He had gone back to the Living Lands and had been struck anew by the awful silence of his home. Yet he felt strongly that it was not deserted, merely that full participation in its joyful life was barred to him. Only by betraying Felicia could he again be part of the land he loved. To do that, he had to keep her close.
He simply needed to force himself to remember that mortal women did not appeal to him. For all the nearly twenty thousand years of his life, mortal women had never appealed to him. He’d seen them change from stone-flinging tribal harpies to sweetly elegant creatures of intellect and charm, like Felicia. But she was no Cleopatra, no Theodora, no Walladah al-Musakfi. If none of these erotic enchantresses had wound their way into his cold, inhuman heart, why should she? He must see to it she did not.
Felicia said, “Now that you have helped me gain what I want most in the world, whatever debt you owe me for freeing you is paid, more than generously. I suppose you will be going home.”
“No. Not yet.”
He knew he could not be mistaken in her delight. She caught her lower lip in her teeth and bounced charmingly on the tips of her toes, pushing her shawl behind her back. Then her brows drew together. “Why not?”
Looking around for an excuse, Blaic said, “I have gardening to do. Mustn’t leave Mr. Payton in the lurch.”
“Surely that cannot... Where will you stay? William Beech lived in a dreadful, dirty hovel with the other men, though they don’t seem to mind living there. Father tried to move them into nice homes with widowed ladies but they’d have none of it.”
“I have chosen neither a hovel nor a home with a woman in it.”
“Then where? The manor?”
He smiled at her, and had the gratification of watching her be quite unable to resist smiling back. “I have a gift for making myself comfortable. If you would care to see...?”
“I can well believe you do, with such tools as that bag to help you.”
“Yes. Are you entirely sure you want to give it back?”
“I don’t need it anymore. For all Lady Stavely’s faults, she sets a good table.”
As she followed him more deeply into the garden, Blaic asked, “I notice you never call her your stepmother. Why is that?”
“When I first came here, my father desired me to call her ‘Stepmama.’ She soon declared her own preferences. I have always abided by her wishes.”
“Because it was your wish as well?”
“You divined that, I suppose.”
“It took no magic. From what I saw of her the other night....”
“You were there!”
“Certainly.”
“I didn’t see you. But after you visited me in the gaol without anyone’s seeing you, I suppose I should realize there is nothing you cannot do.”
She walked a few steps behind him, far enough away so that there was no chance of an accidental touch. When she tripped as a loose stone turned under her shoe, he had enough time to restrain his natural impulse to steady her. Blaic realized she’d chosen this method of walking with him entirely on purpose, to save him from any further entanglements. While her resolution pleased him, he felt a prickle of irritation at her restraint. This was not how humans were supposed to behave.
Blaic saw trepidation in her eyes as she entered the grotto. But then she cried out with pleased surprise when she found herself standing on the sandy floor of a low-ceilinged chamber just inside the narrow mouth.
“What happened to the maze?” Then, raising her hands as though receiving enlightenment, she said, “Oh, yes. It’s not really here. It certainly seemed real, though. What was it? Part of the journey between your world and mine?”
“In a way,” Blaic said warily. “How did you guess that?”
“I thought about it while I was in gaol,” she said without giving it much consideration. She walked about the small chamber with a housewifely air. She gave a rub to the brass-work of his small lantern and straightened the coverlet on his bed with a touch, while the full skirts of her gown trailed over the sanded floor, leaving it much neater. “It’s charming,” she said. “So long as it is warm. I shouldn’t care to dwell here in a black frost. Did Ol' Calm do that?”
“In winter, he was graciously permitted to move into the manor’s attics. But they were unheated, and I’m afraid it brought on chilblains. He’d complain about them to me on fine days. That was one benefit of being stone — if the sun could not make me too hot, the snow could not freeze me.”
“Yet I think that once when the sun was full upon you I touched you and the heat was enough to scorch my hand.”
