“Blaic!” she exclaimed, off balance in more ways than one.
“It’s perfectly simple,” he said, his lips moving against her temple. His voice became strangely husky. “As long as we don’t let go.”
“Let go?”
“Never.”
His arm was around her, under her cloak, holding her so tightly against him that she could hardly breathe. But, as her heart began to pound in a wild rhythm, she realized that breathing had become irrelevant. If she didn’t taste him right now, she’d die anyway.
“Touch my face,” he said. “Keep your skin against mine.”
His cheek and throat were hot. His morning growth of beard was softer than she had expected, but she didn’t stop to wonder why he hadn’t shaved or whatever it was he did. She didn’t even ask herself why he had been standing on the doorstep when she’d come down.
The moment she touched his face, Blaic reached for the dangling broad ribbon of her hat. A quick jerk and the hat fell to the floor, taking half a dozen hastily inserted hat pins with it. He stroked the loose waves of her hair and Felicia closed her eyes from pure pleasure.
“There was never silk so fine. Oh, Felicia.” He said her name as though calling upon a deity. She touched the crisp hair at the back of his neck, one of the places she’d longed to know, though she never expected to hear him groan when she did it. That sound did something to her, awakened in her a sense of power different from his, completely mortal, yet the equal of his own. He could control the world if he wished to, but he couldn’t control his response to her touch.
She felt him over her, so near. She allowed her head to fall back as she slowly opened her eyes again. His own, the black pupils swamping the green, stared down, his lids heavy. She formed his name on her lips but before she could speak it, his hand stilled on her hair and he kissed her.
At first, she was hesitant, unsure of what was expected of her. Each kiss was feather-light and swift. She murmured with frustration. Though she didn’t know exactly what she wanted, she wanted more. He said, “Wait...wait...,” but she’d waited too long already.
Impatiently, she lifted against him, her fingertips stirring his hair. It caught at her fingers as though even it was greedy for her. She felt him pause, as a fire seems to hold back for an instant before blazing into life. She opened her mouth against his when he wordlessly asked it of her.
Then Felicia didn’t know anymore who was stronger. They were equal in every way that mattered.
When he broke the kiss to lean his forehead against hers, Felicia looked around and felt a shock of surprise that nothing had changed. The stairs still needed repainting, the doors were still battered, the iron lustre hanging from the ceiling still had flakes of rust. Nothing had changed; nothing was the same.
Blaic said, “Felicia, come with me into the Wilder World.”
“I beg your pardon?’’ In her surprise, she let her hands slide limply from his neck to the fronts of his coat.
He growled, “Command me!”
“Oh, damn!” Felicia said, dredging the word up from her memory. He had despair in his eyes, but she did not know how to help him. To apologize would be an insult; more impossible yet to explain that she’d stopped touching him because her thoughts had been on his kisses, not on her hands.
At last, she said, “Take me to Hamdry Manor.”
A disorienting wind blew through her hair as she distinctly felt her feet leave the floor. She felt like a leaf caught up in the wind, swirling up in an out-of-control spin that lifted her higher and higher. Unable to focus on anything, feeling her stomach begin to revolt, she shut her eyes and clenched her teeth.
When she opened them, she stood exactly where Blaic had promised. The rich mahogany door of Hamdry Manor stood only inches away. She brushed her fingers over the surface and saw that the brass knocker had a spot of tarnish on it. The sight shocked her; such a thing was unthinkable.
Felicia glanced around for Blaic. He stood at the edge of the drive and lifted his hand in a half-wave. Then he walked away. She knew he remembered that she’d said his presence would not improve her arguments. Undoubtedly he’d return when she needed him.
When she raised her hand to knock, the door opened. She peered around the edge, seeing no one. For a moment, she hesitated on the doorstep. This was, after all, no longer her home; she had no more right to walk in the door unannounced than any other outsider. She knocked on the thick wooden door, hearing echoes roll down the corridor. When this brought no response, she called out.
“Hullo? Clarice?”
Only silence answered. Feeling a strange foreboding take hold, Felicia went in. Surely, there must be someone about. A house like this was never left entirely unattended; any passing tramp or gypsy could have made off with every silver fork and silken petticoat.
