Veiled Rose (18 page)

“He’s mine, brother,” says the Lady, and her empty eyes bore into the Dragon’s with a force greater than fire. “Don’t forget who won our game. Touch him, and I’ll take that girl from you!”

“You wouldn’t dare,” snarls the Dragon. “I’ve worked too hard. My Enemy’s Beloved will become my child, and I will finally have my vengeance for those centuries of binding. Don’t you dare take her from me.”

“Then don’t touch the boy. His dreams are mine.”

The Dragon flashes his long teeth. “I’ll use him as I can to win that kiss,” he snarls, yet the rules of the game hold fast. “I’ll not touch his dreams, sister. But I’ll use him as I can. And the girl had better not leave the mountain.”

T
HE SUMMER WAS NOT TURNING INTO
anything like Leo had expected, but that didn’t mean it was worse. After all, childhood memories rarely matched up with reality. He would not have enjoyed a summer traipsing about the mountainside as he once had, carrying a silly beanpole and building dams. Quiet afternoons of playing cards or chess with Daylily were a fine substitute, and this way he didn’t have to worry about the household staff watching him wherever he went.

Foxbrush gave him the evil eye more often than not, but that was nothing new, so Leo ignored him.

He slept well at night for the most part, with his window open to admit the fresh mountain air, so different from the stifling atmosphere of the tablelands in the summer. Sometimes, if he half awoke, he would think the drifting curtains looked like a spectral woman’s robes and billowing hair, but after a few blinks, the illusion would fade, and Leo could sleep again.

One night, sleep did not come to him as easily, nor did that daft image of the specter fade like it should. So he got out of bed and marched right to the window, grabbing the curtains in both hands just to prove to himself that they were, in fact, curtains.

They were, which was something of a relief.

Before returning to bed, he gazed out on the moonlit lawns, admiring how the starflower vines blossomed white at night. During that lonely moment, he remembered Rose Red more clearly than he had since the day he last climbed to the creek. But she was gone, he was certain. It was foolish to think he would find her again.

And foolish to try to make sense of what he had seen in the cave that night so many years ago. He’d probably dreamt it.

Leo went back to bed and fell asleep immediately.

The next day, Daylily noticed a damper on Leo’s mood. He had, over the last several weeks, been in remarkably good spirits. She hadn’t once heard him mention that goat girl of his, which was encouraging. And he certainly was, in his boyish way, paying her attention. He could hardly compare with the more sophisticated gentlemen from whom she’d enjoyed similar attentions in the past, but she wasn’t under orders to marry any of them, so she mustn’t complain.

Besides, Daylily had to admit, there was a certain pleasure in having a chance to play little girl again. Over the last few years she had found herself flung into the dizzying society of Middlecrescent, learning the flirtation game and dancing until her feet were sore. Here at Hill House, the most exciting pastime was a rousing game of chess, or if they were feeling particularly sophisticated, Daylily might play an instrument and sing some ballad of Eanrin the Bard . . . which never failed to put Leo to sleep, though Foxbrush always listened with rapt attention. A unique summer, to be sure, but not altogether unpleasant.

She would win him over before the holiday was out.

Yet today, between moves across the chessboard, Daylily watched her prospective husband and noticed a distinct lack of vim. He slouched more than usual, and his attention was not on the game. She saw his gaze wandering to the window.

Daylily took his queen, and Leo didn’t notice.

“Why don’t you inquire after her?” she asked, perhaps more sharply than necessary.

Leo pulled his attention from the window and examined the chessboard. “Oh. I guess you killed her, huh?”

“Not the queen,” said Daylily as she added the white piece to her collection of pawns, knights, and rooks on one side of the board. “Your goat girl.”

Leo gave her a darting glance and slouched farther than Daylily would have thought humanly possible.

“You’re thinking of her, aren’t you?” Her voice was calm and even. No one could have guessed at Lady Daylily’s true feelings on the subject, least of all Leo . . . who wasn’t paying attention in any case.

He shrugged. “She’s probably left the mountain. It doesn’t matter.”

Daylily’s eyes narrowed. “Are you going to play?”

He moved a bishop, and she killed it with her knight. Iubdan’s beard! It wasn’t even a strategic pleasure to destroy him today. Leo fixed his eyes on the board and appeared to be making a real effort to study what was happening. But he didn’t move a piece.

“You should inquire in the village.”

Leo’s hand, resting quietly beside the board heretofore, formed a fist, and he smacked the tabletop. “Dragon’s teeth, Daylily!” Then he took a breath, and she braced herself for his apology. She hated apologies. They implied weakness.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She nodded and folded her hands.

“I’m just tired today,” he continued. “Not feeling too well.”

Excuses were worse than apologies. Daylily rose. “This game is not what it might be. I shall retire and see you at dinner.”

Leo watched her exit the room and cursed himself several times over. It didn’t help at all.

Daylily swept from the sitting room where she and Leo had been playing and made straight for the library. She usually avoided Foxbrush, who spent far too much time gazing at her with long-suffering adoration to be agreeable, but she sought him out now and found him madly scribbling away at something.

He blushed when he saw her and quickly hid whatever he was writing beneath several stray papers and a couple of large textbooks. Brilliant. He was probably composing love letters that she could only hope he would lack the courage to give her. She pretended not to have noticed.

“Lady Daylily,” Foxbrush said, trying to assume a courtly manner. He rose and bowed and held a chair for her. His face was still crimson. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Tell me about Leo,” she said, taking the seat, “and this goat girl of his.”

