Bride Enchanted

by Edith Layton

  She sat wide-eyed and still.

  “Shall I go on?”

  She nodded.

  “At least you’re not laughing,” he sighed. “My people, my folk, my troop, have lived here at Far Isle or what came before it, from time out of mind. It could be argued that we’re more British than any of you latecomers: you Celts, Angles, Romans, Vikings, Francs—all you latecomers. We were born on and of this very earth that is Britain. But we’re not precisely humankind. We’re an older race. We look the same. We feel many of the same things. Three things differentiate us. We live for ages more than you do. Maybe that’s why we’re not bothered with religion, or the other superstitious emotions that you have in plenty. We don’t care about our souls, if we have them, because we’ve never seen them. Nor do we worship any higher powers. We can think of no one higher than ourselves.

  “We can also cast spells, which are only light enchantments, over humankind. That’s also partially why we were, in our racial youth, amused by your kind and treated you with no respect. We were callous and thought you inferior, and used you only for our own pleasures, which were self-serving and chiefly mischievous.

  “As time went on, we began to see your qualities. You were capable of being fully as wicked as we, equally as intelligent, and quite as conceited. The problem was that your kind are mayflies compared to us. We no sooner came to know you than we lost you, so we considered you of no account. But your race was intelligent enough to accumulate wisdom and pass it on. And mankind is ambitious, far more than we are. Is it your fear of extinction that makes you so? We don’t know. But you began to grow wiser as a race, and as you did, to distrust us, and with good reason. So we began to keep to ourselves more. In fact, were it not for one thing, we would retreat to our own realm, which is really exquisite, and you would see us no more.”

  He waited for her to ask. She wasn’t dull. She’d put it together. He watched her eyes, those sincere earth brown eyes, and he vowed that if humans did indeed have souls, he could see hers there.

  “You’re not joking,” she said flatly.

  “No.”

  “But you must be.”

  “No,” he said.

  “It isn’t a game?”

  “No.”

  You believe what you’re saying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah,” she said, and sat and thought a moment. “Nor are you mad,” she whispered, as though to herself. “At least I don’t think so. So what could be your reason for telling me such a tale? Ah, it’s a jest between you and your sister? Some sort of test for me? Or is Sherry in on it? I don’t think it’s amusing. Please stop it. I don’t find it funny; it’s frightening me, and it’s cruel of you all to tease me so.”

  “It’s neither a joke nor a test, nor am I teasing you.”

  “Of course, no human male could be as beautiful as you are,” she mused. “And you never do have a blemish or a skin problem; you wake as handsome at dawn as you are at night, and however much I look at you, one glance at you and you always take my breath away. It’s more than infatuation. I feel it here,” she said, her fist to her chest. She cocked her head to the side “Have you truly enchanted me then?”

  He smiled. “No, I have not.”

  “Never?”

  “Once,” he said. “The first time we made love. I didn’t want to hurt you. I did, but I didn’t. It was only for a moment. Never before that, and never again.”

  She laughed and put both hands to her head. “Oh, I must have run mad then. Or you have. This is the most peculiar conversation.” She lowered her hands. “But ours always was a peculiar relationship, wasn’t it? Why should a little brown girl like me attract a man such as you? Very well, finish it. Tell me, Aubrey, all of it. How old are you? How many wives have you had? I may even believe it’s true as you speak to me. I’ll doubt it the minute you step away. I’ll wonder back and forth through a week of nights or more, but you know? In the end, I’ll think less of you, or of myself, for not seeing the cruelty, or the madness in you before this.

  “If it is madness, Aubrey,” she said, leaning forward, her eyes huge and sincere, “we’ll seek physicians for you, I promise. But you’ve never shown any hint of it. Oh, damnation. Have done. Now, will you share the jest? Or do you still intend to continue with this story of yours?”

  “I’ll continue with the truth,” he said. “I have lived three centuries.”

  “Ah! And so you knew good Will Shakespeare?”

