Fascinated (14 page)

“Edward,” she breathed but could find no other words. It was all right; he understood. She could see it in the moonlight that glowed so brightly in his eyes.

“Yes, Alicia,” he breathed. “I’m with you. Now, let us dance, you and I.”

He began to move his hips against her, circling, lowering, and rising up again. He kept his weight on his elbows and knees, letting her adjust to the intense sensation of his cock moving inside her. At first, she wasn’t sure she liked it, but then she was. She began to match his movements, his rhythms, as she had when they had stroked each other with their hands. This new caress, this intimate sweetness, robbed her of the breath she had so recently regained. She wanted it faster, wanted him deeper, but he was holding back. She groaned, as much in frustration as in delight, and tightened her legs around his rock-hard thighs, arcing her hips up to force him farther inside her.

“Gently, gently my dear,” Edward murmured. “You’ll be sore in the morning as it is.”

“But I want this,” she panted. “Please. I want
you
.”

“Oh, Alicia.” He cupped her cheek with one broad palm. “You have me.”

His moonlight gaze filled her as deeply as his cock inside her.
The two sensations redoubled the pleasure. She felt the tightness, the wildness, building up from deep with her once more. She arced her hips again. No warning from him could still her. Edward moaned and threw his head back. His cock thrust forward. She had him. He was as far gone as she had been. His thrusts grew faster and she knew his control was slipping. She welcomed this, as she welcomed his weight against her. She was filled to the brim with passion, and when he called her name the tide of it burst, rocking her against him, rolling her close into his arms, until together they collapsed in a tangled embrace and lay together, stunned and breathless.

H
ester Hartwell.

Hester sat bolt upright in her bed. Someone had called her name. She had heard it distinctly.

Hester Hartwell. I would speak with you.

Hester’s brow furrowed as she threw back the bedclothes and pulled the bell cord. While she waited for the maid, she calmly donned her wrapper of plain, gray flannel and pulled the sash tight about her waist.

The maid knocked and entered. She was as perfectly turned out in her uniform as if it had been the middle of the afternoon rather than the early hours of the morning. It was not the first time Hester had needed to call for a servant in the middle of the night. She knew the maids drew straws to see who would sit up. She did not care how they ordered things among themselves, so long as the bell was answered promptly by a girl ready to do what was required. Anything less would bring about instant dismissal.

“I need to get dressed, immediately,” Hester said.

The girl asked no questions. She just curtsied and began to assist Hester into her plain black dress and to cover her white hair with a proper cap. Someone waited for her out in the darkness, but she would not appear less than ready. She was no fool to be overawed by her family’s enemy or to have her wits disordered by his summons.

Once the maid helped her on with her shoes, Hester dismissed her. When she was alone, she pulled open her nightstand drawer and brought out the bundle of keys waiting there. One in particular was important now. It was a small, silver key that fit no door in Hartwell house, but was decorated with a carved cinnabar oval. Hester hung her key ring at her waist and let the amulet’s cool shield settle over her heart.

Cane in one hand, candle in the other, Hester Hartwell descended the back stairs of her house. She blew the candle out and set it on the table by the door before she stepped out into the walled garden.

The night was unusually warm, and the heaviness of the air said that rain approached. Hester walked without glancing left or right. She had no question as to where she must go. Most of the garden was taken up by Gavin’s flower beds, but she had forbidden him to touch the center of the garden. There spread the pied-à-terre maze: a precise and intricate design of flagged paths and carefully trimmed plantings with a silver gazing ball resting on a plinth at its center. If anyone had been given the opportunity to study the two, they might have noted the paths of the ankle-high labyrinth looked strikingly similar to the cinnabar carvings on the key Hester carried.

The labyrinth was not empty. A slender man stood beside the gazing ball. Long white hair cascaded across the shoulders of his
white surcoat and gleaming golden mail. A golden circlet adorned his pale brow. His eyes were golden too, and shone as if lit from behind. This was no mere metaphor. The light of his slanting cat’s eyes mixed with the more workaday glow of the moon overhead, turning his face into a startling mask of gold and sepia shadows.

“What do you want here?” Hester gripped her cane hard enough for its silver handle to bite into her bony fingers. The pale king at the center of the maze saw this, and smiled.

“You know very well what I want.” His voice was as rich and strange as the golden light of his eyes. If Hester had not been shielded, that voice would have reached right through blood and bone to wrap around her heart.

As it was, she brushed his charm aside. “You are mistaken. Nothing has occurred that would warrant your presence here.”

“Really? Little Alicia has slipped her bonds, and you say it is nothing?”

“What do you mean?”

The king cocked his head toward her and Hester became uncomfortably aware of his silent mockery. “How strange that you should not feel it. I did. Distinctly. You’ve hidden Alicia from me for years now, but suddenly”—he made a gesture as if releasing a bird—“here she is again, only much grown from the little girl who came to play in my gardens.”

The blood drained from Hester’s cheeks. Alicia’s enchantment was broken? Impossible. She would have felt it. “You’re lying.”

The Fae King’s hand settled onto the hilt of the golden sword he wore, and the light from his eyes seared Hester’s skin.

“Just this once I will bear your insult, and only because it will be amusing to see your face when you learn the truth.” He sketched a sign upon the air.

The night tore like cloth and Hester did see. She saw a dim apartment, and she saw Alicia in the arms of her betrothed Lord Carstairs. All at once, Alicia cried out in fear and pain, and, with her own hand, tore the amulet from her throat.

“No,” whispered Hester. The white knight smiled and closed his fist. The vision vanished. Hester meant to call him out on his lie again, but she could not. Every fiber of her being told her she had been shown the truth.

