"Do I listen so poorly, my Lady?"
"Sometimes," Angelique admitted, refusing to extend a false reassurance even though her heart so much wanted to. "Sometimes you only hear the part that reinforces what you are so certain is true, and nothing else. I need you to listen to everything, Drew. To really listen."
"I will do my best. You have my promise on that."
"And you will stay? No matter what?" Angelique pressed.
"You have my word, Angelique."
"I want more than your word, Drew. I want you."
"I am here. Say what you have to say."
Angelique sighed. Already Drew was not listening. Angelique stepped forward, offering her hands. Drew grasped them obediently, and Angelique pulled them close to her breast, holding them tightly in defiance of escape. She glanced down at the black leather gloves. "I thought we were done with these. Why have you put them on again?"
Drew hesitated. "I dare not risk —"
"What?" Angelique challenged softly, her eyes searching the dark void. "The feelings that you awaken in me when your hands touch my skin? The feelings the touch awakens in you? Simply because ignorant people believe that one woman should not touch another woman in love?"
Drew started and began to pull away, but Angelique held tight to her hands. "No. Listen to me, Drew. You promised to listen to me. I know you are a woman. I saw you ride in with the children this morning. I know your skin has a pallor that cries out for the kiss of the sun and a softness that cries for a woman's touch. I’ve seen your hair lift in the breeze. Why do you hide it under that terrible cloak? I know the shape of you now, Drew. The curves the cloak hides. I know you are a woman, Drew. But what I don't know is why I should fear you. Where is this abomination you spoke of? I saw nothing but a beautiful woman too long denied everything."
Drew pulled away sharply. Turning her back, she reached up to cover her face with her hands. Angelique moved swiftly toward her, but stopped short of embracing that taut figure from behind. "Drew," Angelique whispered. "You are beautiful. There is nothing horrible about you. Please, don’t deny me any longer."
There was no answer. There was no movement. Slowly, Drew lifted the cloak from her head and let it fall to the ground. She pulled the gloves off unhurriedly. Like shadows melting with the rising sun or smoke blown from a fire, the cloak and gloves disappeared.
The breath caught in Angelique's throat as the taller woman turned. The darkest sable-hued eyes she'd ever seen stared at her, so full of fear that Angelique felt her heart would burst. She longed to smooth the knotted brow, ease away the years of self-hatred and doubt. Moving closer, she raised a tentative hand and brushed a tendril of ebony hair aside, letting her fingers linger on its silky softness. Her fingers slipped beneath its satin weight to cup the nape of Drew's neck. Tugging gently, she pulled Drew’s mouth toward hers.
"This is wrong," Drew protested fearfully. "This will damn you to hell."
"No," Angelique murmured. "It was your stepmother who was sent to hell for her hatred and greed. You are not damned, beloved. And neither am I."
Angelique kissed her, pressing her lips softly and tenderly against Drew’s. The other woman did not respond at first, but Angelique persisted until she felt Drew begin to relax into the kiss. A flood of desire opened within her and she pressed against Drew, remembering a thousand casual and not so casual touches, the feeling of Drew's fingertips on her skin, the tender mouth against her shoulder. She pulled back reluctantly as Drew broke the kiss to find tears streaming down Drew's face.
"I hope those are tears of happiness," Angelique said softly as her hands cradled the warm, wet cheeks.
But a sob caught in Drew's throat, and she pulled away. Helplessly, Drew shook her head. "I can't. Not with you."
"Only with me," Angelique corrected swiftly.
"No —"
"— but you love me!" Angelique protested. "I know you do!"
"Because I do...."
Drawing a short breath, Angelique bit her tongue hard to stop the retort. She thought for a long moment, waiting while Drew gathered herself together. "Does it make any difference that I love you, too?"
"You cannot."
Angelique glared at her, warning, "Don't tell me who I can or cannot love, Drew. I am the mistress of my own heart and I have given it to you."
Panic flashed across Drew's face. "Please," she said. "Don’t. You will only be disappointed."
