Kissed by Starlight (33 page)

“The statues?”

“Most of them aren’t all muffled in a cloak, you know, the way you were. Most of them are naked. There was a Hercules, for instance, during the carving of which one can only assume that the sculptor had an attack of delirium.” She put her hand to her cheek as though to cool a blush he could not see. “Most of the others weren’t like that. Smaller, if you see what I mean.”

“Are you by any chance talking about male members?” Blaic asked bluntly. She turned her head away and her shoulders shook with laughter, making everything else move. “Are you by any chance asking me if I am a complete man?”

Her eyes shone with tears as she looked at him, while her beautiful mouth trembled as she tried to control a fit of giggles. “Yes. I am.”

He pulled her down, reaching out to claim all her sweet roundness. Her laughter became silent as he slanted his mouth over hers, showing her without words that he could be everything she wanted. He felt as though he were falling into her, as though she were making him into something new with her arms and her legs and the hot twist inside his chest he felt whenever he kissed her.

Felicia had no more time to think of blushing as she gave herself to Blaic. She wanted him to own her completely, leaving nothing for anyone else. She’d heard a thousand times in her life that a girl must be careful; that a man only desired a girl until he had her, then he discarded her. But Blaic wasn’t a man....

He moved his hips against hers, and Felicia gasped. “Yes, you are,” she whispered, low and tense. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

He murmured hot words against her throat, chanting something that sounded like love poetry, though in a language she did not know. She ran her hands down his back, feeling the slickness of sweat, the tautness of his muscles, and knew she was making him feel this way.

Felicia wanted him closer yet. She wanted him holding her so tightly that they’d melt into one being. “I want you,” she said in his ear, breaking the rhythm of his lyric.

“Yes.” He rolled away a little, and Felicia could have sobbed with disappointment. Separation was not what she wanted, even for this tiny moment. Then his hand stroked down, down, and she flinched as he slid his big, warm fingers into her. He moved his hand so gently that she relaxed enough to let the first wave of pleasure roll over her.

Her eyes flew open. She found him looking down at her, with such a mixture of desire and love that she could not be shy. He moved his hand again, faster now, discovering what pleased her by the changing expression on her face. The waves built and built, driving her along to the point at the edge of the world where it all crashed down. She was looking him full in the eyes when the tidal wave of sensation carried her off.

Then, before she could speak or think again, his weight was on her. That was what she wanted most. She reached up, welcoming him with arms and legs both, feeling that his hardness would fill an emptiness she’d never been aware of until this moment but that had always been there, waiting for him to answer this desire with his own.

He reached up, smoothing the damp hair back from her face. She could feel tension quivering in every line of his body. “Felicia...”

She felt very strongly that whatever he meant to say could wait. Pulling him down to a kiss, she rocked up against him and felt his hips surge ever so slightly against hers while he gasped, leaning his forehead against hers. His light hair fell around her, tickling her face. She knew she was ready for whatever came next; suddenly, she understood why men were men and women were women. It was as if her body had known all along and the facts of the matter had only just become real in her mind.

Felicia ran her hands once again down his back, this time reaching his hard buttocks. Meanwhile, she eased the soles of her feet up his legs. She told herself that this was right, that she could make this decision for both of them and it would be wonderful.

Then, somehow, she lost control of the moment.

He clamped down on her hips, holding her still. He groaned aloud, a pained sound, as he slowly eased his way in past the tightness that guarded her. Suddenly, Felicia found herself pushing on his shoulders, desperate to retreat, to wait, to hold back. But it was too late. She felt a sharp pang cut through the veils of love that had hid the truth from her. Had she just been congratulating herself on her perception? Fool.

“Blaic...please.”

“I know...I know. Wait.”

She lay beneath him, trembling, trusting him to help her. Slowly, she felt herself changing, stretching to accommodate this loving invader. He lifted up and she could look down between their slippery bodies and see the darkness of him disappearing into her. Then he began to move again, shallow strokes at first, letting her experience all the hot slide of him. The pain lingered, but she couldn’t tell if it grew less or it was just that she wanted more of him.