  “You’re joking now,” he said. “You’re shocked, and with good reason. Say then, I’ve known many men and women.”

  “Why are you here then?” she asked patiently, watching him closely. “When your own country is so much more beautiful and your own people, to judge by you and Arianna, so much more beautiful too?”

  “We like diversity,” he said. “This land was all ours once. Now it’s becoming too crowded and too different. Your people discovered iron centuries ago. We’ve never liked it. It stings to the touch, it jangles our nerves, and it’s the antithesis of trees, leaves, and grass, even of living rock. Your people used it only for hunting once, and to put on horse’s hooves. Now you build gates and towers of it. They’re talking about laying down iron tracks across the land, for iron beasts to travel on.” He shuddered. “Our own land becomes more pleasant by the day to us. And yet, and still, there’s no question that you still fascinate us.”

  “Oh, and so what exactly are you, Aubrey?” she asked, as though she were asking if he wanted some tea.

  “We are called by many names. Elves, faerie folk…”

  But she was laughing. “Oh, I see. “Where the bee sucks there suck I?’” she quoted. “You must have known Mr. Shakespeare. But it’s not midsummer, and where are your wings? And shouldn’t you be much smaller? Come, what’s the jest, Aubrey? I’ve had enough.”

  “No jest,” he said quietly. “Humans have depicted us as they need to see us, but we are as you see.”

  “How many wives?” she asked so conversationally that he realized she disbelieved him entirely.

  “Three,” he said. “I was faithful to each of them in turn. I nursed them until their deaths. I took them away from here as they aged. I don’t age, you see. The differences between us became too much for them to have their friends see, and for me to risk being seen. One lady I took abroad. I couldn’t stay long because I can’t leave my own spot of earth for too long. But she was ill, and died soon after we left, and was peaceful at the end, looking out at the sea.” He turned his head and avoided Eve’s eyes. “She couldn’t bear to look at me at the last. She was vain. It made her ill to see her face in the glass and then mine. That, I couldn’t help.

  “When the other two grew old and sick, we said we were going abroad as well. But I took each in turn back with me to my country. The gateway to it is down at the end of the lane, in the wood, beneath a burrow, under a tree and in a hillock. The Hall has its reputation for a good reason. Worlds intersect here and always have done.

  “My land didn’t make the poor ladies any happier, not for long. Even if one isn’t vain, it’s not a joyful thing to grow old while those about one stay forever young. Then, when my wives died of advanced years, each time, after a decent absence from human sight, I returned to your land again, impersonating my own son. Those who had known me before remarked on how much I resembled my father. But they were usually too old themselves, and their vision too fogged, to note that I hadn’t changed at all, except for my hair and eye color. For some reason, coloring always deceives mortals.

  “For what it’s worth,” he said bleakly, turning to Eve again, “I respected each of my wives, but I never loved. I’m not sure that I can. Not in the way you mean. But with you, I try, and sometimes, I think I know what it is.”

  “Ah!” she said. Her hands were clenched. “And so, the last question. Arianna was right. I never asked it correctly. Why did you marry me? And by that I mean, what do you want of me? I think it was what you wanted of the others as well. Good lord!
You have me repeating that nonsense. Never mind that. If you didn’t marry me for love, then what is it that you want of me?”

  “We are a small nation and we grow smaller each year,” he said bluntly. “We need children. We stopped producing them centuries ago. When we were young, we stole yours. They aged more slowly with us, but they aged and eventually died, to our great sorrow. We haven’t had a new child of our own kind since my own birth.”

  “And you want one from me? But why? I’m not of your kind.”

  “Your great-grandmother’s mother’s mother mated with one of our kind. Though she had children, none were of our kind. Nevertheless there is more in your blood than you know.”

  Eve arose. “And you knew her, I suppose? Of course. Enough. Have done. Yes, this is, I think, an elaborate trick. Or I have run mad, or you have. It may be that you and your sister are toying with me. Or Sherry has thought up a new game. And I think very badly of you, Aubrey, for taking part in it. Everything you say makes sense and no sense.”

