Kissed by Starlight (9 page)

Feeling as she did, she was delighted to find Mary dusting the hall as she went upstairs to collect a hooded cloak. Acquiring her services as chaperon had taken merely a request and the gift of two shillings, which Mary accepted only with the understanding that some ribbon and a packet of pins would be added later.

William the Footman led them out past the cedars that guarded the border of the garden and over a fallen slab of stone that served to bridge the deep peat-brown water of the stream. The ice that had scummed the water all winter was gone.

“Oh, where are we going?” Mary demanded.

“Told her,” William said, hooking his thumb toward Felicia. Not all Varley’s training had yet eradicated William’s accent, nor had it lessened his tendency to treat his betters as equals while off duty. “They be goin’ to look at them rabbits up the moor.”

The wind sounded like the sea, roaring down over the empty hills. The winter-brown grass showed the tracks of the wind’s passing, as the nap of velvet is changed when a hand is run over it. High above the swelling hills, falcons rode the currents, masters of what harried the humans far below.

Mary’s hair was whipped into a froth in seconds, while Felicia felt as though her cloak had come malevolently to life, determined to wrap around her more securely than a spider would a fly. William the Footman’s short-cropped hair ruffled like the grass and the worn coat he put on in place of his livery flapped behind him. There was no use in trying to speak—the words were snatched from their mouths and blown to pieces.

The women trudged on behind the younger man, who seemed to have legs of steel. The hill appeared to run right up into the thin blue sky. Moor and sky seemed the same size, unendingly vast, not only unexplored but incapable of being explored.

The moor had looked so smooth from a distance, as though it had been shaped in wet clay. On closer acquaintance, however, it was as lumpy and uneven as an old mattress. Felicia had every reason to hurry. It was maddening that the rough ground slowed her down so much. Having to help Mary over the unexpected hillocks, the maid clinging to her arm like a dead weight, tried Felicia’s patience exceedingly.

William the Footman stopped and held up his hand. He pointed off at a distance and shouted something. Felicia stepped to his side, looking eagerly for Clarice. She saw only a bright green place between a couple of knolls. It looked like a little piece of spring dropped down in the midst of the dormant season.

The young man shouted again and a word blew to Felicia’s ear. “Sink .. .”

Suddenly, the green place didn’t look wholesome anymore. Though Devon was by no means as famous for its sinkholes as were the great mires of the Yorkshire moors, it had its share, especially in the wettest months. Some said that Hamdry was protected by its bogs; others claimed they resulted from a curse laid down centuries ago. Family history was clear that at least one of Hamdry’s owners had perished in a sinkhole, as well as at least one mortal enemy.

William the Footman pointed up the hill and started off again. Felicia followed, all but dragging Mary along behind. Sometimes the wind, like a giant hand, would push her in the back, propelling her up the hill. At other times, it acted like a dragline, making her bend over backward as she struggled on. Mary was in no better plight. Her lips moved constantly in a stream of complaints which, fortunately, Felicia could not hear.

Once on the far side of the hill, it was better. Felicia could catch her breath and hear herself think. In the distance, more tors rose, the tallest scoured down to the granite bedrock and glinting like silver in the sun. Though she had less liking than ever for the moor, the sight lifted her heart.

“Is it much farther?” Felicia asked.

“Nobbut ‘round them rocks, miss. There, on the side of that rill.”

Felicia nodded. “Very well.”

She glanced at Mary, only to find the woman sitting on a rock, unlacing her shoe. “Here I am,” she announced. “Here I stay. I didn’t bargain for scramblin’ over half the county, Miss Felicia, ribbons or no.”

When a Devonshire woman says no, she means it. Mary’s firm-set lips and level eyes made it clear that she was going no farther and that neither bribes nor pleas would soften her. “Very well,” Felicia said. “But no hair ribbons and no pins.”

“Fair enough.” Mary shook out a few sharply hooked barbs from her shoe. “But I keep them two shillings!”

“Lead on, William,” Felicia said. Mary, at any rate, would keep a clear sight of them as they walked. If, by some unhappy chance, William was overwhelmed with a yearning to declare himself her admirer, it would go no further than words. Mary might not stir herself for propriety’s sake alone, but were real danger to threaten, Felicia knew the maid would hurry to her rescue.

