Lustfully Ever After (17 page)

Kit’s hedge-witch mother had given her little power and less instruction, but enough that she could feel the aura of fierce desire emanating from the brooding watcher. It inspired a tremor of fear, yes, but a wild, wanton impulse as well that made her spread her arms and let the wind blow her threadbare cloak out behind her and mold her damp, shapeless dress tightly against her very shapely body. Long hair whipped about her face at one moment and streamed free like a banner at the next. She flashed a look of challenge, a laughing invitation, upward to the cliff-top; he raised an arm in salute, letting his cloak rise in the wind like a mighty wing—and then he turned and was gone. Kit had waited on the shingle as long as she dared, shivering in the cold wind yet burning with anticipation, but he had not come.

Even now, by the graveside, she yearned to feel again that aching intensity, that fierce power and irresistible force of nature that might yet be bent to her own desires. She would begin her new life by searching out the mysteries surrounding the man on the cliff. In the harbor town of Rockbay, she knew, they called him The Ogre, but had little more to tell, though he had taken residence in the old castle on the coast more than six months past.

The diggers signaled Kit that they had finished. She tossed a handful of daisies onto the new-turned earth. The old man had been kind, in his way, taking her from the workhouse at fifteen to keep house and cook for him and his three sons. Five years later, as he’d grown ill and blind, she had nursed him through
his last days. If calling her “Puss” and stroking her tangle of hair the color of a ginger cat soothed him, so be it.

But no one else should claim that liberty. Rolfe, the middle son, had tried and still bore the scars of her claws. He had tried a good deal more than that, in fact, and Kit had chosen to give in to him a few times, on her own terms; satisfying a man she despised might be a useful skill some day, and learning to satisfy herself, since he could not, was a valuable lesson as well. Having soon wrung from him what little he offered, she fended him off once by force and afterward when necessary by twitching her fingers to make his old scars burn anew. Her mother, who had come and gone unpredictably throughout her childhood, had at least taught her a few tricks, bare essentials for survival, just as her poacher father had taught her the survival skills of trapping and snaring wild game before he’d been hanged for shooting deer.

Now Rolfe would be off before the funeral dinner had entirely cooled. He would ride the horse that was his only inheritance in search of a fortune to be made by any means possible, a rich widow or tradesman’s heiress being his preference. The local rich widow had already been appropriated by his oldest brother, Willem, who inherited the mill and had grand plans to expand and update it with his wife-to-be’s wealth.

Just a few more hours…
Kit drew a deep breath and turned from the grave. She had already prepared the dishes for the customary dinner, more bountiful than the family could have afforded without her skill at snaring rabbits and pheasants. Now she must serve the guests, clean up afterward, and then she’d be free to go. More than free. The rich widow had no intention of sharing the house with Kit, being shrewd enough to recognize her allure for men in spite of Kit’s own attempts to conceal it. The wedding had been delayed only until there was
no more need for her to stay and nurse the old man.

Free, except for one detail.

“Kit?” The youngest boy, Jotham, turned back from following his brothers. “Are you feeling all right?” His blue eyes filled with honest concern. He had a kind nature, a handsome—some would say pretty—face, flaxen hair, and very little sense. Kit merely surveyed him without answering. “I mean…” Jotham hesitated. “Well, Father said that I must…must stick by you. Help you, I suppose, although I don’t know what I’ll do myself.”

Yes, that one detail. “Take care of the boy,” the miller had pleaded on his deathbed, and what could she do but promise? There would be no place for him, either, in his brother’s house. The widow had a certain partiality for pretty boys, and Willem had no intention of sharing.

“I will work out a plan,” Kit told Jotham, “but you must do everything exactly as I tell you, or I’ll leave you to your own devices. Do you understand?”

“Oh…yes, of course.” Jotham’s face eased in relief. He was in the habit of being led by Kit.

“And tell no one, no one at all, about anything I do or say.” She steered him along the path back toward the mill and the house.

“No one.” He nodded vigorously, then nearly stumbled, and stared down at her feet. “But Kit, you’re wearing boots!” He looked harder. “My boots!”

