Kissed by Starlight

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  “Come now. Let’s not be hasty,” Doctor Danby said.

  Lady Stavely hardly glanced at him. “Once word of this afternoon reaches the good people of Tallyford...”

  “I don’t see why it should,” Felicia said, “I don’t intend to mention it to anyone.”

  Sir Elswith chuckled vulgarly. “ ‘Magine your ‘friend’ has already taken care of that. Those low fellows don’t care who’s about when they boast of their conquests.”

  “Blaic won’t tell anyone. He doesn’t know of anyone to tell.”

  “Don’t hoodwink yourself, m’dear. He’s probably already in the taproom, tellin’ the tale.”

  “If he isn’t,” Doctor Danby said, glaring scornfully at Sir Elswith over the top of his glasses, “I’ll wager you’ll be willing to fill in for him.”

  Lady Stavely said, “I shall certainly make no secret of your transgressions! For years I have told my confidants that you would one day prove my contention about you — namely, that you are the same as your mother. Now you have proved my case, and all those who derided me must know they were wrong and I was in the right.”

  Felicia could well believe Lady Stavely would trumpet her vindication to the four corners of the earth. She turned toward Doctor Danby. “What do you suggest I do?”

  The small man sighed. “Go away. There’s nothing else for you to do.”

  “And then? Shall I starve in a ditch for everyone’s convenience?”

  “You have what your father left you. Begin again elsewhere. In Cornwall, perhaps, or even Wales. Somewhere.”

  Felicia glanced at Lady Stavely. Would she now admit that Mr. Ashton had made off with her funds? It struck her suddenly that Lady Stavely did not know of her unfaithful lover’s death. She could not tell her. To do so would only add another suspicion of witchcraft to her already difficult situation.

  Lady Stavely’s lips were pressed together tightly. She unfolded them enough to say, “Yes. You have your inheritance, as well as the money I gave you before you left Hamdry.”

  “That is all gone.”

  The older woman snapped, “If, in your extravagance, you have ruined yourself, it's no one's blame but your own."

  “I spent it on the children’s needs, as you can see if you will trouble to examine the ledger. Which returns us to a point you all seem to have forgotten: The children must be cared for!”

  Doctor Danby took a turn about the room. “My wife told me yesterday that her sister is coming to live with us. She is a respectable widow of forty-four years. Her only child is grown and gone to America. I do not see why Amelia should not, for the time being, take up residence here until such time as another directress might be found. She is a very levelheaded creature.”

  “Most suitable,” Lady Stavely said, bowing a trifle in the doctor’s direction. “A solid widow without encumbrances is the very person I should have chosen in the first place!”

  “But there is still no money!” Felicia exclaimed. “You may bring in all the widows you like, but you cannot run the asylum without funds.”

  “No money?” The doctor and Sir Elswith exchanged glances. “The scoundrel,” Sir Elswith growled. He stepped closer to Lady Stavely and possessed himself of her gloved hand. “There, now, m’dear. Don’t trouble yourself. There’s many another in the same boat.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know to what you are referring, sir,” Lady Stavely said, tugging free.

  “That wretched fellow Ashton has defrauded some of the best families in the county. Justice Garfield is attempting to trace the blackguard even as we speak. They’ll find him, arrest him, and force him to hand back all that he has stolen. Rest assured, madame. In the end he will hang.”

  Lady Stavely staggered to a chair and sat down blindly. “You...you know?”

  “A plausible fellow like that has wormed his way into the good graces of half a dozen ladies. I never trusted the dog. Poor Viscount Stavely was probably too ill at the end to see through him.”

  Felicia wondered if that was true. Her father had never taken a great deal of interest in money matters so long as there were sufficient funds to pay for his pleasures and his charities. She wondered, and supposed she always would, whether her father had encouraged Palamon Ashton to ensnare Lady Stavely, if only by his own inattention. She did not for an instant suppose that her father had expected them to become lovers or to join in defrauding the orphanage. To be honest with herself, she thought he would have cared more about the orphanage than about the disgrace to his honor. If he had never loved Lady Stavely, as Clarice supposed, would not it be a relief to have her attached to another man?

