The Silver Rose (3 page)

Miri’s heart sank in dismay.
The Lady of the Wood?
Oh, wonderful. So much for her promise to Ariane to draw no attention to herself and she’d barely been home six months. Before she could attempt to convince Madame Greves that her curing of the cow had been nothing more than sensible animal husbandry, they were interrupted by Madame Alain’s shrill voice ringing across the green.

“Laurette!”

Having noticed her friend’s defection, she beckoned imperiously. Madame Greves drew back from Miri, sketching a deep curtsy. “Well, I—I just wanted you to know all that, milady.”

“Thank you, madame. But I am not
milady.
I am only—”

But Madame Greves was already gone, scurrying after the other women. Miri sighed. Despite Laurette Greves’s kindness, she was not sorry to see her go, as uncomfortable with the woman’s adoration as she had been with Madame Alain’s hostility.

Now that the confrontation was over, Miri experienced the inevitable aftermath she always felt in the wake of any rage or violence. A tremor coursed through her, her nerve endings feeling like the delicate strings of a harp that had been plucked with rough hands, forced into playing discordant notes.

She wrapped her arms about herself, gazing toward where Willow peacefully cropped some grass. She longed to fling herself on the pony’s back and retreat to the solitude of her woods until she regained her sense of harmony. She had all but forgotten Carole’s presence until she heard the girl grumbling beside her.

“Good riddance to the lot of those old harpies. They nearly ripped my shawl and my
grand-mère
made it special just for me before she died. If I could pox the lot of those wretches, I’d do it in a heartbeat, make them grow warts on their noses and carbuncles on their fat arses.”

Carole’s lip quivered as she brushed a smudge of dirt from the end of the beloved shawl. But when she realized that Miri had turned to look at her, she swirled the shawl about her shoulders and lifted her chin to a truculent angle. Her freckles stood out in sharp contrast to her pale skin, a bruise forming beneath one eye, her cheeks still streaked with the tracks of her tears. Her face was heartbreakingly young, the expression in her fierce blue eyes far too old.

“I suppose you expect me to thank you for coming to my defense,” she said grudgingly. “But it wasn’t necessary. I can look out for myself.”

“I am sure you can, mademoiselle.” Another woman might have been taken aback by the girl’s truculence. Miri was too accustomed to being growled at by injured creatures in the wild, the bared teeth that masked hurt and fear. Long experience had taught Miri when it was safe to touch, when best to hold back. She plucked her handkerchief from her belt and extended it instead.

Carole eyed the scrap of linen suspiciously. “What’s that for? I am not crying.” She mopped the back of her hand across her damp cheeks.

“Of course you are not, but you are bleeding. You have cut your lip.”

Carole thrust out her tongue, wincing as she tested the corner of her mouth. She reluctantly took the handkerchief from Miri and dabbed it to her lip.

“I am not a slut, either. No matter what Madame Alain says.”

“I never thought that you were,” Miri said gently.

“There were not many sailors, only one. And Raoul said he loved me and would marry me and buy me a fine blue gown.” Her thin throat worked as she swallowed hard. “And then he sailed away and never came back and—and the devil take him. I’ve laid a curse on him and hope he falls in the sea and sharks tear him to bits.”

The girl tossed her head defiantly. “There! Now I suppose you will tell me how wicked I am, that it is evil to say such things.”

“No, it is perfectly understandable that you should feel that way.” Miri’s response earned her a wary look from the girl. Carole cocked her head to one side as though uncertain what to make of Miri.

“Are you sure you are all right?” Miri asked anxiously. “Perhaps you should go home and let your Maman—”

“My mother died last winter. I live with my aunt and uncle now, but only because they’ve never been able to have children of their own. If I have a boy, they’ll adopt him and let me stay on.”

“And—and if it’s a girl?”

“Oh, I expect they mean to toss us both out.” Carole gave a brittle shrug as though trying to pretend the outcome did not matter much to her, either way.

Miri was hard-pressed to conceal her shock and dismay, unable to conceive of the callousness of these people who should have been looking out for this young girl, soothing her fears, reassuring her. Miri’s own family had always been so warm, so caring. She could not imagine anything she could do bad enough to ever put herself beyond the pale of their love and forgiveness.

Her heart went out to Carole, but Miri had always found it difficult to reach out to strangers. She said almost shyly, “Carole, I—I confess I know more about breeding mares than I do about a young girl about to foal. If there is anything at all I could do, I would like to help you. My—my name is Miri Cheney.”

Tentatively, Miri extended her hand. A wistful expression crossed Carole’s face. Miri doubted that the girl had experienced many gestures of kindness in her life, at least not lately. She gazed into Miri’s eyes for a long moment, only to blink and draw back, her youthful features hardening.

“Oh, everyone on Faire Isle knows who you are, my Lady of the Wood. Thank you for your offer, but I don’t have any ailing cow or sick bunny that needs tending. I have been told all about
you,
a half-witch too afraid to use her real power and knowledge.”

“I don’t know who has been telling you such things, but I don’t consider myself a witch at all. I am a daughter of the earth, nothing less and nothing more.”

“That is exactly what I mean.” Carole sneered. “No, Mistress Cheney, I need no help from the likes of you or anyone else on this miserable island. I have friends, very powerful friends who will look out for me.”

Miri wished that might be the case, but she feared it was only the empty boast of a girl, clinging to her last scrap of pride.

“Carole—” Miri began, but the girl cast a scornful look and walked away. Despite her awkward gait, she moved rapidly across the green.

Miri started to go after her, only to draw up short, not knowing what else she could do or say. Trying to reach the heart of a wounded girl was much more complicated than setting the broken leg of an injured fox or badger. Miri watched helplessly as Carole disappeared down one of the lanes. She wished fervently that Ariane was here. Her older sister was so gifted at calming troubled waters and pouring balm into aching souls.

