The Countess' Captive (The Fairytale Keeper Book 2) (7 page)

A resigning sigh breaks the long silence. “Yes.”

That is all he says.

I expect him to warn me, to tell me to do nothing else, but he does not, and so after a few moments of waiting for further instructions that do not come, I turn on my heel.

I pound my fist on the door to the old doctor’s office. A sweet–faced, matronly woman answers. I ask to see the doctor, saying it is urgent. She says that it usually is but allows me in anyway. He turns to look at me and immediately orders the woman to make me leave, explaining that I was the rude urchin that summoned him and then turned him away. The woman’s sweet–face pinches, and she shoos me out like a stray cat. I duck below her arm.

“What was in the potion? I have to know. What did you give me last night?”

The woman grasps my arm and pulls me back. I grip the door frame. The doctor turns and raises an eyebrow quizzically. He turns back to his work and waves his hand in the air, dismissing the woman.

“I told you it was for sleep and pain, but obviously you did not take it.”

“No, I didn’t, but someone else did…and now she won’t rise.”

“So that’s why you rushed me away. Thought your mistress was trying to poison you, eh? So you decided to slip her the potion instead?”

“She’s not my mistress,” I spit. “She’s my father’s lover, though my mother hasn’t been dead a month. We’re cobblers, and she’s a countess. And we hate each other.”
Why am I telling him this?
“She threatened me yesterday morning, and then you came with your potion. So I thought…you can see how I might have assumed…”

“That I was paid to poison you,” he finishes, and I nod. “If you hate her so much, why do you care if she lives or dies?”

“I, I don’t know.”

“It’s because you’re not a killer,” he concludes. “You see, girl, these things happen. A wife dies. A husband remarries.” He waves his hand dismissively again. “Your father may marry a countess. Although a fool of a countess she must be…to marry a cobbler. Either way, I suggest you accept your good fortune.”

I ball my fists and bite my lip, confining fury at his suggestion: that my mother’s death and my father’s affair is somehow a blessing.

His bristled eyebrows raise. “Now when did she take the wine?”

“Last night near Compline.”

“Oh, then it should wear off soon.” He shrugs and then turns back to his sheaf of parchments.

“So it was not poison?”

“No, it was medicine. Just as I said.”

“So she’ll live?”

“Of course.” He laughs. “You see, I am no killer either, no matter how much coin is offered to me.”

“Did she offer you coin to kill me?”

He raises his eyes from the parchments at his desk and faces me. “No,” he says evenly. “She offered me coin to heal you.” He turns back around, hunching over his desk.

The soft indifference in his aged voice convince me that he tells the truth.

If Galadriel wakes before I return, a doctor may be at her side. What if he discovers her deep sleep was induced by herbs? Who else, besides me, could have, would have slipped her such a potion?

I have to keep her from finding out, and I know just how to do it, but first there is something else I must do.

“I know I am in your debt, and that I have nothing to give,” I say. “But I have one other favor to ask of you. I’ll forever be grateful and keep you in my prayers, if you grant me this.”

The doctor chortles. “I think, between the two of us, I am not the one in need of prayers.” He slowly turns from his chair again, purses his lips, and gives me the annoyed, yet triumphant look of a man once wronged who is now in need of a favor. “But you’ve piqued my curiosity. What is it you want?”

The doctor grants my request. With that finished, I race back to the tavern, praying the entire way for the old doctor, for Ivo, for Mama, and for myself, that I do not get caught in this scheme.

I push through the door to the tavern, nearly running down a drunkard who curses me, but I continue toward the stairs. Quiet voices come from our rooms, and I slow my pace, tiptoeing up the stairs. I peek in through the doorway, unseen. A man barely old enough to be a doctor looks Galadriel over, his face muddled with confusion.

Galadriel slips in and out of sleep, answering the boy’s questions. He feels her for fever and chills. He offers to bleed her, but she declines, saying she feels better. Then he asks something nightmarishly awful, something I had never considered. I dig my fingernails deep into my palms to keep from gasping aloud.

The boy doctor asks lowly, discreetly, if Galadriel might be with child.

The silence is piercing. I hold my breath and wait for them to both adamantly, fervently say no and finally Galadriel does. I exhale and quietly peel the door open, entering my room.

Father may ask me why I never came to check on her and why I didn’t bring a doctor. Of course I shall lie to him later, telling him I could not get a doctor to come with me. I’ll tell him that when I returned, a doctor was already in the room, and I heard Galadriel speaking, so I assumed it best to give them privacy.

Now it is time to enact the second part of my plan. To show Father that this trip to Bitsch is cursed, that the heavens above do not want it to be.

I take the potion from yesterday’s wine, still half–full, and before it can mock or goad me anymore, drink the entire thing.

