Kissed by Starlight

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  A flicker of a lantern shone on the wall. Almost at the same time, she heard Richards’s voice calling her. “Miss Starret?” he said, in as near a coo as he could manage.

  “If you’ve come to renew your flattering offer, Constable,” she said, rising, “I have no new answer to make you.”

  “Now then, Miss Starret, you’ll allow a fellow a bit of a joke, won’t you? No hard feelin’, eh?”

  Carefully picking her way around the sprawled bodies of her cellmates, Felicia came nearer the door. The barred opening in the middle showed her the constable and his servant, both appearing most anxious. She heard the rattle of the keys turning in the big lock, then watched as the door screeched open.

  Richards showed her his sweating face, topped by a stained hat with a dirty plume. “I was doin’ no more’n my duty,” he was saying apologetically even as he pulled open the door. “Lady Stavely told me flat-out that you be dangerous and must be locked away, zo I did it. No one can blame me for doin’ my duty and not going against her ladyship.”

  He swiped at the sweat trickling down his cheeks. She realized from his puffing that he was out of breath. Who had made Constable Richards run from his comfortable lodging across the street from the gaol?

  “You won’t hold no hard feelin’ against me, will you, Miss Starret?’’ he said again, holding the door wide.

  Felicia swept out of the gaol. The minion’s hand shook as he held the lantern, making the lights and shadows jump and dance. She glanced over her shoulder at the sleeping forms huddled among the straw.

  “What now?” she asked, forcing Richards to meet her eyes. Inwardly she was rejoicing. If Richards was taking this attitude, it could only mean one thing. But she refused to permit him the satisfaction of watching her listen to the news he was so plainly agog to tell. She would ask him no important questions.

  “If you come with me, Miss Starret, I’ll be more’n happy to show you to a place where you can get clean. An’ I’d be most obliged, miss, if you could zee your way clear to zaying I run a modern gaol?”

  “I shall, of course, be perfectly honest about the conditions I have endured.”

  For some reason, this promise did not seem to reassure Constable Richards. He showed her into a small chamber at the side of the gaol, where a basin of water, a slab of coarse soap, and a rough towel tempted her more than even a bath of asses’ milk would have. If her freedom did await her, as seemed possible, the first thing she would do is plunge into a scalding bath.

  Constable Richards gave her the cloak and hat that had been taken from her upon her arrest. “And zum hard work I had, too. That devil Locker made me pay more’n what he paid me! ‘Have to have me profit,’ he zays. ‘These are hard times,’ he zays! Aye, them Northerners are all t’zame. Do a man down as zoon as look at ‘im! We Dartymoor folk b’ain’t like that, I’m glad to zay.”

  He kept up in this vein all the way across the street, his acolyte nodding and agreeing with every other word. Felicia found it difficult to sympathize with Constable Richards' plight in regard to the pawnbroker. After all, it was her things he’d been trying to pawn. She prayerfully hoped that Locker had made him pay triple what he’d realized on the first transaction.

  Richards’s lodging beside the small provincial courthouse reeked of cooked cabbage and boiled pudding. On the lower level, a small tavern had been set up. The sign overhead showed two jovial attorneys eating and drinking, while a death’s head in the background must have symbolized their clients.

  In the low-ceilinged taproom, a well-known bald pate caught her eye. “Doctor Danby!”

  At her voice, he spun about and hastened across the room to her, his hands held out. “By thunder!” This was all he could say for several minutes, shaking both her hands in his own and beaming all over his small, monkeyish face. He was so moved that his spectacles danced the entire way down his nose.

  Then the plumed eyebrows frowned past her at Richards, shaking like a jelly bag in the dimness of the room. “There’d better be no sign of gaol fever in that pesthole, or I’ll throw you in there myself and let you rot!”

  “Yes, sir, Doctor, I mean, no, sir, Doctor! Not a zingle death in, oh, over a month...or more! Much more. Much, much more...” He was backing out of the taproom, his lackey beside him shaking his head as though the very thought of losing a prisoner to a dread disease was completely unheard of.

  Felicia hardly waited until they were alone before demanding, “What is happening? Why am I free? What about Clarice?”

