Kissed by Starlight (36 page)

Clarice winced. Blaic saw that her mother had twisted the girl into a strained posture so that they could both reach into the box.

“Think of it, Clarice. You will be arrayed in the finest gowns money can buy. You’ll dazzle the eyes of every man in London. They’ll hurl themselves at your feet, but never fear — I shall be there to guide your steps. I shan’t relinquish you to any but the most worthy. You shan’t throw yourself away on a man simply because you love him, though he cares nothing for you. Keep your heart whole. Love only that which cannot love another. Your children...your jewels.”

“Mama, let go! You’re...you’re hurting me.”

Blaic pushed Lady Stavely away from her daughter. Clarice fell back with a little cry, massaging her twisted wrist. Lady Stavely, however, rose to her feet, icy disdain in every line of her body. “Who do you imagine yourself to be? Take yourself away.”

“Come, Clarice,” Blaic said. He lifted her under the elbows as she rose. “I’ll take you to Felicia.”

“Please do.” On the threshold, she turned and said, “Mama?”

But Lady Stavely had begun counting the coins, stacking them to either side of her, and had no leisure to look up. She called, “That’s right, my sweet life. Go to bed. All will be well in the morning. We’ll make plans for London. Perhaps the Prince of Wales would buy these. No, his credit is not good. Stay! The queen has plenty of money. She’s bound to leap at these plates and goblets and if she won’t, there’s always foreign royalty. Ten, twenty, twenty-five...I shall have to see if we have any books on numismatics. I declare, I don’t know what half of these coins are.”

“What is wrong with her?” Clarice asked once the door had closed. “She’s never been so...” She closed her lips tightly, as though to prevent some disloyalty from escaping.

“She’s suffering from greed,” Blaic said. “I’ve seen the sickness before. A great many people suffer from it.”

“But she didn’t listen to anything I said! She rarely does, ‘tis no novelty, but she acted as though I were agreeing with her, which I certainly was not! Who cares about trinkets and tinsel when Felicia is languishing in gaol? What shall we do? Constable Richards is so under my mother’s thumb he’d never listen to me!”

“Who can help her?”

“Doctor Danby has always been her friend. The vicar, too, though he has been somewhat disquieted by these ridiculous rumors about her.”

“The witchcraft story?”

“Yes. Naturally, it’s impossible! Witches, in this day and age? Only credulous fools believe such nonsense. Yet Mr. Hales must be careful of his position.” More rapidly, she added, “But I am confident he will rally to Felicia’s defense once I tell him everything.”

She fixed him with a glare that made her slightly tilted blue eyes flame like an angry cat’s. “I don’t know or care what game you are playing, sir, but I promise you this: If my dear sister comes to harm through your double game, I will hunt you down and kill you.”

Blaic saw as though in a prophetic trance the kind of woman Clarice Stavely would one day become. Beautiful, yes, and with a generous heart, but with a spirit so indomitable that only a very special man would ever keep her for his own. He wished he might come back to see this epic battle.

He bowed before her. “If Felicia comes to harm, I hope you will.”

Blaic escorted her into the carriage that waited at the end of the drive. A mist had come up, blurring the lantern’s light. “Be careful, driver,” Blaic called. “Go slowly, no matter what your mistress might urge.”

“Aye, zur,” said the dimly glimpsed liveried coachman. “In a rare tear, she is.”

“Indeed I am, and if you know what is good for you, you will not heed this gentleman’s caution, though I trust he will heed mine. Good evening, Mr...?”

“Gardner,” he supplied, bowing yet again. “Blaic Gardner.”

He waited until, with a creak of leather and a rumble of the big wooden wheel, Clarice drove away on her desperate errands. For himself, he walked off into the garden. With luck, his world awaited him down one of those paths.

* * * *

“At least this time,” Felicia reflected, “I have the cell to myself.” Furthermore, once she thought of it, she had the consolation of knowing that her panic in the garden had had a very real cause. There had indeed been hostile forces gathering about her, but they had been Lady Stavely’s minions rather than an unearthly evil.