  Felicia, moved again to pity for her stepmother, said, “I hope you aren’t too unhappy about Mr. Ashton. He was —

  “Kindly don’t speak to me,” Lady Stavely said sharply. “You will go to your chamber and prepare to leave at once.”

  A few minutes later, alone for the first time since Blaic had walked in the door, Felicia straightened the tumbled counterpane. She could not regret the touch of Blaic’s hands or the strange sensations he had awakened within her. She loved him, and it had seemed right to give herself to him. If only they had not been interrupted!

  Perhaps it was better this way. She had, after all, to live in this mortal world. A woman who had lost her virginity outside of marriage had only one course open to her, and that, Felicia vowed, was a road she would never take. Her mother had been a romantic, looking always to replace the love she’d found with Stavely, a love forbidden by their families and their respective stations in life. Felicia had found that love at nineteen; she would not make the mistake of thinking she could find it again.

  As she began to lay out her things on the bed, a knock sounded at the door. Mary opened it slowly, peering around the edge. “An’ here she is tellin’ the world how you be cry in’ with the shame of it!”

  “Who, my stepmother?” Felicia shook her head. “She is a woman who believes people should behave as they do in novels. I have nothing to weep for. Next she’ll expect me to lie down and expire in shame.”

  “Here, let me do that,” Mary said, taking a shift from Felicia to fold it more neatly. “Indeed, you have nothin’ whatever to be weepin’ over. Zo the pleasingest young man in all Devon be makin’ love to ye, an’ why not? Any’un with half an eye could see he be zo fair and far gone in love....Tis jealous she is!”

  “He is in love with me, isn’t he, Mary?”

  “Iss, fai! Clean off his head with it, indeed.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Felicia said. “Can you bring me a valise to put these in?”

  “Oh, aye.”

  They worked awhile in silence. Then Mary said, “It’s this way, Miss Felicia. I be stayin’ here. ‘Tisn’t fair to the children if we all go off an’ leave ‘em. There’s been far and away too much leavin’ of ‘em, an’ if I stay ‘twon’t be zo hard on ‘em.”

  “That’s very good of you, Mary. I wish ...”

  “Now, then,” Mary said, her cheeks pink, but moving more quickly, having said what she had intended to. She clicked her tongue. “I couldn’t leave the little ones, will or no. I’ve got that fond of ‘em you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Yes I would. I hate the thought of going. I felt that I could make a difference in their lives and now, like a fool, I ruined what I had only just begun to build. How could I be so blind!”

  “Now then,” Mary said, a trifle fiercely. “You can come back in a few weeks. You take that young man and go into Cornwall. ‘Tis a heathenish place by all I heard, but ‘twill do well enow until you’m married.”

  “Married?”

  “What did you think? He’m waitin’ down by t’shed with a horse ‘n’ cart. Don’t ask how he come by it, but there he be waitin’. The children be waitin’ too, with flowers. Don’t be disappointin’ ‘em by showin’ that face, neither.”

  Felicia was certain Mary was wrong. Blaic would not marry her — she was a mortal. Even when he’d said he wanted to take her awa
y into the Other Realm, he’d said nothing about marriage. However, she realized that this was probably the best tale she could tell the children. They’d been most interested in the mechanics of Miss Dravoget’s wedding, and not merely because it represented the departure of a woman they’d heartily disliked. If they believed she was going away to marry Blaic — whom they liked a great deal — it would lessen the blow of another change. If only Lady Stavely wouldn’t spoil things....

  “Oh, her? She be a-layin’ down with a bottle o’ zmelling zalts and a headache. If you’m tippy-toe down them stairs quiet like zome mouses, you’m get clean away and no’un the wiser. When you come back married, even her won’t have nothing evil left to zay.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Long after dark, Blaic pulled on the reins along a street where the only light was the moonlight shining on the puddles. Felicia spoke from the corner of the gig, where he had believed her to be sleeping. “Where are we?”

  “I’m not sure. The signpost was blank.”

