Kissed by Starlight

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  Blaic opened his eyes. In the dimness of the church, lit only by flickering lamps, his pupils were huge, making his eyes seem black and dull. “No. Not even the stone remembers.”

  Felicia wondered why neither the doctor nor the reverend had demanded an introduction. She glanced back at them and saw them asleep, their heads dropped forward until their chins rested upon their chests. The doctor looked particularly comfortable, wedged in his niche like one of the saints torn down by Cromwell’s men. Poor Mr. Hales had leaned slowly, slowly forward until he rested the crown of his wig against the wall. He hung there, his arms dangling, supported only by wig and feet.

  “No harm will come to them. The crowds will soon disperse, and then we can wake them. This way they need not ask you unpleasant questions about your association with a mere workingman.” He rubbed at a new callus on his forefinger.

  “You have hardly avoided their questions. What will happen when they wake?”

  “Nothing. They will be more refreshed than in some time, this little doctor especially. He gives himself no rest.”

  “He takes his responsibilities most seriously. Though he does not always cure, he eases some people’s fear of dying just by being there. He says that is what priests used to be for and that it’s a great pity England ever gave them up.” She chuckled. “Mind you, he doesn’t tell Mr. Hales that. To hear them talk together, you’d think the Inquisition will come calling at any moment.”

  Blaic shook his head ruefully. “The English.”

  “But you are English? That is to say, you live in England?”

  “For the moment. Which reminds me....” He smiled at her, and the chill of the stone left her limbs. Yet not even Blaic could ease her spirit.

  At the back of her mind, fear moved. The thought that someone in the village, someone she might have spoken to and could name, would throw filth at her was too frightful to be thought of. She would put that knowledge aside, remembering that in two days’ time she would be gone. Ten miles might as well be the other side of the moon; few people from the town traveled much outside it. The gossip would reach Tallyford in time, but not before she did.

  Blaic said, “I believe that I will go with you to this new place of yours.”

  “Go with me? Why?”

  Blaic asked himself what reaction he had expected. Joy? Though she seemed to be at ease with him, accepting him for what he was, she did not truly know him. He reminded himself that it was better so. He said, “My presence would be displeasing to you, Felicia?’’

  “No, of course not,” she answered, backing down as he hoped she would. “You are welcome to accompany me if you think it necessary.”

  “Doesn’t the reaction of these foolish mortals to your generosity prove it necessary?”

  “Once I am away from here, there won’t be any such demonstrations. No one has ever thought well of me here.”

  The last words were said softly, as though with regret. Blaic felt a flame of anger in his heart. He had brought William Beech back, chastened and humble. Before he left with Felicia, he meant to see that several others suffered their just punishment. Folly to look on her pure face and see evil!

  Felicia asked, “What’s wrong? You look....”

  “How do I look?”

  “As if you were angry at me.”

  “Not at you. At myself, perhaps.” He wanted to hold her so badly that his arms felt hungry. Between the pangs of anger and yearning, he couldn’t help being brusque. Better to keep her at a distance, lest the temptation of her nearness prove to be too much. He looked around him. “This is a dreary place. I prefer your ancestors’ method of worship, out under the open sky with no stone walls between the soul and God.”

  She did not seem hurt by his sudden change of mood. Rather, she seemed to welcome it. “You’re forgetting our irregular climate. Open-air worship might do very well in midsummer. But come winter’s blasts I am grateful for these walls. So long as there is a comforting brazier to warm my feet!”

  She smiled at him, inviting him to share her humor.

  When he did not respond, she sighed. “There is also something to be said for a sturdy oaken door. I am not the first to seek refuge here from a harsh world.”

  Blaic almost did not dare to look at her —how could she fail to read his eyes? Instead, he cast his thought forth and searched the greensward outside the church. “They’ve all gone. You could walk out now without fear of being molested.”

  “Yes, I should be on my way. No doubt Lady Stavely ordered the coachman to drive on when the discord broke out.”

  “Well, she is certainly not there now.”

