by Lisa Cach
To his consternation, tears pooled in her eyes and overflowed down her cheeks. “What have I said?” he asked.
She sniffed once, pressing the back of her hand against her nose, and gave a wet laugh. “You are the first person, outside my family, who has treated me like a completely normal human being—and this when you know the strangest part of me. I am so happy.” She collapsed into sobs.
He did not know of any man who would not rather suffer a gunshot wound than be alone in a room with a weeping female. He lifted Valerian onto his lap and put his arms around her, stroking her hair and saying nothing. Thank God for sisters. Margaret, his junior by two years, had once viciously punched him in the shoulder in the midst of one of her weeping fits. “Stupid man! When a woman cries, she wants a warm chest against which to do so. Stop offering me brandy!”
As Valerian soothed herself against his chest, his thoughts roamed to less mysterious matters than healing hands and the workings of the female mind. He caressed her hip and thigh, pressing his face into her hair to inhale the scent of her. He worked her skirt up her leg until he reached the bare skin above her garter, and felt himself go hard at the smooth softness of her flesh under his fingertips.
He hardly noticed as Valerian’s sobs dried up. “Nathaniel, what are you doing?”
“Hmm?” He shifted her position on his lap, and slid his hand up to the juncture of her thighs, lightly brushing the damp curls of her womanhood.
“Ohh,” she sighed, as he found the nub of her desire, and gently teased it with the tips of his fingers, then cupped the whole of her mons within the palm of his hand, pressing in gentle circles.
“Why did you leave my bed last night?” he whispered into her ear, following the words with a tracing of his tongue.
“You fell asleep,” she said, and arched her head back onto his shoulder.
He slid one finger deeply within her, pressing in light circles against the roof of the slick passage. “You could have woken me. You deserved more attention, especially for your first time. I want memories of pleasure in your mind: Memories strong enough to lure you back to my bed every night.”
The thump and creak of footsteps overhead reminded them both of where they were. Valerian stiffened, then pushed his hand away. She scrambled off his lap, pulling down her skirt.
“You will come to me tonight?” he asked, standing up and stroking the hair away from her face, trying to ignore the throbbing desire in his loins. He wanted her more than he had last night.
“I do not know. If I can.” She cast a nervous glance at the stairway.
“Or perhaps I should take you home with me right now. For your own protection, of course.” He bent and kissed the side of her neck, tracing his lips down to her collar bone. He could not resist bringing up one hand to caress her breast through the heavy material of her bodice.
“There will not be trouble now, not after what you ordered for Gwen,” she said.
“Say you will come tonight,” he murmured into her neck, feeling her pulse against his lips.
“If I can, I will.”
He captured her mouth with his own, his arms coming around her, pulling her against the hardness of his arousal. He squeezed her buttocks, then released her. “See that you can, and do.”
He bowed to her, then left. He was afraid if he stayed any longer, the thought of having her on top of Charmaine’s kitchen table might have started looking less and less inappropriate.
She might not be in league with the devil, but she had certainly bewitched him.
Chapter Fourteen
“Are you certain you do not want to accept Charmaine’s offer?” Valerian asked her aunt.
“Heavens, yes. Can you honestly see me living with her and Howard? We would all kill each other inside of a week. She knows that as well as I do.” Theresa sat in the chair by the fire, propping her feet up on a stool. “Would you make me a cup of tea, dear?”
“Of course. Would not you like something to eat? I have not seen you down a bite all day.”
“I had a bit of soup with Charmaine.”
“It is not enough.”
Theresa shrugged.
Valerian put down the mugs in her hands, exasperated. “I will not try to heal you, if that is the way you want it, but please do not hide things from me. Do not make me scrounge for hints to how you are faring. I will worry more in ignorance than I ever will in knowledge.”
Theresa sighed. “I know. It is the habit of a lifetime, and hard to break.”
“Well?”
“It hurts me more to eat than to go without. I do not seem able to digest anything.”
Valerian bit the inside of her lip to keep herself from showing concern that would only disturb her aunt. “Then we will have to make sure those liquids you do consume do you a bit of good.” She took out the hard cylinder that was what remained of their sugar, and with the tongs clipped off a chunk.
Theresa groaned. “You know I hate sugar in my tea.”
Valerian ignored her, and ground the sugar in the pestle, then dumped the lot into the analgesic tea she had steeping. “It should not upset your stomach, and your intestines will absorb it. You are wasting away as it is.”
“And I will not be around long enough for my teeth to rot from that cup of syrup you are about to force on me.”
“There is that.”
Theresa accepted the cup of tea with a sour expression that was not sweetened any by her first sip. “Is there someplace else you should be tonight?”
“Should be?”
“Want to be. Were invited to be. He sounded rather insistent. Or do you not want to go, and discover what pleasures await those who have abandoned their virtue?”
“Aunt Theresa!”
“Well?”
“You were eavesdropping!”
“I was looking out for your welfare. And if I had not, you would have skulked around here until I had gone to sleep, fretting over whether or not you could slip away.”