Wheat tickles my arms as I run, giggling through the fields. The stalks sway lazily in the timid breeze ahead of me, but their brilliant blond heads part just before I reach them.

His long shadow grows closer to me.

If I slow down, he’ll catch me. Perhaps, I should let him.

A wanton smile pinches my cheeks.

No, not yet
.

With another giggle, I sprint ahead. The swipe of his hand tosses a tendril of my hair.

Almost, Ivo.

I laugh aloud and veer right, running straight into the sun. The searing pink orb and the illuminated edges of the mountainous plumes of clouds scald my eyes. I turn left, avoiding the blinding brilliance. The wheat goes on and on until the fiery firmament and the gilded fields embrace at some point beyond forever.

The night sky and stars roll down upon the sunset, squeezing it into the horizon until it is nothing but the faintest lavender line. The moon hangs by a string, swaying in the breeze. It grins widely and beams down upon the stalks, casting silver highlights and pewter shadows.

I open my hand, running my fingers along the billowy heads of wheat. I expect to hear the brushing sound as I pass through, but instead the stalks ring like whispering bells. A set of fingers caress my open palm, and I slow. I can’t wait a moment longer. His fingers wrap around my hand. They weave together. Panting, I come to a quick stop. He doesn’t expect it and tries to halt, but it’s too late. He yanks me forward. I fall into him, laughing as we plummet into the chiming stalks of wheat.

I rise up on my hands, the weight of my body upon him. His face reflects the smile that cramps my cheeks. His hand presses into my lower back. A stray strand of hair falls into my face, and he brushes it away, his fingers warm against my cool cheek.

The happy creases that frame his mouth and eyes have gone, relaxing away. His hand slithers behind my neck, pulling my face toward his.

His lips brush mine, resting upon my top lip. His fingers sink into my lower back, and I melt into him. The rest is a passionate rush. One sensation flows for the briefest moment before it ebbs behind a stronger one: his hand running through my hair, the scent of his neck, the sweet, silky taste of his lips. Sensations merge, an alloy of bliss.

I lie on my side, tucking my head into his shoulder. His chin rests upon the top of my head. Every joint, muscle, in my body unhinges. The silver wheat stalks swing to–and–fro, at the whim of the cool, night breeze. The moon swings as well, still brilliant, still smiling. Stars diminish like candle flames with too little wick, and just as one burns out, another illuminates.

Swollen creatures rise from the wheat, floating lazily like sud bubbles from a laundress’ tub.
Fireflies.

I duck into the crook of Ivo’s shoulder, afraid, worried, though I do not know why. I peer through a squinted eye. Ivo holds out his hand, and a fat firefly lands clumsily upon it, examining us with large, pup–like eyes.

“Adelaide,” a voice whispers, nearly imperceptible, on the roll of the wind. Ivo grips me tighter. I nuzzle my head deeper into his shoulder.

“Adelaide,” the voice calls more clearly, no longer coming from the wind, but the heavens. I sit up quickly, startling the firefly who bumbles away.

“She stirs,” a bell–like voice says excitedly. I stand, looking around for a prankster hiding among the wheat, but the voices come from above. I look to the sky.

“She’s coming around now,” a man says. I look down to Ivo to ask him if he hears this, too, but he is gone, not even a flattening in the stalks left as evidence of his presence.

Was he ever here at all?

Is any of this real?

No.
No, this is a dream. My happiness withers at this cruelest of realizations.

But if it’s my dream, why can’t I stay?

I close my eyes tightly, conjuring Ivo: his lips stretched into a half–smile, the scent of wind and smoke in his silvery blond hair, the give of his ropey muscles beneath my roaming fingertips.

I open my eyes, surrounded by wheat fields and endless night. The moon’s smile seems more like a mocking smirk. Was it mocking me all along? Did it know this was only a dream and that I would wake to a nightmare? I run my fingers along the stalks of wheat, hoping to hear them chime once more, but I feel nothing, hear nothing.

“Adelaide,” beckons the girl. The weight of a dainty hand rests on my shoulder though no hand is there. My shoulder shakes with a shove, and all goes black.

The blankets rustle as I shift to the side. A pop from the fire startles me. Galadriel’s hand gently shakes my shoulder, and I roll upon my back, opening my eyes. Father’s furrowed brow unravels. I’ve worried him. A guilty knot rises in my throat, but quickly melts away as flashes of my dream return.

Father and Galadriel take Ivo away from me, and if I protest I may lose my freedom, Ivo, or both. I turn away from him, not bothering to mask my disappointment.

Father brushes sweaty tangles of hair from my neck. “How do you feel?”

I regard the question. I am sad, disappointed, and homesick, but this isn’t what he wants to know. I lift my heavy arm. Moving my limbs is like swimming through pottage. “I am tired.”