  Felicia raised the hem of her full skirt to look ruefully at her shoes. “Such is the price of vanity.”

  “Vanity?”

  Her face, he noticed, had increased in rosiness. “I wanted to look especially well-turned-out, so I put on my best shoes. They are pretty, but they pinch.”

  He looked, not at the black shoes with the ribboned roses on the toes, but at her neat ankles and high-arched feet. Her white stockings clung to them, hinting at the lengths hidden behind her black skirt. Blaic found he had to clear his throat before saying, “Charming.” Then he thought to ask, “Why did you care what you looked like? Do you wish to leave a good opinion of yourself behind you?”

  “Yes. That’s it exactly.”

  But he knew she lied. Was it for him that she had dressed with care? Or for another?

  He sent a glance of black suspicion toward the immobile reverend. His wide-sleeved surplice was slipping from his shoulders, now that he hadn’t the will to keep his body square and upright. A lank-limbed spindle-shanks, Blaic thought, pronouncing his judgment. Yet he must have a ready tongue to be in holy orders. Perhaps Felicia responded to his wit.

  “Poor Mr. Hales,” she said with something like a laugh in her voice. Blaic suddenly felt less critical toward the man. Felicia said, “You should let them go. They are very good men, both of them. They, at least, mean me no evil.”

  “Will one of them see you safely home?”

  She opened her mouth as though to protest but thought the better of it. “I would have said yesterday that I was as safe walking to the manor as a babe in her mother’s arms. Today, I do not believe I should vouch any such faith. I don’t know whether it is the world that has gone mad or I myself.”

  “Not you.”

  “No?” She glanced at him, leaving him to wonder what she was thinking. How easy she would have been to figure out were she any other mortal. But her strain of fay blood, dilute and distant though it might have been, protected her from any such intrusion. He was left the same as any man, blind and groping in the dark for a clue to a woman’s thoughts.

  She said again, “Let them go, please. I will ask the doctor to see me safe. If his wife objects, then I will ask the reverend.”

  “Don’t trouble them. I shall go with you. I can keep off anyone who troubles you.” Beneath his shirt, Blaic could feel his muscles twitch in anticipation. “I only hope some rustic does try.”

  “You are kind, Blaic, but that would only make my situation worse. To be seen with you, a gardener attached to the manor, walking openly through the streets...looking the way you do. I should be called worse than witch,” she added, and hid a smile behind her hand.

  “How do I look?”

  “Mary said it best.” Felicia fell into the broad Devon accent that was so expressive. “A handsome fellow, he is, with a fine, noticin’ light in his eyes. Nothin’ be worse ‘n a noticin’ man, miss.”

  “A noticing man. What does that mean?”

  “Well, either that you notice things, which you do, or that you are worth noticing, which you are.”

  Blaic was not used to being complimented and laughed at in the same breath. She continually spun him off his axis, so that he went bouncing along like a top at her whim. It amused and troubled him all at once.

  He did not consciously admit that he wanted to disorient her as she had him. Yet he k
new a completely primitive satisfaction in watching her eyes widen and her tongue swipe over her lips as he reached out as though about to caress her face.

  All thought of pretense went from his mind as she angled her face as though pressing against his hands. The size of her absurd hat made her face look as adorable as a kitten’s, but the kitten was the cub of a lioness. There were fires in her eyes, burning for him. His slight jealousy of the mortal men she knew floated away like ashes.

  Her breath was warm on his cheek, but he had no memory of having come so close to her. If she’d inhaled deeply, her breasts would have brushed his chest. He groaned inwardly at the image and fought to close the door on the flood of pictures that supplanted it. He felt cramps prick him all over as he tightened his body against the sight, the smell, and the nearness of her.

  “Felicia...you’ll be the death of me yet.”

  “That’s why you mustn’t come to Tallyford. Go back to your Living Lands before I beg you....”

  “Beg me for what? Ask it. Ask it of me and I’ll give you anything. Anything.”

  “Give me the cloak of invisibility as you did in the grotto. If you don’t touch me, I’ll die.”