Angelique shook her head. "I will not be disappointed in you, beloved. But I understand. I cannot expect one kiss to erase lifetimes of pain. It is unreasonable of me to expect you to forget all those empty years in one instant. But I am patient, Drew. And you will not be rid of me so easily. In fact," she added, "try as you might, you cannot get rid of me at all. You said this is my home, Drew. And I intend to hold you to your word."
Drew said nothing and her face was a careful blank. But Angelique was not dissuaded. "Now," she said lightly, "sit down and have your tea."
Chapter 14
A bird sang somewhere, and Angelique stirred, sighing blissfully at the warm sun on her face. A light touch brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. She turned her cheek into the soft fabric, half asleep in Drew's lap.
"We should be thinking of going," Drew sighed, but there was no real urgency in her voice.
Angelique opened her eyes and stared up into the cautious, yet hopeful, face of her companion. As their eyes met, Angelique felt desire rise within her and felt, as though it were a tangible thing, the same feelings spark in Drew. Drew leaned over Angelique, kissed her gently, and then pulled away reluctantly. She still feared where giving herself permission to touch Angelique would lead them. "Perhaps this was not such a good idea after all," Drew managed, swallowing hard against the hoarseness of her voice.
"Yes, it was and you know it. You needed the time away from your star charts and calendars."
"The work is necessary —"
"But one cannot work all the time, my Liege."
Drew looked off to the horizon of sun and mountains and the tension slowly eased in her body.
"What are you thinking?" Angelique asked.
The question drew a chuckled from the other.
"Tell me, please?"
"I was thinking that you are right," Drew allowed, glancing down at her. "This was a good idea. It has been a good day for me, despite myself and all my initial reservations."
"A good day for us," Angelique corrected, lifting Drew's hand to weave their fingers together.
"For us." Drew looked upwards again, her eyes following the lines and contours of the valley around them. "There is so much here I have always taken for granted. I believe you may have begun to show me how precious this place can really be."
"Everyone should know the feeling of a true home," Angelique murmured, but her voice trailed off as she remembered the letter she'd received last evening.
"What is it, Angelique?"
For a moment Angelique was silent, then said, "It is my mother. Thinking of how much this place has become home to me reminded me that Aloysius' house has never truly been a home for her. And now she seems worse."
"Did the letter say that?"
Angelique shook her head. "Not so boldly, but it was very short for Mama. She has so little to do save dictate these letters, yet it was merely a note. That worries me."
Drew sighed. "I wish I could bring her here for you. I wish she was strong enough for the journey."
"I know she is not," Angelique admitted. "If I simply sat beside her and moved quickly, the pain she felt was excruciating. She would never survive a carriage ride."
"And my magick cannot summon her unless she already belongs to this place. That limit is part of the spell that binds me here," her companion noted.
"I know," Angelique whispered, sitting up and wrapping her arms around Drew's shoulders. "She cannot whisk here and back as Culdun and the caravans do."
"Sometimes I think my stepmother must have feared me more than I knew."
"Feared that you would pull her into this limbo with you?" Angelique let her arms fall and she took Drew's hands in her own.
"Not her, perhaps. Her daughter."
"Did you want to? Did you try?"
Drew shook her head. "She would have had to come here freely. For a long time I hoped that she would somehow choose to. But time passed and I grew wiser. She is dead now of old age, Angelique. She has long been dust."
"Did you love her that much?" Angelique breathed, caught between compassion and jealousy, even though she knew she had no real cause to be jealous.
"I thought I did. Once." Drew pulled listlessly at the grass beside her. "But that was a foolish dream."
"You were young. Do not be so hard on yourself."
The muscles in Drew's jaw jumped. "How can I not be? I was banished for her sake! Duped into thinking she loved me. How could I have been such a fool? How could I not have seen that she didn't care for me? Couldn't love me? How can anyone — " She broke off and shook her head.
"What, Drew? Love you?"
Drew closed her eyes and said nothing.