“Just like I was, Ansel,” Galadriel remarks before turning to me and adding, “We caught a sleeping sickness.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Since yesterday afternoon,” Galadriel replies, “but I feel fine today, and you will tomorrow.”

“She needs to rest at least another day,” Father says to Galadriel.

“Of course,” Galadriel’s agreement is rapid and sweet like his words were a question and not a command. “Do you feel sick, Adelaide?”

“No.”

“Neither did I,” she says. I sigh, hoping her question stems from concern, not suspicion, and she truly believes a sleeping sickness plagued us. “I had the most wonderful dreams,” she adds dazedly. “Did you?”

Father’s grey eyes darken at her question. They almost seem black. “Don’t press her,” he snaps.

“It was a simple question,” she defends with a nonchalant laugh. “I meant no—”

His glare silences her mid–sentence.

This feigned illness did more than pass time. In Father’s heart, I outrank Galadriel now. The convent that felt so close, now feels far away, a speck on the horizon. But Father’s heart is fickle lately. His affections may turn at any moment.

He rises and grips my foot through the blanket, wiggling it playfully. He brushes past Galadriel. “The sun sets. Supper will be in an hour.” He raises an eyebrow at me. “Do you think you’ll be well enough to join us?”

There it is again. That word,
us
. I try not to cringe and nod obediently. He leaves. His footsteps drifting evermore silently down the hall until they hit the steps. He goes down into the tavern rather than back to his room with her.

I expect Galadriel to scowl at me like a child bested in a game, but she does not. And unlike a child winning at a game, I do not gloat. We gaze upon each other expressionless. After a long silence, she leaves, closing the door behind her.

I sink heavily into the bed
.
I could sleep for days. But Father wants me to join him for supper. I cannot disappoint him now.

I prop myself up, leaning against the wall for support, and toss the covers off the bed. Perhaps, Father shall want to go home now. He seems disappointed with Galadriel again, and postpones our departure another day.

I rush onto my legs, and they give. I fold, falling back onto the bed. I huff. My limbs take too long to wake. I plait my hair as I wait for them and dress slowly, the effort painstaking and deliberate. When my legs strengthen enough to support me, I make my way to the basin and dunk my head a half–dozen times into the cold water.

Father sits alone at a table, hunched over his mug. I sink into the chair beside him, relieved to rest my shaky legs. My stomach roars loudly, so Father summons the kitchen maid to fetch bread and wine.

“I am sorry I worried you,” I say, and I do mean it. If it had been him and not me, I’d surely have lost my wits with fear.

He shrugs. “You’re well. That’s all that matters.”

I keep my mouth stuffed with bread or sipping on wine to avoid losing Father’s favor with words. He remains silent, blindly staring forward. I squelch the urge to prod, letting his thoughts fester. Galadriel arrives an hour later, and we eat in a fermenting silence. Father rises from the table with a groan, and Galadriel follows him.

I finish my wine alone. My back aches from lying in bed for so long. I nearly order a stronger wine to dull the soreness but remember the headache from yesterday’s indulgence and go to bed instead.

I ascend the stairs with deliberate steps, feeling far beyond my fifteen winters. Raised voices come from Father’s room. I utter a curse, wishing I had tread the stairs more lightly. Perhaps they heard me coming and shall mind their tones. I inch toward the door when it whips open, Galadriel, red–faced and teary–eyed, nearly plows me over. She slams the door behind her.

“I suppose you heard that.” She swipes tears from her cheeks.

“I heard raised voices but not words.”

“So are you here to find out what was said or to gloat?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Oh, leave me alone!” she huffs and storms past me.

“Is he going to send you to a convent, too?” I jest, following her out of interest not concern.

“Your father is a beast!”

I give a laugh. “And you’re a fool if you expect that to change.”

“So he has always been like this, even with your—”

Mother is what she doesn’t say. That unspoken word is like a punch in the stomach. My fists quickly curl in response. Galadriel’s eyes are immediately apologetic. Even she knows this was the cruelest of questions. I couldn’t answer Galadriel even if I wanted to, though if I did, the answer would be yes.

Mama and Papa fought and argued, but Mama yelled back. She never cried over their fights. She got angry. So why does Galadriel cow to him? Why would a woman of her station let a man of his not only speak to her in such a manner, but take him and his unruly daughter into her home?

“Why are you doing this?” I ask.

“What do you mean?” she asks coolly.

“Why are you taking us in?”

She does not answer, so I inch forward, lowering my voice. “Do you plan on leaving your affair at the gates of Bitsch? If you do not, won’t your people speculate? Such a thing could ruin you in the eyes of other men,
noble
men. “