Kissed by Starlight (7 page)

But there would be no rescue now. Felicia had only herself to rely on. Unfortunately, she was not so natured that she could think only of herself. If Clarice were well, then she could go. If Clarice could only be the girl she’d been before—brave, headstrong, not only able but willing to stand up to her mother’s autocratic ways ...

Felicia folded her arms on the mantel and, feeling as though she’d aged a hundred years since this morning, rested her stinging eyes against one of them. But it did no good to shut her eyes. The moment she closed them, the hungry gaze of Sir Elswith appeared, outlined in red. She was not so naive as to believe he’d given up all hope of her. For the next week, she’d have to be very careful whenever she believed herself to be alone. It wouldn’t do to have another interview like today’s. If anyone had seen or overheard it, her reputation as an utterly brazen woman would be assured. Or, horrors! what if Sir Elswith or William Beech repeated it!

Suddenly, Felicia realized she was not alone. The scrape of a shod foot on her floor, the slight deep cough as of a clearing throat, the glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye, told her that a man had entered her room.

“Really!” she exclaimed, spinning around. “This is the outside of enough! Get out....”

The words died on her lips. Tall, his fair hair caught back in a leather thong, his body solid and broad, her delusion stood before her, smiling.

Chapter Four

“Oh, no,” Felicia said, sounding surprisingly calm even to herself. “No you don’t. You get out of here before I scream.”

He held up a placating hand, stepping forward. “Peace, my lady. I mean you no harm.”

“I don’t care if you do or you don’t, you can’t stay here!” She trotted past him to open her chamber door an inch. All was dark and quiet in the corridor beyond, but that was no security.

“They are all asleep,” he said, turning to follow her.

“Good. Then you can leave without disturbing them. You might want to take those boots off, though. They’ll make a ghastly clatter—how did you get in here, anyway?”

“My boots make no noise unless I want them to.” He was resting his hands on his narrow hips as though he had all the time in the world. “Even if I were as noisy as a marching legion, they would not wake.”

Felicia realized she’d been thinking of him as a man, not a mirage. “You didn’t...”

Flinging open the door, she hurried down the corridor to Clarice’s room. Felicia opened the door, sure she’d see a nightmarish sight by the light of the single candle that burned all night on the table. Clarice lay curled on her side in her narrow white bed, while the dressing room beyond rattled to the sounding brass of Nurse’s snores. Breathing a sigh of relief, Felicia paused to smooth the tousled hair back from Clarice’s smooth brow.

Turning to go, she all but collided with Blaic. She threw her hands up to avoid touching him, for she was in no mood for human contact. Though willing to believe that in her distraction she’d not noticed his footsteps following her, she remembered his boast.

“Make your boots noisy!” she demanded fiercely, then shot a glance at Clarice. She had not stirred, but that was nothing new. Any child who could sleep through the trumpet blasts resounding but one door away could sleep through anything!

Blaic studied the sleeping girl with interest. “She is some relation to you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

The man frowned and turned his head toward the dressing room. “Peace,” he said.

Instantly, those sounds reminiscent of an elephant’s mating season died away to silence. Blaic repeated his question.

“What have you done?” Felicia asked as she hurried to open the other door.

Nurse slept flat on her back, her arms twisted around her body. Her resemblance to a corpse laid out for burial was unnerving. Yet the meager bosom rose and fell to deep, regular breaths, though in complete silence.

Then the flat, deliberate smack of footfalls against a hard floor echoed through the room. Nurse’s pallid eyelids flickered. Felicia had only an instant to order “Shush!” before the woman opened her eyes.

“Miss Felicia? Is anything the matter?”

“No, Nurse. Nothing. It’s only ...”

Sadly, the older woman said, “I expect I was snoring again.”

“No you weren’t. Not at all.”

“I wasn’t?”

“No. I’m sorry I disturbed you. Pray, go back to sleep.”

Slightly disoriented, the nurse lay down again, huddling under her blankets. With any luck, she’d put the incident down to a dream, a comfort Felicia felt rapidly disappearing from her own mind. Leaving the door only slightly ajar, Felicia shrank back into her sister’s room.

