Kissed by Starlight (23 page)

“I believe I told you once that I don’t find mortal women desirable.”

“I’d forgotten.”

“So had I. When I look at you, I forget that and much more. If the Queen of the Snow showed me her naked body right now, I’d yawn at it.”

“Who? What would she do to you?”

“Pierce my heart with an icicle, most likely. She’s not very understanding. But, I tell you, one look from you and the icicle would melt in a cloud of steam.”

Blaic had let the horse drop into the slowest of walks. Now he shook the reins over the bay’s back. “Come up,” he said commandingly.

Felicia had now, at any rate, more scope for her thoughts. When he said he had not seduced women throughout his life, she wondered if he ever had. Was he a virgin too?

“Blaic....” she began, then her face flamed anew. There was simply no delicate way to ask a man who, by all visible clues, seemed to be about thirty whether or not he was an experienced lover or a tyro. Though she’d been thoroughly drilled in etiquette from age ten, she did not believe such a subject had ever been addressed.

“What is it?”

Felicia began to consider writing an etiquette book that would cover awkward situations like this. There had to be a polite, evenhanded way to ask a man to take one to his home. She recalled a passage she’d read once suggesting that a woman should never take the initiative from the man. The author had been critical of girls who anticipated a formal proposal with an eager ‘yes’ and equally censorious of girls who were too coy to answer the first time.

Relying on her native good sense didn’t seem to help matters much either. She folded her hands in her lap and asked civilly, “If you take me to your home, can you touch me there?”

“Where? In Mag Mell?”

“Yes.”

Once again he let his hands drop. “I suppose...it's possible. Sometimes, long ago, women of the mortal realm were brought across by their lovers.”

Hearing the word on his lips seemed to constrict her heart for a moment. She literally could not catch her breath until he took his vivid gaze off her. “Were they?” she gasped idiotically.

“Yes. Some of them. It was always frowned upon. It’s not...desire isn’t something... We don’t make love among ourselves. Not the way mortals do, with their bodies. We think yours is a most inefficient method.”

Felicia’s mind boggled. If the Fay were immortal, then they didn’t need to replace themselves by having children. Yet at some point, surely they must wish for that intimacy.  Another point to be addressed in that mythical book of proper behavior.

“What happened to those humans who crossed over?”

“Some stayed with their lovers. But I’ve never so much as met one. It’s a great risk they took. To leave everything, everyone you’ve ever known. To wake in a world where you know nothing and where you will lose your humanity. The risk was on both sides. Those who couldn’t face it returned, rejecting their lovers, and finding misery because time had not stopped for them. Their lovers became bitter. There’s no happiness either way.”

Before she could censor her tongue, Felicia asked, “Will you risk it? Will you take me with you when you return there?”

There was no mistaking the expression he had after hearing this proposition. He was revolted by the very notion.

“Never mind,” she said hastily, withdrawing the suggestion before he could answer. Her shame threatened to swallow her. But even with the horse at a walk, she could not very well jump down and run away out of embarrassment, not without turning her ankle. And she knew she would not be fortunate enough to die making a grand gesture.

“Felicia....”

“I believe the rain is stopping,’’ she said, raising her hot face to the sky.

“Felicia, look at me.”

She did, giving him a cool and distant look, as though she’d been hailed by name in the street by a stranger. He bore a dusky flush on his cheekbones and a look of pleading in his eyes. “Things have changed in Mag Mell since the last mortal came over. My king hates your kind since his daughter married a mortal, and he was none too fond of humans before that. He turned me into stone for helping her. What kind of reception would he offer you? He’d kill you, or worse.”

“Worse?” Felicia decided she really did not care to know any more. “I see. So it isn’t that you don’t...want me?”

“Never that. Never that.” His hands tightened on the reins. “If I could, I’d be with you tonight. I’d walk over iron plates for you barefoot or bring a flame-feather from the wing of a dragon just to see you smile.”

She gave him the smile, sweet and furtive, without any such daring deeds. “I don’t understand why you don’t like iron. It’s so useful.”

“This is why.” His hand sought a nail, slightly protruding from the side of the seat. As his finger touched it, his face twisted into a grimace of pain. Felicia cried out as a faint sizzle came to her ears. When Blaic raised his hand, the finger was blistered as though by the heat of the forge that shaped the nail.