“Maybe I am not as eager as you to see me spend all my nights in his bed.”
“Why ever not?”
“I do have more on my mind than sex.”
“Which is as good a reason as any to indulge. It will be good for you, to be distracted from thoughts of me, and Charmaine, and that witless Gwen. There is nothing like the release of a good tussle in bed to relax a woman after being chased down the street by a murderous mob of witch hunters.”
Valerian stared at her aunt.
“You have got to have a sense of humor about these things, dear,” Theresa said. “He rescued you—riding in on his mighty steed, as it were, his henchman with sword at the ready, all quite dramatic and satisfying to the female vanity—and he made it quite clear that harming you was forbidden, punishable by all manner of unpleasantness. That is, after all, what we wanted: his protection. No harm done, in the end, and much gained.”
“I would we could have gained it without the attack on my forehead.”
“It will make an entertaining story for your grandchildren.”
“Do you think it is truly over then, any threat from Gwen or the town?”
“It may be. Or it may not. In any case, his lordship has made a public stand now, and is not likely to go back on it, for his pride if nothing else.”
“Then it does not matter if I do or do not return to his bed.”
“As if that were the reason you went in the first place! You are such a serious young woman, Valerian. Even when the opportunity for fun presents itself, you need to find a practical reason for taking it. I regret at times that I have not given you a more fashionable, light-hearted youth.”
“Aunt Theresa, do not. The life you led before—I know it would not have suited me. I love the forest and the sea, and being free to roam as I will. I would have been miserable in a city, going to balls and supper parties, wearing stays and satin slippers, leading a useless, ignorant life.”
“So you say. But you come from a long line of harlots. Perhaps you wo
uld enjoy such a life.”
“We have had this conversation a hundred times. Why do you keep on about it?”
“I worry, is all. I have faith in you, Valerian. You are a smart girl, and will land on your feet whatever happens. I would that you tasted more of life than what you have here in Cumbria, though. It is one thing to choose this life after experiencing another, as I did. But you need to know the world before you can make a decision of where you want to be in it. And you are going to have to make that decision when I am gone.”
Valerian came and sat opposite her aunt. “I have been avoiding thinking about it, what I will do after.” She swallowed back the rising emotion, willing her voice to be steady. “Even the thought of it leaves me feeling lost. My anchor will be gone, and I will drift.”
Theresa took her hand. “I know it feels that way. But sooner or later the currents or the wind will take you to shore, even if you have not yet found your rudder. You find yourself living, whether you wish to or not.”
“Could you perhaps give me a look into what will happen?”
Her aunt took a long minute to consider, then shrugged her shoulders. “Hell, why not? At least if you know you will be miserable, it will not be such an unhappy surprise when it happens,” she said, grinning. “And maybe you will see that you will be happy again, too. Fetch a pan of water. I think this calls for a scrying.”
Valerian hurried to do as Theresa bid. Her aunt only rarely did a scrying, and the results were always much more vivid and precise than when she relied on the canvas of her closed eyes alone. Theresa had once admitted that it was perhaps for reason of that accuracy that she avoided it. Sometimes she preferred not to know what was to come.
Valerian extinguished the two rushlights and set the shallow pan of water on the stool in front of Theresa. The only light came from the small fire on the hearth, just enough to turn the smooth surface of the water reflective.
Valerian sat cross-legged on the floor. Oscar hopped down from his perch on the mantel and found his favorite place on Valerian’s shoulder, curious to see what the women watched.
They all three sat silent, eyes on the silvered water. Valerian heard the crackle of the fire and the rain start up on the roof. Oscar shifted, rustling his feathers with a sound like rushes in the breeze. Valerian focused her attention on her own breathing, listening to it come in through her nose, out through her mouth. She lengthened each breath, as Theresa had taught her to do, holding it briefly at the end of each in—or exhalation. She never had the visions of the future that Theresa did, but she did see the chimerical visions that haunted that state between sleep and wakefulness, projected upon the mirrored surface of the water.
Colors swirled before her eyes, and then from their midst appeared a strange badger-like creature, which began eating linen sheets left out to dry. Before Valerian could discover just where this peculiar vision would lead, Theresa spoke, describing what she herself could see. Valerian let Theresa’s words guide her own vision, and in the pan of water she pictured the images Theresa described.
“Water. Darkness. The wavering light thrown by flames. You are in the water, wet. Your hair spreading. The baron is there.” Theresa fell silent, and Valerian waited, watching the image of herself and Nathaniel, her own imagination continuing in the scene, Nathaniel leading her naked out of the water, caressing her wet skin, her own hands skimming over the planes of his back . . .
“Candlelight. Crystal,” Theresa said, and the amorous scene was replaced by the images given by her aunt. “Many people. Silks and satins, bright colors, music. I can see no faces. A man approaches. His face, I do see. Blue eyes. He is an older man.” There was a long silence, and then, “He looks almost like—”
Theresa’s foot jerked, kicking the stool where the pan sat. The images rippled violently, fractured. Valerian surfaced from her trance, and saw that Aunt Theresa had done the same. “Who was it?”