  “You don’t know? I would have thought...” “Many things have changed in six hundred years, Felicia. I’m trying to accustom myself to them, but the location of every insignificant town has not been among my studies thus far. I’ve had enough difficulty with the lists of your kings and your wars.”

  She dropped the hood back from her face as she peered out into the night. Blaic caught his breath anew at the sight of her. The moon washed the rich color from her hair so that she was a pen-and-ink portrait. Yet nothing could wipe away the vitality that lived in her eyes and face. Though a deeply peaceful mortal, she had an interest in the world that would make her beautiful even when an old, old woman. “Well, it looks clean at least,” she said. “Won’t you see if there’s room for us?”

  Off to the left as he entered, he heard the noise of a busy taproom. To his right he saw a deserted dining room, while straight ahead a set of stairs rose to the second floor. Felicia was right: The place was spotlessly clean, though he did not know how she’d been able to tell in the dark.

  He glanced down at himself. His linen was awry, his coat wrinkled, and his boots none too clean — hardly an appearance likely to impress an innkeeper ready to turn questionable persons from his door. Blaic passed his hand over his sleeve, feeling the rough homespun change into a good broadcloth, and gave his boots a flick with the linen handkerchief that materialized between his fingers. A brief tug at his unruly hair and he saw reflected in the arriving innkeeper’s eyes the prospect of a bourgeois gentleman.

  “Good evening, sir,” the man said, rubbing his hands together as he bowed. “What may I have the pleasure of doing for you?”

  Sometime later, Felicia sighed with sated delight as Blaic poked up the flames in the stone fireplace in the dining room. “I was hungrier than I thought.”

  “So I see. I hope you found everything to your taste, Mrs. Gardner.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Gardner. I did.” She had an unexpected dimple by the corner of her mouth when she was being mischievous. It had been all Blaic could do to keep from staring at it when it had made its first advent. He’d thought he knew her well, yet she could still surprise him.

  He sat down across from her as the landlord removed the used plates and tablecloth. From the man’s obsequious bowing and eagerness to serve, Blaic surmised that they were the most genteel couple he’d attended in some time. Certainly Felicia must have been the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  “I like you in blue,” Blaic said in an intimate tone as the man set comfits and cream cakes upon the table. He’d already apologized for there not being a greater variety.

  Felicia looked at him through her lashes, a feminine trick he’d not seen her use before. “I had a gown exactly like this in green once but you, it seems, did not care for it.”

  He’d admired her aplomb once again when she’d taken off her cloak and found herself in a dress of sky-blue silk even though she’d dressed herself that day in one of green. She’d sent him a half-amused, half-chiding glance which gave him to understand that she suddenly realized why he’d brushed her skirt off as she’d emerged from the gig. Her fichu was now of rich point lace rather than simple muslin. When she’d noticed, she’d run her fingers over it, and Blaic had found it suddenly difficult to breathe. He remembered clearly the form beneath the concealing lace and how smooth and cool her breasts had been under his touch.

  Before the landlord had the chance to study her, Blaic had brushed his hand over her hair. She did not know that she now wore an elegant hairstyle, complete with matching ribbons catching back the fullness at the crown. It flattered her native dignity without making her seem the least cold.

  The landlord said, “Your boxes have been carried to your room, ma’am.”

  “Thank you kindly. Everything has been most charming.” She brushed sugar from her fingers and rose from the table.

  Blaic said, standing to honor her, “I’ll come up in a few minutes to bid you good night, my dear.”

  In the doorway, she swept him an elegant curtsy, surprising him yet again. He supposed she must have been taught all the ladylike arts, yet she herself was so natural and easy in manner that it was sometimes difficult to remember that she was the daughter of a minor nobleman. Where was her pride, her arrogance, her liking for pomp? Blaic wished he might have met her father to know what kind of man had produced such a character.

  He drank a glass of port the landlord found. Studying the ruby depths, he decided that this was one mortal thing that the Living Lands could use. They had wine and mead but had not yet brought port into existence. It had a pleasantly warming effect, and seemed to impart a balance to the digestion. But he knew it wasn’t the port or the meal that made him so contented; it was the knowledge that in a few minutes he’d be holding Felicia in his arms once more.