Glancing at William, Felicia didn’t think Mary would need disturb herself. Though his cheeks were red from his exertions, he still looked like a six-foot piece of string dipped in tallow. When he noticed her scrutiny, he blushed and wriggled.

Without the wind, it was a pleasant stroll, though the ground was still hummocky. Felicia found herself opening her cloak and pushing the hood back, for she’d grown too warm. She didn’t feel weak, surprisingly enough, though she’d taken little exercise of late. Indeed, she felt as though she’d never been ill a day in her life.

They passed a tumbled pile of dark gray stone. “What’s that?” Felicia asked.

“Giant’s Bones,” William answered.

“I beg your pardon ... oh! It must be a fallen-down dolmen. My father said there were many such up here, but I had no idea there was one so close to the house. I wonder why he never offered to show it to me.”

“Come on, miss,” William said, hurrying on as though she’d stopped to discuss something not quite decent.

With another glance at the rough-hewn stone blocks, Felicia trotted along behind him. “Your brothers must know the moor as well as you do,” Felicia said.

“No ‘un knows it so well as Lady Clarice,” William said. “My mother says it’s ‘cause she’s a natural and they can’t be led away by the will o’ the wisp.”

Felicia repressed her instinctive protest at the word “natural.” Soon they’d all see that Clarice was as normal as any other girl her age.

“There they are,” William said. In the distance, four figures moved in a rather stately pattern, dancing like their elders in prescribed movements. Though they had no music but the wild wind and their piping voices, they looked as though they belonged in some stuffy assembly room. The breeze tugged at hair the sun had turned to gold and flapped one white apron as the children let go their linked hands.

“Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!”

Suiting the action to the word, the four sat with a shock on the heath. Their laughter came ringing across the open landscape, following their song. “Again! Let’s go again!” Clarice shouted, clapping her hands.

Felicia realized that the last little hope she’d cherished had faded. It had not been very large or strong, for a newly restored Clarice would not have kept the appointment to watch rabbits on the moor with a footman’s brothers. Yet the hope, which was really nothing more than faith in Blaic, had hung on during this weary walk, only to die a lasting death on first sight of her sister.

“Ring-a-ring a-rosy...”

It was not the wind now that whipped the tears into Felicia’s eyes. She wanted to break out into howls and weeping, but she’d been taught from the age of ten that one never showed emotion before a servant. It embarrassed them and not only lessened one’s personal prestige but slashed at the foundations of the entire social order. Showing emotion before a servant was the first step to the kind of political mess they had in France.

“Go back and keep Mary company,” Felicia said to William. She gathered her skirt in her hand again and started down a hill toward Clarice.

Her disappointment was all the more bitter because she knew she should have had more sense than to hope at all. The very idea of magic should have made her laugh with scorn. Instead, she’d been an easy target for Blaic’s cruelty—for raising false hope must be considered the last refinement of torture.

Remembering the fabulous feast he’d conjured out of nothingness, Felicia was willing to admit that he did have some power out of the ordinary. Yet no doubt the luxury was due to some delusion she’d been suffering. If she’d been able to see with disenchanted eyes, would the table linen have been no more than spiderwebs, the edibles no more than simple bread, the gown no more than rags?

“Felicia!”

Clarice had seen her now. She dropped the hands of her companions and ran toward her. The wind caught her hair, flailing it about her face. Dirt marred her face, while her skirt was marked with mud where she’d kneeled down on it.

Yet Felicia accepted her sister’s embrace with delight. “Have you been playing?” she asked, inconsequentially.

“The young rabbits were out today. I found a lost one and took it back to the warren. Collie says the other rabbits’ll kill it, but they won’t, will they? They wouldn’t....”

“No, of course not,” Felicia lied smoothly.

The other children, much younger than Clarice in age, just as they were older in experience, stood shyly apart. They were clean, but ragged. Only the boy was shod, in a pair of boots too big for him. Felicia turned to them and smiled. “Your brother is back there. Tell him I said he is to take you to the manor and give you something to eat.”