“It’s not so bad so long as we don’t touch it. But we can never be at ease. Even now, sitting here, I can feel the iron in this cart like an overhanging threat.” He raised the burned fingertip to his mouth. Felicia wasn’t certain if he breathed on it or muttered an incantation, though she watched closely. When he took the fingertip away, it was still reddened, but no longer puffy.

Without her prompting him, he told her some of the tales of his past. “I have always been something of a lawbreaker. It used to be that Boadach was not nearly so strict when it came to transgressions. But over the centuries his dislike of mortals grew, until it was nearly an obsession. He warned Sira against them, doing everything in his power to stop her infatuation with the mortal who won her.”

“Everything? Yet she defied him?”

Blaic shook his head as if in disbelief. ‘ “The king could not control her. She had too much of her mother in her. The Sea is controllable by no force, neither mortal nor of the People.”

“The Sea? We control it now, in our ships. England rules the waves, they say.”

“Do you? You never lose a ship? There are no more storms? No more tsunamis?” When she looked blank, he translated. “No more tidal waves?”

“Oh. Yes. There are those things, I suppose. But perhaps when you were last taking notice, the ships were not the way they are now.”

“Undoubtedly not.”

Felicia mulled over the things he’d told her. “Her mother was the Sea?” she asked at last.

“I told you, we do not mate as you humans do. When it is time for a couple to bring a child into the Wilder World, they ask one of the great forces to give it to them. The Sea, the Sky, or in my case, the Wood That Covers the Earth. We carry these attributes throughout our lives.”

“The Wood That Covers the Earth,” she said softly. Then she laughed. “Yes, I can see that. You are stubborn. Hard to move. I think too....” She paused, hesitating over whether to add the last observation. She saw him wriggle, as though made self-conscious by her gaze. She realized she was staring at him as if she would look into his soul, provided he had one.

“You think what?”

She took the risk. “I think you search for a place to take root, Blaic. I wonder if you’ll ever find it.”

His tone light, he replied, “If I did not take root in your garden after six centuries, I doubt I shall ever bloom. Here’s Tallyford.”

Felicia looked up to see a small village, now her home. There was no clock tower, but the gaol and the local tavern stood in close proximity. There was a grocer, a butcher, a blacksmith, and a leather-worker’s shop. Felicia was glad to see that there was also a milliner and mantuamaker’s shop, somewhat dusty-looking but with a neat sign swinging overhead. “Good,” she said in satisfaction. “Just between us, Mary, though a fine servant in many ways, is not a very good seamstress. She can mend linen so that you’d never know it had been torn, but she has no eye for gowns.”

They had hardly any distance to travel down the increasingly muddy road, yet they had been observed by the inhabitants. The innkeeper stood in his doorway, a short pipe wreathing his countenance in smoke, while several bodiless heads seem to levitate behind him in an attempt to see over his shoulders. The blacksmith raised his hammer high and paused, his head turning as the cart passed by. Several women, shawls clutched over their aprons, had hardly glanced at her before putting their heads together. Felicia could only be glad that the rumors from home about her could not have reached Tallyford just yet. With luck, they’d not come until long after she’d established herself as a decent and God-fearing woman. Of course, having a preternaturally handsome man beside her on the box was not likely to add to that impression.

When she glanced at Blaic, she saw with a shock that he’d conjured up a shapeless, greasy hat the very spit of the one she’d knocked off into the road. Under its concealing brim, she saw him laughing at her.

“Is it far to the orphanage?”

“A mile or so farther on. Perhaps you should wake your maid.”

Chapter Thirteen

In the end, it was left for Mary to sum up Tallyford Beneficial Asylum for Children. “There’s nowt wrong here that a mess of zilver wouldn’t cure, but I can just zee you gettin’ it from her ladyship.”

Miss Dravoget had retired to her quarters on the floor above. Felicia had refused the other woman’s halfhearted offer to turn herself out for the new directress, saying that as she had but one night before her wedding she should at least sleep in her own bed one last time. Miss Dravoget, fair, forty, and a careful collector of any h’s she might accidentally drop, had sighed a great deal over the necessity of her forthcoming marriage.