  “No.” He saw the laughter curve her full lips, and the sight of that wicked curve alone was nearly enough to satisfy him. “I don’t want it like that. Come with me to Mag Mell. Let me make love to you.”

  The whispered hoarseness of his need reached her. He saw her respond with a willingness that sent the desire pounding through his veins. For an instant, it was as if time meant nothing. Then her mind, the truest part of her, took control again. “I can’t. I want to. Believe me.”

  “I understand. I shouldn’t have asked you.”

  Then he was gone, leaving only a bouquet of summer flowers at her feet. Behind her, she heard Doctor Danby and the reverend arguing quietly, as though they’d never slept.

  The parson was nodding wisely as Felicia approached, flowers in hand. Doctor Danby stared at her. “You aren’t sickening? You look overheated.”

  “Do I?” She buried her nose in a particularly sweet gillyflower. “I suppose Lady Stavely has gone on without me. Would you walk with me, Doctor?”

  “With a good will, Miss Starret.”

  “Oh, I should be honored if you'd accept my company,” Mr. Hales began.

  “I’ll do it,” the doctor grumbled. “You look out to be certain there’s no one lying in wait, then go to your parish meeting.”

  As Felicia and Doctor Danby walked, she asked, “Have you ever known anyone who answers every question with another question?”

  “Who’s been troubling you?”

  “No one. I am only curious....” Then she laughed. “You do it too.”

  “Do what? I’m not doing anything. Who answers your questions with a question?

  “Just a man I know.”

  “What man?”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “I don’t? That sounds most dubious. I know everyone. What does your stepmother think of this person?’’

  “She wouldn’t want to know him socially.” She thought of the new calluses on Blaic’s hands and felt a strange lurch in the pit of her stomach. She could not recall ever feeling such a thing before.

  “You be careful,” the doctor warned. “Strange men, strange happenings...This can be a very backward country, my dear. I may have been twitting the good reverend a tad just now but to be utterly honest, ‘twas not so long ago that they were indeed burning witches.”

  “Here? Surely not.”

  “They ducked them here, then sent those that survived up to Essex for the assizes.”

  “Well, we shall hope people are wiser now. The witch hysteria is long over.”

  “Is it? Who threw that dirt today?”

  “It wasn’t necessarily aimed at me. There are other women not a hundred miles off who could be described as a — well — as a witch.”

  “Felicia Starret! At the risk of sounding like my old woman....”

  “Well, who is to say that dirt wasn’t aimed at my step-mama? Do you believe her well-beloved, as my father was? There was not one person at his funeral who did not have recourse at some time to a handkerchief. Who would weep for her?”

  “Would you?”

  “Now you are doing it! A question with a question? Why do people do that?”

  “As a doctor, I would venture to say it is because they have something to hide.”

  “What are you hiding, Doctor Danby?” But she spoke flippantly, her thoughts occupied in fruitless speculation. What was Blaic hiding? He had told her everything about himself, or very nearly. She might not know his favorite color, but she knew where he had come from. Or did she?

  Her broad hat sheltered her face from the sun. It also blocked her view of much of a friend’s face. It wasn’t until the silence stretched for half a mile that Felicia looked out from underneath the brim. “Why, what’s the matter?” she asked, stopping in the middle of the cart track.

  “You are not a child, Felicia. Thanks to your — ahem — irregular early life, you’ve seen things that nicely raised girls never do. Therefore, I shall not speak to you as a child.”

  “Thank you. But you are alarming me, rather.”

  “How much do you know of Lady Stavely’s affair with Mr. Ashton?”

  Chapter Twelve

  The gloriously exhilarating spring weather did not hold. By Tuesday, the wind drove blue clouds the way an impatient herder drives geese. A wet, cold smell in the air threatened rain that at some point would soak all Felicia’s boxes and bags. The two gardeners kept an eye to the sky as they tossed her things onto the back of the cart.

  “I see William Beech has returned,” Felicia said to Clarice, letting the window curtain drop on the scene outside. After she’d told Clarice that she had nothing to fear, that the taint of madness in their family had not been passed to them, the conversation had lagged.