It was too late to arrange her skirts to conceal them, so she pretended her carelessness had been planned. “Yes, the boots you outgrew before you were fourteen.” She raised the skirt higher. “And your old breeches as well. But that is just the sort of thing you must not reveal to anyone, or I will wash my hands of you, and use them to good purpose first!” She raised one fist,
and Jotham, whose ears she had boxed more than once, flinched.

“See that you remember,” Kit said in a milder tone. “Now go to the house, eat your dinner, make proper responses to those offering their condolences, and then pack up all the belongings you can easily carry in a pack on your back.”

She strode off ahead of him, feeling as though the boots were carrying her into a different life, as a whole new person.

Without Jotham to consider she would not have paused at the mill longer than it took to retrieve her own meager bundle of belongings, already packed. As it was, she finished her work with unobtrusive efficiency, feeling the tug of the boots and her own deepest yearnings, tinged with darkness, all the while.

“Meet me in an hour in the copse past the mill,” she whispered to Jotham at last, and was off and away before anyone else noticed she had gone.

Before the hour had passed, Kit heard Jotham approaching and stepped out from the trees to meet him.

“Who…what…” he stammered in astonishment, in spite of the hint he’d been given. Kit was every inch—every visible inch, at any rate—a young man, or a boy on the cusp of manhood. Her hair had been cut short to about the length a page might wear and brushed to a smooth, gleaming russet. The clothes that had once been his were of good quality, if somewhat out of date; the breeches, shirt, and jacket fit her slender figure perfectly, with only the aid of some inner binding about her breasts. Jotham’s mother had favored and indulged him while she lived, dressing him above his station; now even his Sunday-best suit worn for the funeral was a hand-me-down from his brother Rolfe.

“We must find positions, you and I,” Kit told him, “and I refuse to consider any that I might be offered as a woman.”

Jotham nodded. “Yes, I had thought about seeking a position
at a wealthy man’s estate, but I worried as to what you would do.”

Kit’s surprise was nearly as great as his had been. There was hope for the youngster yet. “Good! Have you chosen a first place to apply?”

“Well,” he said, “the few manor houses nearby are too small. That huge dark castle on the north coast might need staff. They say he has none but a housekeeper and a deaf-mute gardener. But they also say he is an ogre who can transform from hideous beast to man. Nothing could make me approach him! So…,” here a blush rose on his cheeks, “…my only choice is to try those foreigners renting the fancy villa to the south.”

Kit knew at once what he was about. “Ah yes, the royal something-or-other from the minor princedom with an unpronounceable name. And his very beautiful daughter.” Not a bad idea, even if Jotham was so obviously smitten with the girl. He would make a fine and tempting figure as a footman. “Let us both try our luck, and meet again in three days at dusk where that old fisherman’s shack was half blown down in the gale last summer.”

“You aren’t going with me? What will you do?” Jotham’s concern was touching.

“Oh, I’m all for the dark castle. And the ogre. Those are more to my taste,” Kit said, and strode off without a backward look.

Even the boots and the freedom of breeches did not quite give her the courage to brave the castle that night. In any case, it would be impolite. She could see a light in the castle, high in a tower. If the man had been alone, she might yet have risked all, but with a housekeeper present it would be a different matter.

Kit paced on the shingle beach near the castle for a while, imagining a watcher’s gaze on the slender legs and hips so
brazenly displayed by her snug breeches and short jacket. After a while she even seemed to sense such a gaze, but that was impossible. This night the sky was dark and moonless, and only the faint phosphorescence of the now-placid wavelets showed her the boundary between land and sea. Even if there had been moonlight and a watcher, he might have been deceived by her disguise and thus shown no interest. But oh, to feel this freedom and be swept by desire; to be exposed, vulnerable, and yet strong, meeting passion with passion, and returning bruise for bruise, if it came to that!

Eventually Kit trudged up the narrow path to the cliff-top, rather enjoying the mild discomfort of breeches dampened in the crotch and pausing at the top to add to the sensation by stroking her own so-accessible limbs. She followed the path back toward the town and the abandoned fisherman’s hut, which had still enough wall and roof in one corner to provide some shelter, and there she spent the night.

