“Barren Fort is a very ancient ruin. They are fond of such places. Some of them were built with our help, many thousands of years ago before King Boadach became so stern about enforcing the law against contact with mortals.”
“You’ve never spoken to me much about this before, Blaic. Why not?”
The leaf green eyes of the singularly handsome older man turned in search of his beautiful wife. “I have not wished to remember. Even the near-paradise of the Living Lands pales beside my mortal life with Felicia and Morgain.” He looked a( Clarice. “Lately, however, I have been revisiting Mag Mell in my dreams. It troubles me. And now this . . . appearance . ..”
Clarice patted her brother-in-law’s folded hands. “It’s nothing, Blaic. I had an odd experience perhaps, but it isn’t the first time strange things have happened to me on the moor. No doubt the explanation is perfectly reasonable. You and Felicia shall go to London tomorrow with a clear conscience.
“Besides,” she added on a laugh, “I’d match my darling nephew against any magical creature from the depths of Mag Mell, or from the Book of Revelations for that matter. Morgain’s a dragon, a gryphon, and a six-headed hydra all by himself. A pity he’s not old enough for war. Wellington could use a weapon like Morgain. Napoleon would resign in an instant and be thankful for the opportunity.”
Blaic could always be distracted by talk of his son. Just when Clarice believed she’d changed the subject successfully, Blaic came back to Mag Mell. “There is one way to tell whether someone is of the People or not.” He paused impressively, an effect ruined by Clarice’s impatient, “Well?”
“If you touch one, they are obliged to obey you in your next request, no matter what it may be.”
Clarice nodded, giving Blaic the compliment of taking what he said in the same spirit in which he spoke. “I shall make it a point to touch every stranger I meet.”
Soon, the fall of evening put an end to the festivities. The guests would have a full moon to light their various ways home. Melissa and her husband would spend their first night of married life in the little cottage allotted to him as curate. However, their bridal month would be spent in Bath, where Mr. Henry’s invalid mother and two sisters lived.
Melissa gave her dear friend a warm hug and handed her the tightly gathered nosegay of pink roses that she’d carried that day. “I want you to have this,” she said, her brown eyes sparkling with unshed tears. “You have been the truest, dearest.. ..” She swallowed with a noticeable gulp. “I never minded not having a family after I came here. Hamdry has been the nearest thing to a home that I. . . .”
“You’ll make your own home now,” Clarice said bracingly, though her throat was tight.
Melissa nodded. “I love him so much!”
“Then go to him. Be happy.”
After the manor had settled down for the night, Clarice softly put the bedclothes aside. In her white nightdress, she knelt on the padded window seat in her room. She reached out to open the casement, letting the warm summer air perfume her chamber. Remembering how her former nurse would have died of horror at the risk of illness she was running, Clarice opened it a little wider.
She couldn’t help thinking of Melissa, who was perhaps at this moment learning the deepest mysteries of married life. And from Mr. Henry! Though she’d never said anything of her feelings to Melissa, Clarice could not for the life of her understand what her friend saw in her new husband. He was, no doubt, very well in his way. But where were the depths that a woman could explore for life? Where was the spice of a clever mind, the challenge of taming a stronger will, the fascination of two completely dissimilar sexes finding a common ground on which to stand against the world?
Felicia and Blaic had these things. Clarice had seen their love grow from day to day, sometimes set back by adversity, sometimes by doubts. Always, however, they’d become stronger because of the struggle. Though when they’d met she herself had been under a spell-compelled to remain mentally a child despite the growth of her body—she knew that Felicia and Blaic had both desired and battled from the first only to reach a safe haven at the end. But with Melissa and Mr. Henry, falling in love had been about as arduous as sleeping on a new feather bed.
Clarice worried that without these necessary “growing pangs” Melissa and Mr. Henry’s first quarrel would seem entirely out of proportion to the cause. She vowed that she would never marry a man who did not argue with her. Then she laughed at herself. Could she tolerate having her decisions questioned when she’d been sole mistress at Hamdry for so long?
