Of Midnight Born (24 page)

“You are bold and beautiful,” he said to her when their sweat had dried and their breathing slowed, and he kissed the scar on her forehead, where it began.

“Not that,” she said, tucking her face down.

“Yes, that, too. It makes you look rather like a pirate. Did I ever tell you that when I was a boy I had a fascination with pirates? Especially female ones.”

“I know nothing of pirates,” she whispered.

“If you tell me about your scar, I will tell you about them.”

She reached up and pulled the pillow more comfortably under her cheek, where it rested on Alex’s arm. She still felt the hesitation in her chest that had kept her from speaking of the scar, but it was not so strong now. He had seen it and wanted her anyway. She could not believe that indifference completely, but it was so much better than loathing that it seemed worth the risk to talk of it.

“I was training with my brothers in the use of swords, and in fighting. I didn’t enjoy it much—have you ever been near a true swordfight, or a battle?”

“No, fortunately not. Only fencing done more as an art than for practical use.”

“Then perhaps you do not know how frightening it is, the clash of metal on metal, and sharp edges swinging through the air, wielded by a powerful arm. You sense how vulnerable your flesh is, how easy it would be to become seriously injured in even a mock fight.”

“Why were you joining in? Surely your family did not expect that of you.”

“No, of course not, not if they stopped to think about it. They sometimes seemed to have forgotten, however, that I was not male. I think they looked more on me as an untried youth than as a girl, and they teased and competed with me as if I were one of them, only a very poor specimen with peculiar habits and weak arms. My father remembered my gender only when he thought of possible alliances he might make by marrying me off.”

“What of your mother?”

“She died when I was very young. It was largely a household of men, with the occasional serving wench or spinning woman thrown in, and I am afraid I did not do much to encourage their motherly attentions. I saw soon enough that favor fell to the strong, not the weak.”

“And so the sword practice,” he said.

“Yes. My brothers were usually somewhat more careful with me than with each other. They would knock me down and thwack me cheerily enough, but deep down something kept them from doing me any serious harm. I was as tall as or taller than most of them, a circumstance that made it all the more amusing for them to see me eating dirt when I tried to play at their games.

“One thing at which I excelled, however, was archery. On a hot, sunny afternoon, after he had called me a clumsy cow one too many times, I challenged William to a match. He was the second oldest, and had a fearsome pride.”

“You beat him,” Alex predicted.

“Oh, yes. To the cheering and jeering of half the keep. One of his arrows had missed the target entirely, while I had one of those days of marksmanship where it seems that no arrow can fly wrong. Even so, I was tired by the end, for he had insisted on going two out of three, three out of five, and on and on until the humiliation of it became too great.

“All was fine that night, although William was more sullen than usual, quieter. He was not one to take the jibes of others well.

“The next day on the practice field, he insisted on being my training partner, although I was admittedly poor with a sword. However much practice I had, I could not be as strong as any of my brothers, and my arm tired quickly.”

She shrugged within Alex’s arms. “William wanted to prove that he was better than I was. In swordplay it would have taken little for him to do so, but with his anger from the day before he lost that care that even he usually had with me. In his determination to best me, he accidentally struck me upon the face.”

“Accidentally?” Alex asked doubtfully.

She snuggled more closely against him. “’Tis perhaps part of why I do not like to speak of it, the thought that my own brother may have scarred me on purpose, to teach me a lesson in humiliation.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was scolded soundly by Father. But then so was I, for being so stupid as to try to fight him, and for getting myself a scar that would make it that much more difficult to wed me. Years later I watched William die…during the Pestilence. With his last words, he cursed that I should be the one besting him yet again, by surviving.”

He kissed her on the forehead. “We should have exchanged houses, you and I. I thought I was in hell surrounded by nagging, primping, manipulating girls who would rather I had been a caged canary than a brother.”

“Is that why you had a household of men here?”

“It was an experiment meant to produce peace and quiet. I had not, of course, counted upon you.”

She smiled, recalling the uproar she had caused.

“Do you want to hear about the pirates now?” he asked, stifling a yawn.