  “Well, what about her?” The words were not delivered in Doctor Danby’s usual rough and admonishing tones but in a soft, lilting voice that held a young girl’s laughter.

  There on the small stairs that led away to the first floor stood Clarice. Her gown was of pale gray silk, low in the bosom and highly flounced around the skirt. There was not a scrap of a pinafore. Her golden hair lay in soft, well-ordered waves, with ringlets on her shoulders and a neat knot on top. All was neatness, all was propriety. She looked nothing like the hoyden child that Felicia had known and protected for the last three years. Only the laughter in her eyes remained the same.

  Felicia reached out to grab hold of the back of a sturdy chair. “Clarice?”

  The younger woman ran lightly down the rest of the stairs and took Felicia by the arm. “It’s been too much of a shock for you, coming on top of all that dreadful business. I shall find it hard to forgive Mama for her meddling. Come, sit down.” Over her shoulder, she said, “Bring the brandy, Doctor. Can’t you see she’s about to faint?”

  “I never faint,” Felicia said. “Though I should be glad of a chair.”

  “Sit then, my love.” With the grace that had marked her actions even while she’d been enchanted, Clarice sank to her knees as her sister sat down. She guided the small glass the doctor brought to Felicia’s lips. “Not too much at first. Carefully...carefully. There.”

  The aromatic liquid burst in her throat like warming fire. Felicia blinked hard, half-expecting the vision before her to vanish along with the tears in her eyes. Clarice laughed. “We’ve thrown her into confusion, Doctor.”

  But it was not Felicia’s pulse the doctor took. Clarice suffered him to hold her wrist only for a moment before she shook off his touch. “See to my sister,” Clarice said. “I shall take no hurt. The fire is quite warm, though smoky, and I am well.”

  Felicia glanced up at the doctor, whose lips were tightly compressed. “What is it, Doctor?”

  “If Clarice, Viscountess Stavely, is of the opinion that a ride in an open carriage in the depths of a black March night after an immersion in freezing water that is enough to have killed two healthy men isn’t going to do her any harm, what can a mere medical man say?”

  Clarice laughed up at the doctor. “‘Tisn’t March anymore. ‘Tis April as of yesterday.”

  It had been impossible to think of the Clarice she’d left at Hamdry as being the viscountess of anything. The restored Clarice, however, seemed to belong to the title. It had been a long time since a woman had held the title in her own right, but the patent allowed for it.

  Felicia had seen the actual patent, covered over with the crabbed, black lead writing of an ancient age, and the language that guaranteed the direct survival of the title had been read out every year on the anniversary of Henry VI’s signing of it in 1453. Some said this eccentric clause was just the first sign of that king’s incipient madness, but the document had been upheld by all the kings of England thereafter.

  Clarice laughed again and all her youthful charm came pouring into the room like a very real wave. The doctor coughed, turning away to busy himself with the contents of his bag. Looking at Felicia, Clarice allowed her left eyelid to flicker a trifle. Winking was something she’d learned during the last three years from one of the half-wild boys near the manor.

  She said, “At first I thought all they told me was no more than an April Fools’ jest, but when they spoke of you being in prison for my attempted murder, I knew i
t was no fooling. So I came as ever soon as I could.”

  “Dearest, what in Heaven's name..?’’ Felicia began.

  Clarice shook her head suddenly, the ringlets flying. “Don’t ask me anything now. I’m all muddled up inside. Some things are bright, very bright, and others are dark. Father’s dying...” The ringlets flew once more.

  “There is time to talk of that.”

  “Yes, let’s put it off.” Her smile glittered upward. “We are together and all this folly of Mama’s shall be quite forgotten. I was most cross with her when I learned upon waking this morning what she had done to you.”

  The youthful voice faded to a whisper, and the temperature of the room seemed to drop by several degrees. “She hates you, she truly hates you. I never realized that before.”

  The doctor turned about again, all bustle. “That’s enough of that! Drink this down and let’s be practical.”

  Standing up and giving an entirely instinctive shake to her skirts, Clarice took the small wineglass from his hand. “What is it? Is it nasty?”