The door behind her creaked in warning, a good reason for her always having refused to have it fixed. Just for an instant, Clarice felt convinced that the man from Barren Fort stood behind her, perhaps even reached out to her. The feeling was so strong that it was like having a wave break over her. She did not dare to turn her head, though she despised herself for a coward.
A whispered “Clarice?” reassured her.
“Is something wrong, Felicia?” she asked.
“I was worried so I came to look in on you,” Felicia said. “You should be in bed.”
“I couldn’t sleep. Too much wedding cake, I think.”
“You’ll catch your death sitting there like that. At least wrap up.” Her sister pulled the neatly folded cashmere shawl off the end of the bed. ‘Tuck this around you. What are you thinking about, sitting there like an owl in an oak tree?”
“I was thinking about marrying, actually.”
“Indeed? Anyone I know?”
“Marriage in general, I mean. How do you know when someone is right for you?”
“You’re thinking about Mr. Henry. Well, he wouldn’t have done for me and he certainly wouldn’t have done for you. but he’s the precisely right man for Melissa Bainbridge.”
“Melissa’s a dear girl.”
“Very amiable. Now that she’s not so bitter against life, she’s a very amiable girl indeed. When I think how she snarled when I first met her at Tallyford Orphanage!” Felicia raised her eyes heavenward. “But no one could be more steadying and gently affectionate than Mr. Henry. That is what she needs and I, for one, am delighted that they found each other.”
“But she seems to think of him as Apollo, Hercules, and Adonis all in one. He is not.”
“Not to your eyes, perhaps. To each his own, my dear.”
Felicia leaned closer to her half sister. In the moonlight, Clarice looked older than her twenty-six years, the lack of color emphasizing the slightly dark marks beneath her eyes and a tiny drawing in of a smooth cheek. These signs of weariness were not noticeable by day. All one saw then was the laughing beauty that was so startlingly perfect.
It was no wonder that all the young men—and quite a few of the older ones—came flocking to admire the exquisite young viscountess. The one Season she’d spent in London had caused pandemonium. At least one earl had been infatuated, as well as any number of lesser men. Yet in the end, Clarice had come home, unmarried, unengaged, and uninterested in trying the experiment a second time. She’d settled down with her friend and her old family retainers with every sign of contentment. But it was not contentment Felicia saw on that glorious countenance now.
“You are lonely, aren’t you? Surely there must be someone you have considered marrying?”
Clarice switched her braided hair back and forth as she shook her head. Then she smiled impishly. “Melissa only left today. Give us a small respite before we have another wedding.”
She looked into Felicia’s eyes and seemed, for once, to be serious. “I am not afraid to be alone. In many ways, I have always been alone. If not for you coming to live here when I was a child, I should have died of loneliness. But I didn’t. And I shan’t die from it now either. Someday, if I wish it, I will search for a new companion.”
“But not now?”
Somewhat absently, looking once more out the window, she answered, “No, not now. Let me. . . .” She caught her breath on a note of alarm.
“What is it?
” Felicia asked, half-rising from the bed where she’d seated herself.
“Nothing.... I thought I saw a man.”
“A man?” She came to the window seal to peer over Clarice’s shoulder into the darkness beyond the open window. “Where? I don’t see anyone.”
“No... neither do I—now. It must have been a shadow. ..”
“I shall rouse the servants,” Felicia said, heading toward the door.
“No! There’s no need to wake them because their mistress hasn’t enough sense to go to bed and instead sits dreaming of things that never were. You can hardly blame me if I see one lurking in the garden.”
“Things that never were . . .” Felicia repeated.
“I’m only tired,” Clarice said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve been in a strange mood ever since Melissa came to tell me she’d accepted Mr. Henry. I think I am just lazy and am blue-deviled because now I have all the difficulty of picking out another congenial companion. Don’t you have some respectable widow among all your good works to fill this vacancy?”
