Kissed by Starlight (27 page)

“Well, I’ll winkle it from you one o’ these days, zo I will. Not that it matters a hair zo long as you mean to do right by my mistress.”

Blaic swallowed and raised his hand. “I shall do all I can for her. Whether she wants me to or not.”

“That’s the zort of thing I’m wantin’ to hear, it is. Have some cake. There’s no icing for the top. No more sugar ‘til Lady Day.”

When he returned to his cold hut, he lay down on his narrow cot, his arms crossed behind his head. He had, once or twice, returned to the Living Lands at night to luxuriate in his bed stuffed with the cheerfully given breast down of imperial swans, and to enjoy the warmth of his bath there as well.

Yet lately, he’d slept here, where the ropes that supported his thin mattress cut into his back, where the only ablutions were with cold water, where the wind sang him to sleep through warped boards. If he turned his head at an angle, he could see stars through the hole in the roof. When it had rained, he’d blocked this loophole with a wadded-up sheet of old newsprint. Only in the morning had it occurred to him that magical means might have saved him a wetting when the paper gave way. He excused himself by recalling that he’d been too angry with Felicia to achieve the      calm center needed for conjuring.

The children had touched him. They’d slid grubby hands into his. They lifted up their arms to be swung in the air. They’d leaned against him.

At first, he’d been repelled by their seemingly permanently running noses, their wounded eyes, and their overall lack of any redeeming quality. He’d wanted to take Felicia away, feeling as though he’d seen a dear friend fall into a pit of dragons. Yet Felicia had faced them with compassion and a righteous anger directed against their oppressors. She shone in his memory like some great heroine, a Queen of the People from the Long-Ago Before.

Blaic shook this thought away. She wasn’t like that. The earliest females of the People had been warriors, legendary creatures of ageless power, beauty, and vigor. Felicia, on the other hand, was often tired. Frequently, she would stop what she was doing to rub her temples or to stretch, her hands pressed into the small of her back. She knew the rage of the powerless, and yet could cuddle a child more tenderly than its own mother.

Every time he saw her, it became more and more of a struggle to keep from catching her up in his arms and holding her close. He wanted to keep her there forever and never let her go.

Blaic sat up as a new idea occurred to him. Had it ever been tried?

Standing up, he swirled on his long coat. Then he went out into the night, down to the stand of trees at the edge of the asylum’s land.

Chapter Fifteen

Lady Day came and went without one single farthing more arriving to improve the pathetic total in the ledger. Felicia, on the following morning before anyone in the house was stirring, defiantly jammed on her best hat and asked Blaic to walk with her into Tallyford.

“I will find someone there to drive me home. If Lady Stavely and Mr. Ashton will not reply to my letters, I shall see if a personal appeal will not have better effect.”

“Felicia,” Blaic said patiently. “You don’t have to be driven anywhere.”

“Don’t attempt to talk me out of going. I am so angry at this moment that I might very well lash out against you.”

“That would be a pity; we have been in such excellent charity with one another of late.”

He smiled down into her eyes, but Felicia had her mind resolutely fixed on her desire to face down one of the two people responsible for her worry. She’d already had to look in the eyes of the children, seeing their anticipation fade from moment to moment. When Blaic had returned from meeting the post chaise with no parcel in his hands, she had noticed that, in Melissa’s face at least, something of the hardness of despair had returned. She had shrugged off Felicia’s comforting hand as she walked into the house. To Felicia’s knowledge, the girl had not smiled since.

The smaller ones had eaten the cake Mary had prepared with the very last grains of sugar. The rest of the elaborate meal the two women had been planning to buy had, perforce, turned into another repast of bread and milk. The cow, at least, did not care whether it was Lady Day or Christmas.

Felicia said, “Are you coming, or not?”

“I will follow you anywhere, but this time it isn’t necessary for you to walk so far. If you want, I could easily....”

“No, I have tried sending messages already. With all due respect to you and your powers, Mr. Ashton or Lady Stavely will never listen to someone they consider so far beneath them. Though I am not respected by either of them, they cannot ignore me. If necessary, I will sit on the doorstep of my old home until every friend Lady Stavely has sees me there. If duty and honor will not speak for me, then I shall have to see what kind of advocate shame is!”

“Felicia!” Standing in front of her, he spread his arms wide as though waving off a charging bull. “Listen. All I meant is that I can spare you the walk and an uncomfortable ride by transporting you home. Touch me, give me the command, and you will be standing at Hamdry’s front door in the twinkle of an eye.”

“Oh.” She felt the heat rise in her cheeks and saw his gaze soften. She’d seen that look in his eyes often of late. As sure as if he’d said it, she knew he loved her.  

 Sometimes she longed to hear the words, to know that her joy and sorrow were shared, yet at the same time, how could she bear to hear them? It was for this reason that she kept silence regarding the state of her own heart. Better that when the end came they should part with the words still unspoken and be able to fool themselves into believing their love was on one side only.

She asked, “Do you fly through the air?”

“No, not in this form. I wish that I could.”

“Not in that form? ” She held up her hand. “I have too much to accomplish today to inquire into your mysteries. That would take a lifetime.”

“It so happens that I have a lifetime, several in fact,” Blaic said, a slightly sardonic sneer lifting his upper lip.

“I haven’t,” Felicia said with a laugh. “I have only people I must see.”

He held out his hand, palm upward. “Come then. Secret ways riddle this island England. Give me your hand and I’ll lead you hither.”

The idea of traveling instantly to face Mr. Ashton had its appealing side. She could wrest the subscriptions from him and be back in good time for morning prayers. Then the children wouldn’t have to face another day of disappointment.

The thought of the children decided her. With deliberation and a calmly resolute smile, she laid her hand in his.

She expected to hear him invoke his Law. Instead, his grasp tightened and he pulled her into an embrace right there in the hall. Anyone could have seen them, if there’d been anyone awake to see.

“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?”