Kissed by Starlight (17 page)

Again the muttering, hardly more than an undercurrent of deeper sound in the air.

“I’ve thought of that. But I shan’t soil my hands. Let her go to Tallyford and rot.” Lady Stavely’s laugh was a devil’s. Suddenly she said, “What? The gardener?”

Felicia and Blaic exchanged a glance. Then he looked around the bare confines of his “home’’ and shook his head at her. Nowhere to hide.

Felicia saw his body change, fading out like a painting exposed for a century or two to the sunlight. He was vanishing before her eyes, slipping perhaps into his own world. Though she had come to accept that he was not human, this sight made her senses spin. She found that accepting something with her mind was quite different from accepting the evidence of her eyes.

When he was all but gone, no more than a blurred outline drawn in chalk, her shawl lifted in the air and floated toward her. She knew he carried it in his hand, but it seemed to drift a few feet off the ground all by itself.

“I’ll lay a wager she has entered this grotto. It was here that her mother.... Well, enough has been said about that! If William Beech did not appear for his duties this morning, it is probably because of some furtive assignation the slut had planned. It would be like her to choose some brawny amusement. These sly sham-innocents are all the same.”

The shawl settled around her shoulders, but it was now heavier and longer than the red Kashmir shawl her father had given her. Of a deep black, the cloak had upon its surface a slight, illusive shine. It covered her as a candle-snuffer covers a flame. The hood came up, seemingly of its own will, though Felicia felt the delicate brush of Blaic’s invisible hand against her hair.

“She cannot see either of us now,” he whispered, so close beside her that his breath was a touch on her cheek. Her skin tightened at his nearness. He added, “Stay still. There is less chance of someone walking into you.”

Lady Stavely came in, but her companion, whoever it was, remained outside on the path. Her ladyship cast a glance around the plainly furnished chamber, all her pride and scorn distilled, as it were, into one single moment. The serene mask she wore every day was torn away, revealing the twisted mouth and blazing eyes of a woman consumed with hate.

“Faugh! There’s no one here,” she called to the one who waited outside.

Her black skirts rustling, she turned abruptly to leave. Then she stopped short and peered around. Felicia saw Lady Stavely’s face as she looked over her shoulder. She might have been a witch from some dark nursery tale, the kind that gives imaginative children nightmares. Her nose twitched, lifting the upper lip to show her teeth.

“I smell...lemons,” she said, her voice low as a growl. “Florida Water? What gardener would wear Florida Water at seven shillings the bottle?”

Her face contorted, turning all the more hideous with triumph. “She was here!” she hissed. “She wears that scent. She didn’t leave here so long ago, either, for ‘tis strong still. I was right.”

Lady Stavely, gleeful as a sated vulture in her black gown, turned toward the mouth of the cave. “Do you hear? I am right about her. She’ll leave for Tallyford now, the instant I choose to crack the whip! Not even Clarice’s love can withstand knowing her ‘dearly loved’ sister is a whore like her mother!”

Felicia felt Blaic’s hands on her shoulders, pressing down, trying to stop her trembling. She leaned against him, closing her eyes, and felt his hands slide along her collarbone to her throat. They fanned out at the base, his thumbs massaging the tension away through the heavy cloak. When she breathed in, she felt his fingertips on the upper slopes of her breasts.

“She’s gone,” he said softly. “What have you done to make her hate you so much?’’

“I’m alive,” Felicia said. “She cannot forgive me for that.”

“Yes, you’re alive. For all your mortal faults, you are alive.” It was as though he were speaking to himself. In an altered, more present tone, he added, “You’re still trembling.”

He turned her gently and wrapped his arms about her, bringing her to rest against him.

She longed to put her hands on his waist, but he held them down within the circle of his arms. She could feel his body, warm and firm, his chest rising and falling with his breath, but she could not see him. Nor, she thought, could he see her within the folds of the invisibility cloak. Yet he was there, as substantial a presence to her four senses as he would have been to all five.

She lifted her face for the kiss she instinctively knew he wanted to give her. He touched her face through the enveloping sides of the hood. It was like being touched by a ghost. “Felicia... It means ‘happiness,’ doesn’t it? Felicia...”