She stroked her fingers along his side, enjoying the lazy feel of their embrace. “You can tell me later,” she said. “Sleep now, if you want.”

He smiled and his eyes closed, and within minutes she heard his breathing deepen. A lassitude was creeping through her own limbs, but it had nothing to do with sleep. She had remained “real” for far longer than she usually did, draining energy, and there was not much time left in her tree for her to squander. She felt warm and secure in his arms, but it was a comfort she would have to dole out to herself in sparing portions.

She gave him one last kiss upon the lips, and faded from his arms into the oblivion that was her only form of rest.

When Serena roused, she found herself standing in the garden, as she always did when she came back to the conscious world. She was not certain how long she had been drifting in the realm of nothingness as she tried to let her tree recoup some of its losses. That nowhere world was as timeless as it was formless.

The season had already stripped the tree of its leaves, so they could give her no clue to its state. She ran her hands over the trunk, and felt that there was still a pulse of life within it: not as strong as it had once been, but neither quite as feeble as it had been after she had slept with Alex.

She had no precise gauge for these things, but she doubted she would be able to expend herself in such a way more than two or three times more. What would happen then, she did not know.

The garden looked far closer to winter dormancy than it had when last she’d seen it, and a frisson of worry went up her spine. Had she been out for only days, or was it weeks that had passed? What would Alex be thinking?

She made her way quickly to the castle, noting that night was falling. She went through the kitchen, pausing briefly to observe the staff assembled for the evening meal.

Underhill appeared fully recovered from his ordeal, not even the trace of a bruise remaining. Nancy sat across from him, but kept her eyes on her food, not returning any of his longing gazes. A quick glance under the table confirmed, however, that Nancy’s stockinged foot rested quietly atop Underhill’s own.

Marcy and Dickie sat side by side, and he looked pleased with himself, while Marcy looked decidedly pouty. She leaned away when Dickie stretched across her to reach the bowl of potatoes.

Mrs. Hutchins ate her dinner as if it were fuel for work, and nothing more. Serena caught her sending a supervisory glance at her niece and Underhill, checking that all was in order.

Otto, who had been lying by the fire, saw her and got up, padding after her into the hallway. As she reached the stairs in the main entry hall, she spotted Beezely napping upon a step halfway up. Otto barked once, and the cat’s eyes popped open. Beezely stretched, his claws coming out, his eyes closing tight as his mouth gaped wide, needle-sharp teeth displayed as he tilted his head back. Otto woofed again, his tail wagging. Beezely stretched out on the stair, lying on his side, the tip of his tail flicking negligently.

Otto’s own tail slowed like an unpowered pendulum, finally resting at midpoint. He whined impatiently, shifting. Beezely rolled onto his back and started to purr.

“Give it up,” Serena told the dog. “He’s not in the mood to be your prey today.”

Otto galloped up the stairs to the feline, putting his jowly face down to him. Beezely licked his cheek and Otto withdrew, sneezing dramatically.

Serena left them to continue on their own, and went first to the dining room, and then to the tower. There she finally found Alex poring over his papers, his hair a rumpled mess, testament to the fingers that had run repeatedly through it. In a glass dish on his desk were several dozen burned wooden matches.

“Alex,” she said, in the voice that he could hear.

His head jerked up, and then he shoved back from his desk, his chair falling over behind him as he stood. “Serena! I thought you’d gone.”

“I’ve been resting. I do not judge time well when I do that. How long has it been?” she asked. As he came around the desk she let herself go solid, anticipating his embrace.

“Nearly three weeks. I didn’t know what to think,” he said, stopping in front of her.

He looked too surprised to do anything but stare, so she closed the distance herself, wrapping her arms around his rigid body and laying her head against his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I did not know so much time had passed. It tires me to be real, and I must rest.” It was the truth, although not the whole of it. She did not want to tell him of the dying tree, and her tie to it. It would destroy the time she had left.

“You should have told me,” he said, his arms finally coming up and holding her in a tentative hug. “I didn’t know what to think when I woke and all trace of you was gone. Your clothes, your shoes—even any stain of blood. For a moment I thought I had dreamed it all.”