Chapter Nine
An awkward silence fell between them. Felicia hardly dared to glance at Blaic. Reminding him that she had once taken a liberty with his person, though she had not known he was alive in the stone, must have embarrassed him almost as much as it did her. Felicia reminded herself that she was no coward and said impulsively, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why not? If it’s true, why not say it? Did you touch me once and find my surface unpleasantly warm? Well, then....”
“I never said it was unpleasant.” Perhaps something of the between-worlds atmosphere still lingered in the grotto. Certainly, something was making her speak before she thought. After years of learning to keep her tongue between her teeth, Felicia was startled by her lack of control.
“I should be going,” she said, moving toward the doorway, where he still stood. “I didn’t reflect...if anyone saw me come in here with you.... My reputation won’t stand such a thing.”
He had not moved aside to let her through the narrow opening of the cave. His body was broad and, with his arms crossed over his chest, he looked immovable by any force she could summon.
“What would happen if you were seen?”
“Catastrophe. You don’t know....” She really couldn’t reveal her evil reputation to Blaic. Too many people thought it well- deserved. She couldn’t bear it if he too were to think her promiscuous merely because her mother had been of doubtful morals.
“Yes, I know. I told you how your servants talk.”
Felicia had thought her bloom had been completely destroyed in the gaol. Apparently, some of it still clung. She found herself blushing hotly at the thought of all he must have heard. “They don’t like me very much.”
“No. I cannot understand why not. You are kind to them. Even they admit it.”
“They are worried my bad blood will out.” With an effort, she looked up at his face. She saw no condemnation there, only puzzlement. “I keep waiting for it too. I keep waiting to go mad as well.”
“Mad?” Then enlightenment seemed to come to him, and she saw Blaic laugh. His head went back, his eyes closed, and his shoulders shook, bringing forth deep-toned chuckles that seemed to go on and on.
Slightly annoyed, Felicia snapped her spine straight and said, “What is so funny, may I ask?”
“Mortals. You become so obsessed on one point it is as though you enjoy wallowing in misery.”
“I do not wallow!”
“Don’t you understand, Felicia? You need never fear again that you will run mad. Clarice was not insane, as you feared, but enchanted. Now that she is well, your reason for fearing that you will be placed in an asylum is groundless.”
Felicia blinked at him. Her feelings had not kept pace with the changes that had come to Hamdry Manor through Blaic. Clarice was cured. Did this mean that the dark shadow of a family strain of insanity had been lifted?
“No, that fear is still in me,” she said after a moment. “My father’s grandmother believed herself to be a hen. And one of his cousins attacked her husband and was locked away.”
“Grandmother? A small woman with reddish hair?”
“The only portrait of her shows her with gray curls. Do you remember her?’’
“If she is who I think, then yes. But she, surely, was a second wife. They had no children together.”
“No, I’m certain that cannot be right. F
ather always spoke of her as his grand- mother. He never mentioned anything to the contrary.”
“Perhaps you are right. So many mortals have passed beneath my sight as I stood there, perhaps I have confused them. Though it is difficult to forget a woman who lays eggs at your feet. Ol’ Calm used to collect them after she’d gone.” His smile was so warm, Felicia felt as though she stood under the beams of an August sun.
“I want to know one thing,” Felicia asked suddenly. “When you picked Clarice up to jump into the spring, why didn’t you quote your Ancient Law? Why didn’t you avoid touching her?”
“She was enspelled and therefore not precisely mortal. The Ancient Law does not apply to such a one.”
“Therefore, if I were enspelled, you could touch...me?”
Perhaps she was as much a wanton as everyone said, she thought. Certainly only a shameless woman would even suggest such a thing.
As though to disassociate herself from her own words, Felicia backed up a few steps. “I only ask from curiosity.”
“Curiosity is a powerful thing, even among my People. It is that which continually plunges us into trouble with your kind. Often I disobeyed the King’s Rule to follow my...” He found that he was staring at her mouth, and broke off in confusion.