Felicia pushed open the green baize doors at the end of the corridor, intending to discover at least one other human soul in the place. Halfway down the hall, she heard a strange, confused noise. Calling out, she proceeded. Instead of the calm tyranny of the servants’ hall, she found an uproar.
The youngest laundry maid, Lena, shrieked with hysterics, her apron flung over her head. The knives-and-boots boy, Bob, was chattering nineteen to the dozen without anyone paying him any heed, when usually more than two words from him brought Mr. Varley’s stately wrath down upon him. Mr. Varley sat at the head of the table, his wig pushed out of position as he scratched in puzzlement at his sparsely furnished head. Cook herself trotted between Lena and Mr. Varley, with smelling salts for one and brandy for the other.
“Whatever is amiss?” Felicia asked, putting down her hat on a chair.
She had not noticed William the Footman sitting in the angle between the fireplace surround and the wall. “She’s dismissed the whole bally lot of us! Everyone — barring Cook. Even Mr. Varley!”
“Who has?”
“That she-devil upstairs!”
“Now, William, that’s no way to speak of her ladyship,” Mr. Varley said with no more animation than a mechanical doll. “No doubt she has her reasons.”
“Aie, an’ we know what they be, too. We’m not fools, Miss Felicia, niver mind what that creature has to zay,” Lena said, snatching down the apron. Her cheeks were cherry-red, her eyes swollen almost shut. Yet she’d roused herself at the sound of anyone’s defending Lady Stavely.
Felicia did not understand enough of what William the Footman was muttering to take offense. “Her and her damned dirty ways!” he burst out. “We’re not blind, miss. We know what goings-on she’s been up to with that bloody lawyer. Didn’t my own zister zee ‘em a-kissin’ and-huggin’ only weeks afore your dad died?”
“Hush!” Mr. Varley assumed once more his Olympian voice, though his shoulders still slumped.
“Indeed!” Cook chimed in. “Such nasty talk in my kitchen’s not something I’ll put up with, William. Mind you, I could think of a few choice words myself. ‘Naturally, you’ll be staying on, Cook,’ she says to me, grander ‘n the queen herself ever thought of. Just as grand as herself, I says, ‘No, indeed, my lady. I must give in my notice. Two weeks and keep my back wages, for the sooner I shake th’ dust from my shoes th’ better!’ Not that there’s ever a speak o’ dust in any of my kitchens.” Cook was not from Devon.
Felicia said, “Lady Stavely would be a fool to let you all go. She can’t imagine that there are that many good and honest servants willing to live in the midst of a wilderness all the year around. Where will she find a butler like you, Varley? Or any of you?”
“It’s not we only, miss,” the maid said. “She’s been and dismissed most all the indoor staff and more ‘n a few of them outside. She says she don’t need half zo many no more, now that yer father’s a dead ‘un, that is.”
“A foolish economy,” Mr. Varley mourned. “If Hamdry Manor is permitted to go to wrack and ruin through neglect, it will take a powerful lot of brass to shine it up again.”
“Wouldn’t zurprise me none if she cleare
d out with what she can carry,” William the Footman said darkly. “You can’t get from it. She’s no true Stavely, not in my book.”
“William, you exaggerate,” Felicia said sternly.
Perhaps not sternly enough, for the young man went on, “Not a zoul about to keep an eye on her but that Mr. Ashton, what she has in her pocket, and some doddering ol’ trustee up in Lundon-town.”
Felicia never failed to be amazed by what the servants picked up. No one could suspect them of listening at keyholes, and yet William knew the terms of her father’s will. No doubt the entire servants’ hall knew to a penny what her own personal settlement was to be.
Mr. Varley said, looking down at his hands on the tabletop, “It’s not so easy to get a new position at my age. Never did I think I’d live to see the day I’d be turned out of Hamdry. Man and boy, I’ve always had the best interest of the Stavely family at heart.”