“Yes, I do.” Felicia’s thoughts were busy with the lists of young bachelors that every woman has in her head. Kept, if not for herself, on the thrifty notion of “waste not, want not” for others. She decided that one of the objects of her trip to London would be adding significant numbers of young men to that list. Somewhere lived a man for Clarice—Felicia intended to find him if she had to track him through the Trossachs in the depths of a January blizzard. Anything to banish the darkness at the back of the dear girl’s eyes.
After Felicia returned to her sleeping husband, Clarice leaned her head on her hand and looked out the window. What dreams she’d entertained here as a young girl! Dreams of a dashing hero who’d dare anything for love! Her Season in London had taught her that there were no such men in these degenerate days. Plenty existed if she wished to be squired sedately around the park or escorted to choose a fashionable gown, but where were the bold knights and daring cavaliers of old?
Though it had never been said, Clarice knew that at nearly twenty-seven she was “on the shelf.” Men preferred younger girls, fresh from the schoolroom, who could be molded and shaped into wives. Most women her age were already the proud mothers of hopeful families.
She leaned forward to close the window. “I think I shall buy a pug dog and raise roses,” she said with a tiny, rueful laugh. “Better that than to settle for less than my dreams.”
Some movement caught her eye. She paused, peering down like a princess in a tower. There was someone down there—moving slowly from shadow to shadow as though he did not wish to be seen. He was not moving toward the house, but away. It was hard to see through the distorting glass and the ethereal moonlight but Clarice felt certain she saw the trailing end of a cloak.
She sat up for a long time watching, even after she heard the sound of a horse’s hooves traveling away.
Chapter Two
“Zee now, Jem. It’s as I zaid it would be. High jinks, zame as any boy’d be.”
“It’s very good of you to look at it in that light, Mrs. Yeo,” Clarice said. “I know my nephew didn’t mean any harm.”
“An' no harm was done. It was ever so good of you to come yerself, my laidy. Git up, Jem, do, an’ zee her laidyship to the door. Ain’t you niver laamed no manners?”
“Jem,” who hadn’t been permitted to speak two words by his good lady, rose to his feet from his seat by the cold fireplace. He towered over his round, pink-cheeked wife, yet it was plain who ran the roost. Mrs. Yeo stayed behind, waving a white dishcloth in farewell as her husband walked Clarice to the gate.
Clarice said, “I do hope the trees took no harm?”
“Nay. T’boy did not eat too many of the apples. Green ‘uns ...” He made a gesture in the direction of his third waistcoat button. His wife had obviously hurried him into his Sunday clothes as soon as the viscountess had appeared.
“I’m afraid he did. If it’s any consolation, he’s lying down upon his bed at this moment feeling as though he had three cats fighting inside him.”
“Poor lad. Laarn him a lesson, though.”
“That it has.” Mr. Yeo assisted her in mounting her cream-colored mare, Bess. “Good day, Mr. Yeo.”
“Yer laidyship.”
She rode away with a ladylike salute. If Morgain’s escapade of the morning had not left him with a stomachache, she would have brought him along to make his own apologies to the Yeos. As it was, she would have to explain that one did not take advantage of one’s tenants. From a legal standpoint, the apples in Mr. Yeo’s orchard belonged to her, as the owner of the property, and, if she so chose, her rights could be extended to her nephew. But the labor, and the love, were Mr. Yeo’s own.
The summer afternoon was almost too warm for exercise. Clarice adjusted the brim of her hat to allow more of a breeze to caress her face. If not for the movement of Bess, there would be no air stirring at all. Between the hedgerows, all was still as a painting, though the birds were merry among the branches. Above her, the sky was cloudless, looking like the merest wash of blue on some maiden lady’s watercolor.
She was growing steadily warmer. Loosening the frogs across the throat of her riding dress did little to relieve her. She wished she’d called out the carriage this morning, for then she would have worn a lighter dress, but she had been afraid that too much pomp would alarm the Yeos unnecessarily. Besides, both she and Bess needed the exercise. Perhaps a gallop, once they emerged from this narrow track bounded by the hedges?