“It’s not every girl who ‘as—has—the opportunity to marry in these days, Miss Starret. So when Mr. ‘Umphrey—Mr. Humphrey—asked me, natchurally, I jumped at it. Otherwise, I shouldn’t dream of leaving my charges. They’re dear to me, h’every last one.”

Felicia had, by force, kept her gaze from turning to the large rattan cane that had hung over the directress’s chair at the evening meal. Twelve children, ranging in age from just under two all the way to sixteen, had watched impassively from their places at table as Miss Dravoget had made rather a show of giving up her place of seniority to Felicia. They had not seated themselves when the meal commenced, but ate while standing. When asked, Miss Dravoget had said that the constant scraping of chair legs on the floor had so spoiled her meals that she’d had the chairs taken away. Even the smallest ate standing, though as a concession to their lack of inches, a bench was provided to stand upon.

In the kitchen, Mary said, “God be thanked her be too old—I hope—to have any young’uns of her own. But I do feel mortal zorry for that feller what’s marryin’ her tomorrow. Maybe he’ll be off to the navy in the morning. For me, I’d take the King’s Shilling afore I married a woman with no heart in her.”

“I’m afraid I may have too much heart,” Felicia said. “Did you see the room where the children sleep? Not a whole blanket among them. Girls and boys all tossed in together, and I saw Miss Dravoget lock them in before she brought out the sherry.”

“How be it?”

“The sherry? Drinkable. Not the best Malaga, perhaps, but drinkable.”

“That’s it then. I asked that drudge as does the cooking what allowance is made for foodstuffs. When I heard what ‘twas and zaw what she had the crust to zerve, I knew that zilver was goin’ somewheres outside the pot!”

“I thought the children’s food seemed insubstantial. Mostly cabbage, I imagine.”

“More cabbage ‘n aught else, ‘ceptin’ water. An’ the bread burnt zo it was a cryin’ shame t’zee it. That’ll change.”

Felicia chewed a moment on the inside of her lip. “Mary, how difficult would it be to.... No, never mind.”

“What?” Mary had, quite oblivious of class or indeed manners, seated herself at the scrubbed table across from her mistress and put her elbows on the table to lean forward. There was a definite sparkle in her dark eyes.

“I just hate the thought of those children going hungry one more night.”

“If you want key t’larder...” Mary opened her hand and a tarnished key fell to the table.

Felicia picked it up with a grin as mischievous as any boy’s. Then she sighed. “It’s not good enough. The children are locked in. It’s so dangerous. If there were to be a fire, they’d all be killed.”

“Aye, I can’t zee that one riskin’ her life to come back for ‘em. ‘First out and divil take the rest’ be my guess.”

Felicia tapped the key on the tabletop. “Mary, you open the larder and make a good supper — whatever you can find —for the children. I’ll find a way to unlock the door. There will be a midnight feast at Tallyford Asylum!”

“Iss, fai!” Mary exclaimed, using the old Devon ejaculation of extraordinary agreement.

Miss Dravoget had looked down her not-inconsiderable nose when Felicia had indicated that Blaic had come to stay. She had said, doubtfully, that he could sleep in an old shed where the last gardener had resided.

That had not been during her term of service, and the garden showed it. It was all but hopelessly overgrown, only a few brick paths and borders indicating the difference between what had once been flower beds and the wild grass. Miss Dravoget had only looked blank when Felicia had asked where the children played, and had waved a slack hand at the wilderness around them.

Behind the thinning clouds, the moon turned the sky to milk. The wind stirred it, but here, at ground level, there was no breeze to be felt. The grounds were completely unfamiliar. Felicia soon lost her way.

Then she heard a breath of sound, a flute far off but very clear. A light tune, a dancing tune, that spoke of revels and gaiety under the moon. Felicia began to follow it, straining her ears to catch the merry magic. There was something familiar about it. Was it the tune Blaic had been whistling between his teeth?

Now she heard the deep insistence of a drumbeat. It seemed to hurry her feet onward, toward the deep stand of trees at the farthest edge of the grounds. Was Blaic there, summoning her?

She realized, just as she reached the deep shadow of the wood, that she no longer walked alone. Blaic was there indeed, matching her stride for stride. His lean face seemed sharpened, his eyes hooded under a frowning brow. His lips moved as though he were saying something to her, but she could hardly hear over the drumbeats. They’d replaced the music of the flute; she could not hear it anymore.