“Be wise, my Felicia. Don’t love me, for it would be futile.” He stepped back, becoming more visible from moment to moment. She noticed that he looked at her for only an instant, yet she realized then, that the cloak he’d lent her had not concealed her from his eyes. He must have been able to see the desire in her eyes. Suddenly, she was burning with embarrassment.
She opened the cloak at the throat. Like an actor stepping through a curtain from the reality of backstage to the unreality of the footlights, her body appeared. She looked down to find herself solid. Looking behind, however, she saw that she blended into nothingness. Disconcerted, she glanced up at Blaic.
His hair was mussed, as though he’d been clutching at it; yet his face had closed again, as though once more he’d turned to stone. Felicia wanted to reach out to him, to break that restraint, but had to admit that he was right; to let herself love him would be to invite heartbreak. She had to force herself to draw back while there was yet time.
Blaic asked, “Will I see you again?”
“Certainly. If you wish it.” She doffed the black cloak and held it out to him. “May I have my shawl back, please? It was a gift from my father.”
He started. “Yes, yes. I’m sorry.”
She did not see the cloak change into the shawl. He shook out the fabric and the black cloth was suddenly red marked over with a shifting, stylized pattern of vines and birds. She took it, always being careful not to touch him, and swung it loosely about her shoulders. Reflexively, she smoothed her hands over her hair, making certain all was in order.
“I’ll go,” she said. “I think it best if we do not meet again for some time. If Lady Stavely is suspicious, it won’t be safe.”
“The most she will do is send you to Tallyford earlier than you planned.”
“Yes, that’s so, but there is Clarice to consider.”
He followed her to the mouth of the cave. “Come again tomorrow.”
“I only just said.... Why?”
“To talk to me. There is no one here to whom I can reveal my true self. I don’t mind playing mortal for a time, but if there is no one with whom I can take off the mask, I don’t know what I shall do.”
Felicia said, “You could go home. I have no one who understands me here, not anymore.”
“Did your father understand you?”
Felicia smiled, at a memory as faint as the scent clinging to some pressed flower, cherished as a memento of a long-distant summer noon. “No, he didn’t. He felt guilty for abandoning my mother and tried to make my poverty-stricken childhood up to me. But he did not understand who I am, inside.”
“Such understanding is hard to come by.”
“Even for you?”
“Especially for me, Felicia. Will you come again tomorrow? Even against your better judgment, will you come?’’
“I — I will try.”
Perhaps she did keep her promise to try; Blaic didn’t know. All he knew is that he waited at the time they’d agreed upon —twilight — and she did not come. He paced before his grotto the way a lion paces at the edge of his cave, restless and impatient. He fought the temptation to steal over to the manor, gain entrance by stealth, and find her. She had promised to try. If she could not succeed, no doubt she had a good and sufficient reason.
Blaic went and threw himself down on his bed. His back muscles protested in a twanging concert with his thighs and hands. For one who had, once upon a time, chased the manticore over hill and up dale; who had, long ago, held the title as Best Wrestler in Mag Mell; who had, east of the sun, ridden the Great Worms when they offered themselves as tribute to Boadach the Eternal, Blaic had to admit he had become embarrassingly soft.
Or perhaps it was just that digging, planting, and weeding used different muscles than dragon-riding, elf-wrestling, or chasing more or less fabulous creatures.
In truth, his weariness went deeper than a mere ache in back and shoulders. Playing mortal was exhausting. Closing his mind to humans’ irrelevant thoughts, their undisciplined emotions, took a great deal of mental strength. He had to be on guard every moment against an unconsidered word in a strange accent or a demonstration of knowledge greater than this corner of Devonshire could provide. The others were already suspicious of him because he had not been born within a stone’s throw of Hamdry Manor as they all had been.
He’d been the recipient of some sideways looks when he appeared at the manor the very morning William Beech failed to report. Harry had walked about with a half-wary, half-petulant expression, as though expecting his brother to leap out from a clump of trees and shout, “April Fools!” But April the first was long past.