  She hugged herself against a chill, though the room was warm. “You’re toying with me, and that’s unlike you. Or maybe it is like you. We haven’t known each other that long, have we? I should never have married in haste. But I don’t intend to repent at leisure. Whatever it is, this is either so cruel I can’t grasp it, or so bizarre it’s true. I can’t tell truth from lies anymore. One thing I do know: I can’t believe it of you. Obviously, I don’t know you. I want to go home.” She raised her head, turned on her heel, and left the room.

  He stood there, watching her leave. He couldn’t follow. She had to come to him. She believed and disbelieved. He’d seen it before. He’d wait. She would or would not believe him. Too bad Arianna hadn’t given her a fourth question, because he was bound to answer all she asked.

  Eve had already conceived. And the babe was as much his as hers. She’d know that soon enough. In the meanwhile, she wouldn’t leave him yet, she’d think about it, and take her time deciding. He was sorry he’d hurt her, sorrier still that he’d had to tell her so soon. Whatever happened, he was her husband. He’d stay with her. After she thought it over, she would stay with him.

  Divorce was rare, scandalous, and shameful, as well as a long tedious process. She wouldn’t risk it. She might be embarrassed to repeat his story to anyone else anyway. But even if she did, he was a charming and fabulously wealthy gentleman. They’d say he was an eccentric, and eccentrics were well known to Society. At a time when ladies and gentlemen of the ton cultivated eccentricities as their ancestors used to propagate exotic flowers, when the King of England himself walked about his palace in his nightshirt curtsying to ghosts, and the prince squandered state money during a war to erect a vast Chinese palace for his seaside pleasures, peculiarities were well tolerated.

  But she mightn’t talk to him again.

  Still, he wouldn’t leave her, not until he looked into the eyes of the child and saw if he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do all those many long and lonely years ago. He had to know if he’d succeeded, if he’d saved his troop and his clan. If he had, he’d take the child to it’s proper home. If not, he’d try again. And at the last, he’d have to see if he could save her love for him. Because he realized that for the first time, that it mattered too.

  Chapter 15

  Eve didn’t know what to say, or if she should say anything at all, but she hated silence. When Aubrey came into their bedchamber much later that night, she put a trembling finger in the book to mark the place where she’d pretended to be reading and looked up with hope. “You’ve thought better of it? It was a distemper of the spirit, wasn’t it?” she asked him. “Too much wine?”

  “No,” he said wearily.

  “And so,” she asked carefully, “You have always believed this? Or was it something that just came to you suddenly in a blinding flash and you knew it was right?”

  “Always. It wasn’t a brain spasm or seizure.”

  “And have you told anyone else?” she asked. She sat up in their bed, but had never looked less sleepy. She wore a robe over her nightshift, and hadn’t even undone her hair. She’d been reading, but now she held the book in a white knuckled grasp, as though it anchored her.

  He paused. “I told my past wives, in turn. Everyone who has worked at this house for more than thirty years knows the truth, or aspects of it, and many others suspect it.”

  “You told your wives at once?” she asked, “Or only when you thought you could no longer avoid it?”

  “Only then,” he said.

  She stared at him. “So where are the pointed ears? The wings and the wand and the like? There’s no way you could dance under a toadstool in the moonlight.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “We never looked different from your people. That’s folklore. We’re not immortal either. We do live for longer than you do, much longer. But when our time comes, we do cease to be. We can be killed before times, as well. When we die in natural course of things, we simply become less solid. We stretch out on the wind and flow away. I hear it’s not painful, but only very sad. We aren’t human, but we can become much more mortal if we stay with you too long. The longer we stay, the less we become, and if we stayed all our lives we would lose our lives quickly, or at least as quickly as you mortals do. Our own land gives us substance and years.”

  She nodded. “So that’s why you’re leaving me?”

  “Leaving you?”

