“Well, I shall let you off this time....” She ignored the bolt and turned toward him. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she began.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No. He simply was renewing an offer he’d made once before. From his position, I suppose, he thinks it’s flattering. Strange, though, how he can’t see that to me there is no difference between his advances and those of a humbler man.”
“When did he first ask you to become his mistress?”
“It’s unimportant.”
“Nothing about you is unimportant — to me.”
Felicia could not see his face well. If he meant what he said... But that was too much even for a dream. “I never realized what passion I aroused in the breasts of so many different kinds and conditions of men,” she said, trying to make light of her two propositions. She told him how William Beech and Sir Elswith had each decided to declare their dishonorable intentions on the selfsame day.
“A beehive’s too good for him,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?” His words had been quite distinct but utterly meaningless. When he only shook his head, the lamp sprinkling gleams in his hair, she went on, “I can’t really boast. No one else has shown interest. Even while I was in gaol... Oh, no, I forgot. Constable Richards made the same bothersome propositions as Sir Elswith, only more openly. Sir Elswith offers me Paris and the chance at a wealthier protector once he’s done with me. For the good constable, I had only to permit liberties with my person and he would...if I would...”
Her attempt to make light of the matter fell apart as her voice faded. She turned against the wall, her eyes sheltered against the bend of her elbow. The tears were absorbed into the stuff of her gown, as scalding as if she’d spilled hot tea. She felt him more near to her but did not look up.
“I want to hold you,” he said, his voice too low to carry beyond her ear. “I want to stroke your hair and taste your lips and trace each tear to the end.”
“Don’t. It only makes this feeling worse.”
“What feeling? Tell me. Do you... ?”
“Women want these things as well as men. If you were a man, wouldn’t I be in your arms at this very moment?”
“Yes. If I were a man, I would hold you.”
She could hardly catch her breath. She wanted his touch so badly it was as if she were starving for it. “Don’t talk about it any more. I can’t bear it.”
“At least if we speak, we can share our thoughts. Do you want to pretend you don’t feel this way? Tidy it politely away so that we cannot even find solace in speech?’’
“No, there’s no point in pretending. I can’t even pretend that what I feel isn’t hopeless. Because it is hopeless. You’ll go back to your Mag Mell and dwell there forever. Maybe in a hundred years you’ll wonder whatever became of me, but the thought need not keep you long: I should be safely dead by then and quietly out of my misery.”
She let her head loll and was started to find him so close, leaning against the wall in almost the same posture as she had taken, but with his head up, his eyes focused only on her.
“Do you think I am so lighthearted? There is little merriment in me at this moment. I have never thought of a human woman in this way before — never in all my life.”
Blaic closed his eyes and dropped his head back, exposing his vulnerable throat. He went on, “I’m as confused as an owl in daylight. Mortal women have always seemed fat and overblown in comparison with the delicacy and charm of one of my own kind. Maybe it’s only because it has been so long...”
Felicia tried to summon up some just indignation or raise a protest on behalf of her fellow women, but she couldn’t. He looked exhausted. For an instant, gazing at him, she saw the bones of his skull beneath his skin, and she remembered that he had been alive when Aristotle walked the earth. The knowledge didn’t disgust her; it filled her with wonder and pity.
“No doubt that is it,” she said. “As for me, perhaps I have lived too long under another’s roof. Many girls my age are married and mothers by now. When I leave Hamdry, one of my goals will be to find a husband. Someone who won’t mind my mother’s sins so much. Someone who will overlook my checkered past and love me for myself alone.”
“Touch me,” Blaic said, looking into her eyes. “Touch me and I will bring your true love to you if you wish it.”
Felicia trembled with the temptation. To touch him! To run her hands over the planes of his face and know for all time the rasp of his whiskers. To feel the warmth of his skin and the contrasting roughness and smoothness of his body. She would not stop with some light brushing of the fingers — she would hold him so tightly that he’d never escape her.