“There now, Varley, her ladyship is bound to give you a glowing reference,” Felicia said. She didn’t say so, but she meant to see to that personally, if it meant she had to take up one of her former duties and write the letters herself. Felicia was a trifle surprised that Lady Stavely had roused herself enough to dismiss so many people, face-to-face.
Varley’s troubled eyes rolled toward her. He had always been suspicious of her, keeping a sharp eye on her whenever she might stop to speak to one of the young men under his charge. Now he seemed on the verge of speaking more emotionally than was proper for a butler to a daughter of the house, no matter how irregular she was. But all he said was, “You’re very kind, miss.”
“If only Lady Clarice was in charge! She'd niver zee us thrown out and our families left to starve!” A strong mutter of agreement arose at William the Footman’s outcry. “What’s to come to my poor mother? Five at home, miss, and my wages not comin’ no more. It’ll be the sea for me. Ever since my brother Jemmy was drownded, that’s her mortal fear.”
“I’ll call on your mother,” Felicia said rather feebly. “Perhaps she can help with the mending even more than she does now. If the linen-maid is to be dismissed too, there’ll be more for your mother to do.”
Lena said, “That’s all right for him, but what’s to happen now you’ve gone, miss?” The screaming fit having passed off, her face had lost some of its harsh redness. “You has your hands full with that there orphanage over to Tallyford, and a nastier, dimmer, dirtier place I never care to lay m’eyes on.”
“We’ve improved it past all knowledge,” Felicia boasted.
A sharp bang on the door made them all look around. The chambermaid came in talking. “I’m shamed t’be a woman,” Rose said dramatically, shaken out of her meekness for once, “if there be such creatures as that sharin’ the name!”
“Not you too,” Felicia said.
“Iss, fai! Just now on t’upper landin’. She comes oilin’ out, all smiles but sharp as cheese! Feels I’m not goin’ to be happy at Hamdry now master’s dead. Wants me to know what a valuable servant she finds me and hopes I’ll be happier elsewhere. She’s the one that ought to be happier elsewhere — somewhere hot!”
It might fall under the heading of gossiping with servants, but Felicia found herself musing aloud, “Why is she dismissing you all personally? I would have thought....”
“That she’d find some way of shufflin’ the dirty work off onto someone else now you’re gone, miss?”
“Surely, Mr. Ashton is the proper person.”
Cook sniffed. “It’s my opinion that she likes it. There was a wicked, gloating look in them tiny little eyes when she said she was letting the rest of you go, and on that I’ll take my oath!”
Felicia said to Rose, “Lady Stavely is upstairs?”
“ ‘At’s right, miss.”
“Where’s Lady Clarice?”
“In her room. Zick, her ladyship says.”
“Sick?”
Alarmed now, Felicia hurried up the stairs. Her dark suspicions of Lady Stavely conspired with her imagination to present a series of pictures that would have done justice to a nightmare. Clarice poisoned, lying pale and wan across her bed; Clarice starved or drugged. Even as she entered, she knew these ideas were foolish. The one person Lady Stavely adored was her daughter.
“Felicia!” Clarice exclaimed, sitting up in her chair, a book falling to the floor from her hand.
“Dearest! They said you were ill.”
“So I am,” the girl said. Her glorious hair was confined by the linen cap tied down over it. Her eyes were swollen and the tip of her nose was carnation-pink. She had a stack of neatly folded handkerchiefs tucked down beside the cushion and a glass of some ruby-colored tonic on the elbow-table.
“A cold in your head?” Felicia asked.
“Not just a cold. The most abominable case of grippe that ever struck suffering humanity. I haven’t done anything but sneeze and cough for the last two days. And I had the headache so bad that I dreamed the top of my head was on fire. But I am recovering nicely now.”
Felicia bent to pick up Clarice’s book. She had not meant to ask, but the question came out. “Why haven’t you written to me?”
“But I have. Half a dozen times. Didn’t you get them?” When Felicia shook her head, Clarice sniffed again. “Mama. I thought she might.”
“I’m relieved to hear that you are not displeased with me. However, there’s something more important than that. Do you know that she has dismissed all the servants? All your servants.”
“Yes, I know.” She shifted in her chair and blew her nose. “I’m afraid we haven’t much choice. Don’t you know that we have no more money?”