  “Well, one sort of announcement such as you have made usually precedes another,” she said with an attempt at her usual tone of voice. “And if a person’s husband comes to his wife with a wild tale it’s either because he’s run mad, or he’s trying to lightly but firmly let her think he has, so he can leave her, or be left alone.”

  Aubrey sat on the side of the bed. “I told you the truth. It takes some getting used to, but it is so. That is what I am. Many things in your world are fantastical but true, Eve,” he said gently, his expression gentled and sympathetic. “Who would think spring could rise from cold dead earth every year if they hadn’t seen it and gotten used to it? The ancients didn’t believe it. They sacrificed their own blood to ensure the marvel kept happening. Only when spring came without their sacrifice did they believe it wasn’t a miracle and began to take it as a matter of course.

  “But think of the other fantastic things you take for granted: birds flying through the air, an ugly worm weaving a crypt for itself and emerging as a beautiful butterfly, fish popping out of eggs: it’s all fantastical. Life itself is fantastic. Two humans make love. They either give each other pleasure, or one is bored, or one is terrified, it makes no difference. If the time is right, another human comes into being from the act. Is that not magical? And oysters and whelks and cold creatures from beneath the seas need not even meet another of their kind to produce young. Which is more fantastic?

  “There are many more kinds of life on this earth than you know of, Eve,” he said softly, reaching out to touch a lock of her hair. “You’ve read the old legends, heard the stories, even seen the pictures the ancients drew and carved. Those depict real things too.”

  “Dragons and mermaids?” she asked. “Brownies and ogres and trolls? Giants, and dwarfs with pots of gold? Werewolves and great worms rising out of Scottish lochs? All the creatures from fairy stories I heard as a girl? I suppose I could believe that there was once some foundation for those tales. Deformed humans and animals could have been seen as strange and new creatures. Tales told around a fire with wolves prowling outside the light take on lives of their own, just as fire shadows from the hearth seem to do. Primitive people are afraid of the dark, and they see enemies everywhere.”

  “Possibly because they have them,” he murmured.

  “Well, I suppose,” she said. “But elves? An old race still living and weaving magics today, and I married one of them? And he’s one of the last of his kind and only here because he wants an elf child from me? No,” she shook her head sadly. “That, Aubrey, I can’t believe.”


  “Others still live here,” he said. “Not everyone went away. Many more visit.”

  She gazed at him long and hard. “Aubrey,” she finally said with infinite sadness, “I can’t help loving you. Although it feels like my heart is breaking, it’s made of sterner stuff. It would take a great deal more to make me stop loving you. But that love has changed. You’ll have to give me days, weeks, months, I don’t know, perhaps years to absorb all this. And I don’t know if I’ll ever believe it. In the meanwhile, if we go to London, will you go to see a physician, and tell him all this too?”

  He nodded. “Dr. Frost in Marble Arch, or Dr. Jennings in Harley Street? They already know, because they have their own powers and reasons for being here. We aren’t the only race to live in secret, as I said. But that is their story to tell.”

  “I see,” she said slowly. “Aubrey, I don’t want to leave you, but I don’t know what else to do. For now, this seems to me to be for the best.” Her eyes filled with sudden hot tears. It had all been too wonderful to be true. She should have known. She had known but he’d denied it, and if there was magic, it was in his convincing her he was marrying her because she was so wonderful to him.

  They were speaking of fairy tales. How could she have believed, for a moment, that a man like Aubrey would have fallen in love with someone like her, and on first sight? Though his story about his old race was bizarre, it made more sense than the romantic dreams about their marriage that she’d woven for herself.

  He sat beside her now, outlined by lamplight, as perfectly beautiful as a dream that came to a maiden lady in the depths of night. Commanding as the mature Apollo, as lithe and languidly beautiful as a statue she’d seen of the young Perseus: supple and easy and certain in his masculinity. He radiated warmth and desire, and he was knowing, knowledgeable, and kind. And he was mad, utterly mad, from a mad family. And he was her husband.