Against this, there was all her reluctance to see him trapped. He had not said, “Touch me so that you might wish me to stay here with you.” Unless he wanted that, she would not touch him.
Then too, deeper yet, she drew back from the thought of losing her virginity — for that is what it would come to; she knew it as she knew her own name — to Blaic, who gave no hint of wanting to stay here. If she gave her body, she would give her heart. He would take both and be gone. He would not mean to hurt her. She had heard how he spoke of Mag Mell, as a place of wonder, the only place he could be happy. If he loved her and then went back there, she would never recover.
Was she already in love with him? Was it far too late to draw back? She felt as though she were standing in the waves of an incoming tide, being pulled this way and that, fighting against the power of the water for a time before it dragged her under. If she could resist just a little longer...
“When will you go back home?” she asked.
“Soon, I hope.”
“Why do you stay here? If your home is so much more pleasant than mine, why do you stay?” As she asked, she wondered that she had not asked before.
He paused so long that she thought he’d gone to sleep. Then, just as she decided to try to wake him, he said, “I stay to see you happy. When you are happy, I will leave.”
“Why do you care for my happiness?”
“Because you freed me from the stone. Isn’t that reason enough to devote myself to your happiness?”
Distantly, she heard someone calling her name. She had only time to answer “No” before she heard Clarice’s light steps running down the staircase. Wearily, she answered, “I’m here.”
“What are you doing down there?” Clarice paused on the bottom step. “Is someone with you?”
“No, Sir Elswith has gone home.”
Blaic had vanished into nothingness in the moment she took her eyes off him. He would return soon, no doubt. For a moment, Felicia wished that he would not come back. If he went away forever without a word, she’d forget him in the course of time and not regret anything. As it was, she was afraid that spending more time with the only one at Hamdry who was completely her ally would overmaster her best intentions.
Clarice said, “I don’t like Sir Elswith. I swear he started to pat me on the head when he came into the drawing room this evening. Then he stopped and ogled me.”
“Did he?” Felicia said, her thoughts elsewhere. Then, realizing what Clarice had said, she asked, “How do you know what ogling is?”
“Well, he didn’t put up his quizzing glass because he doesn’t carry one, but what else do you call it when a man looks you up and down as though you were prize beef on the hoof? Like this...” Clarice raised her eyebrows as far as they would go and ran her gaze over her sister, pursing her lips before smacking them together at the end of the appraisal. Felicia laughed, for the imitation was perfect.
“You should tell your mama that is how he looked at you.”
“I did. She told me not to become imaginative. She likes him, I think. He kisses her hand.”
“He doesn’t!”
“As good as. I wouldn’t have thought the bluff, manly sort was in her line at all. Father wasn’t like that.”
“Perhaps she finds his attentions flattering.”
“What about you?”
“I?”
Clarice rolled her eyes. “You aren’t usually dense, dear. If Sir Elswith didn’t cast lures in your direction, then why did he want to see your painting? Don’t tell me he has a passionate interest in art because I wouldn’t believe you on your oath.”
“You don’t know what you are saying.”
Clarice said, “T'chah! I’m not a fool and I can see farther than the end of my nose. Besides, Doctor Danby said —
“The doctor knew about Sir Elswith?”
“Then there is something! What does he offer as the price of your dishonor? Jewels... a bijou residence in London? Not his hand in marriage, I’ll warrant. I’ve heard the servants say that any number of mothers have tried to catch him for their girls and he’s wriggled out of every net!”
“So he said.”
Clarice went on, “I’ve told Mama that if she has any ideas in that direction, she should forget them. I’d as soon marry the fat old Prince of Wales, and you can’t say fairer than that!”
“Clarice!” Felicia didn’t know whether to be appalled at the girl’s knowledge or proud of her shrewdness. What Blaic had said about Clarice’s becoming the person she had been meant to be was true. She seemed to understand things that she could not have learned during her enchantment and to have acquired an assurance and charm at odds with her youthful face.