“I won’t go away so long again,” she said. “I lost track of time, is all.”

“I should not have tired you so.”

“Don’t say that,” she said, touching his lips with her fingertips. “It is the most wonderful tired I have ever felt. I would not give up a moment of it.” And it was true. She would have to ration what time she had left, ration what she could share with him through touch, but it was worth the cost.

He smiled, but there was something uncertain in his eyes, and he released her and moved slightly away. Her own happiness at returning faltered as she realized he was holding back, and she went immaterial again, conserving strength. She stepped over to his desk. “Tell me what you have been working on while I was away,” she said, running her fingers over his papers. If he was talking, maybe she could subdue
this painful tightness in her throat that said he did not seem entirely happy to see her.

“You must have little interest in that.”

“On the contrary,” she said, going around the desk to where she could look at his charts right-side up. “I want to know what occupies your mind, and I very much enjoyed our last conversation about astrology.” And she wanted to know what had happened to draw him away from her. Or had he never been as close as she had thought to begin with? Maybe he had been hoping she really would disappear after losing her virginity.

“Astronomy.”

“They are the same,” she said, not bothering to look up.

“As you will,” he said.

She heard the hint of humor in his voice, and a little of the tightness loosened. If she could amuse him, then at least he did not hate her. “Why the dish full of spent matches?” she asked. Matches were one of the more wonderful new things she had seen since Maiden Castle was rebuilt. She would like to strike and burn a hundred of them herself, but she doubted that the delight of such a novelty had been Alex’s motivation.

“It was a thought I had while lighting a lamp in the dark,” Alex said. “Here, let me show you.” He picked up a new match, then blew out the oil lamp that had been burning on his desk. She saw him look at her and frown. “You can still see me, can’t you?”

“As well as I suppose you can see me,” she said, remembering what he had said about how she seemed to glow. “Or perhaps better.”

“Well, pretend all is dark, as dark as the night sky. You see stars burning at their appointed places, and perhaps you see a sliver of moon near the horizon, but all else is blackness. Nothing moves. You see nothing approaching, and then…”
He scraped the match across a striking plate, and the head burst into flame. “There, did you see it?”

“I see it,” she said. “I do not understand your point, but I do see the flame.”

He snapped his hand, waving out the match, and dropped it in the dish with its siblings, then brought out a fresh one. “Not the flame,” he said. “It is the moments before.” He again struck the match against the plate, a trifle more slowly and weakly this time, causing the head to spark where it scraped along, but not to catch fire. “There, you see?” he asked excitedly.

“I see no flame.”

“But did you see the fraction of a second before there was no flame?”

“The spark?” she asked.

“The sparks.” He repeated the demonstration. “Do you see?”

“It looks a little like a glowing streak.”

“Yes! What if what we see as a streak of light across our sky is something similar to what we see when we strike a match across a rough surface? What if it is the heat of friction causing something to catch fire, and then burn its way across the heavens?”

“But what is the match head, and what does it strike against?” Serena asked. “There is nothing up there.”

“There are planets and stars and comets, and pieces of them sometimes fall to earth. In 1803 just such a stone was seen to fall from the sky, near a village in France. That is the match head.”

“But then rocks should be falling upon us every time we see a star fall, and such is not the case.”

“Perhaps they are too small. Perhaps they are no bigger than the head of this match, and burn themselves into nothing before they can reach the ground.”

“And against what does it burn?”

“The very air we breathe.”

She chortled. “I think not.”

“Have you never felt the wind blow upon you with such force that it was as if something solid pushed you? What is wind but air? It can wear away mountains, given enough time. It is possible, Serena. And look at this,” he said excitedly, lighting the lamp and coming around to her side of the desk. He pulled out a star chart with many lines upon it, all intersecting at almost the same point. “I did not see it for so long: my attention was all on numbers and durations and times. I was obsessed with calculations, when simply looking afresh at my own dashes across the chart could have told me so much more. I had these short lines that marked the path of a falling star, and then it struck me that if I extended them, back to whence they came…You can see yourself.”

“They all come from the same place,” Serena said. “Every falling star?”

