Kissed by Starlight (22 page)

“Felicia Starret! At the risk of sounding like my old woman....”

“Well, who is to say that dirt wasn’t aimed at my step-mama? Do you believe her well-beloved, as my father was? There was not one person at his funeral who did not have recourse at some time to a handkerchief. Who would weep for her?”

“Would you?”

“Now you are doing it! A question with a question? Why do people do that?”

“As a doctor, I would venture to say it is because they have something to hide.”

“What are you hiding, Doctor Danby?” But she spoke flippantly, her thoughts occupied in fruitless speculation. What was Blaic hiding? He had told her everything about himself, or very nearly. She might not know his favorite color, but she knew where he had come from. Or did she?

Her broad hat sheltered her face from the sun. It also blocked her view of much of a friend’s face. It wasn’t until the silence stretched for half a mile that Felicia looked out from underneath the brim. “Why, what’s the matter?” she asked, stopping in the middle of the cart track.

“You are not a child, Felicia. Thanks to your — ahem — irregular early life, you’ve seen things that nicely raised girls never do. Therefore, I shall not speak to you as a child.”

“Thank you. But you are alarming me, rather.”

“How much do you know of Lady Stavely’s affair with Mr. Ashton?”

Chapter Twelve

The gloriously exhilarating spring weather did not hold. By Tuesday, the wind drove blue clouds the way an impatient herder drives geese. A wet, cold smell in the air threatened rain that at some point would soak all Felicia’s boxes and bags. The two gardeners kept an eye to the sky as they tossed her things onto the back of the cart.

“I see William Beech has returned,” Felicia said to Clarice, letting the window curtain drop on the scene outside. After she’d told Clarice that she had nothing to fear, that the taint of madness in their family had not been passed to them, the conversation had lagged.

“Yes, sadder but wiser. I think he knows that it was only his father’s long service on the manor that kept him from being dismissed out of hand.”

Felicia had noticed that the young man had not so much as glanced in her direction. The one time she had caught his eye, he’d blanched under his tan and looked away with something like a shudder. Felicia was confused but relieved.

Clarice added, “He’s proposed an idea of keeping bees here on the manor, rather than relying on the ‘visitors’ from the moor. I think it’s wise enough to mention to Mama.”

Another silence fell while they sipped their morning tea. It was broken by Clarice’s laugh. “I didn’t tell you the delicious piece of gossip I heard yesterday. You were too busy to see them, but Mrs. Chappel and her two daughters came yesterday — mostly, I think, to take a look at me. You know, her son is twenty-one and from what I understand, quite a strain on the family’s purse. An heiress would not come amiss, provided I am not actually sticking straws in my hair.”

“Didn’t you understand what I told you? You don’t have to worry....”

“Oh, yes. But you know, Felicia, there’s no doubt that the tale of our dear step-grandmama’s desire to lay eggs may come in useful from time to time. For instance, when unwelcome suitors come to call. A little clucking rids us of this ill.”

“The gossip?” Felicia prompted.

“Oh, yes. It has to do with your dear friend, Constable Richards. Drunk and incapable, he fell headfirst into the privy behind the Blue Boar. He was lucky not to have drowned! But that little fellow who follows him about went roaring into the tavern to fetch help. The most amusing part is that Richards claims he was pushed! But his friend swears that Richards was alone, so of course he was drunk as a lord.”

“At least it forced him to bathe,” Felicia said. As a Christian, she had a duty to forgive Constable Richards for his suggestions while she was under his “care.” But the wicked sinner in her rejoiced at his downfall.

She poured out a cup more of the by-now tepid tea and drank. Her hat and mantua lay ready on a chair near the door. It was ten minutes to ten. She’d planned to be gone from Hamdry an hour since, but half a dozen causes had arisen to delay her, from the accidental packing of the boots she’d meant to wear to an unexpectedly emotional leave-taking from the female staff. Cook had produced an elaborate breakfast — much more than the coffee and rolls she had requested — and noblesse oblige had forced her to eat it.

The knock at the front door and the muttered exchange between Mary and one of the gardeners was the signal for Felicia to finish her tea. Clarice rose when she did. For a moment, the sisters stood looking at one another. Then Mary opened the morning room door and said, “They be ready, Miss Starret.”