Yet there was something of the child about her still. She sat down in her good gown on the second-to-the-bottom step of the wide staircase, her chin resting in the palm of one hand. “Doctor Danby said that there might be trouble with men and you. He said most men are fools, and I must agree.”
“You and the doctor discussed all this?”
“Yes, the night we came to fetch you home from gaol. He sees a lot through those spectacles.”
“I hope he sees that I do nothing to entice such men as Sir Elswith.”
“Oh, yes, he knows that. So do I. But you are pretty, Felicia, and they can’t help themselves.”
“They should try.” Felicia hoped her bitterness did not show in her voice.
“Lands, yes. But I don’t think men have much self-control. Look at all the trouble they cause. Actually, all things being equal, I am quite fortunate that I need never marry.” She smiled as though at a beautiful thought. “I have, after all, everything a woman marries for.”
Diverted by this air of world-weariness, Felicia asked, “Do you indeed?”
“Think of it.” Clarice counted on her fingers. “I have — or will have when I’m twenty-one — a pleasant fortune. I have a title, held in my own right. I have a roof over my head and in no way lack for protectors.”
“No,” Felicia agreed. “There are many who are more than willing to watch over you.”
Clarice looked up toward the landing above, her face so somber that for a moment she looked thirty. “There is something to be said for my mother’s protection of me. She will keep the fortune hunters and the second sons away. I dare swear that if the Prince of Wales did offer for me, she would refuse him. She is...loath to let me go even so far as the village. What hope would there be, even if I wished to marry? So it is as well that I do not wish it.”
“Never?”
Clarice shook her head, slowly and firmly. “Never. The same, however, cannot be said of you.”
“I? You need not trouble your thoughts with me, dearest. What man would have me?” Seeing Clarice’s smile, she added, “Lawfully, I mean.”
“That is the difficulty. Doctor Danby and I both know that we cannot count on Mama to protect you.”
“I will not require her protection. You know about the position she has offered me at Tallyford?”
“Papa’s pet orphanage? Yes, she told me. She said it would be a significant opportunity for you. As much as I hate to admit it, she may be right.”
“I’m afraid so.” She’d been dreading telling Clarice that she must leave. Now it seemed as though her sister couldn’t wait for her to be gone.
Then, the younger girl jumped to her feet in a swirling rustle of long skirt and petticoat. She threw her arms around Felicia and said, “Don’t look like that! I don’t want you to go! I always dreamed we’d live quietly together here at Hamdry, happy and contented. But as long as Mama feels about you as she does, you’d never be happy here.”
“Don’t distress yourself,” Felicia said, hugging Clarice. “I feel I should go.”
“Yes, it’s best. You see, she is my mother. I can’t choose between you."
“Don’t try.” Felicia pressed a kiss against the springing golden hair. “I know. It’s how I felt about my own. It doesn’t matter what she does or how she speaks to you, we must be loyal to her first.”
“You do understand.” Clarice leaned back to look up into her sister’s face. “What was she like? You never speak of her.”
Felicia said slowly, “It’s not easy to remember. She was tall, taller than I am, I think. Her hair was red and her eyes a deep blue. Even...even at her worst, she had a lovely way of moving — long, slow, gliding steps.”
“Like you?”
Pleased, Felicia smiled. “That’s sweet of you, but no. I’m a clumsy thing. One of her ‘friends’ told me once that watching my mother walk was like seeing a fairy walking on flower petals. He was a poet and quite poor.”
“She had a lot of admirers, I imagine?”
Felicia tried not to make her mother sound too sordid. There had been much ugliness in those last years, when sorrow and drink had raddled her complexion and ruined her temper. Yet even then, there had been days when her mother could find beauty in a wilted flower in a broken pot or a rainbow spray where a gutter sent water down to a dirty street.
“She wrote to our father when she was dying, praying him to provide for me. I think he’d always sent her money. We never expected him to come himself. I remember how she bade me brush her hair and wrap her nicest shawl about her shoulders. And how she cried for joy when he told her he’d take me to his own house.”
“I thought she died before...”