The boy said something, but his country accent was further garbled by a heavy cold. Clarice translated. “Collie wants to know if we need help finding our way home.”

“William tells me you know the moor as well as anyone, Clarice. You can be my guide.”

“I’m very good,” Clarice said with a proud lift of her chin. “Nobody’s as good as me!”

The boy had some reply to make to this boast and Clarice darted off to chastise him. Felicia stopped the girl with a word and, thanking Collie for his concern, set him and his sisters off.

“Aren’t you cold?” she asked Clarice. Felicia herself was still glad of her cloak, even here where the sun warmed the earth.

“Oh no. I’m never cold. Besides, we were lying in the furze down by the warren. You can’t be cold there!”

That explained the small scratches on Clarice’s hands, where the thorns had caught her. They’d stopped bleeding, so Felicia decided not to fuss. “Why not show me the rabbits?”

“Will you come? You never would before.”

“Yes, I’ll come with you.” This would be an opportunity to tell Clarice that she was leaving Hamdry. Felicia hoped she’d be able to do it in such a way that the girl would look on her leaving as an adventure, not a betrayal. She would promise that Clarice could come and visit her. She had hardly ever left Hamdry Manor since her “accident,” except to visit doctors. The prospect of a trip of even ten miles would fill her with excitement.

There were indeed young rabbits down in a sheltered hollow of ground between two fair-sized hills. Clarice went down on her stomach to watch them, and pulled Felicia down beside her. “See,” she whispered, “that’s their mother there watching over them. She won’t let them stray. An’ if a shadow falls over ‘em, she’s right there worrying it’s a falcon come to carry ‘em off.”

“I didn’t realize you knew so much about them.”

“It’s mostly Collie. He’s the smartest boy in the whole world. Felicia...”

“Yes, dear.”

“Don’t tell Mama I was out here today.”

In the three years since Clarice had changed so drastically, not once had she asked Felicia to keep anything from her mother. “Why ever not, dear?”

“She’d be terribly angry. She doesn’t like me playing with Collie and his sisters. She might sack ‘em.”

“They don’t work for her.”

“Not yet. Collie wants to work in the stables someday. I told him he could. He says everything belongs to me now that Papa’s stuck his spoon in the wall.”

“Dearest!”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes, you are a viscountess in your own right. Hamdry Manor and the title descends to the eldest child of whatever sex, but you don’t say ‘stuck his spoon in the wall.’ That’s vulgar. Say ‘died’ or ‘gone on to his Reward.”

Clarice shrugged petulantly. “If I’m a viscountess, why can’t I do what I want?”

Felicia tried to think of a tactful answer. “You’re still a child, Clarice.”

“Then when I’m grown up, Collie will work in my stables and I’ll marry him.”

Since Clarice had wanted to marry at least five wholly ineligible men in the last several months, Felicia did not take this declaration too seriously. After drawing in some loose dirt with her finger, Clarice said, “I think it would be better all around if you were the viscountess. I don’t think I’d like it. You do it. I’m going to be an explorer and track the Amazon to its start!”

“I can’t be.”

“Why not? You are older than me.”

Impossible to explain that she was not legitimate. Lady Stavely had tried again and again to explain the distinction, but Clarice paid no mind. Felicia was her sister and that was all.

When Felicia didn’t answer, Clarice changed the subject with one of her lightning alterations of mood. “I saw a pixie today.”

“A what?”

“A little man. He was with the rabbits. The others didn’t notice him, but I did. I’m cleverer than they are.”

“Yes, dear,” Felicia said absently.

“Nurse says there used to be pixies all over this part of England. She says there aren’t anymore but I saw one.” She yawned without troubling to cover it up. “Is it time for tea yet?”

“Not yet. We should be returning for luncheon, though.”

Clarice put her head down on her arms. “Watching rabbits is tiring, isn’t it?”

Felicia reached out and stroked the tumbled golden hair. “Yes, dear, very tiring.”

Had she seen something out of the ordinary? When in these hills, Felicia always felt as though someone or something was observing her. Perhaps it was no more than the wary eyes of the creatures that dwelt here, watching this human to see what damage it would do. Perhaps it was no more than her own awareness that this place had been populated for longer than anywhere else in England.