Angelique turned Drew's face toward her with one gentle hand. "What will it take to convince you that I am not like the others? That I do love you, despite your imaginings that it is otherwise?"
"But don't you want something more? A family? Children of your own? Loving me will only court your damnation."
Angelique shook her head. "Enough of that. It's ridiculous. Your stepmother twisted religion and myth to her whim. If you know nothing else, Drew, know that I would not choose a life like my mother's for anything in this world. A life worn thin with a husband's demands, bearing child after child, biting my tongue and suppressing my opinion until I believed I never had one. Only in the end to be forsaken by lover and husband, worn through by years of incredible physical pain that no tincture can ease. Her disease of the bones is inherited, you know. At least here, when the pain grows too severe, I can walk into the faeries' mist and be rid of it forever."
Horror flickered in Drew's dark eyes. "You cannot know for certain that this disease will strike you!"
"Nothing is certain, no. But my aunt suffered the same ailments. There is the risk. But with you I would not be forsaken. And neither will I be damned."
"If you choose, I could bind you into youth. Then that pain would never touch you at all. If you stay —"
"And wed you?"
Drew hesitated and did not answer.
"So, you would ask me to stay and watch as another maid comes to break your curse and my heart in the process?"
"There will not be another." Angelique studied Drew's tense, closed face. Darkness churned in the depths of her eyes as she repeated, "There will never be another."
A small glow lit in the corner of Angelique's heart. "Not even a faery maid?"
Drew's eyes flashed surprise at Angelique's perceptive guess. "Not even a faery maid."
"Have I your word, my Liege?" Angelique's voice was touched with possessive mischief.
Drew bowed her head. "You have my word, my Lady."
Their eyes met for a moment as Drew admitted with a grin, "Even the lure of the faery lands grows thin after a time, especially if you do not succumb to the wines. Faery maidens have no real attachments except for their music. Nor does their touch break the curse."
"That is just as well," Angelique assured her, sliding an arm into Drew's and dragging her off toward their tethered horses. "Married or not, my Liege, your dancing eves are done unless I'm included!"
Days drifted into weeks as Angelique found her beloved's resistance slowly ebbing, and their habits began to settle into routines. She seldom spent the mornings with Drew, but with Culdun's aid she had begun an experiment with a new sort of garden that was a mixture of wild and domesticated plants, and it consumed a good deal of Angelique's energies. Afternoons, however, brought Drew to her, and they shared the more leisurely affairs of picnics in hidden meadows or rides through the cool forest. Angelique found herself growing into something of a philosopher, as well, an interest Drew encouraged, and often tea was accompanied by animated discussions. The questions raised nearly always spurred Angelique back to the libraries before dinner.
Her magickal skills continued to grow, but Angelique was still very much aware of her limits. She was largely reliant on the magickal energies of her environment and found out early that a trick easily done in the palace worked less well in the forest, despite the presence of the faery magick and the accompanying mist. That fey magick had nurtured the trees, and so she was certainly a better sorceress in the woods than out on the meadows or in the fields, but she was sometimes still frustrated with her limitations. Drew only smiled and encouraged her to persist, reminding Angelique that it had taken her years to move beyond the arcane restrictions Angelique was just now encountering.
Despite this, however, Angelique took a quiet joy in magick, particularly the smaller sorts such as the ability to place a comb in her hair and command it to stay, the murmured word that adjusted the temperature of the bath water to the perfect degree, or the spell that caused the fountain pool to reflect Culdun's whereabouts. These were the talents Angelique found the most rewarding.
And it was the reflecting spell that dominated their conversation one evening as they dawdled over a half-finished game of backgammon. "Despite what it seems, that is not a simple spell. There is more to it."
"I thought there must be!" Angelique exclaimed. "I stumbled upon it in one of your older books, the ones bound in red leather. I tried for an hour before I could get the pool to show me Culdun, and then only if he were on the palace grounds. It wouldn't show me you at all."