“Very good. Thank you, Mary.”

The servant pushed the door open a bit farther. Clarice and Felicia looked at her. She wore her best hat, the polished straw with only one broken feather, and her best shawl over a clean dress. “Beggin’ your pardon, but ‘tisn’t right you goin’ off there on your own, miss. So me ‘n’ Rose talked ‘em over last night and I’m t’go with you.” The sturdy chin lifted. “B’ain’t no cause to zay you won’t have me, ‘cause m’mind is made up.”

Rather belatedly, Mary bobbed her curtsy, then added, “Wait for you in the cart, miss.”

“Well, I like that!” Clarice declared when the door was shut behind her. “No notice, no regret, and off she goes like a flighty young thing, leaving us a maid short!”

“I’ll talk her out of it.”

“Never mind,” Clarice said, catching hold of Felicia’s arm. “She’s quite right: You’ll need someone. No doubt this Miss Dravoget is taking her own maid with her when she goes off to her new home.”

Felicia found herself dragging her handkerchief out of her inner pocket and wiping her eyes. “I don’t know why I am always so surprised by loyalty.”

“Don’t you? Come, let me help you on with your mantle.”

After she skewered her hat to her hair and comfortably wrapped herself up in wool and silk, Felicia stopped Clarice from coming out with her. “If you stand on the doorstep and wave to me, I shall dissolve in saltwater.”

“I am not so far from it myself,” Clarice said, rubbing ineffectually at a teardrop on the front of her bodice.

Felicia put her hands on her young sister’s shoulders and looked her full in the face. “I don’t care what Mrs. Chappel thinks. Anyone who looks at you and only sees your fortune is a fool. Don’t you dare to marry her profligate son.”

“Don’t fear for me. I shan’t. Nor any other man who cannot see past the end of his purse.”

Impossible to express all she felt for Clarice even in a hug of considerable length, so a brief one was all she gave her. Then out of the house to be handed with exquisite care into the cart. She rode beside the hunched back of the old carter and did not turn her head to wave goodbye, though she knew the curtain of the morning room had lifted.

Mary sat in the tail of the cart, her arms resting on a small barrel filled with china and straw. “The weather’ll hold off, eh, ol’ Griff?”

The carter grumbled something over the edge of his faded red muffler. His hat, once a dark tricorne but now a shapeless, faded thing, was set tight as a skullcap upon his head. The brim flipped and flopped with the vagaries of the deeply rutted road. He hardly seemed to watch the road, but kept his head tucked down between his shoulders.

Beyond the boundaries of Hamdry Manor, they rode along the narrow track, high hedgerows blocking any view over the fields. Despite the damp chill in the air, the green hedges were busy with birdsong as birds prepared nests for the fledglings to come. Felicia concentrated her thoughts upon the things she saw, sooner than look behind her.

Mary sighed heavily. Sitting where she did, she had little choice but to look behind her. “ ‘Tis the moor I’ll be missin’. My Joseph used to come a-walkin’ over hill and down t’spend an hour or zo at my father’s fire. Then I’d go as far as t’water with him and zee him on his way. Gi’ him a kiss or two to last the week on.” She laughed a little, reminiscently.

“Joseph?” Felicia asked.

“Yiss. My man that was. Dead now all of — Lord save us. Twenty years or more it must be now zince he went off t’Exeter and niver come home n’more.”

“What became of him?”

“Pressed. More ‘n likely, that is. Niver heard a word more from him. Pressed and zent away to fight in one o’ His Majesty’s ships. Killed, maybe. He niver did like zailin’.”

As if to mark the utter depression Mary’s tale cast over them, a weeping rain began to fall. Felicia sighed, resigned to the destruction of her hat and a damp and miserable journey. The horse raised its tail and dropped steaming “buns’’ in the road as a final addition to the discomfort of the trip.

Felicia’s lips quivered as a laugh, utterly inappropriate under the circumstances, came bubbling up from her heart. She became aware that the carter had opened one eye in her direction and was looking at her with alarm. Fighting down a shaking voice, she said, “All’s well. Never fear.”

In a low voice, the driver said, “Are you ill? Should I stop?”

“No. Drive on.” She held on to the edge of the padded wooden seat and let herself be shaken by gusts of silent laughter. Her ribs hurt from the effort of keeping it all in.