  The inn was not full. Two rooms had been easy to arrange. A tale about a thrown shoe that had made “the Gardners” late and servants gone on before to the house of a friend had assuaged the landlord’s doubts and, more important, the doubts of his wife. Blaic had seen how that redoubtable woman had instantly noted Felicia’s lack of a wedding ring.

  As he stood up from the table, he wondered what Felicia had told her to change her from a potential difficulty into an ally.

  A moment later, he stood outside the door, hearing Felicia bid him enter. The landlord’s wife picked up Felicia’s shoes. “I’ll have ‘em back afore you can say ‘Jack Robinson,’ ma’am. G’night. G’night, sir.”

  Felicia’s blue silk dress lay over an armchair and she had changed into a lace peignoir. Blaic grinned as he wondered what she had thought of her new wardrobe. He thought too well of her to believe she’d given the game away by any unseemly starts or exclamations. She must have realized he had taken the opportunity to touch her baggage as well as her gown.

  Yet it was on none of these subjects that she approached him first. “‘Gardner’?”

  “It was Mary’s idea. She thought I should be provided with more of an identity than I had troubled myself with before. I like it.”

  “So do I. It suits you. ‘Blaic Gardner....’ Yes, it suits you.”

  “It suits you, too. ‘Mrs. Felicia Gardner.’ Yes, charming. FSG makes an elegant monogram.... Shall I embroider it for you?” He touched the back of the wooden brush in her hand and there the letters suddenly appeared, cut in elegant scrollwork.

  She looked at it, and some of the gaiety went out of her expression. Only when it was gone did Blaic realize how forced it had been. “No,” she said softly. “Don’t trouble.”

  He smoothed his finger over the mirror. The varnished finish returned, brilliantly shiny and unmarred even by a finger mark. Desperate to return to a merrier footing, he said, “There, you see how handy I am to have around?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, the smile returning. “Indispensable, in fact.”

  Blaic decided that he did not like that particular smile.

  It was too hard, too bright, and altoget
her too wide. It seemed to bar him from coming too close to her. He wondered if she’d rather he go.

  “I’ll leave you to take some rest,” he said. “We may drive a long way yet.”

  “Why don’t you just waft us there as you did this morning?”

  “I would, and gladly, but I don’t know where you want to go.”

  She dropped the brush, letting her head fall into her hands. “Neither do I!”

  He went on his knees to her, appalled at the sight of her tears. “Felicia,” he said, slipping his arms around her. “Please, don’t. It....”

  She turned her face away from him, a trembling hand going up to wipe away some moisture. “Never mind. I’m just tired.”

  But Blaic was taken up with a startling notion. “Why do your tears make my heart hurt this way? Look at me.” She obliged. “Yes. The sight of tears in your eyes fills me with the strangest feeling.” He pressed his hand to his chest and breathed in deeply, but with a catch. “Most strange. Don’t cry anymore. I can’t bear it.”

  “I’m sorry.” She put her hands together as though in prayer and then, with palms still pressed together, used her fingertips to flick away the tears. “I shan’t cry again. It’s only that I felt so hopeless for a moment.”

  “You need never feel hopeless so long as I am with you. I will do anything for you.”

  “Find a way for me to go home. Find a way to care for those poor children and I will love you for the rest of my life.”

  Blaic froze, staring up into her face. She didn’t mean it; of course not. This was just a mortal’s overwrought way of pledging gratitude. “Felicia....”

  “Stay with me,” she said, looking full into his eyes.

  “I should not....”

  She leaned down, infinitely tender, and kissed him with warm, soft lips. The taste of her reminded him of how soft other parts of her were. He rose, so that he was standing on his knees. Then he stood up the rest of the way, lifting her from the chair.

  He said her name again, differently. All of her body was against his and every line of it said she belonged to him alone. Blaic felt a surge of possessiveness that was nearly mortal in strength. He fought it for a moment, then gave in.