Teresa Medeiros - [FairyTale 02] (10 page)

Tupper shook a finger at her. “He warned me about that, too. Told me if you couldn’t outwit me, you’d
probably try to charm me with those dimples and that pretty mouth of yours.”

Gwendolyn was accustomed to being blamed for her intelligence, but no one had ever before accused her of being pretty or charming. “He said such a thing?”

Tupper fumbled in the pocket of his frock coat, drawing forth paper, pen, a flask of sand, and a bottle of ink. “He told me to leave these with you. Said you should make a list of everything you require.”

He tossed the items on the bed and dove for the panel, leaving her alone once again. Gwendolyn recognized the stationery. It was the same expensive vellum the Dragon used for his demands.

She caressed the creamy sheaf between thumb and forefinger, lost in thought. Despite their recent encounters, she was no closer to divining the Dragon’s true nature than she’d been last night. If she could just remember what she had seen in that courtyard…. But the memory continued to elude her, leaving her with nothing but the conflicting truths she’d learned since then. He was a gambler who gave away his winnings, a bully who took exquisite care not to pull her hair, a thief who had her completely at his mercy, yet had made no attempt to steal her innocence.

Sinking down on the bed, she brushed her thumb against her lower lip, just as the Dragon had done earlier. What in heaven’s name was wrong with her? She was beginning to feel as witless as Nessa. Instead of being outraged by his impertinence, she was yearning for a mirror for the first time in her memory.

Shaking off the ridiculous longing, she uncapped the ink, dipped the pen into it, and began to scribble. If the Dragon was intent upon keeping her as his prisoner, then she would see to it that he paid dearly for the pleasure of her company.

A
WOMAN
’
S
SCREAM ripped through the deserted streets of Ballybliss. When the villagers came spilling out of their cottages in their nightdresses and nightshirts, they found Kitty Wilder standing in the moonlight at the mouth of the village, gripping her chest as if the arrow still quivering in the trunk of the ancient oak had pierced her heart.

Three young lads tripped over their own feet in their rush to comfort her, but her sisters reached her first. As Glynnis and Nessa gathered the trembling young girl into their arms, clucking like mother hens, a dour-faced Ailbert reached up and pried the arrow from the rough bark. A hushed murmur traveled through the crowd. There was no need for the blacksmith to tell them that the ivory paper rippling from the arrow’s shaft was not a flag of surrender.

For the past twenty-four hours, Castle Weyrcraig had yielded nothing but ominous silence. While many had expressed their hope that the curse had been broken
and the Dragon was off to torment some other unfortunate village, none had dared give voice to their secret fear that they’d somehow compounded their past transgressions with a darker and even more damning sin. A warm spring sun had burned off all traces of last night’s storm, making the madness that had seized them during their march to the castle seem more nightmare than reality.

But the consequences of that madness could no longer be denied—Gwendolyn Wilder was gone and her poor, mad father would spend the rest of his days waiting to hear a familiar footstep that would never come.

Clutching the paper in his fist, Ailbert led a grim parade through the narrow streets of the village, accompanied by Kitty Wilder’s sobs. He marched right up to the stoop of the only cottage in Ballybliss maintained by the English Crown and began to pound on the door.

After several minutes, the door flew open, bathing them in a golden halo of lamplight. “G-g-good heavens, man, what is it? “ stammered Reverend Throckmorton, his nightcap on backward and his wire-rimmed spectacles hanging askew from one ear. “The second coming? “

Ailbert did not speak. He simply thrust the piece of paper beneath the man’s nose.

The reverend shooed it away. “And what’s this? Another message from that beastly Dragon of yours? “ He shook his head. “I strive to be a patient man, you know, but I’ve just returned from a grueling journey and I’ve no time for such pagan nonsense. Why don’t
you go wake that dear, sweet Wilder girl and let me get a decent night’s sleep.”

He was about to close the door in their faces when Ailbert wedged his foot between door and jamb. “ We’d be much obliged if ye’d read this note for us. So obliged we wouldn’t even think o’ breakin’ that lamp ye’re holdin’ in yer hand there and burnin’ yer cottage to the ground.”