Felicia realized after a few moments that she was rising to meet his thrusts, that they had fallen into a perfect accord of tempo. She ran her hands up his trembling arms, urging him to fall. When he did, she closed her eyes against his neck and let the driving cadence carry her away.

The feeling hit her hard, without the slow increase she’d already grown accustomed to. She threw her arms around him, grateful that he was there to hold on to as blackness swirled around her. She chanted his name, interspersed with cries of joy that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than her voice. When his entire body went rigid, she was hardly aware of it. Then she heard his voice mingling with hers in a new song.

They lay together, as unashamed as shipwrecked voyagers washed up on the same shore. Blaic held her until the last quivers faded from them both. Then, realizing he was lying on her with his full weight, he rolled away. Still holding her hand, he raised it to his lips. “It’s enough to make me wish...”

“What would you wish for?”

“Nothing. I have everything I need in you.”

“That’s the way I feel,” she said, her whisper sleepy.

He moved away just long enough to pull the bed linen over them. Something in the quality of her silence made him turn to look at her. “What is it?”

“You’re not touching me.”

He looked at his hands, then at the length of her body. It was true. He’d moved away only an inch or so in some places, yet nowhere did they touch. “I....”

“Well? Aren’t you going to say it?”

Blaic listened with an inward ear. He heard no voice, felt no demand issuing from his soul. The Ancient Law was silenced. “Ask me for something.”

Felicia looked blank. “I can’t think of anything I want.”

“Try. Ask me for...for fairy gold.”

“You said that brings no luck with it.”

“Ask me anyway.”

“Very well.” She sat up straight, ignoring or unaware of the fact that she was naked. Blaic gazed at her enraptured until she cleared her throat, which forced him to look in her eyes. Smiling at him like Delilah, she said, “Blaic, give me your fairy gold.”

Always before he’d performed what she’d asked. Take her somewhere, jump out a window, it was all the same — he’d had to do it. He’d been forced into it by a power outside himself, stronger than all the People. Now he lay in bed, feeling happy. He’d never felt so at peace.

“No,” he said, grinning at her. “Isn’t that marvelous?”

It was only long after she’d fallen asleep that Blaic had a disquieting thought. Maybe when he was talking to Felicia, looking at her, kissing her, evil thoughts could not intrude — but now one came knocking. What if he had not just lost the Voice of the Law? What if he had lost everything that made him one of the People?

Blaic eased himself out of bed and tried to turn a candle into a lamp. The white wax still burned defiantly. He could not even blow out the flame without using his lips. Had he, in a moment of passion, thrown away the very things that made him who he was?

Chapter Eighteen

“You saw them bury it? But weren’t you...er...stone?”

“Yes, I was, but I wasn’t dead, you realize. It’s as I told you of Ol’ Calm. Although I could not speak to him or move so much as a finger, I could hear him and see him — not always clearly and only so long as he stood in front of me, but I could do it. I overhead many conversations when people thought they were private. I even listened to lessons when a good-natured governess or tutor would bring the children onto the lawn for study.”

“Miss Gamp used to do that,” Felicia said.

“I remember how much trouble you had with Latin grammar,” he said, smiling down on her.

“You do? My word, you were watching me then? Little did I know ...”

“Little did ‘I know you’d be the one to free me. I don’t believe I’ve mentioned how grateful I am.”

Felicia wound her arms about his neck. “You mentioned it, but I prefer your demonstrations.”

He smoothed his hands over her from shoulder to thigh, reveling in the differing textures and responses of her skin. “You have my gratitude for this as well.”

Felicia knew it was absurd to be shy at this point. She’d given more of herself to Blaic than she would have thought or dreamed possible with any man. Meeting his eyes, knowing they were filled with memories of her wantonness, was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. Her discomfort was eased only slightly by the affection of his glance.

He’d awakened her with a wild tale of family fortunes lost and buried, presented as the solution to all her difficulties. She wanted to focus on what he was saying, but her mind kept wandering to what he was doing with his strong, elegant, callused hands.