“No, only those on the same night, or a series of nights one after the other. They all come from the same place in the heavens! Do you see?”

“But what does it mean?”

He ran his hands through his hair. “Ah, well, I don’t know about that. I have ideas, but I don’t know. I am trying to tie this theory of the striking match to the patterns of when there are showers of falling stars throughout the year. How I wish I had a thousand years’ worth of observance to sift through, to find the key. If there is one.”

“You make me wish I had paid closer attention to the heavens,” she said. “I sought solace in them as something eternal, but cared little for keeping note of what they did.”

“There are precious few who have, however long their existence,” he said, and gave her a grin. “We all of us look to the sky, but what we each want from it is as different as each man from the other.”

She was silent a moment, her mind circling around a new
understanding of his nature. “I think that you believe that if you could unravel this mystery, you would be unlocking a secret of the universe. I think you believe that if you could understand this, you could understand what your place is on this earth.”

“This is about science, and discovery,” he said.

“No,” she said, shaking her head slowly, “it’s not. And it’s not about losing yourself in the vastness of the heavens, either, like you told me before. It is quite the opposite.” She looked into his eyes as she spoke, and saw a puzzlement deep within the sapphire, a puzzlement that was laced with hurt, as of an ancient wound that he barely knew existed.

After a moment he shook his head, breaking their gaze, and turned his attention back to the confusion of papers on his desk. “Whatever it is, ‘twill be a long while before I find my satisfaction. I will not be getting any closer to a solution in the next few weeks.”

“Why is that?”

He sighed, sitting down and leaning back in his chair. “I have received a letter, most elegantly penned, from dear sister Philippa. She and my sisters Amelia and Constance have elected to visit me, along with their families, and doubtless with a friend or two as well. For all I know, Sophie and Blandamour may join them. They should all be here tomorrow. I’ve let Rhys and Beth know, and invited them to stay as well, if they dare.”

Her lips parted, the corners of her mouth turning the slightest bit down in disappointment.

“Exactly,” he said. “We shall have little time to ourselves, and certainly I shall be unable to put to use whatever clear nights we may have.”

“But why do you allow them to come?” she could not help asking.

He grimaced. “To repair the damage I myself did. Apparently I did a fair job of convincing them I was dancing on
the edge of lunacy, and they are descending en masse to ensure that such is not the case. As I won’t go to them, they have decided to come to me.”

Serena pulled in her chin, indignant at the idea. “You do not need to be coddled like a baby. You are not mad.”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “’Twill make them feel better.”

“You are a most generous brother to sacrifice yourself in such a way.”

“You are partly to blame for my allowing their visit, you know.”

“Me? How?” she asked, appalled.

“It is what you have told me of your own brothers, especially Thomas and William.”

“I don’t know why any of that should make you wish to have your sisters here.”

“Don’t you?” he asked, looking at her with a mirror of the same intensity she had used on him. She felt a tingle in her nose, and an ache in the muscles of her face that spoke of long-hidden tears. “You watched them both die,” he said. “You lost all your brothers.”

“Let be!” she said, feeling the wetness in her eyes.

He cocked his head slightly to the side, and she saw the understanding sympathy in his eyes. “My sisters yet live. However much they annoy me—and they do annoy me greatly—I still care for them. I sometimes forget that.”

She wandered over to the telescope, not wanting him to see the jealousy on her face. Whether it was jealousy of the affection he showed for his sisters, or envy that he had living siblings, she was not sure. At this moment she was jealous even of his own living body. He would go on to a normal life, with family and love and laughter, whereas she never would.

She closed her eyes, her own envy making her feel ill. With effort she smothered the sensation and turned to face
him again, a false smile on her face. “Enough of this serious talk. Weren’t you going to tell me all about pirates?”

“That depends,” he said, arching an eyebrow at her. “Are you going to keep your gown on all night?”

She laughed through the remnants of her tears, even as she recognized that an offer of sex from him was not the same as an admission of affection. She knew, however, that she would rather have his body close and his heart far than go back and spend a lonely night in her garden. She had had thousands of lonely nights in her existence already. She needed no more.