The reverend gasped in outrage, then took the paper from Ailbert’s hands. While the villagers crowded closer to hear his words, he adjusted his spectacles, tutting beneath his breath, “Bagpipe-playing ghosts. Dragons burning up your fields with their breath. Pointy-eared bogies stealing your babies and leaving their own. Is it any wonder you were such easy prey for the Papists?”

“We didn’t come here for a sermon, old man,” Ross snarled, hanging over his father’s shoulder.

With an injured sniff, Throckmorton began to read. “ ‘Good folk of Ballybliss’ “—the reverend started to interrupt himself, then obviously thought better of it— “ ‘although you’ve taxed my patience before, I’ve decided to give you a full fortnight to retrieve the thousand pounds I requested.’ “

The pronouncement was greeted with fresh gasps and groans. Even the reverend looked taken aback. “A thousand pounds? Wasn’t that the reward the Crown paid for the life of that traitor MacCullough?”

“That was naught but vicious gossip,” Ailbert
muttered. “No one in this village has ever seen that much gold.”

Throckmorton wisely returned his attention to the paper. “ ‘Until that time, I will have need of the following: five dozen eggs, a half-dozen rounds of cheese, ten steak and kidney pies, three dozen biscuits, twelve loaves of crispbread, five pounds of smoked haddock, a bag of onions, a sack of oatmeal, seven turnips, twenty-five apples, two dozen oatcakes, a side of moor venison, three pounds of fresh mutton, three dozen potatoes, a head of kale, fourteen…’ “

When Throckmorton’s recitation went on and on without so much as a pause for breath, Ailbert’s mouth dropped open. He snatched the paper out of the minister’s hand, then scanned it from right to left. He didn’t have to know how to read to recognize that it was covered from margin to margin on both sides with the same carelessly elegant scrawl.

“There’s a postscript,” the reverend pointed out, lifting the lamp to squint at the back of the paper. “ ‘While your recent offering was much more delicious than I had anticipated,’ “ he read, “ ‘I should warn you that any more uninvited gifts will cost you not only a thousand pounds, but your miserable lives as well.’ “

Ross rested his chin on his father’s shoulder, his broad face crestfallen. “Can ye believe he has the nerve to ask for all that? Ye’d have thought he’d be full after he ate that Wilder lass.”

Granny Hay shook her grizzled head. “P’r’aps she
only whet his appetite. Me puir Gavin was like that. The more he ate, the more he wanted.” She sighed. “The priest swore ‘twas his heart that gave out in the end, but I’ve always believed ‘twas that last mouthful o’ me haggis that done him in.”

Reverend Throckmorton’s horrified gaze traveled the glum circle of their faces. “God in heaven,” he whispered, “what have you done? “

Kitty Wilder tore herself out of her sisters’ arms, her face smeared with grimy tear tracks. “They fed my poor sister to that nasty old Dragon, that’s what they’ve done! And they ought to be ashamed!”

“Hush, lass,” Nessa crooned, tugging her back. “Gwennie sacrificed herself for all of us, and she was more than glad to do it!”

The reverend blinked his red-rimmed eyes in disbelief. “ You gave that poor child to this Dragon of yours? Why, she was the only one among you who had even a pinch of sense!”

“Keep talkin’ like that,” Ailbert snapped, “and I’ll be thinkin’ the Dragon might like a nice juicy Presbyterian.”

“He’s a bit on the scrawny side,” Ross noted, leaning forward until his bulk threw an ominous shadow over the stoop, “but we could always let Granny Hay take him home and fatten him up with a bit o’ her haggis.”

Without warning, the good reverend hopped backward and slammed the door in their faces.

Ailbert swung around, swearing violently. “I’d like to wring the neck o’ the muttonhead who talked us into tryin’ to break that blasted curse.” It was at that precise
moment that he spotted Auld Tavis on the fringes of the crowd, attempting to tiptoe away. “And there he is now!”