Blaic thought he’d bring William Beech back a day or two ahead of when he’d originally intended. Perhaps a whole week in a beehive serving the queen would be too much. If the boy had learned his lesson in regard to respect for women in three days, so much the better. Not that anyone would believe him when he did return. Next it would be on to the butler, the constable, and the attorney; and then he would deal with Lady Stavely. All bore some responsibility for Felicia’s rough treatment the other night, and Blaic believed in paying in full.
When it occurred to him that he was taking a great deal of trouble over the affairs of a woman he himself meant to betray, Blaic turned over on his rustling, hay-filled mattress and tried to think of Mag Mell as he’d seen it nearly seven centuries ago: the pavilions with their streaming scarlet banners, the houses thatched with bird feathers of every shade and description, all seen against the velvet green of the grass.
Above all, he tried to envision the magnificently gowned and adorned people moving across that luxurious background. The images would not come clear in his mind. It wasn’t a living picture, but a cold and static one. Nothing moved. His memories were as stiff and immovable as the friezes on the walls of the Parthenon.
Yet if he relaxed his guard and let Felicia come into his thoughts, what a difference! He could picture so clearly the repose of her hands and the slow elegance of her walk, contrasting almost ludicrously with the animation of her face. He had no need to read her mind when her eyes spoke her every thought. When she had looked at him, asking to be kissed...
Blaic groaned.
He sent his consciousness out across the garden. His thought penetrated the house, searching for her. Where would she be? What was she doing?
Tricky business, this mental journey. He’d fallen out of practice, not having enough strength to even try during those long years bound up in the stone. The muscles of the body were not the only things that needed frequent use.
There — behind that door. Blaic caught a glimpse of Felicia, focused on something of importance to her. He could not read her mind, yet he responded instantly to even a hint of her presence. A vestige of her intellect drifted from her like perfume to lead him to her.
Drops of sweat stood out on Blaic’s forehead, but he was too far away to wipe them off. Felicia was alone, working by the light of several reflected candles. Her task absorbed all her attention. Blaic felt vaguely jealous, realizing that he could have been there in the flesh and she would not have known it.
Then he saw that she had a small brush in her hand, the tip no more than a single hair. Looking, in a sense, over her shoulder, Blaic saw the misty beauty of the landscape and the minuscule people just arriving in this Arcadia. As she touched the tiny tip to the canvas in front of her, Blaic said, “I didn’t know you could paint.”
Her hand hesitated, then drew back. She raised her eyes from the magnifier. “Is someone there? Clarice? Mary?”
In the grotto, Blaic frowned. Coincidence? She could not have heard him. There was nothing present where she was to make a sound.
She leaned forward again, dabbing the brush against the canvas. Instantly, miraculously, the minute fellow in the baggy scarlet breeches was sporting a nearly microscopic pair of mustaches. Blaic laughed.
To his surprise, she laid her brush and her palette on a canvas-covered table and stepped to the
door. Pulling it open, she put her head out, looking uncertainly up and down the hall. Then she shook her head, mystified. “Hearing things,” she said. “And talking to myself.”
Felicia stood back, appraising her work critically. Blaic decided to test his strange idea, though his temples were throbbing from the effort of maintaining his distant scrying. Consciousness-casting was never meant to be sustained very long; it was simply a convenience, and sometimes a protection.
He said aloud, “Add a bird. Add a...” He thought for a moment, striving for something that wasn’t ordinary, nothing she could choose by chance.
“Add a yellow bird,” he said, but realized too late that in taking away part of his consciousness to consider the bird, he’d lost too much concentration. He was solidly back in his body and trembling with fatigue.
Sitting up, his hands dangling loosely between his knees, Blaic knew he’d never be able to wait until morning to see if the impossible had happened. Though mortals might believe that there was nothing a “fairy” could not do, the People knew better. There were many things they could not do. Raise the dead. Make someone rich. Hold a mortal woman in one’s arms without first bringing her through to the Living Lands. Smooth her hair back from her wide, blue eyes and kiss lips that trembled....