She had to bite her lower lip to keep from asking him to kiss her. It wasn’t her pride that stopped her so much as a wish not to disgust him. She was, after all, a human, and he’d made it fairly clear how his People viewed hers.

“This is torture,” he said, with something like a desperate laugh in his voice. Though he still had not yet returned to visibility, she guessed that the expression on his face mirrored the frustration of her own.

“Maybe Lady Stavely is right,” she said. “Maybe I am what she says. Why else would I feel like this?”

“No! She is diseased with hatred. Believe nothing she says of you. I myself have never understood why mortals act as they do. So much of your feelings seem random. You see one person and love them; you see another and declare eternal antipathy. Yet you cannot explain it any more than I can.”

“I don’t know about people as a whole,” she said. “I only know about myself. I have loved very few people in my life: my mother, my father, and Clarice. What I feel for you isn’t like that, so I do not think that I love you.”

“Be wise, my Felicia. Don’t love me, for it would be futile.” He stepped back, becoming more visible from moment to moment. She noticed that he looked at her for only an instant, yet she realized then, that the cloak he’d lent her had not concealed her from his eyes. He must have been able to see the desire in her eyes. Suddenly, she was burning with embarrassment.

She opened the cloak at the throat. Like an actor stepping through a curtain from the reality of backstage to the unreality of the footlights, her body appeared. She looked down to find herself solid. Looking behind, however, she saw that she blended into nothingness. Disconcerted, she glanced up at Blaic.

His hair was mussed, as though he’d been clutching at it; yet his face had closed again, as though once more he’d turned to stone. Felicia wanted to reach out to him, to break that restraint, but had to admit that he was right; to let herself love him would be to invite heartbreak. She had to force herself to draw back while there was yet time.

Blaic asked, “Will I see you again?”

“Certainly. If you wish it.” She doffed the black cloak and held it out to him. “May I have my shawl back, please? It was a gift from my father.”

He started. “Yes, yes. I’m sorry.”

She did not see the cloak change into the shawl. He shook out the fabric and the black cloth was suddenly red marked over with a shifting, stylized pattern of vines and birds. She took it, always being careful not to touch him, and swung it loosely about her shoulders. Reflexively, she smoothed her hands over her hair, making certain all was in order.

“I’ll go,” she said. “I think it best if we do not meet again for some time. If Lady Stavely is suspicious, it won’t be safe.”

“The most she will do is send you to Tallyford earlier than you planned.”

“Yes, that’s so, but there is Clarice to consider.”

He followed her to the mouth of the cave. “Come again tomorrow.”

“I only just said.... Why?”

“To talk to me. There is no one here to whom I can reveal my true self. I don’t mind playing mortal for a time, but if there is no one with whom I can take off the mask, I don’t know what I shall do.”

Felicia said, “You could go home. I have no one who understands me here, not anymore.”

“Did your father understand you?”

Felicia smiled, at a memory as faint as the scent clinging to some pressed flower, cherished as a memento of a long-distant summer noon. “No, he didn’t. He felt guilty for abandoning my mother and tried to make my poverty-stricken childhood up to me. But he did not understand who I am, inside.”

“Such understanding is hard to come by.”

“Even for you?”

“Especially for me, Felicia. Will you come again tomorrow? Even against your better judgment, will you come?’’

“I — I will try.”

Perhaps she did keep her promise to try; Blaic didn’t know. All he knew is that he waited at the time they’d agreed upon —twilight — and she did not come. He paced before his grotto the way a lion paces at the edge of his cave, restless and impatient. He fought the temptation to steal over to the manor, gain entrance by stealth, and find her. She had promised to try. If she could not succeed, no doubt she had a good and sufficient reason.

Blaic went and threw himself down on his bed. His back muscles protested in a twanging concert with his thighs and hands. For one who had, once upon a time, chased the manticore over hill and up dale; who had, long ago, held the title as Best Wrestler in Mag Mell; who had, east of the sun, ridden the Great Worms when they offered themselves as tribute to Boadach the Eternal, Blaic had to admit he had become embarrassingly soft.

