouble them. I shall go with you. I can keep off anyone who troubles you.” Beneath his shirt, Blaic could feel his muscles twitch in anticipation. “I only hope some rustic does try.”

“You are kind, Blaic, but that would only make my situation worse. To be seen with you, a gardener attached to the manor, walking openly through the streets...looking the way you do. I should be called worse than witch,” she added, and hid a smile behind her hand.

“How do I look?”

“Mary said it best.” Felicia fell into the broad Devon accent that was so expressive. “A handsome fellow, he is, with a fine, noticin’ light in his eyes. Nothin’ be worse ‘n a noticin’ man, miss.”

“A noticing man. What does that mean?”

“Well, either that you notice things, which you do, or that you are worth noticing, which you are.”

Blaic was not used to being complimented and laughed at in the same breath. She continually spun him off his axis, so that he went bouncing along like a top at her whim. It amused and troubled him all at once.

He did not consciously admit that he wanted to disorient her as she had him. Yet he knew a completely primitive satisfaction in watching her eyes widen and her tongue swipe over her lips as he reached out as though about to caress her face.

All thought of pretense went from his mind as she angled her face as though pressing against his hands. The size of her absurd hat made her face look as adorable as a kitten’s, but the kitten was the cub of a lioness. There were fires in her eyes, burning for him. His slight jealousy of the mortal men she knew floated away like ashes.

Her breath was warm on his cheek, but he had no memory of having come so close to her. If she’d inhaled deeply, her breasts would have brushed his chest. He groaned inwardly at the image and fought to close the door on the flood of pictures that supplanted it. He felt cramps prick him all over as he tightened his body against the sight, the smell, and the nearness of her.

“Felicia...you’ll be the death of me yet.”

“That’s why you mustn’t come to Tallyford. Go back to your Living Lands before I beg you....”

“Beg me for what? Ask it. Ask it of me and I’ll give you anything. Anything.”

“Give me the cloak of invisibility as you did in the grotto. If you don’t touch me, I’ll die.”

“No.” He saw the laughter curve her full lips, and the sight of that wicked curve alone was nearly enough to satisfy him. “I don’t want it like that. Come with me to Mag Mell. Let me make love to you.”

The whispered hoarseness of his need reached her. He saw her respond with a willingness that sent the desire pounding through his veins. For an instant, it was as if time meant nothing. Then her mind, the truest part of her, took control again. “I can’t. I want to. Believe me.”

“I understand. I shouldn’t have asked you.”

Then he was gone, leaving only a bouquet of summer flowers at her feet. Behind her, she heard Doctor Danby and the reverend arguing quietly, as though they’d never slept.

The parson was nodding wisely as Felicia approached, flowers in hand. Doctor Danby stared at her. “You aren’t sickening? You look overheated.”

“Do I?” She buried her nose in a particularly sweet gillyflower. “I suppose Lady Stavely has gone on without me. Would you walk with me, Doctor?”

“With a good will, Miss Starret.”

“Oh, I should be honored if you'd accept my company,” Mr. Hales began.

“I’ll do it,” the doctor grumbled. “You look out to be certain there’s no one lying in wait, then go to your parish meeting.”

As Felicia and Doctor Danby walked, she asked, “Have you ever known anyone who answers every question with another question?”

“Who’s been troubling you?”

“No one. I am only curious....” Then she laughed. “You do it too.”

“Do what? I’m not doing anything. Who answers your questions with a question?

“Just a man I know.”

“What man?”

“You don’t know him.”

“
I
don’t? That sounds most dubious.
I
know everyone. What does your stepmother think of this person?’’

“She wouldn’t want to know him socially.” She thought of the new calluses on Blaic’s hands and felt a strange lurch in the pit of her stomach. She could not recall ever feeling such a thing before.

“You be careful,” the doctor warned. “Strange men, strange happenings...This can be a very backward country, my dear. I may have been twitting the good reverend a tad just now but to be utterly honest, ‘twas not so long ago that they were indeed burning witches.”

“Here? Surely not.”

“They ducked them here, then sent those that survived up to Essex for the assizes.”

“Well, we shall hope people are wiser now. The witch hysteria is long over.”

“Is it? Who threw that dirt today?”

“It wasn’t necessarily aimed at me. There are other women not a hundred miles off who could be described as a — well — as a witch.”