As if in answer to her thought, she heard the pounding of hooves coming up fast behind her.
Though it had been more than a week since Melissa’s wedding, the odd events of that day and evening had not faded in Clarice’s memory. Every night found her still at her window, though she saw nothing.
The moment she heard the hooves she knew that the rider from Barren Fort had found her. Half-panicked already, she glanced desperately about for someplace to hide. But there was only the narrow road and the impenetrable hedges.
When the rider appeared, coming at a full gallop, Clarice felt true fear for the first time in her life. She’d always prided herself on her courage yet now knew she’d never been tried. Frozen, she could only stare back over her shoulder, waiting for the black horse to overtake her. Her chest felt heavy and tight, as if her lungs had shrunk, leaving her nothing to breathe with.
Then Bess whinnied, not the friendly call of one horse to another but at a higher pitch. Without waiting for the clap of a heel to her side, she leapt forward.
Clarice, taken by surprise, nearly tumbled off. Then she tightened her hands and leaned close to Bess’s neck. The lashing of the coarse mane helped to jolt her from her paralysis. She’d ridden almost before she could walk and had been in the stables the day Bess had entered the world, daughter of her own beloved Meg and Tom O’ Bedlam. When they rode together it felt as if they were one, a mythical being of horseflesh and human, and never more so than now with terror riding close behind.
She glanced back through the dust they’d raised and saw the black rider like a hunting shadow among the white clouds. He was close, and coming closer yet. She found herself panting, the tightness in her chest increasing, as though she were being laced much too tightly in her stays.
“Come up!” she gasped to Bess, “Come up, my own, my dear, my love.”
The long legs flashed out in a yet more furious rhythm. Exhilaration drove out fear in Clarice’s heart. They’d never touched this speed before. There’d never been the need.
Then Bess swerved, heading toward Daly’s three-bar gate. Clarice shut her eyes and prayed. She felt the mare’s muscles beneath her gather for the spring.
Bess took the gate as though she’d sprouted invisible wings. There came a long, floating moment in which time seemed to stop, held forever between one breath and the next.
Then the mare landed, neat as a cat, with an impact that Clarice felt from the base of her spine to the top of her head. All would h
ave been well had Clarice been riding astride as she sometimes did while alone. Even a hunting sidesaddle would have been safer than the plain one the mare had been fitted with that morning. But the grooms had not guessed that their mistress might take a fence in the course of a simple morning’s ride.
Her foot came free of the single stirrup. There was nothing to keep her from falling to her death hut her other leg around the pommel and the grip of her hands on the reins. Neither one felt adequate, especially since Bess’s pace had not slackened. But the mare was tiring. Her sides heaved, while her neck had a froth of sweat upon it.
Clarice looked back and saw nothing and no one. She sighed in relief and noticed that the terrible constriction around her chest had eased. She felt rather disgusted with herself for having lost her head so completely. At the same time, however, she found herself amazingly relieved to see no bay horse behind her.
When she finally returned to Hamdry, the head groom himself was standing in the courtyard of the stables, polishing the sides of his pipe with a bit of cloth. Mr. Drake’s idly curious eyes sharpened when he saw the state of his mistress and her horse.
“Did she run away with you?” he asked, hurrying up. He whistled for his sons to come as he reached up to Clarice. She was all too grateful to fall into his arms and be swung down to the ground. She had to clutch the spry man’s arm to keep from falling.
“Clem! Fetch her ladyship a chair.”
She forced a laugh. “No, I’m well. I don’t need it. Whew!” She tried to blow a lock of hair out of her eyes but it was damp with sweat and would not move. “Extra treats for her tonight, Mr. Drake, She deserves it.”
“For running off with you? I’ve zaid it afore, ma’am, and I’ll zay it again ...”
She said the words with him, “You must always take a boy with thee ...”
“There’s no use in scoffing at me, my lady. Yer own father would have no different opinion.”
Magic by Daylight Page 2