At a civilized hour of the morning Kit stood at the castle entrance, bearing a brace of newly snared pheasants as a gift. There was no knocker or bell-pull to be seen; perhaps she should seek out a tradesmen’s entrance at the rear. But the forbidding iron gates swung open at her approach, with much creaking and grating. After one glance back at the brightness of the day, she plunged on through the stone arch into a dim walled courtyard.

A massive wooden door in the inner building swung slowly open, though there was still no one to be seen. Kit hesitated a moment, thinking of old tales meant to frighten children, then shrugged and stepped on through into a corridor with reassuring light at its end.

The room she entered was indeed well lit and comfortably furnished. The woman seated by the hearth seemed at first glance old, fiercely ugly, and forbidding, but Kit could see
beneath the illusion; her mother had often used a disguise very similar, though not as skillfully.

“Well,” said the pleasant woman of middle years—though Kit could not be certain whether that too might be an even more skillful illusion—“So he was right. You do have a touch of magic about you. I had thought his judgment was swayed by his desires.”

Kit struggled to maintain a cool exterior and proceeded with her planned speech. “Indeed, ma’am? I’ve merely come to apply for employment, since my old master has recently died. Have you need here of a page, or footman, or even gamekeeper?” She lay the pheasants on the hearth. At the housekeeper’s raised eyebrow, she added, “These are from the common heath, not any nobleman’s estate.”

“Have you other skills?” The woman’s amusement was clear, as was the fact that Kit’s disguise had not deceived her. “Did you not nurse your old master through his final illness?”

“I did,” said Kit, since it was clear that her past was no secret here, “and kept him alive and comfortable far past any expectation of the doctors or his family. Past any desire of his family, indeed, though they would not dare to admit that openly.”

The housekeeper surveyed her long and thoughtfully. Kit did not try to conceal anything about herself, but finally she blurted out, “Is it an invalid’s nurse that you need here?” It was far from what she had wished for; then again, one never knew.

“Not precisely. Or, rather, not in the common way, but you might yet be of use. Sometimes pleasure can heal flesh and mind better than any medicine, or even magic.” She rose. “Come along. You must meet the master, something he both wishes and dreads. We shall see how much you can endure. They do call him an ogre, after all.” Kit, though she could seldom read minds, caught a further thought from the housekeeper’s
mind, no doubt intentionally unguarded:
Once they called him General, the savior of his country! And
she
, his wife, with her mincing, dainty ways, called him her hero, then turned away in revulsion after that last battle. Gold enough they gave him, as though that could ever heal such wounds!

Kit felt chilled and heated at the same time. She followed along a corridor and up winding stairs, only asking, “What shall I call
you,
ma’am?”

“Mrs. Thorne,” the housekeeper said over her shoulder; then, turning for a moment to face Kit, added with a hint of menace, “and do not try the sharpness of my barbs!”

“Yes, Mrs. Thorne,” Kit answered meekly, understanding her perfectly. “My name is Kit, but I can sheath my claws when I wish.”

“As to that,” Mrs. Thorne said, “best keep them sharpened nonetheless.”

By that time they had come to a landing giving onto several doors, one of which the housekeeper unlocked with a key from the bunch hanging at her waist. Before opening it, she murmured into Kit’s ear, “Do not injure him more than the world has already done.” Then she motioned Kit through, backed away herself, and went down the stairs.

This was clearly a test. Kit braced herself for whatever might come and entered a great room richly furnished but somewhat dimmed by heavy curtains at the windows.

“Sir,” she said to the dark figure seated at a desk, “Mrs. Thorne thinks that I may be of some use. My name is Kit.” She ducked her head just enough to show respect.

He rose slowly and came toward her, tall and powerful but with the gait of a man who refuses to limp though his body demands it. His features could not be made out clearly, with such light as the windows provided still behind him, but she
could see that a patch covered his left eye.

He circled her, and she stood still to let him assess her as he would. Desire was still apparent in his aura, and she felt it grow as his gaze swept along her legs so exposed by the breeches, but a profound loneliness was there as well, and sadness, and echoes of old anger. Even, possibly, a trace of fear.