The Warlock's Daughter (6 page)

Carita
raised her troubled gaze to
Renfrey's
. His eyes were dark, opaque with his refusal to force her decision. She prized that in him.

On his shoulder, the old cat watched her also, its yellow stare unblinking, wondering.

Decision was a difficult thing. So was capitulation. However, neither necessarily required words to make them plain.

She forced her lips to curve in a tremulous smile. Reaching up, she took the cat in her hands and brought it against her breast where she stroked it gently, reassuringly. Turning, she began to walk away from her aunt's house.

Renfrey
was still for a moment,
then
she heard the soft, sudden release of his breath. In a moment, he reached her side. Together, they strolled down the moonlit street. They did not look back.

The air was softer, warmer as they drew near the river. The moisture in it caused the pores of the skin to expand to fullness. A smell of mud and fecundity was carried on it, along with the pervasive aroma of ripe pears from over a garden wall and just a hint of open drains. Somewhere there was a jasmine vine pouring its prodigal sweetness into the night.

The cadence of their footsteps was slow and deliberate. Their way led into the French Quarter where the measured click of their heels on the slate ballast stones carried ahead of them under the overhanging balconies. The shadows here in these narrow ways were sometimes black and crude, sometimes ornate and curling silhouettes of hand-worked wrought iron. They passed them all with hardly a glance.

It was later now, and there was mystery in the deeper night stillness. Or perhaps it was only within herself;
Carita
could not remember a time when she had been less certain of who and what she was.

“When was it,”
Renfrey
said as they strolled, “that you first knew you were different?”

She considered the question. Over the purring of the cat she held, she said, “I'm not sure. At the age of three or possibly four—or maybe my aunt only began to treat me differently then. It was because of a doll I was playing with at the time. I made it talk to me.”

“That would do it, I would imagine,” he said.

“I was punished for it, of course. I cried, but felt a secret pride for what I could do that my older cousins, her daughters, could not. After a while, the pride was gone. I only wanted to be exactly like them, exactly like everyone else.”

His tone thoughtful, gaze straight ahead,
Renfrey
quoted softly:

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring.

Her voice, calm, reflective, picked up the lines.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I
lov'd
, I
lov'd
alone.

“Poe, of course,” she said. “And yes. Yes, that's the way it was.”

The tragedy of being different through no fault of her own was plain in her voice. Behind it,
Renfrey
suspected, were a hundred small slights, a thousand sneers and slurs. He wished that he could take them from her. He wished that he could change the circumstances of her life, could force open all the closed little minds around her and cause tolerance to be the accepted standard for daily existence.

It was impossible. “And now?” he asked, his voice rigorously impassive.

The cat, attuned to the undercurrents
Renfrey
would not permit to sound, came alert and stared at him. He reached to take the animal, to smooth its fur in reassurance then set it on the sidewalk. It followed them, lightly stepping, watching the shadows.

“And now,”
Carita
was saying in answer, “there are times when I enjoy who I am.” She paused, went on with the strained ache of yearning in her voice. “And there are others when I would give the world and all there is in it to be someone else, anyone else.”

He stopped. “I expect that will always be the way of it, and for that I have no remedy. But for the rest—”

“Yes?” Halting beside him,
Carita
looked up inquiringly into his face. His expression was serious, his eyes shaded with compassion. He moved not a muscle, yet there crept slowly in upon her a sense of encompassment, as if she were being gathered into a close embrace. The hold was warm, strong, yet without constriction. It offered consolation and, most of all, abiding understanding.

Tears rose inside her— the tears that spring up because of sympathy freely offered, help and comfort given without expectation of return. She had not known she needed those things, yet accepted them now with gratitude. A
frisson
of relaxation moved over her, and she shivered with it while she accepted his mental support, savored his nearness, the enfolding solace. Standing perfectly still, she yet eased more fully against him in her mind, resting her head upon the firm strength of his chest. He did not move, yet his arms closed around her.

It was total accord, passionless, generous,
infinite
.
Until the warmth became a steady heat.
Until the shivering drove deep.
Until the closeness became a delicate blending of spirits, the instinctive merging of nerves and imaginations, responses and minds. Until the pleasure of it rippled through them and caught them, unprepared, with its splendor.

Carita
almost
retreated
a step, but caught herself. That would do no good; she knew it now, as she had suspected from the moment she faced this man across the fire in the cemetery. As she had surmised when she accepted from him an unbroken vase which she knew had been shattered.
As her aunt must have guessed.
It had, of course, been impossible to be certain.

Watching the emotions flitting across his face, she thought he intended to ask forgiveness for the intrusion of his nonphysical embrace. She did not want that. Tipping her head, she said with unsteady irony, “Some remedies are more effective than others.”

Laughter leaped into his face, and something more that softened the darkness of his eyes. “There are additional cures,” he said, “some of which may be applied either here or elsewhere.”

“Here?”