Theresa rubbed her eyes. “I am not certain. For a moment I thought . . . but no, it could not have been.”
“Why were you startled so?”
Theresa stared into the darkness for a long moment, as if still caught in her vision, then abruptly came back to the present. “Never mind. No use chasing after phantoms. It is nothing to do with your future, in any case.”
Valerian wisely chose to drop the subject. For whatever reason, Aunt Theresa apparently did not want to talk about it. It was not unusual for faces or occurrences from the past to pop up during a scrying. Not every image was a portent for the future, not even for a talented seer like Aunt Theresa.
“And the image of me in the water, what did that mean?”
“You would know better than I. Not a particularly useful scrying, I am afraid.”
Valerian shrugged, her cheeks slightly pink at the meaning she herself had given to the scene in the water. “At least it gives me something to wonder about.”
A gust of wind blew rain against the windows, and the flames on the hearth danced in a down draught. “It does not look like much of a night for a walk in the woods,” Theresa said.
Valerian shivered. “No. Much as I would like to see Nathaniel tonight, I am not at all certain I have the energy.” That was a portion of the truth. She was exhausted, yes, but she was also aware of the vulnerability Aunt Theresa was showing. Just hints of it, like her upset over the face in her vision, but even that much was unusual. She felt her aunt would prefer to have her close by tonight, even if she never said so outright. “Besides, I would not want him to start taking me for granted, would I?”
“For a woman with no experience, you are certainly quick to catch on to the games men and women play.”
“What can I say? I come from a long line of harlots.”
Chapter Fifteen
Eddie gave the new hinges and hasp on the stocks a final polish with his rag and stood back to admire his work in the dawn light. The twittering birds in the shadowed trees had kept him company as he worked through the early morning, tearing out the old metalwork by the light of the lantern that now sat extinguished at his feet.
He understood that repairing the stocks was a punishment for his own foolishness, and the care he took in his work was a reflection of how richly he felt he deserved the task. It was his own cock that had bewitched him, and the scent of Gwen, not witches or owls. He could see that now. The baron was an educated man, and he trusted that Valerian was nothing but an herbalist and midwife. His lordship probably thought him the dimmest of the dimwitted to have made such claims against her.
Eddie flushed, thinking of the fool he had been these past weeks. It was as if the moment a woman came by, his brain gave over all control to his crotch.
A heavy hand grasped his shoulder, and he turned to look at his father. Eddie watched as the man ran his assessing eyes over his work, then nodded in approval, giving his shoulder a brief squeeze. His father had not once reproached him for his part in this mess, for which Eddie was eternally grateful. He felt a mixture of love and shame well up inside at his father’s calm acceptance of his errors and penance.
He would not fail his father so again. Until he was ready to marry, he would keep a dozen paces between himself and any woman. And as for Gwen—well, she could practice her wiles on some other cock-headed fool. He did not need one such as her controlling his life.
The sun rose above the horizon, accompanied by the beat of a rawhide drum. A procession came around the corner, led in its stately pace by Randolph Miller, Gwen’s ten-year-old brother. His freckled face was grinning, his head bobbing with each beat of the drum that hung from a strap around his neck.
Several paces behind Randolph marched Gwen, eyes red-rimmed and glaring, and behind her her father and mother, looking stiff-necked and more ashamed than their daughter. Baron Ravenall and Paul Carlyle took up the rear, mounted on their fine horses, faces somber.
The drum slowly drew the villagers from their houses and shops, as if they had not been waiting behind the shutters since the crack of dawn for
this very sight. The solemnity of the procession was mimicked by the villagers, although one attuned to the moods of the town could sense the pulse of their excitement underneath. Whether Gwen deserved the stocks or not, ’twould make for an entertaining day.
The procession drew to a halt, and the baron rode forward to address Gwen in tones that carried to the gathered crowd.
“Gwendolyn Miller, for the crimes of assaulting an innocent woman, accusing her of witchcraft, and inciting a riot in this peaceful town, you are sentenced to one day in the stocks. Do you accept your sentence and understand the reasons for it?”
Gwen pursed her lips in distaste, but after a glance at the angry eyes of her father responded. “Yes, my lord.”
The baron nodded, then turned his attention to Eddie. “Edward O’Connor, open the stocks.”
Eddie did as directed, and he helped Gwen to lay her neck and wrists into the depressions of the wood, touching her as little as possible, lifting her braid to the side with the tips of two fingers, as if the braid were a snake of the lowest order. He closed the stocks, careful not to pinch her skin where the wood met, then secured the end with a pin.
“She may be released for five minutes at noon, to attend to necessities,” the baron declared, to a general sigh of approval. It took Eddie a moment to realize that without that gesture of mercy, Gwen might have had to wet herself as she stood there. “She shall then be returned to the stocks until sundown, at which time her parents may release her.”