Blaic said suddenly, “What is it?”

Felicia pressed a vehement finger to her lips, giving him a warning look. Though he must have whispered, his voice seemed to echo. She hissed, “The nurse woke up!”

“Impossible!”

“Shush!”

He stared past her at the door, a strange, intense look in his eyes. Felicia felt he could see through the painted wooden panels to the room beyond, and perhaps into its occupant.

“She’s asleep again now,” he said, and a shudder went through her. Her mother used to say it meant someone was walking over her grave, a morbid thought. “Shall we return to your chamber?’’

Felicia didn’t want to. Even in the midst of slumber, people were people and possibly a refuge. For she’d begun to feel, slowly and with the utmost reluctance, that Blaic was not “people.” What had he said of himself? “I am of the People,’’ leaving no doubt that he meant with a capital P—whatever that meant.

“Fairies,” she murmured now.

“No,” he said. “I told you...”

“Yes, I remember. Very well, let’s return to my...chamber.”

She suddenly wished her hair was not streaming over her shoulders and that she was wearing something more suitable than a nightshift and a robe de chambre. Full armor and a helmet would have felt infinitely more secure.

She was not afraid of him in the way that she had learned this day to fear men. His eyes when he looked on her were lit by no devouring flame. Yet she was afraid, in the same way she was both fascinated by and afraid of the untamed moor that lay beyond the garden. He seemed to bring a tang of wild wind and storm-tossed cloud into the quiet home of her ancestors.

Though Hamdry Manor stood on the very edge of the heath, it had always seemed to stand against it as a symbol of order. Now it was as if Felicia had invited in the first soldier of an invading army. Though this was her home only on sufferance, she still felt as though she’d betrayed everyone that had come before her.

It was with this thought in her mind that she faced Blaic.

“Who are you?”

“I told you that when first we met, when you freed me from the stone.”

“
I
did that?”

“Didn’t you realize it? Your tears freed me from my long enchantment. I am in your debt.”

“I didn’t think you were real. After...after that day, I fell ill. I was ill for a week and am only just now recovered.”

He nodded. “I see it in your eyes. You should be taking your rest like the others. Why do you wear a furrow in your carpet? Are you troubled?’’

His eyes were of green flecked with amber, outlined by lashes several shades darker than his hair. Though he looked at her with curiosity alone, not sympathy, Felicia had never seen such compelling eyes. They seemed to draw her answers out of her, willing or not.

“I must leave here and I don’t know how to protect my sister.”

“That girl in there?”

“Yes. We share a father.”

“Does she partake of his ‘honors,’ Felicia? You recall how you told me that you do not.”

“Her mother is Lady Matilda Stavely, my father’s lawful wife. My mother was... someone else.”

“Among my People, children are all cherished equally. Each one is what you would call a ‘miracle’ and treated accordingly.” He folded his arms across his broad chest and said, “If she is your father’s heir, then surely you have no need to care for her. Money pays for all in your world, does it not?”

“Not everything,” Felicia said. A wild idea, worthy of a madwoman, came into her mind. Instantly, she dismissed it. He was a handsome rogue with winning ways, but was she mad enough to believe him?

“You doubt me?” he said, so apropos of her thought that she stared at him.

She had often seen Lady Stavely smile without its warming her eyes even by a fraction; now she saw the reverse. Blaic smiled only with his eyes, infusing them with such laughter that it took a review of all Felicia’s doubts for her not to respond in kind.

“Do you hunger?” he asked.

“I didn’t eat very—

Instantly a repast fit for a king and twenty royal guests appeared. Blaic had not so much as snapped his fingers or raised an eyebrow. Yet the table was there, stretched from bedside to window, covered with a pure white cloth. Candles burned in treelike branches that still had a glitter of ice crystals clinging to the bark. Wooden boards and fantastically shaped baskets held every kind of foodstuff, from a terrine of vegetables to dainty meringues piled high with the bursting sweetness of wild dewberries. There was no meat. There were only two chairs, side by side.