“No money? But Papa....”
“He left little but debts. Mr. Ashton has explained it all.”
“Mr. Ashton!”
“Yes, what about him?”
“I — I have never trusted him.”
“Well, I don’t say that I do. Mama, however, seems to regard him as some sort of oracle. There’s only so much I can do with her, you know. How I wish I were older!”
There was no help for it: Felicia had to tell what she suspected. She sat down rather heavily on the edge of the rumpled bed. “Have you never felt that there was more between your mother and Mr. Ashton than his being our father’s solicitor might explain?”
“You mean — their being lovers?”
Clarice laughed and then, as a cough took her, spluttered. “You look like a gaffed fish!”
Felicia shut her gaping mouth. “You know?”
“Naturally. I have eyes.”
“And you are not shocked?”
“Indeed, most shocked that you know.” The younger girl leaned back in her chair with an assumption of nonchalance. She looked like a mischievous rabbit with her pink nose and clever eyes. “Of course, I would wish Mama hadn’t hurried into a love affair — with Mr. Ashton, of all people. I mean — ugh!” She shivered.
“You don’t like him?”
“Who could? Those hands like a fish’s fin and that way he has of watching one as though expecting the worst...not my idea of ‘Love-in-Idleness,’ to say the least. But I can’t blame Mama. That expression of sympathy must have been very appealing.”
“But did Papa know?”
“I don’t see why he should have known, do you? Papa didn’t notice her at all. They weren’t in love when they married, were they? Papa was still dreaming of your mother. I don’t believe he ever stopped loving her. As for Mama, she married him because her father told her to.” She sniffed and looked wise. “I don’t think marriages should be arranged. I hope to be spared that much, at any rate.”
“Clarice, I don’t see how you can be so cynical!”
“Cynical? I?”
“Do you condone your mother’s behavior?”
“It’s hardly my place to disapprove of anything she chooses to do. But I can, I think, understand her better than you can. You’re good, Felicia, good all the way through. I’m not at all good, not honestly good.”
Clarice
looked toward the window, where the gauze curtain over the glass softened the light into something like a mist. As though she were praying aloud, she said, “I try to be; I mean to be. But I can understand how loneliness, loneliness that has never been relieved, could drive someone into doing a thing they’d never do if they were well-looked-after and truly loved. I hope I shall never have to know what that is like.”
Felicia leaned forward, dropping her hand lightly over Clarice’s. “You are good; never doubt that. You are quite wrong, though. I do understand what loneliness can make a woman do. Sometimes I think I would be willing to risk anything not to feel that dreadful way anymore.”
“You, Felicia? Who is it?”
“Who is who?” she answered, relieved to hear the lightness return to Clarice’s cold-roughened voice.
“Who is the man you’ll risk everything for?”
“No one. I was speaking hypothetically.”
“Then why are you blushing?”
Felicia had been thinking of Blaic’s mouth moving so tenderly over hers. Did kisses show on one’s face so that anyone could see?
Clarice crowed triumphantly. “There is someone! You weren’t blushing before; you are now! Who is it? Some lusty farming lad at Tallyford? The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker?”
“Not the butcher, at any rate. He’s married to the dreadful Miss Dravoget.” Felicia stood up, giving her twisted skirt a shake. She glanced sideways at Clarice. “I shall tell you all about it later. I promise. But for now, I must see Lady Stavely.”
“Must you? She is in no good temper. She feels cruelly deceived by Papa’s will. Even her dower may be in jeopardy.” Clarice coughed, pressing her hand to her chest. When the spasm passed, she reached for her cordial and sipped, making a grimace. “Nasty stuff! I daren’t even think what dear Doctor Danby puts in it, but I believe he strains it through his old stockings!”
Felicia took the glass from Clarice. “You should be in bed. Come, I’ll tuck you up.”
“I did so want to stay out of bed today. But perhaps a little nap....” She turned her head fretfully on the pillowcase, searching for a cool spot. “Send Nurse to me, won’t you? She’s a good old thing. I shall keep her by me, if I can.”
Kissed by Starlight Page 22