Her eyes, he decided, bore a startling resemblance to the star-pool. They seemed to have the same shimmering glow in their clear blue depths, beckoning him onward. When he’d dived in the real star-pool, he knew that a few strong strokes would bring him to the surface again. But lost in her mortal eyes he would drown and consider himself fortunate.
He heard her catch her breath and saw those luminous eyes widen. Blaic realized that he’d reached out to her without conscious thought. He grasped the edges of her woolen shawl where it flowed over her shoulders. The thick material prevented him from touching her, and yet it was no protection against the emotion that beat between them like the beating of wings against a window.
Felicia curled her fingers so tightly against her palms that she later found the crescent marks of her nails. She could feel the heat of his body all along the front of hers, and caught his scent, a haunting fragrance of the wild wood.
He said her name, his voice ragged with desire.
She bore his look steadily, though every instinct told her to look away. She had seen desire in men’s eyes before, but never like this. It was as if he wanted more of her than what he could hold. Her quivering flesh alone would not satisfy Blaic, and she knew it. If she loved him, she would risk more than her reputation and future — she’d risk her soul.
His hands were shaking, making her tremble as well. They could have been closer only if they’d stood strained heart to heart, lips meeting in a kiss like none she could even imagine. She wanted that desperately. She whispered, feeling tears sting her eyes, “Please...”
Then footsteps crunched the gravel outside and Blaic turned his head, his senses fixing on this new concern. Felicia felt bereft, as though he’d pushed her away, though in fact he still held her by the shawl. She dared not touch him to remind him to let go. She did not want him to invoke his Law. The only thing she would wish for was impossible, even for him.
Quickly, before pain and disappointment could overwhelm her, she twisted under his arm, leaving only the soft stuff of her shawl in his tightly gripping hands. For an instant, he looked like a lion balked of his prey. Then, as if by the exertion of severe effort, he mastered his expression. He bowed his head as though in a salute.
Voices reached them. Felicia froze as she recognized Lady Stavely’s crisp tone. “I tell you, she came this way.”
A murmur answered, too indistinct to permit even a guess at the speaker’s sex.
“No. Mark my words, she’s come on a slut’s errand. Her mother was just another such.” Again the murmur in answer. “Of course I knew her. She was almost exactly this girl’s age when she began her slide to degradation. I don’t blame my husband, you know. She had all a whore’s arts.”
The hatred in Lady Stavely’s voice was clear, when one’s attention was not distracted by the cool nunlike face. A moment later, she had herself under better command. “It will be best if that girl is sent off to her new position as quickly as possible. Now that Clarice has recovered her senses, she will want to keep Felicia near. I won’t have that girl under my roof any longer than I must.”
Again the muttering, hardly more than an undercurrent of deeper sound in the air.
“I’ve thought of that. But I shan’t soil my hands. Let her go to Tallyford and rot.” Lady Stavely’s laugh was a devil’s. Suddenly she said, “What? The gardener?”
Felicia and Blaic exchanged a glance. Then he looked around the bare confines of his “home’’ and shook his head at her. Nowhere to hide.
Felicia saw his body change, fading out like a painting exposed for a century or two to the sunlight. He was vanishing before her eyes, slipping perhaps into his own world. Though she had come to accept that he was not human, this sight made her senses spin. She found that accepting something with her mind was quite different from accepting the evidence of her eyes.
When he was all but gone, no more than a blurred outline drawn in chalk, her shawl lifted in the air and floated toward her. She knew he carried it in his hand, but it seemed to drift a few feet off the ground all by itself.
“I’ll lay a wager she has entered this grotto. It was here that her mother.... Well, enough has been said about that! If William Beech did not appear for his duties this morning, it is probably because of some furtive assignation the slut had planned. It would be like her to choose some brawny amusement. These sly sham-innocents are all the same.”