He gestured to his youngest son. Lachlan grabbed the old man by the scruff of the neck. In his billowing shroud of a nightshirt, Auld Tavis looked even more like a moldering corpse than usual.

“ ‘Twas only a suggestion,” Auld Tavis said in a wheedling tone as Lachlan hauled him toward the stoop. “I meant no harm by it.”

“I say we stone him!” Ross shouted.

Ailbert shook his head. “There’s no point in that now. The harm’s been done.”

Lachlan lowered a relieved Tavis to the ground while Ross shook his head in disgust.

“But whatever are we to do?” asked Marsali, hugging her baby daughter to her breast.

Ailbert scowled down at the paper in his hand, his long face even grimmer than before. “Start gatherin’ eggs and milkin’ cows. There’s a dragon to be fed.”

Gwendolyn’s second day in captivity began with a jarring thump and a muffled oath. She sat up in bed, shaking her tousled hair out of her eyes just in time to see the panel easing shut behind someone. Her first instinct was to throw something at it, but as her eyes adjusted to the pearly glow of dawn seeping through the grated window, her anger turned to amazement.

She almost threw back the sheet before remembering
that such a motion would leave her as naked and rosy as she’d been on the day she was born. Tying the rumpled and chocolate-stained silk around her with a clumsy knot, she clambered out of the bed and surveyed the chamber with disbelieving eyes.

While she had slept, someone had crept into her tower cell and transformed it into a bower fit for a princess. She supposed it shouldn’t surprise her that M’lord Dragon would have an ambitious clan of bogies to do his bidding. She was surprised the pitter-patter of their hairy little feet hadn’t awakened her.

She wandered the chamber, absently touching this item or that. Against the wall beneath the window leaned a table draped with a cloth of wine satin. A single chair invited her to sit and partake of the feast that had been spread upon it, a feast that made yesterday’s breakfast of crossbuns and chocolate seem little more than pauper’s fare. Roasted apples, poached eggs, buttery crispbread, and oatcakes shared a platter, their appearance as delectable as their mingling aromas. Gwendolyn pinched off a taste of the crispbread, but for the first time in her life, food failed to hold her interest.

The hearth had been swept clean of its mouse droppings and cobwebs and laid with a tidy nest of logs. A pewter tinderbox perched on the mantel. The wax tapers in the standing candelabrum had also been replaced.

On a smaller but higher table, Gwendolyn discovered
a ceramic basin, a pile of clean rags, and a pitcher of warm water. She leaned nearer and sniffed, half expecting the water to be scented with sandalwood and spice. But it was a sweetly floral fragrance that drifted to her nose.

She poured some water into the basin and splashed a little of it on her face, but it failed to startle her from the waking dream her life had become.

That dream grew even sweeter when she spotted the books stacked in the corner. They were old, their covers cracked and their bindings frayed, but as far as Gwendolyn was concerned that only made the words cocooned between their musty pages more precious. There was Volume II of Swift’s collected works, a first edition of Pope’s
The Rape of the Lock,
Daniel Defoe’s
Roxana.
But none of those novels thrilled her soul as much as a copy of Colin Maclaurin’s
Treatise on Fluxions,
which looked as if its spine had never once been cracked.

Gwendolyn sat down on the floor, drawing the books into her lap. She might have sat there all day, content to leaf through their faded pages, if a splash of color in the opposite corner hadn’t caught her eye.

She slowly stood, the books tumbling from her lap. An ancient leather trunk squatted against the wall, its lid propped open to allow its bounty to spill free. Gwendolyn drifted toward it as if beckoned by an unseen hand, the dreamlike haze surrounding her deepening with each step.

Before she was even aware that she had moved,
she found herself kneeling like an unworthy supplicant before a sacred altar. Unable to resist the temptation, she plunged both hands into the trunk, bringing forth two fistfuls of pink-and-white-striped poplin and a quilted petticoat with a frilled hem. A white muslin dress trimmed in cherry ribbon emerged next, followed by yards and yards of pleated taffeta in a hue that perfectly matched her eyes. She was already holding the elegant sacque gown against her sheet-clad bosom when she suddenly awoke from her daze.