Felicia fixed him with her gaze, easier said than done considering how her eyes yearned to close in order to feel his hands more clearly. “You really mean to say that you know where our ancestor hid all his worldly goods?”

“Well, not all of them, naturally. The box I saw was too small to contain furniture. But they carried it together as though it were remarkably heavy. I recognized Viscount Stavely and his man creeping across the lawn. The master seemed more frightened than the servant. I saw that the good viscount’s hands shook as though he had a fever.”

“Perhaps he had. It wouldn’t be from fear. Considering the circumstances of his life, I can hardly think of him as a coward.”

Her father had told her of Roderick, a none-too-gallant cavalier in the time of the Civil War. Instead of sending his fortune to his king to raise an army, he’d supposedly buried everything — coins, jewelry, plate—somewhere in the garden when Cromwell’s army came through Devon. Only his valet knew of this shameful deed, and he succumbed to the measles before he could tell a soul.

As for Roderick, he may have hid his fortune, but he was not afraid to risk his life. “Unfortunately,” Felicia said, “the things he risked it for were unworthy of such a sacrifice. He is still known as ‘Wicked Roderick’ and his name is sometimes used to frighten small children.”

“How did he come to die without revealing the secret? Certainly, I never saw anyone come to dig up the box.”

“He was killed in a duel with a Puritan lord. They fought over a fair maiden, as the tale runs, though I do not doubt that they sugarcoated the tale for us children. Why he did not return for the treasure, nor tell anybody where it was, is a mystery. Some say it was because he despised the brother who was his heir. Perhaps he simply did not have anyone near at hand he could trust with the tale.”

“You always try to think the best of people, don’t you?” Blaic kissed her forehead, and then her cheek. “It’s still there, waiting for you. With it, you could run the orphanage.”

“No...,” she began, but his lips came down on hers and she entirely forgot what she wanted to say.

When she was gasping and clinging to him, Blaic asked, “What did you tell the landlord’s wife?”

“La—landlord’s wife?”

“Why you wear no wedding ring?”

“Oh.” She drew his head down to hers for another long, drugging kiss. “I told her my fingers were too swollen from being with child.”

“You did?”

Felicia wondered why he looked so strange. He had raised his head to look off into some dim distance, his green eyes narrowed as though he stared into the heart of some astounding illumination. She explained, “Lady Stavely mentioned once in my hearing that this was one of the consequences she disliked the most about that condition. She is very fond of her rings.”

“She is a fool to value jewels more highly than she values people. One day, she will see that.”

“As long as you value me, the rest of the world matters not.”

“I do. I always shall.”

They made love again, slowly, Blaic concerning himself solely with her sensations. This time, there was neither shame nor fear, only such intensity of feeling that nothing else could survive the storm.

The next day, they set off for home. Blaic explained, when asked, that it would make less talk if they drove rather than travel by magical means. She decided against questioning him on the limits of his powers. For today, Felicia did not want to think about the differences between them. It was wonderfully normal to sit beside him, watching his hands light and sure on the reins. She said, “We might be anyone at all — Brown the Butcher, Smith the Baker, Winter the Farmer — on our way home from a pleasant outing on a fine spring day.”

“Could you ever be content as Mrs. Brown, Smith, or Winter?”

“Probably. On such a day, I could be perfectly content to be a gypsy, camped under a hedge. Look at that sky!”

The air was soft and sweet-smelling, with the fragrances of a thousand flowers. Huge white clouds sculpted with lines of blue shadow towered away into an infinity of blue, the sun shining down between them like the benevolent god it had once been. Felicia opened the top button of her fine cloak and held her face audaciously to the full sunshine. She breathed in deeply. “Oh, if that smell could only be turned into perfume I should wear it always to remind me of how I feel now.”

“Sira used to smell like that.”

“Sira?” She remembered that his heart had once belonged to a woman of his own kind by that name. Half the brightness went out of the day as she wondered if he still dreamed of her. Had last night been no more than a giving way to temptation on his part?