It took all her strength of will to rally her calm once more, but she lifted her head. This creature must not see her disconcerted.

“Alicia is nothing to you. You lost hold of her. You have no more claim here.” Hester turned her back on the pale king.

“But I do have a claim,” he said. “And you know it. You have unlawfully held on to what was mine.”

Hester’s temper shattered. “Alicia was not yours!” she cried, striking the flagstones with her cane.

It was a mistake and she knew it, because the king only laughed. “Oh, I was right. You are most amusing when you are confounded, dear Hester.” That laughter faded as swiftly as it had appeared. “Alicia came with me freely, and freely pledged me her loyalty.”

“She was a child!”

He shrugged. “She accepted my hospitality. She ate my food and drank from my cup and freely promised to stay with me. It was your sister and brother-in-law who took her without my consent, and you helped conceal her.”

Hester stood silent. She remembered Constance kneeling at her feet, already dying of fever and starvation. She had walked far beyond her own limits, and drained her husband and herself to their bones to retrieve their daughter. That same daughter who
was tied down to her bed, weeping and screaming like a mad thing.

Please, Hester,
cried Constance from memory.
You must help her! I know I’ve done wrong. But she’s my daughter, Hester, your great-niece. She’s a Hartwell. Please.

For just one moment, Hester had forgotten Constance was a traitor. She instead saw her niece as she had been before she met her seducer and forgot her duty to her family. Hester had weakened, and she’d agreed to try to save the child.

And here was the price of that fleeting weakness.

“The law is with me,” said the king, his voice cold and remorseless. “You must return her, or I may take my lawful vengeance on the house that holds her. Unless…” He smiled, and it was as sharp as the edge of a butcher’s knife. “You will provide another forfeit to me? Perhaps you would even enjoy that, Hester?”

Emotion assailed her, burning joy, bright, aching need. If she went with the Fae King, she would be made young, whole and beautiful. She would have all the love and laughter and beauty that mortal flesh could possibly desire. With a single touch, he could bring to life the longings she had suppressed for so many years, and then satisfy them all. The promise battered at Hester’s thoughts and tried to set its hooks into her heart even through the amulet’s shield.

Hester swayed on her feet, and took one step forward, and held. “Never,” she croaked.

“Then you must return Alicia to me,” said the king. “It is your choice. But I am owed a Hartwell life, and I am not in a mood to be kept waiting.”

In an eyeblink he was gone. Slowly, thankful there was none to see, Hester turned. Her hands had gone cold and she could not
feel her feet anymore. Leaning heavily on her cane, she limped through the darkened garden back to the house.

By the time she returned to her rooms, Hester had regained her composure. She was also sure what had happened.

The maid answered the bell promptly when Hester rang.

“Fetch my sisters.”

The girl left and Hester sat down before the fire banked in her hearth. Methodically, she uncovered the coals and poked up the flames. She lit the oil lamp with a spill from the crock on the mantel. Her movements were unhurried and precise; her face remained blank and still.

Hester’s life was bound by duty. She had sacrificed all other feeling to it. She, along with Eugenia and weak, foolish Mary, were the chosen protectors of the Hartwell line. This responsibility had been laid down for them more than a hundred years ago. Each child born to the Hartwell line had to be examined at birth for magical potential. Each infant who exhibited such potential had to be wiped clean, lest they draw the fear of men and the attention of the Fae down upon the family. Only three members of each generation were allowed to keep possession of their magical powers. Each of those three was given an amulet to help and hide them. Hester was the Sorceress of her generation. Constance, who was her niece and Alicia’s mother, had been destined to be her heir. Hester had raised and trained the girl herself, and in the end had been lightly and carelessly betrayed.

Hester remembered the day Constance eloped. The stupid girl left a letter behind, declaring she would marry whom she chose, and raise her children “free” to understand the gifts of their true natures. Mother had read it out loud as Hester, Eugenia and Mary huddled in front of the hearth in her room. Hester had wanted to
curse Constance down, but Mother had raised her hand against it. Constance would find her own curse, she said. She threw the letter in the fire, and Constance’s name had never been mentioned again.

Mother had been wise. Constance had come crawling back, howling that the man she called her husband was dead. The Fae had taken little Alicia as one of their playthings, as they did with human children from time to time, especially human children who had a talent for magic. The man had died helping to reclaim the child. Now Constance had Alicia back, but Alicia was stark, raving mad, and she too was dying.

Constance had begged the ones she had betrayed for help, begged on her knees. It was to save Alicia’s sanity as much as to hide her from the Fae that Hester and Eugenia had bound her with the strongest of the family’s amulets.

Hester’s eyes narrowed as she stared at the glowing coals. It seemed that Constance was not the only traitor among the Hartwells.

A knock sounded on the door. “Enter.” Hester set down the poker and picked up her cane.

Eugenia came first. Her beady gaze darted this way and that, as if searching for an intruder in the shadows. Mary, of course, was a disaster, with damp eyes, a trembling mouth and her smelling salts wrapped in the lace kerchief she was forever clutching.

“Hester, dear.” Mary’s voice quivered as badly as her sagging chin. “Wh-what is the matter?”

“Alicia’s binding has broken.” Hester leveled her gaze directly on Mary.

“You’re certain?” asked Eugenia. Mary just pressed the damp handkerchief to her mouth.

“Whatever is the matter, Mary?” Hester asked evenly. “Weren’t you expecting it so soon?”

“I? Expecting this? Hester, how can you say such a thing?”

Another person might have shouted at this point, but Hester dropped her voice down to a whisper. “How long did you think you could lie to me?”

“But I never!” whimpered Mary. “Hester, you know me! I’m such a ninny! Even if the thought entered into my head, I’ve never been able to lie to you.”