Felicia covered her eyes, rubbing them, yet even with her hands over her face she could smell the potage aux herbes as though it still simmered. When she looked again, Blaic stood beside one chair, holding it out for her.

“What,” she said frantically, clinging to reality by her fingertips, “no servants?”

Literally on the instant, two servitors appeared, their expressions as blank as any of the best English trained butlers. They wore silken tunics and hose of pure white, of undoubtedly medieval cut but without any heraldic design or badge. One stepped forward to pour out two glasses of red wine, the glow of the fire reflected a thousandfold in the facets of the crystal.

“But my lady must be gowned,” Blaic said.

Without feeling the slightest change, Felicia glanced down and saw herself encased in a gown of equally antique design. The bodice and skirt were of white cut velvet while the reverse of the hanging sleeves was brilliant crimson silk, the same shade as the wine. Her hair, however, was not caught up in any fantastic headdress of twisted horns or golden net. It still poured over her shoulders, as before.

Feeling a cold weight around her throat, Felicia put up a hand to touch the smooth stones and prongs of a collarlike necklace. Catching sight of the twisting golden vines around each wrist, sparkling with ruby-hearted flowers, she could only guess that her necklace was equally opulent.

He said conversationally, “The jewels of my People bring no luck with them, yet I believe you will be safe enough if you only borrow.”

Quite speechless, she seated herself in the chair Blaic held. No change had occurred in him. He still wore leather breeches and an open-throated shirt. Felicia felt like Queen Elizabeth in full panoply entertaining a bandit chieftain. He looked strong enough to wield a vicious length of steel through the longest battle.

Felicia reached for the wine. The crystal was heavy, the wine cool and intensely flavorful. She drank of it as though it were water, which, she reserved mentally, it might very well be.

“You are wise to doubt,” Blaic said, seating himself beside her. “So much of life is illusion.”

“As is this?” she said with a glance that took in all the wonders before her.

“Possibly. But how pleasant to believe it all.”

“Certainly. Yet what an ache I will have in the morning if this turns out to be a meal of acorns, husks, and well water.”

“Your ancestors once lived very comfortably on such meals. They made no complaint.”

“I find we have grown out of the habit.” She took a bite of a pastry-wrapped entree of vegetables quite unknown to her and found it good.

“Yes, you eat meat now.” His wine stood untouched before him.

“I noticed that there is none here at the table you have spread.”

“We of the People don’t indulge in slaughter for our stomachs’ sake.”

“My father said that men must eat as men, even as the sheep eat as sheep.”

“I am neither.” He paused as though debating whether to speak his next thought. Then he said in a deeper, slower tone, “Neither are you.”

She looked into his eyes. She had meant to say something light, in keeping with this peculiar evening, but the words fled. Had she told herself that there was no desire in his eyes? That only meant she had failed to search deeply enough.

With her new, unwanted experience, Felicia judged that there was something besides base lust in Blaic’s seeking her out. She’d seen the low hunger of William Beech and the somewhat more dressy variation practiced by Sir Elswith, and this was neither.

Blaic’s eyes burned with a need that seemed unquenchable, as though he’d devour her, body, soul, and all. It was not the desire of a man for a woman but something darker, something she dared not name.

“What do you want?” she cried, starting up and overturning the chair.

A cold wind seemed to blow past her, whirling away the table, the servants, and her magnificent gown. All the enchantments vanished, except for one.

Blaic was still there.

Felicia backed away from him, fear choking her like green seawater. She clutched the throat of her robe tightly. She knocked into the stand of fireplace tools at the edge of the mantelpiece and sought blindly behind her for the poker.

He said her name and she heard only the hissing of snakes.

“Don’t come near me,” she said, her voice pleading rather than commanding.

“I swear on my father’s immortality that I mean you no harm.”

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe in you. Go away.”

“Put down that thing in your hand. My People cannot bear cold iron.”

“Good, then I—I have a weapon.”

“You don’t need a weapon.” A hint of exasperation crept into his voice.

“I’ll hurt you if you touch me.”

“I have no intention of touching you. Mortals! The men are bad enough, but the women! May the Powers protect me from mortal women!”

He went out like the flame of a candle in a sudden breeze.