Kissed by Starlight (8 page)

Was it over, this dream or madman’s fantasy? Felicia searched her room for the slightest sign that would prove the reality of what she had experienced. The heavily laden table had left no marks on the floor, not even divots in her Turkish carpet. Not so much as a crumb had fallen from the white cloth, nor had the servants let spill a single drop of wine—quite the best she’d ever tasted. Even her own candles in their brackets by the mirror seemed not to have burned down at all.

Yet she could still taste what she’d eaten and feel the warmth of the wine within. Though the jewels were gone, she still felt the touch of their heavy coolness on her skin. “Either,” she said, “I have a much better imagination than I have ever suspected in myself, or ...”

Firmly, she slammed the door of her thoughts on that “or.” She methodically prepared herself for bed. If she scrubbed her neck and wrists a little more briskly than usual, there was no one to wonder why. Keeping her thoughts solidly fixed on the business at hand—cleaning her teeth, brushing her hair, rubbing away a spot of tallow that had dropped on her black gown—Felicia managed to keep at bay Blaic’s all-too-real image.

Kneeling, she said her prayers before climbing up two small steps into her bed. Taking her book of devotions from beneath the pillow, she read the day’s thought. Yet a moment after she’d marked the page with a ribbon and slid the book away again, she could not recall what she had read. That was his fault too.

“Most vexatious,” she said, leaning over to adjust the screen around the candle. The near-darkness was a comfort.

Ordinarily, she loved her deep, wide bed. The moments just before sleep, when she let her troubles slip away for the night, were the best of the day. She always positioned herself more to the side than in the middle, as the feathers in the center were weak and would leave her floundering if an emergency were ever to arise in the night. How wonderful to pull the curtains close, lay her cheek on the soft caress of the pillow, and drift away.

The counterpane, turned back in a double bend over her chest, seemed a trifle heavier than usual. She rolled onto her side and felt a definite draft, warm and slightly scented with herbs. Felicia knew before she opened her eyes what she would see. She tried to throw off the counterpane and spring from the bed, but found herself sinking into the middle of the feathers instead. Wallowing feebly, she only sank deeper.

“Pray don’t scream!” he said quickly.

“I’ll scream if I want!” she said, and took a deep breath. But she couldn’t. She’d never been able to. Clarice had a piercing shriek which she let go on every occasion from delight at a piece of candy to horror at the prospect of a bath. But Felicia only went rigid when a scream would have been useful.

“Pray don’t,” Blaic said, and smiled at her. “No one will hear you but me, and my hearing is delicate.”

He still had his arm draped over her. His head was propped up on his other hand and he stared down with those deep green eyes. Felicia stopped wriggling. “What do you want?”

“That’s the first time you’ve asked me that. You asked ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What are you?’ But never ‘What do you want?”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“I want to help you.”

“Why?”

His smile became wider. Felicia discovered that she did not trust him when he smiled. It seemed out of character.

He said, “I want to prove to you that I am who and what I say I am. You have done me a great service. Do you know how long I was entombed? Not quite six hundred and fifty of your years.”

“Six hundred ... oh? How interesting ...”

“Still you don’t believe? I’ve never had so much trouble before.”

“You used to spend a lot of your time in the twelfth century helping girls?”

“Very little of it, actually. I’ve never been fond of humans.”

“You haven’t? And I have the very great good fortune to be the one to change your opinion.” She made a galvanic effort to free herself from the welter of blankets and the weight of his arm. He was as strong as she imagined, and her own strength was sapped by her illness.

Blaic shook his head in wonder. “I still think you are a singularly foolish race. How much time you waste of your short lives. We of the Living Lands make every instant count, though we have an infinite number of them.”

“Then losing a mere six hundred and fifty years shouldn’t trouble you. That being so, I absolve you of all feeling of obligation. Kindly go now.”

In the shadows, she saw him shake his head again. “I still feel an obligation.”

“Then serve me by removing yourself from my bed. You put me in a most troubling position. If anyone found you ...”

“Who should? All in this house sleep under my will. When I withdraw it, they shall wake. In the meantime, no one will disturb us.”

“Surprisingly enough, that thought does not reassure me.”