“No. He took me away then and there.” It had been both the gladdest and the saddest day of her life. Her mother had lived for but a few days after.
“I remember when you came.” Clarice laid her head on Felicia’s shoulder. “I was seven. I never told you — I had spent my birthday wishing for a sister. I didn’t know then that babies were always small, and I wished for an older sister. Then Papa came home with you and I knew my wish had been granted. I wonder if that is why They took these last three years away from me. A wish come true must be paid for, you know.”
“‘They’?” Felicia asked, holding very still.
“Yes.”
“Who are ‘They,’ dearest?”
“You know. Like that man who leapt with me into the water. He’s one.” Clarice smiled up at her. “What is his name? He’s very attractive.”
“Blaic.” Felicia spoke automatically.
“Oh. Has he enchanted you yet?”
“Not yet. Not all the way.”
Slowly, Clarice moved out of the comforting circle of her big sister’s arms. As she looked up at Felicia, her eyes were very serious. “Don’t let him. You won’t like it. They trick you and tease you and then laugh at you. For three years, I’ve heard their laughter. You wouldn’t be able to stand it.”
“Clarice...”
She spun about on her heel, almost dancing as she forced a change of mood. “Tallyford is not so far away. I will soon be able to ride the ten miles there, though at first I imagine I shall be little better than a neophyte. I used to ride much farther than that on Jack-Straw! I suppose he was sold long ago.”
“I think so. I’m sure he must have been.”
Clarice nodded. “It doesn’t matter. I should have outgrown him by now at any rate. I shall look in the stables tomorrow with John Groom and see if there is a horse to suit me.”
Felicia said, “But, dearest, your mother is selling the horses to
Sir Elswith.”
“Is she? Oh well, I suppose Father’s horses might as well go — there’s no one here who can ride them. But not to Sir Elswith.” She shook her head. “No, I’ll have her write Papa’s friends. Sir Horace Whitby or Lord Caxton; they always admired his horseflesh. As for me, I shall buy something smart. Not too high in flesh with an easy action.” She giggled enchantingly. “I shall call it ‘Bedlam’s Fancy,’ and if it should prove I buy a gelding then I shall call him ‘Tom’ for short.”
“Lady Stavely still holds the purse strings. If she does not want you to begin careening all over the countryside again, she may make it impossible for you to buy a horse.”
“Then I shall steal one...or borrow. I’m not a fool. It is not my coming home on a shutter again that she fears so much as that I will visit you whenever I please. Don’t look so, Felicia. There will be no quarrel with her. But I shall have a horse. You’ll see.”
Clarice clapped her hands together lightly. “I forgot: Mama wanted to see you as soon as Sir Elswith had gone. You had better go. Tell her I’ve gone to bed, if you’ll be so good.”
She kissed Felicia abruptly and, almost running, hurried away up the stairs.
* * * *
Before going to see Lady Stavely, Felicia carried a candle into the library. Her father’s broad mahogany desk had a light film of dust over its surface. The papers and books, the pen and the paper knife, lay just as he had left them, that last afternoon before he’d fallen ill. Mr. Ashton had kept Viscount Stavely’s will. There’d been no reason for anyone to enter here.
Deliberately, Felicia set her candle down on his desk. He would hate, she knew, for the library he had loved to be made into an inviolate memorial, unused and unchanged. She made a mental note to request that one of the maids be detailed tomorrow to dust and clean.
The bookshelves were filled with books, short and tall, fat and thin. Their backs, hued in every color of leather, gleamed in the candlelight. The biggest and oldest of these was the family Bible, closed with a hasp and locked. The key was in the top desk drawer.
With a handkerchief over her fingers to protect the pages, Felicia turned the leaves at the beginning of the Book. Names, some in black ink, others in a rusty red, leapt off the crisped, yellow pages at her. Thomas, Grievance, Mariah, Lavinia...all the ancestors and their dates, going back as far as those who had built the previous manor house in 1594.
Kissed by Starlight Page 15