  “Never mind the taste; it’ll calm that pulse of yours. Most tumultuous.”

  “Ooh, then it is nasty. Very well.” She raised the glass to her eye level. “To you, my dear sister, and to you too, best doctor in the world.” She tossed off the cordial-water as though she were a hardened toper, then strangled for a moment over the taste. “You mix them strong, Doctor.”

  His lips twitched. “You never heard that from your mother.”

  “I was ever my father’s daughter.” She smiled at Felicia. “You know I’m still a hoyden at heart. I shall miss my freedoms.”

  “Not for long,” Felicia said. “You’ll soon steal them back again, if I am any judge.”

  Clarice tilted her chin as though defying some opposition only she heard. A commotion in the tiny foyer outside drowned her next words, but Felicia knew what they were: “So I shall; indeed I shall.”

  The commotion proved to be Justice Garfield and Mr. Ashton. Felicia stiffened as the solicitor came in. Clarice did not know of her mother’s disgraceful behavior, and it would not be for Felicia to reveal it. Yet being in the same room with Ashton was nearly enough to make her wish herself again in gaol.

  Both gentlemen bowed to Clarice, who replied to this honor with a mere flick of her head. Mr. Ashton spoke first, entirely cutting off the older, more experienced but less effectual man. “My dear lady, as coroner I must investigate these things that have been charged. I pray you fully disclose your mind to me, with neither fear nor favor.”

  Doctor Danby said, “Is this a formal inquest?”

  Mr. Ashton pulled at a signet ring on his littlest finger. “No, indeed, Doctor, I hope to spare her ladyship that ordeal. These are a few private questions and she may answer as among friends.”

  “I shall be happy to answer whatever questions you pose,” Clarice said. “At home tomorrow, after I have tended to my sister. This un—unconscionable arrest has pained my family deeply.” Only the stumble over the long word showed that she’d thought out this speech in advance.

  Mr. Ashton stepped between Clarice and Felicia when the younger woman would have gone to her sister’s side. “I’m afraid I must insist. Miss Starret must return to the gaol pending a complete investigation. It’s the law that put her there; ‘tis the law you must trust to see her safely out.”

  “She’ll do nothing of the kind!” Doctor Danby declared. “D’you want her dead of gaol fever before she ever comes to trial? That’s what it’ll come to if you keep a delicately bred girl locked up with the sweepings of the moor!”

  Mr. Ashton coughed behind one of his flabby white hands while his thick lids shielded his eyes. “I’m sure Miss Starret is far less delicate than you believe, Doctor. The...ah...lessons learned in childhood are not so easily forgotten.”

  When both Doctor Danby and Clarice would have rushed hotly to her aid, Felicia raised her hand to silence them. The swift change in her circumstances — from being locked up in gaol to seeing Clarice alive and entirely in her senses — had caused Felicia’s own brain to swim for a space. Now she felt herself once more in full command of her faculties.

  She addressed Justice Garfield. “If you would consider releasing me into Doctor Danby’s care, I should undertake to appear at any trial. I have no reason to run away, you know.”

  Justice Garfield looked as though he should be a miracle of judicial wisdom. He had a long nose, ideal for looking down on the criminal underclass, bright blue eyes, and a wisely furrowed forehead. He was approximately sixty years of age, though the gray periwig disguised some of his years. The late Lord Stavely had not held a high opinion of him, but since Garfield was a distant relation of Lady Stavely’s, he had been tolerated.

  Now he shuffled his feet in his black and buckled shoes and looked sideways at Ashton. “It does seem harsh to keep her locked up with a lot we know to be guilty. Very low, some of them. Morris, for instance. A very bad man, that.”

  Realizing that none of her former cellmates could expect a fair trial, Felicia felt helpless. Clarice, however, paid no attention to anything but the justice’s words about Felicia. “Good!” she said determinedly. “I shall take her home at once. Mama shall just have to look cheerful, that’s all!”

  So it was settled. Ashton still murmured objections into the judge’s hairy ear, dancing around like a trained bear to first one side and then the other. The judge made burbling noises but did not summon the constable, who also served at bailiff, to stop Clarice and Doctor Danby from bundling Felicia into the carriage.