Slowly, Blaic withdrew his arm. “You have nothing to fear from me. I won’t touch you.”

“I didn’t think it,” Felicia said—perhaps too quickly. He had a face that a woman instantly responded to, yet in the near-darkness of her bed it was not his face that made her insides quiver. Something about his nearness, the weight of his arm across her midriff made her feel all breathless... She did not want to explore that feeling any more closely.

“I can’t touch you,” Blaic said as she rolled out of bed. “Nor must you touch me. If we touch, by our Ancient Law—”

She interrupted as she struggled into her robe. “You said something about that before, the first time we met. When you carried me up here.”

“Yes. I must serve you. Any of the People must serve the mortal that touches them.”

“Why?”

“It is the Law.”

She tightened her belt and felt, if not dressed, at least less naked. Now if he would only arise himself. It confused her to see him lying on her bed, though she told herself it was because he still had his boots on.

He sat up, swinging his feet over the edge nearest to her, exactly as if he’d read her mind. When he stood up, his shadow grew long, as though he were reaching out to her.

Wary of him, Felicia again took up a position near the fireplace, the poker within ready reach. “It must be difficult to be what you are. No iron, no meat, and this Law.”

“It has rewards. The Living Lands are—” He seemed to be looking deep within himself, as at memories too precious to be shared. “Take your best day and extend it forever. Surround yourself with those you love and who love you in a landscape of endless wonders and beauty.”

“What did you do to be shut out of such a heaven?”

His smile was a bitter twist of his fine mouth. “I loved.”

“Whom did you love?”

“My king’s daughter. She wouldn’t have me; she loved a mortal man. Like a fool, I helped him to reach her when the king had forbidden it. They were happy; I was turned to stone.”

He seemed to have forgotten that he was speaking to her, a mere mortal. Felicia felt as though he’d revealed a part of his soul. She released her hold on the poker and it fell with a rattle that seemed to recall Blaic to the present.

She said, “I love someone too. If I could have one thing in all this universe, it would be for her.”

“You mean, for your sister?”

“Several years ago, she was as normal as any young girl on the threshold of womanhood. Then, she went riding. She didn’t come back. We searched for her, high and low. My father found her, alive, well, quite happy, but ‘wandered,’ as the country people say. She has never recovered, and I’m afraid if I leave her ...”

“Yes?”

Felicia tried to speak fairly, to put her own dislike of Lady Stavely to one side and to tell him no more than the facts. “Her mother is very possessive. Even when Clarice was in her senses, Lady Stavely tried everything she could to keep her from growing up. I think—I think she needs to have Clarice stay a child, dependent on her. But what kind of life is it? Never to love, never to have children of her own, never to have her freedom...”

“Is it Clarice you speak of? Or yourself?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” But she knew she lied. How could he know so much about her?

Blaic had crossed his arms while listening. Now he tapped his lip meditatively with a forefinger. “Where was she riding?”

“Up on the moor. She loved to ride there; I won’t go near the place.” She dropped her gaze so that he wouldn’t see just how frightened she was of that vast emptiness. “I’m not a native of this county as she is.”

“Your wish is for me to cure her?”

“No one else can. Lady Stavely has had medical men of every stripe here. She even took Clarice to London, but it didn’t agree with her. Or rather, Lady Stavely said it didn’t agree with her.”

“Very well.”

Felicia stared at him with hope in her eyes. “Are you going to help her? Can you help her?”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “She is cured already. It’s the least I can do for you.”

Felicia started forward, joy rising in her heart with a flutter like angels’ wings. She reached out, wanting to touch him, to be sure he was real and that therefore what he promised was real.

This time it was his turn to back away. “Don’t touch me,” he said. “Please.”

“Oh, I forgot.” She looked at him, knowing that her thoughts were plain to see. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“It was nothing. I’ll go now.”

“And the enchanted sleep you put on this house?”

He opened his eyes as though the matter had slipped his mind. “That’s gone too. If you wanted to scream now, you would have a legion to rescue you in an instant.”

“I don’t want to scream, thank you.”

His dark-eyed gaze traveled over her body. Whatever desire she’d glimpsed in them once seemed as dead as Caesar. She wondered if she’d really seen it at all. He said, “You must be cold. You have nothing on your feet.”