The shawl settled around her shoulders, but it was now heavier and longer than the red Kashmir shawl her father had given her. Of a deep black, the cloak had upon its surface a slight, illusive shine. It covered her as a candle-snuffer covers a flame. The hood came up, seemingly of its own will, though Felicia felt the delicate brush of Blaic’s invisible hand against her hair.
“She cannot see either of us now,” he whispered, so close beside her that his breath was a touch on her cheek. Her skin tightened at his nearness. He added, “Stay still. There is less chance of someone walking into you.”
Lady Stavely came in, but her companion, whoever it was, remained outside on the path. Her ladyship cast a glance around the plainly furnished chamber, all her pride and scorn distilled, as it were, into one single moment. The serene mask she wore every day was torn away, revealing the twisted mouth and blazing eyes of a woman consumed with hate.
“Faugh! There’s no one here,” she called to the one who waited outside.
Her black skirts rustling, she turned abruptly to leave. Then she stopped short and peered around. Felicia saw Lady Stavely’s face as she looked over her shoulder. She might have been a witch from some dark nursery tale, the kind that gives imaginative children nightmares. Her nose twitched, lifting the upper lip to show her teeth.
“I smell...lemons,” she said, her voice low as a growl. “Florida Water? What gardener would wear Florida Water at seven shillings the bottle?”
Her face contorted, turning all the more hideous with triumph. “She was here!” she hissed. “She wears that scent. She didn’t leave here so long ago, either, for ‘tis strong still. I was right.”
Lady Stavely, gleeful as a sated vulture in her black gown, turned toward the mouth of the cave. “Do you hear? I am right about her. She’ll leave for Tallyford now, the instant I choose to crack the whip! Not even Clarice’s love can withstand knowing her ‘dearly loved’ sister is a whore like her mother!”
Felicia felt Blaic’s hands on her shoulders, pressing down, trying to stop her trembling. She leaned against him, closing her eyes, and felt his hands slide along her collarbone to her throat. They fanned out at the base, his thumbs massaging the tension away through the heavy cloak. When she breathed in, she felt his fingertips on the upper slopes of her breasts.
“She’s gone,” he
said softly. “What have you done to make her hate you so much?’’
“I’m alive,” Felicia said. “She cannot forgive me for that.”
“Yes, you’re alive. For all your mortal faults, you are alive.” It was as though he were speaking to himself. In an altered, more present tone, he added, “You’re still trembling.”
He turned her gently and wrapped his arms about her, bringing her to rest against him.
She longed to put her hands on his waist, but he held them down within the circle of his arms. She could feel his body, warm and firm, his chest rising and falling with his breath, but she could not see him. Nor, she thought, could he see her within the folds of the invisibility cloak. Yet he was there, as substantial a presence to her four senses as he would have been to all five.
She lifted her face for the kiss she instinctively knew he wanted to give her. He touched her face through the enveloping sides of the hood. It was like being touched by a ghost. “Felicia... It means ‘happiness,’ doesn’t it? Felicia...”
She had to bite her lower lip to keep from asking him to kiss her. It wasn’t her pride that stopped her so much as a wish not to disgust him. She was, after all, a human, and he’d made it fairly clear how his People viewed hers.
“This is torture,” he said, with something like a desperate laugh in his voice. Though he still had not yet returned to visibility, she guessed that the expression on his face mirrored the frustration of her own.
“Maybe Lady Stavely is right,” she said. “Maybe I am what she says. Why else would I feel like this?”
“No! She is diseased with hatred. Believe nothing she says of you. I myself have never understood why mortals act as they do. So much of your feelings seem random. You see one person and love them; you see another and declare eternal antipathy. Yet you cannot explain it any more than I can.”
“I don’t know about people as a whole,” she said. “I only know about myself. I have loved very few people in my life: my mother, my father, and Clarice. What I feel for you isn’t like that, so I do not think that I love you.”
Kissed by Starlight Page 13