Foxbrush’s blush drained away, leaving him surprisingly pale. “I . . . I beg your pardon, my lady. I don’t know what you’re—”

“Oh, don’t try that with me,” she said as lightly as though remarking on some concert or dance. “I know very well that you are as knowledgeable of this situation as anyone here. I suspect you know more even than his good mother and father—long life to them—so I suggest that you be straightforward now.” She allowed her eyes to stray, however briefly, to the pile of texts and papers on the desk. Foxbrush saw that glance and went from pale, to red, to a horrible gray. Daylily smiled. “Besides, we are friends, aren’t we?”

“Of course,” he managed.

“Then tell me what you know.”

He said nothing.

“They had some sweet little childhood romance, yes?” Daylily tilted her head fetchingly to one side. “Adorable, I’m sure. But inappropriate for a lad of Leo’s position. His parents brought him back home and had her sent away, am I right? Is he still pining for her?”

Foxbrush drew a long breath, his hand running nervously back and forth along the edge of his desk. “Lady Daylily, I . . . I really know nothing of this matter. Leo liked to play out in the woods that summer, which Aunt Starflower did not like when she heard. That’s all I—”

“Why are you lying to me, Foxbrush?”

“I’m not, I—” He made the mistake of looking into her eyes, which were very wide and very blue and very much fixed on his. All the manly resolve with which he’d been blessed fled him in that moment, and he bowed his head. “She wasn’t a goat girl,” he whispered.

Daylily opened her mouth to speak, then closed it and frowned as she considered his words. “What was she, then?”

“She was . . . it was . . .” Foxbrush licked his lips and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Leo was bewitched.”

“How intriguing,” Daylily said dryly. She shook her head. “Don’t bandy words about, my dear Foxbrush. All I ask of you is—”

“It’s true!”

No one ever interrupted Daylily. Her eyes flashed. But she saw the expression on Foxbrush’s face before he turned his back on her and stood with his head bowed and a hand pressed into the desk for support. So she said nothing and waited for him to continue.

“It’s true,” he repeated in a lower voice. “But we don’t speak of such things here. We all know it, and we all pretend not to. The monster does not exist according to us here at Hill House. But the whole mountain knows the truth of the matter.” He was, Daylily noticed, trembling. “Leo was bewitched, and it wasn’t by a goat girl. I know this as sure as I’m standing here. I . . . I saw her myself.”

Not a feature moved on Daylily’s face, and she was silent for some time. At last she said in a cool voice, “I have no doubt that you believe everything you have told me.” She got to her feet but did not grace Foxbrush with a glance when he turned back to her. Instead she gathered her skirts and started toward the door, saying to herself as she went and not caring who heard, “I’ll get to the truth of this matter yet. Whatever it may be.”

Tell me what you want.

Leo stirred fitfully, somewhere between the waking world and the world of dreams, comfortable in neither. Over and over, the phrase circled through his mind. Sometimes he thought he dreamt it; others, he believed he heard the voice in his ear.

Tell me.

He startled awake at last and sat up in bed. The moon was bright and shining through those dragon-eaten curtains, which again looked so much like a tall woman to him. Leo forced himself to stare at them, and they devolved back into drapes of velvet edged in moonlight. But his heart continued pounding.

“What do I want?” he muttered to himself, picking at his bedclothes and finally pushing them back altogether and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. His feet sought across the cold floorboards until they found slippers, and he shrugged himself into a dressing gown. Hardly knowing what he was doing, he left his room without a candle and made his way down the passageway, down the stairs.

“What do I want?” A midnight snack, perhaps? He rubbed his eyes as though he could somehow rub the sleep right out of them, but his head remained woolly. He crept into the kitchen, which seemed so ghostly and abandoned with the fire banked and Redbird not at her post. No one to guard the larder. But food was definitely not what Leo desired just then.

The back kitchen door creaked when he opened it, and he cringed at the sound. He left it cracked open for fear it might latch behind him, then stepped out into the gardens. “What do I want?” he murmured as he went. He had gone a good ten paces before he stopped and scratched the top of his head. “And what, by Bebo’s crown, am I
doing
out here?”

Tut, tut, tut, o-lay o-leeeee!

The silver birdcall sang from the forest, unlike all the other sounds of the night. It was a song of morning, of dawn, and strange in the moonlight. Leo followed it across the lawn. They would all think him mad if they caught him at this. Could he pass it off as sleepwalking? Or should he turn around and go back to bed like a sensible person?

O-lay o-leee!

There were words, almost. But not quite. Leo thought that if he had slightly different ears he might be able to understand them. As it was, the song was lovely, if eerie in the semidarkness.

He saw the marble stones of the graveyard and shivered. Not once, in all his boyish imaginings, had he thought to explore the Hill House graveyard after dark. Not that he believed in ghosts, of course, but . . . well, maybe he did.

Tut, tut, tut!

“Dragons eat that bird,” Leo muttered. But somehow he felt compelled to follow the song. He crossed the lawn and passed through the low gate that marked the edge of the graveyard. The white panther statue of Hill House’s founder snarled at him in the moonlight. But that wasn’t half so bad as the shadows cast by all the markers and stones. For the first time since returning to Hill House, Leo wished for Bloodbiter’s Wrath. For all the good a beanpole would do against shadow frights and ghosts! But he passed between the marble stones, following that birdsong as it led.