She was free.

She had not realized until that moment how oppressed she had felt living at Hamdry. Even though she had seen Lady Stavely only in the evening, her presence had been like a fog creeping into every room. Felicia could not speak or move naturally. Every time she needed to pass Lady Stavely’s door, she had crept by, as wary as a beaten dog.

Now she could do as she liked. Oh, not burst into noisy laughter without obvious cause, perhaps, for that would alarm her friends and serve no purpose. Still, it was as if her mind had been in bonds and was now liberated. No need to wonder if Lady Stavely stood just inside her door, her ear pressed against the panels.

The giddiness did not last long. Within the hour, as Mary dozed in the rear, Felicia had grown weary unto death of the jouncing cart and the sullen driver. The scenery, dreary under the low clouds, was not entertaining. They passed no one, not even a shepherd. The hedgerows dripped and even the birds were now silent.

Her thoughts were weary too with dwelling on one point: Should she have told Clarice about her mother and Mr. Ashton? If the doctor was wondering, then it would not be long before others of greater social status would begin asking questions amongst themselves. Was it right to leave Clarice unprepared to meet the rumors that, sooner or later, some well-meaning friend would be sure to mention?

The carter, feeling perhaps the melancholy of the morning, began to whistle through his teeth, of all vague noises the most irritating. Felicia didn’t like to be so autocratic as to tell him to stop, but the bodiless thread of sound interrupted even her thoughts. She shot him a disapproving glance, hoping he’d interpret it correctly.

She could see little of his face, just the lobe of his ear and the sweep of his jaw. Put together with the nagging notion that the eye that had fixed on her when she’d begun to laugh was of a green that she’d seen before and ...

With a sudden snatch, she knocked off his hat. It fluttered away over the end of the cart, leaving Blaic lifting his grinning face, free of the concealing muffler. He’d drawn his thonged hair high for concealment, and now it fell down into its accustomed place.

“What are you doing?’’ Felicia asked, her boredom leaving her. The sun had not come out from behind the clouds, yet she felt warmed.

“I told you I am going with you to Tallyford. The gardens need looking after and I have found that I have an unexpected talent in that direction.”

“Oh. And how do you know the gardens are in disarray?”

“I was there yesterday.”

“Were you? Then you can tell me what I want to know. The information Lady Stavely deigned to offer me was sketchy at best. She could not even tell me how many children there are. I could not find my father’s account of the place in the library.”

“Children? Oh, a dozen or so.”

“So many?”

“I think so. It’s not easy to count them —they don’t seem to ever stand still.”

Felicia should have had a thousand questions. She could think of no more. She looked at Blaic, his eyes squinting slightly as he watched the road, his hands firm and easy on the traces. How could she have seen his hands and not known him? Felicia asked herself. They had haunted her dreams all the night before.

She felt her cheeks grow red as she remembered, in his presence, all that she had dreamed. In the world of the night, Blaic had no reason not to touch her. The Ancient Law of his People had no counterpart in her dreams, so he had woven patterns of desire on her skin without hindrance. She had never known such a vivid dream before, the details still clear even hours later.

“You shouldn’t stay with me,” she said, the words overmastering her control. “It’s too dangerous.”

“No one knows who or what I am. There’s no danger.”

“Yes there is. You may be whatever you like; I’m only a mortal. We suffer from temptation.” She tried to keep her mind clear, but she couldn’t help seeing the muscles flex in his thigh beneath the much-washed-and-shrunk breeches he’d adopted. The tiny hairs on his wrists glinted as he controlled the horse. His hands possessed strength and a kind of blunt beauty. She wanted her dream to be reality. If he’d just touch her once...

“Lead me not into temptation,” she whispered, letting her words fly up into heaven.

“I’m suffering too,” Blaic said. “Do you think I don’t want what you want?”

“Have there been many women like me? You can tell me. Have you spent your life seducing mortal women?”

“No. Nor mortal men, for all that I knew Socrates. Not that he didn’t try.... Do you know the Greeks had three different words for love? Eros was the least important to them. Odd, how it seems to be of first importance among mortals now.”

“I never studied Greek. My father wanted me to but I was already too old to learn.” She stripped off her gloves to put her cool hands on her face. “Never mind the Greeks.”