Even Gabrielle would have known better how to handle Carole. There was something about the girl that reminded Miri poignantly of what Gabrielle had been like when she was young, so quick to hide her hurts beneath a tough façade, shoving away anyone who would comfort her. But Gabrielle was as far off as Ariane, Miri’s family scattered in opposite directions, miles from the island that had once been their home.

It struck Miri as an inexplicable and cruel trick of nature that Carole Moreau should be burdened with an unwanted babe while Ariane, who had so longed for a child, remained barren. But her sister had put a brave face on it, genuinely rejoicing each time that she successfully delivered another woman of a babe, especially when it had been Gabrielle.

Happily wed to her Captain Remy, Gabrielle had spent these past years ripe and blooming with creation, three daughters so far, producing babes almost as easily as she did the paintings and sculpture that were Gabrielle’s own special brand of magic.

Ariane had resigned herself to her childless fate. Taking deep comfort in the love of her husband, Renard, she was content.

She tried not to dwell on thoughts of her sisters. Her heart ached for them too much. It had been her own choice to come back to Faire Isle, but Miri was starting to feel it was the biggest mistake she’d ever made—next to trusting Simon.

Faire Isle still looked much as she remembered it, the rocky harbor where she’d once stood and waited hopefully for her father’s ship to return, the same deep, dark woods where she’d hunted for fairies. Port Corsair was still the same with its lumbering old inn, row of timber-framed shops, and dusty lanes where she’d trailed shyly after her older sisters.

But those lanes she recalled as bustling with activity and women toting their market baskets, gossiping and laughing, stood mostly empty this summer afternoon and not just because of the threatening weather. So many familiar faces were absent: Mistress Paletot, the gifted sword maker; old Madame Jehan, the apothecary; the Jourdaine sisters, skilled weavers. All talented and clever women, charged with sorcery, either condemned or obliged to flee for their lives as Ariane and Gabrielle had done.

What women remained kept more to themselves, minding their own families and tending their gardens. Miri did not know what she had expected to find on Faire Isle after an absence of ten years, but certainly not this atmosphere of fear and mistrust. It was as though a bottle had been uncorked, releasing a dark miasma that had stolen away the spirit of the island itself.

Faire Isle had always been populated mostly by women, the wives of fishermen and sailors gone at sea. But there were widows and maidens as well who found Faire Isle a refuge, a unique place they could prosper and ply trades forbidden to their sex elsewhere. And yet Miri was not naïve enough to recall the island as being idyllic. No, women being women, they had known their share of bickering and squabbling. But nothing like the ugly scene Miri had witnessed this afternoon. It was ironic that such violence should have taken place before the statue that commemorated the best traits of a woman, wisdom, compassion, healing.

Miri gazed up at the monument depicting a gentle lady in flowing robes, her arms extended. One of the hands had been broken off, the face smashed beyond all recognition. Miri’s breath hitched in her chest. She did not know if the vandalism had been the work of witch-hunters, the king’s soldiers, or even embittered townsfolk. The pedestal that used to be decked with floral offerings was now overgrown with weeds.

“I should have done something about this long ago,”
she thought guiltily. But she had steadfastly avoided this part of the town square ever since her return, the sight of the defaced statue far too painful.

She knelt down now and doggedly tugged up clumps of weeds, clearing the inscription at the base.
Evangeline . . . Our Lady of Faire Isle.

“Maman,” Miri whispered. With a heavy heart, she traced her fingers across the worn lettering. She had only been eleven years old when her mother had died and the island people had erected this monument to Evangeline’s memory. Evangeline’s knowledge of the old ways and her skill in brewing medicines had saved the entire island from the ravages of the plague.

But the statue also honored the generations of wise women who had gone before her. There had always been a Lady of Faire Isle, counseling, protecting, and healing with her gentle magic. At least until Ariane had been forced into exile.

Ariane’s husband, the former Comte de Renard, had ever been wont to say,
“There is a fine line between a woman being proclaimed a saint or a witch.”

Her mighty brother-in-law had been proved right on more than one occasion. Just as Ariane had been when she had counseled Miri not to return to Faire Isle.

“I should have listened to you, Ari,” Miri murmured.

Miri was still rather surprised that Ariane had not done more to prevent her return. Ariane had always been notoriously protective of her younger sisters. Exile had been hard on all of them, but Miri felt as though she was the only one never able to adjust to the change.

She was like one of those small white wildflowers that grew on the far side of the island, unable to successfully take root elsewhere. They clung to life, the shoots still green, but the petals never blossomed again. She had tried to conceal her unhappiness, but there had never been any deceiving Ariane. The Lady of Faire Isle was far too gifted at the wise women’s ancient art of reading eyes.

Whatever she had read in Miri’s eyes, Ariane had finally consented to her return to the island. As she had handed Miri into the boat, she had attempted to smile through her tears.

“Godspeed, little sister. And whatever you are looking for, I hope you find it.”

“I am not looking for anything, Ariane,”
Miri had protested.
“I only want to go home.”

Home . . . A hard lump rose in Miri’s throat. As she cleared the last of the weeds from her mother’s monument, she wondered if there was such a place anymore. Not with her mother dead and her sisters far away. As for her father, all hopes for Louis Cheney’s return had ended a year ago when she had received word that his ship had been wrecked off the coast of Brazil. The
Evangeline
had sunk during a storm, taking with her all hands.

With her family gone, the island was a bleak and lonely place. But if Miri didn’t belong here on Faire Isle, then she didn’t belong anywhere. She felt as though she was nothing but a ghost drifting through a land that should have been so familiar to her but no longer was. The feeling might have been quite unendurable except for one small consolation.

She was not the only phantom haunting Faire Isle.