  “Yes, sadder but wiser. I think he knows that it was only his father’s long service on the manor that kept him from being dismissed out of hand.”

  Felicia had noticed that the young man had not so much as glanced in her direction. The one time she had caught his eye, he’d blanched under his tan and looked away with something like a shudder. Felicia was confused but relieved.

  Clarice added, “He’s proposed an idea of keeping bees here on the manor, rather than relying on the ‘visitors’ from the moor. I think it’s wise enough to mention to Mama.”

  Another silence fell while they sipped their morning tea. It was broken by Clarice’s laugh. “I didn’t tell you the delicious piece of gossip I heard yesterday. You were too busy to see them, but Mrs. Chappel and her two daughters came yesterday — mostly, I think, to take a look at me. You know, her son is twenty-one and from what I understand, quite a strain on the family’s purse. An heiress would not come amiss, provided I am not actually sticking straws in my hair.”

  “Didn’t you understand what I told you? You don’t have to worry....”

  “Oh, yes. But you know, Felicia, there’s no doubt that the tale of our dear step-grandmama’s desire to lay eggs may come in useful from time to time. For instance, when unwelcome suitors come to call. A little clucking rids us of this ill.”

  “The gossip?” Felicia prompted.

  “Oh, yes. It has to do with your dear friend, Constable Richards. Drunk and incapable, he fell headfirst into the privy behind the Blue Boar. He was lucky not to have drowned! But that little fellow who follows him about went roaring into the tavern to fetch help. The most amusing part is that Richards claims he was pushed! But his friend swears that Richards was alone, so of course he was drunk as a lord.”

  “At least it forced him to bathe,” Felicia said. As a Christian, she had a duty to forgive Constable Richards for his suggestions while she was under his “care.” But the wicked sinner in her rejoiced at his downfall.

  She poured out a cup more of the by-now tepid tea and drank. Her hat and mantua lay read
y on a chair near the door. It was ten minutes to ten. She’d planned to be gone from Hamdry an hour since, but half a dozen causes had arisen to delay her, from the accidental packing of the boots she’d meant to wear to an unexpectedly emotional leave-taking from the female staff. Cook had produced an elaborate breakfast — much more than the coffee and rolls she had requested — and noblesse oblige had forced her to eat it.

  The knock at the front door and the muttered exchange between Mary and one of the gardeners was the signal for Felicia to finish her tea. Clarice rose when she did. For a moment, the sisters stood looking at one another. Then Mary opened the morning room door and said, “They be ready, Miss Starret.”

  “Very good. Thank you, Mary.”

  The servant pushed the door open a bit farther. Clarice and Felicia looked at her. She wore her best hat, the polished straw with only one broken feather, and her best shawl over a clean dress. “Beggin’ your pardon, but ‘tisn’t right you goin’ off there on your own, miss. So me ‘n’ Rose talked ‘em over last night and I’m t’go with you.” The sturdy chin lifted. “B’ain’t no cause to zay you won’t have me, ‘cause m’mind is made up.”

  Rather belatedly, Mary bobbed her curtsy, then added, “Wait for you in the cart, miss.”

  “Well, I like that!” Clarice declared when the door was shut behind her. “No notice, no regret, and off she goes like a flighty young thing, leaving us a maid short!”

  “I’ll talk her out of it.”

  “Never mind,” Clarice said, catching hold of Felicia’s arm. “She’s quite right: You’ll need someone. No doubt this Miss Dravoget is taking her own maid with her when she goes off to her new home.”

  Felicia found herself dragging her handkerchief out of her inner pocket and wiping her eyes. “I don’t know why I am always so surprised by loyalty.”

  “Don’t you? Come, let me help you on with your mantle.”

  After she skewered her hat to her hair and comfortably wrapped herself up in wool and silk, Felicia stopped Clarice from coming out with her. “If you stand on the doorstep and wave to me, I shall dissolve in saltwater.”