"No, it wouldn't have. I am another magickian. You would need to tailor it very precisely to find anyone else versed in the magickal arts."
"Whereas Culdun is not so versed?"
An easy smile came to her companion, bringing a touch of youth with it. "Not as you and I know magick, my Lady. The Old Ones work with the earth and with the netherworld. They are part of everything and everything is part of them. The only real spells you have seen Culdun do are palace magick — the spells which answer to 'I wish' or 'I need.'"
"But I've seen him simply appear from nowhere. I've seen him do it between the village and the gardens as well."
"Ah, but that is different. He does not use the portals as I do. Between here and the village, he steps into the faeries' mist. Time does not exist in a forward motion there. It is much more convoluted. He understands those currents and eddies even better than I do and uses them to hurry between places in the valley when he has need. He and the others travel there with my talismans and beneath my protection."
"Then the reflection spell lets me find him because he's not warded against it. Whereas you are."
"Yes," Drew nodded, pleased at Angelique's insight. "Early in my exile, I took the precaution of guarding myself against any secret observations. Initially, I worried my stepmother would return to wreak more havoc, especially if her daughter were truly as marred by my so-called abuse as she'd claimed. Later it was useful in avoiding the clumsier enchantments of the occasional witch hired by the poachers."
"And now you hide from me as well?"
"Actually, I seem rather incapable of that," Drew admitted with a wry smile.
"Can you teach me?"
"Although I can guide you, Angelique, I cannot actually teach you magick, for it is a personal thing to be learned alone. But I can tell you that when I was first studying, I kept a journal. You will find it among the loose parchments in the black leather folders."
"The ones in your study?"
"Yes. You will find help with the reflection spell. And much more. They will warn against the more common, awkward mistakes."
"Do they address the seeking of another sorceress?"
"No." Drew sat back with a faint shake of her head. "Wards are intensely personalized to each spell caster. Although you will be able to use the same basic knowledge to hel
p you, they must each be broken differently."
"Oh."
"But the notes do address some of the other matters which concern you, such as greater distances," Drew encouraged. "When you are adept enough to find Culdun or his nieces in the village, you should also be able to see your mother back home."
"That would be wonderful, Angelique admitted. "But I wish you would quit referring to Aloysius' house as my home. This is my home, Drew. In this place. With you."
It took longer for the haunted shadow to appear this time, and Angelique noticed the brief moment of pleasure which lit Drew's eyes before the doubt closed in again. She rose and rounded the small table, smiling with fond amusement as Drew's chair scraped in her haste to rise politely.
"I am going to bed now," Angelique announced, calmly, looking up into those pensive eyes. "I intend to dream wonderful dreams of magick and love. I know that look on your face, my Liege. And I refuse to stay and allow you to torment us both with all that noble nonsense about not marrying me." Drew opened her mouth to protest, but Angelique lay a slender finger against the other woman's lips and said, "I will hear no argument from you tonight. Now, give me my good-night kiss."
Drew bent, brushing her lips across Angelique's. Angelique sighed happily, brown eyes shining as Drew straightened. Unexpectedly, Drew pulled Angelique close and kissed her again, much less cautiously this time.
The sheer possessiveness of it stole Angelique's breath. Desire parted her lips, and she moaned as she felt Drew respond in kind. The kiss deepened, and Drew slipped her hand under Angelique's thick hair to cup the nape of her neck. The world spun as Angelique lost herself in the sudden, surging rise of desire.
Drew pulled back very slowly, but she did not release Angelique when she paused once more to draw breath. One hand was still buried in Angelique's hair; the other cupped her cheek. Angelique gazed up into the unreadable depths of Drew's gaze as she waited for the other to speak.
Angelique expected another denial of the love they shared, but instead was rewarded. Drew whispered, "With each passing day it seems..." she faltered. Angelique held her breath. For a moment she thought Drew would simply shake her head and take her leave, but Drew took a slow breath and continued, "It seems more possible."
Roses & Thorns Page 10