He indicated the tall, handsomely painted door beside him with its knocker of silver in the shape of a Pan with pipe. “This is my home, the place where I am staying while in New Orleans.”

Hard on his words, as if at a silent summons, the door opened to reveal a manservant. He was as dark as the night with a grizzled head of silver and a white jacket over black livery. He bowed them inside, took their outer wraps and
Renfrey's
hat and cane,
then
stood back for them to precede him along a tunnel-like entranceway.

To enter required no conflict of conscience;
Carita
had come this far, so might as well go on. She moved ahead of
Renfrey
along this passage that led underneath the house. Passing through pools of light falling from lamps of hammered silver, walking alongside Italian frescoes in jewel colors highlighted with gold and silver, they emerged in a courtyard.

In that space open only to the sky,
Carita
discovered the source of the jasmine she had noticed earlier. Its scent permeated the air, along with that of roses and tuberoses, sweet olive and gardenia. The combined
perfumes was
a mind-swimming assault on the senses.

The walls and columns of the house were warm and golden even in the cool light of the moon. French windows in arches looked down on them with shining squares of lamplight. The stones of the courtyard floor were a mosaic of garnet and turquoise, jade and amethyst in geometric patterns edged with gold. In the center was a porphyry fountain where the splattering water played a soft,
Andalusian
melody and droplets glittered like falling diamonds. Under the house eaves at one corner, in the deep shade of a great sheltering live oak, turtledoves chortled softly in the darkness.

Their pathway led through the center of the courtyard toward where double doors stood open to the night.
Renfrey
took her hand and put in on his arm, holding it with a warm clasp as he urged her forward. With the cat following, they skirted the fountain, tread lightly up the low and wide entrance steps, and entered.

There was a vestibule with a floor of rich green malachite and Greek vases on bronze plinths. Beyond was a dining room hung with cloth of gold and velvet the color and texture of spring
moss.
The floors glowed with an intricate inlay of light and dark woods, while enormous Renaissance mirrors on opposite walls reflected the table laid for a late
supper,
the food set out on a sideboard, and also repeated the crystal and bronze
d'or
chandeliers into infinity.

Round, intimately small, the table was centered with roses, sweet peas and lilac. The napery was the finest damask, the serving plates of Aztec gold, the utensils of heavy and deeply engraved coin silver. The crystal glasses had been hand-blown in Venice and were chased and rimmed in gold. Poured into them,
waiting,
was a vintage wine like liquid rubies, which breathed the delicate and astringent perfume of grape flowers.

Carita
came to a halt. Her fingers on
Renfrey's
arm tightened before she forced them to unclench. The cat circled her skirts and sat down among them at her side where it began to wash its face. The manservant soft-footed his way to a door leading into a butler's pantry and disappeared inside.

Carita
moistened her lips. “Lovely,” she said, “and I
am
impressed; but I fear I'm not dressed for such a sumptuous residence or grand repast.”

“You have no need of further adornment,”
Renfrey
answered in low tones. “You are the one perfect jewel that has always been needed to give the rest purpose.”

“Nevertheless,” she said.

Inclining his head, he moved with her toward one of the tall mirrors. For an instant, the silvery surface was dark,
then
it cleared.

Gone was her dull little hat and drab gown. Her hair was dressed high, the silver-gold strands entwined with pearls and diamonds. The creation she wore was of shimmering tissue silk in iridescent blue and gold, exquisitely cut, perfectly fitted— an airy confection piled in layers over a hoop of enormous size. Under it, she could feel the most fragile of silk
pantalettes
and no more than a wisp of ivory-boned corset.

She stared at herself in fascination. Removing her hand from his arm, she lifted it to touch the fortune in pearls, sapphires and diamonds that sparkled in her ears, at her neck, on her wrists.

Turning slowly from the mirror, she looked up at the man beside her. Her mouth curved into a smile that did not quite reach her eyes.

“Presumptuous for a man I hardly know,” she said.
“Also paltry.
For a warlock.”

~ CHAPTER 4 ~

 
“I should have told you at once,”
Renfrey
said. “My only excuse is—”

“Arrogance?” she supplied.

“Vanity, rather, which I like to think isn't quite the same thing. I didn't want you to fall into my arms simply because I was suitable.”

“What,” she said in trenchant inquiry, “made you so certain I was going to fall into your arms at all?”

Exasperation shifted across his face. He thrust his fingers through the dark waves of his hair and clasped the back of his neck. “It was not a foregone conclusion, of course—but, as with royalty, the choice of our kind is not wide.”

“Royalty,” she repeated, diverted momentarily by the comparison.

He turned from her, walking to the window where he stood staring out at nothing. “You yourself pointed out to me one of the possible consequences of looking for a mate who is not as we are. “

He was referring to the fate of her mother.
“Yes, certainly.
So it was all neatly arranged and our meeting set. I take it you had no expectation of becoming enamored, even if I developed affection for you.”

“It wasn't necessary. The match seemed appropriate.”