Or perhaps it was just that digging, planting, and weeding used different muscles than dragon-riding, elf-wrestling, or chasing more or less fabulous creatures.

In truth, his weariness went deeper than a mere ache in back and shoulders. Playing mortal was exhausting. Closing his mind to humans’ irrelevant thoughts, their undisciplined emotions, took a great deal of mental strength. He had to be on guard every moment against an unconsidered word in a strange accent or a demonstration of knowledge greater than this corner of Devonshire could provide. The others were already suspicious of him because he had not been born within a stone’s throw of Hamdry Manor as they all had been.

He’d been the recipient of some sideways looks when he appeared at the manor the very morning William Beech failed to report. Harry had walked about with a half-wary, half-petulant expression, as though expecting his brother to leap out from a clump of trees and shout, “April Fools!” But April the first was long past.

Blaic thought he’d bring William Beech back a day or two ahead of when he’d originally intended. Perhaps a whole week in a beehive serving the queen would be too much. If the boy had learned his lesson in regard to respect for women in three days, so much the better. Not that anyone would believe him when he did return. Next it would be on to the butler, the constable, and the attorney; and then he would deal with Lady Stavely. All bore some                responsibility for Felicia’s rough treatment the other night, and Blaic believed in paying in full.

When it occurred to him that he was taking a great deal of trouble over the affairs of a woman he himself meant to betray, Blaic turned over on his rustling, hay-filled mattress and tried to think of Mag Mell as he’d seen it nearly seven centuries ago: the pavilions with their streaming scarlet banners, the houses thatched with bird feathers of every shade and description, all seen against the velvet green of the grass.

Above all, he tried to envision the magnificently gowned and adorned people moving across that luxurious background. The images would not come clear in his mind. It wasn’t a living picture, but a cold and static one. Nothing moved. His memories were as stiff and immovable as the friezes on the walls of the Parthenon.

Yet if he relaxed his guard and let Felicia come into his thoughts, what a difference! He could picture so clearly the repose of her hands and the slow elegance of her walk, contrasting almost ludicrously with the animation of her face. He had no need to read her mind when her eyes spoke her every thought. When she had looked at him, asking to be kissed...

Blaic groaned.

He sent his consciousness out across the garden. His thought penetrated the house, searching for her. Where would she be? What was she doing?

Tricky business, this mental journey. He’d fallen out of practice, not having enough strength to even try during those long years bound up in the stone. The muscles of the body were not the only things that needed frequent use.

There — behind that door. Blaic caught a glimpse of Felicia, focused on something of importance to her. He could not read her mind, yet he responded instantly to even a hint of her presence. A vestige of her intellect drifted from her like perfume to lead him to her.

Drops of sweat stood out on Blaic’s forehead, but he was too far away to wipe them off. Felicia was alone, working by the light of several reflected candles. Her task absorbed all her attention. Blaic felt vaguely jealous, realizing that he could have been there in the flesh and she would not have known it.

Then he saw that she had a small brush in her hand, the tip no more than a single hair. Looking, in a sense, over her shoulder, Blaic saw the misty beauty of the landscape and the minuscule people just arriving in this Arcadia. As she touched the tiny tip to the canvas in front of her, Blaic said, “I didn’t know you could paint.”

Her hand hesitated, then drew back. She raised her eyes from the magnifier. “Is someone there? Clarice? Mary?”

In the grotto, Blaic frowned. Coincidence? She could not have heard him. There was nothing present where she was to make a sound.

She leaned forward again, dabbing the brush against the canvas. Instantly, miraculously, the minute fellow in the baggy scarlet breeches was sporting a nearly microscopic pair of mustaches. Blaic laughed.

To his surprise, she laid her brush and her palette on a canvas-covered table and stepped to the door. Pulling it open, she put her head out, looking uncertainly up and down the hall. Then she shook her head, mystified. “Hearing things,” she said. “And talking to myself.”

Felicia stood back, appraising her work critically. Blaic decided to test his strange idea, though his temples were throbbing from the effort of maintaining his distant scrying. Consciousness-casting was never meant to be sustained very long; it was simply a convenience, and sometimes a protection.