Blaic went out to the stream and waded in past his thighs. When that did not cool him, he sat down, letting the frigid, slow-moving water chill him to his depths. The water rinsed him clean, but when he stepped on the slick bank, his clothes were dry.
A few minutes later, he stood outside the manor’s back door. Where did she paint? A faint odor of turpentine beckoned to him. Pushing open the door, he found the servants sitting around their table at their evening meal.
“Here,” Mr. Varley said, rising in his majesty from his place at the head. “You take your meals with the other gardeners.”
“That’s right,” said Cook. “Don’t you bring your muddy feet onto my nice, clean kitchen floor!”
Little Lena from the laundry’s lips were moving. It didn’t take any great power to know she was saying, “Ooh, but he’s handsome!”
Blaic said, “Mistress Starret done zend for me.”
He had visited the mortal world often enough to know the meaning of the expression — all rolling eyes and pursed lips — that passed over every face present. Some mortal attitudes, were ever old, never changed. The peasants of the twelfth century had been no less censorious than these villagers of the eighteenth.
“You can’t zee her,” Varley said. “She’m do have Zur Elswith with her.”
“Who’s he?”
“That’s none of your concern—or is it?” Varley winked broadly at Cook, who giggled behind her red hand. The other maids looked sly, while those who pretended not to understand blushed. The males elbowed each other.
Then Mary, seated near the foot of the table, pitched her napkin down onto her plate. “I’ll show you,” she said, tossing her head. The stiffly starched frill of her mobcap did not move. “Like as not, she’s a-wantin’ to paint you inna picture. ‘Member last year, how she did us all? Ma’s done and hung the one o’ me up, zent it to a glazier and all. Cost her near a shilling for the frame alone.”
Blaic followed the maid whom he’d seen on the moor. “Niver you mind them,” she said as laughter burst out behind them as they left. “Them the zort as would laugh at a funeral as soon as a clown.”
“I hope I’m neither,” he said under his breath. But the maid caught it.
“We’ll zee what we do zee.”
The manor was furnished without any great style, neither lavishly gilded nor faux Grecian. He remembered when they’d built it, replacing the black-beam and white-plaster work that had replaced the stone manor he had seen all those years ago. He could come here without any thought of the princess he’d once loved; there was nothing here she would recognize.
Mary said, “She be here. Now, mind you speak respectful. Niver take your manner from that lot back there. Miss Starret be the only true lady in this house, t’my mind, and don’t you forget it!” Giving him a fierce look, she turned the doorknob.
Before she could announce him, however, they overheard a panting male voice saying, “I don’t mind these games, sweeting. But they’ll keep ‘til after we’ve come to terms, eh? M’God, you’re a lovesome wench!”
As Felicia babbled a refusal, Mary and Blaic exchanged a glance. Her indignation changed to shock when she saw the rage in his eyes. Blaic thrust hard against the door just as a crashing sound came from within. He strode into the room and took in the situation at a glance.
The scene had changed. Instead of Felicia peacefully at work on her painting, she was backed up into a corner of the gallery, clinging to a wooden chair between herself and the man. A table lay on its side on the floor, bits of broken bowl scattered around it.
The man had her by the wrist and seemed intent on hauling her out of her inadequate defenses. He grunted bits of complimentary speeches in between demands for a kiss. Felicia hadn’t noticed that they were no longer alone. Her face white, she tried to push him away with the hand he did not hold.
“Sir Elswith, stop this. I don't...”
When Sir Elswith continued to paw her, she kicked at him. Blaic saw that her skirt was too heavy. It padded the blow and she made no impression on his shin. “Stop it this instant,” she demanded. “I’m going to scream.”
But the breath she took did not come out in a scream. She caught sight of Blaic. Her eyes lit with such thankfulness that Blaic could almost believe he’d come in answer to her prayers.
He marched up and put both his hands on Sir Elswith’s padded shoulders. The fabric lifted as he pulled, the tight armholes cutting off the circulation to Sir Elswith’s arms. “What the devil! Here, let me go.”