  It was open, as he had said, and the fresh air felt like a divine draft. “I knew you should hate anything closed,” Clarice said.

  “So would you,” Felicia answered. “I imagine I smell like gaol.”

  “I told Mary and Rose to have a really steaming hot bath waiting for you the instant we arrive. You needn’t worry about Mama — she retired with a murderous headache as soon as she saw I was determined to fetch you home myself. I would have come much, much earlier today, I pray you believe me! But with Mama threatening hysterics and dear Doctor Danby foretelling death from inflammation of the lungs if I dared to stir out of doors, then came the cherry on top the blancmange — Liza had to go off in a strong convulsion and ‘a-babbling of green fields.’ Oh, ‘twas a giddy afternoon, I vow!”

  Felicia laughed and felt so wonderfully free that she wanted to go on laughing. Doctor Danby, climbing up resignedly beside them, felt for her pulse. “Take her home and put her to bed. Treat those scratches on her neck before you do aught else.”

  “A bath before all,” Felicia pleaded. “Doctor, please don’t sit down. I want you to do something for me.”

  His eyes narrowed suspiciously, he asked, “And this would be?”

  “Those others in the gaol — I would like you to see to it that they are released.”

  “Released? My good girl...”

  “I know, I know. But if you can winkle Mr. Garfield away from Mr. Ashton, you can persuade him to let them go. Oh, I realize it’s not proper, but I couldn’t sleep knowing ...I can’t...I...” Suddenly she felt too exhausted to muster the words. She only looked pleadingly at the small, fretful man.

  Clarice said, “Tell him, if you must, that I shall offer bond for them on this occasion.”

  “You’re mad, the pair of you. There’s Morris, a man the poor constable’s trying to catch for months, and a couple of drabs Tiberius wouldn’t look at, but you two want me...”

  Felicia leaned back against the leather cushion. With her eyes closed, she said, “It will do the constable good to chase Morris again; he’s too fat as ‘tis. As for the girls, they are no more than children themselves. How else can they keep themselves if not on the street? Help them most of all. One is about to have a child.”

  Doctor Danby stepped down into the street and shut the door. “Mad as hatters, the pair of you. But I’ll do all I can.”

  All the way from Hamford to the manor, Felicia kept her eyes
tightly closed. Somehow she felt less disoriented that way. She kept the cloak Clarice had brought for her caught together at the throat with one hand. With the other, she clutched a white bag, embroidered with a B.

  A bath sounded heavenly, and then a long sleep in a real bed. Felicia looked forward to these sybaritic pleasures almost as keenly as she anticipated seeing Blaic again. She had many hot words stored up to fire at him. She would demand answers from him and not rest until she found them, straightforward and clear.

  Strange, though, how in the midst of her anger, she was aware that aside from all that she wanted just to see him. She hoped he’d not gone back into his Living Lands forever — and somehow, she guessed that she would indeed see him, if only once more.

  Down beneath her anger and her anxiety, Felicia was aware of yet one more feeling. Bumping over the road to Hamdry, she tried to examine the emotion, but her feelings were in such confusion that she could make nothing come clear.

  She looked at Clarice, the girl’s enchanting profile turned toward the window. What did she remember of Blaic? He had swept her up into his arms but had said nothing of Ancient Law or of becoming Clarice’s servant. Felicia was aware of something inside of her, very petty yet quite feminine, being glad of that. She could not say Blaic belonged to her — one might as well try to own the sky. Yet she felt a connection to him that was unlike anything she’d ever known before.

  Looking up past the erect back of the coachman, she caught a glimpse of Hamdry Manor, standing like a paper cutout against the moonlit sky. The famous chimney pots, a freakish whim of the viscount who’d built the place, were shadows that almost seemed to move with the passing of the carriage. They were held up by mythical creatures, modeled on the monsters that lined the drive to Hampton Court. Griffins, unicorns, gargoyles stood upright, bearing the smoking pots on their heads or lifted up on straining arms. She recalled seeing them when she’d first arrived at Hamdry Manor as a child and thinking that they were not frightening but welcoming.