“I’m too happy to be cold. If it weren’t so late, I would wake Clarice up this minute!”

“Why don’t you? Do you think she’d mind it?”

The temptation was strong. “No. Better let it seem to have happened overnight. But I don’t believe I’ll sleep a moment between now and morning! I haven’t felt this way since I was a child with Christmas morning twelve long hours away.”

“Get into your bed,” Blaic said, swinging his arm wide in invitation.

Not thinking of herself at all, Felicia laid aside her robe and climbed up the steps. “In sober truth, I shan’t close an eye all night.”

“Yes, you will.”

A yawn shook her. “Oh, that’s your doing.”

“Is it?”

He drew the covers up to her shoulders, holding the counterpane gingerly between two fingers, careful to avoid even the lightest brush of her skin. “Felicia,” he said.

“Hmmm ... ?”

“Be careful of me.”

Blaic did not think she heard, and he was glad. Let her trust him completely. Only then, when he betrayed her trust, would he be free of his curse.

As when he’d first met her, he stood above her sleeping form, staring down at her. Mortal women still did not appeal to him, yet there was something about her that pleased him now. Perhaps he was merely growing used to her peculiarities.

He reached out as though to smooth her hair. He didn’t touch it, but he made a sweeping motion and the strands responded, flexing as though beneath his fingers. Blaic remembered that earlier the chestnut mass had been tightly restrained into a hard knot on her nape. He much preferred the wild curls of its natural state.

She had a fine, smooth skin, unlined as yet. Though trouble left its marks under her eyes, he recognized that these would fade, leaving her with a wholesome glow. He wondered how old she was and sighed again, though without bitterness, for the fleeting substance of mortality.

As soon as he vanished, Felicia opened her eyes. “It seems to me,” she said aloud to the darkness, “that he needs to practice his sleep spell.”

Chapter Five

Felicia came down early to breakfast with the first good appetite she’d known since her father’s death. The butler, Mr. Varley, and the young footman were clearing the table of a place setting as she entered the room. Holding his miniature brush and pan in one gloved hand, the butler turned stiffly, for he was a martyr to rheumatism. “Good morning, miss.”

“Good morning, Varley. Lovely day.”

“Yes, miss, most clement for the season. Eggs, miss?”

“Please, and some of that bacon. It’s from Yeo’s farm, isn’t it?”

She tucked into her breakfast, savoring every bite. Her ears were open for sounds of excitement and astonishment. Nurse had a yelp like a trodden pug-dog that she displayed at every unusual event, from a dead snake on the path to the gift of a bouquet of flowers on her birthday. Felicia had half-expected to be awoken by this yelp in its most joyful inflection, but it had been the dark images in her dreams that had brought her awake. Surely she would hear that yap the moment Nurse realized what a change had taken place in her young charge.

After a few minutes, Felicia asked, “Is Lady Clarice down as yet?”

“Yes, miss. She finished just a moment before you came in. Didn’t you see her in the corridor?”

“No, I...” She sipped her coffee. Asking Varley any more questions would fall under “gossiping with the servants.” She pushed her cup away, suddenly repelled by the bitter taste.

She could decently ask, however, “Do you know where Lady Clarice has gone now?”

“I couldn’t say,” Varley said. “But, if you’ll pardon me, miss, she seemed all lit up with excitement.”

William the Footman made a noise too quiet for a cough, too emphatic for a mere clearing of his throat. Felicia and Mr. Varley looked at him. Without meeting either pair of eyes, he said, “I know.”

Seen through the windows of Hamdry Manor, the day had seemed both bright and warm. The wind whipping down off the moor was determined to prove it otherwise. “Aie!” Mary exclaimed, huddling herself into her shawl. “T’wind’s too lazy to go ‘round me; it’s goin’ raight through!”

After yesterday’s propositions, Felicia had felt most uneasy going anywhere alone with a man. Even a bashful jackstraw like William the Footman who, as it was said in the servants’ hall, hardly dared to breathe without asking permission, might turn out to be hoarding some secret lust. Felicia still was not sure why she should have had the doubtful honor of being the receiver of those outpourings from two men on the same day. Midsummer madness, she’d have guessed, were it not the cusp of spring.