“Certainly.” Blaic raised him up higher yet. He shook Sir Elswith vigorously, as a housewife shakes a rug to force the crumbs out. The seams under the arms gave with a long rip and Sir Elswith dropped out of his coat. His legs wobbled beneath him and he sat down abruptly on the floor, the tattered remains of his coat hanging over his shoulders like a hussar’s ornamental pelisse.
From behind them, Mary remembered her duty and said, her voice high with excitement and amusement, “Gardener come to zee you, miss.”
“Gardener?” Sir Elswith demanded. “Gardener?”
Felicia freed herself from her barricades and, taking care to give her visitor a wide berth, hurried to Blaic’s side. Her agitation and alarm acted on him like a spur. He advanced purposefully on Sir Elswith, with only one thought in his mind. He wanted to hit him, just once.
Felicia said quickly, “Sir Elswith was just leaving, Mary. Be good enough to show him out.”
“I’ll show him out,” Blaic volunteered with a grin that had nothing friendly about it.
“So you’re the one,” Sir Elswith growled, rising awkwardly to his feet. “Yes, you show me the door and I’ll throw you through it! I’ll teach you to make unwelcome advances to gently reared girls!”
Blaic was taken aback. “My advances?”
“M’God, what’s the country coming to when a low fellow like you can think to raise his eyes to the daughter of the house? I’ll give you such a thrashing.... Horse-whipping’s too good for the likes of you.... Girl! Fetch m’cane!”
Felicia clutched Mary’s hand. “You’ll do no such thing.”
“No, miss.”
“Sir Elswith, aren’t you a tad confused?” Felicia said. “It is you who have made most unwelcome advances, as I have tried repeatedly to tell you.”
“You don’t know what you’re sayin’, m’dear.” Dropping his voice, he said hoarsely, “Pas devant les domestiques, eh?”
His French was so poor that Felicia wondered how he expected anyone to understand him during the trip on which he proposed to take her to Paris. She had already guessed that this plan was nothing more than a snare. If she’d been the sort of girl everyone thought, no doubt it would have been effective.
Now she wondered if he’d meant to take her any farther than Portsmouth.
Felicia said, “It’s quite impossible to keep anything from servants, Sir Elswith. However, if you wish to keep this from the ears of Lady Stavely, I suggest you take your dismissal quietly.”
“Let me take care of him,” Blaic said, meeting her eyes.
She was tempted. Blaic had powers that she, as a human and a woman, could never have. Yet here he was offering to use his gifts on her behalf. For a moment, she luxuriated in the idea of all the things he could do to Sir Elswith. But in the end, she said, “No. Thank you, but no.”
Sir Elswith instinctively straightened his attire, though it was long past any such help. He sneered. “If you prefer the low company of servants and gardeners to the assistance of a gentleman, then I can only say —"
“Don’t.” Blaic came quite close to Sir Elswith, almost toe-to-toe. “Don’t say a word. I should hate to have to soil my hands by touching you.”
Chapter Ten
Eventually, they all trooped together to see Sir Elswith off the premises. When he’d gone into the night, still muttering oddly protective bombast, Mary bobbed a curtsy to Felicia and then, quite plainly, bobbed another at Blaic. “I’ll be zayin’ good evening, then, miss.”
“Not a word of this in the servants hall, please, Mary.”
“Hmph! Catch me tellin’ them anything when they be zo powerful clever theyselves! Niver you mind, m’dear. Tell ‘em I been watchin’ you paint him.” Her smile had an air of conspiracy about it as she disappeared behind the butler’s door under the stair.
The big central hall was cast into shadow by the large lamp hanging from the floor above. Felicia struggled with the bolt of the front door, not wanting to leave it open until Mr. Varley came by on his rounds. Though she fought to bring the bolt home, it resisted her efforts. She cast a look at Blaic, who spread his hands and said, “We don’t like iron.”
Kissed by Starlight Page 14