Felicia tried to force herself to dwell solely on these two comforts, feeble though they might be. The bitterest reflection was better than thinking of Blaic. Even the sound of his name, whispered on a sob in this desolate darkness, was like the sharp point of a blade in her heart.

“How could he do it?” she said aloud, then bit her lip hard. She forced herself to think about something else. Had the straw been changed since her last visit? It would not have surprised her to learn that Constable Richards mucked out his horse’s stall more often than the floor of the gaol.

It was very dark. Only a dying torch in a bracket outside the door cast a measure of warm orange over the straw. She had nothing to make herself more easy—no cloak, no shawl. Both had been taken from her, lest, as the constable put it, “You tries to hang yerself.”

More likely, she thought, some wench he had his eye on would now enjoy them. She could not imagine any woman accepting Richards on his own merits.

Remembering how she and Mary had made shift to find blankets enough for all the children to have one, Felicia smiled in the darkness. She’d been clever then. Clever too to have figured out the antique riddle of Wicked Roderick’s treasure. Had he meant to leave the treasure hidden? Or had his buying it under the Royal Arms meant he had somehow intended it for the King after all?

Yet she would trade all her cleverness for a chance to feel Blaic’s arm about her, to squeeze his hand. And should he offer a “Command me,” she knew exactly what she would ask. It would have nothing to do with helping her escape from her dire predicament. She’d ask him to tell her why he’d treated her so shabbily. She’d felt the love in him for her; she’d take her dying oath upon it. There had to be a reason for his cruelty. She could bear it better if she knew the answer.

“I hope you are happy, wherever you are,” she said, drawing her ankles close to her body and resting her head upon her knees.

“I am.”

She raised her head to find him smiling down at her as though nothing had changed between them. Had his cruel betrayal been only a nightmare? She struggled to her feet, using the wall for support rather than taking his hand. He looked away, his mouth pained, his forehead drawn. Felicia repressed the pity she felt for him. How dare he look like that when she was the one injured?

She suddenly realized that the wall she leaned against was not rough and dirty stone blocks but the most elegant satin-striped wallpaper imaginable. Delicate gilt chairs and chaises stood on a vast Gobelin tapestry too fine for a palace wall yet here used as a carpet. Candles glowed in many-branched candelabra, with some set in sconces before mirrors to cast an even greater glow over the repast set out on the table.

“More tricks?” she asked coldly.

“The last,” Blaic promised. “Won’t you sit down?”

“I should rather stand, thank you. I know that there is solid stone behind me, though you may disguise it as you will.”

Felicia stumbled. Just like that, the wall she’d depended on vanished away into thin air. “The second time tonight,” she observed, and saw him color as he caught the allusion to his betrayal.

The gaol had vanished entirely. As she turned, she saw dark-boled trees shoot up as though one moment had to encompass thirty years of growth. In the distance she saw round-shouldered mountains, while nearer at hand a beribboned barge floated, ready to take voyagers across the lake to an island covered with wildflowers of every shade and description. Their scent reached her, crisp as wine. A small circular temple in the Grecian style crowned the isle. Blaic stood nearby, leaning against a tree, a basket at his feet.

Felicia thought that everything looked strangely familiar. Surely she’d been here before? “Where is this?” she demanded. “Is this...is this Mag Mell?”

“No. Mag Mell is far more beautiful than this. Are you certain you don’t recognize this place? And you such a fine artist.”

A flicker of red amongst the trees caught her attention. Then she heard the breathy tootles and light drums of merrymakers approaching. Surely... surely...she recognized the horse’s skull that the lead couple carried on a pole. A red ribbon bound it about its jaws and the place where the ears would have gone.

“It’s my painting! You’ve put us in my painting!”

The revelers were masked, precisely as she had painted them. They danced as they came on, with light bounds and fluttering chasses. Dressed in vaguely Renaissance costumes, ribbons floating behind them, each man bowed, each lady curtsied as they passed her, all without breaking the rhythm of their dance.

“Shall we join them?” Blaic asked.

Felicia remembered finishing the painting before the admiring eyes of the children. She’d started the older ones on drawing and had been surprised by Melissa Bainbridge’s talent. What would become of that girl now?

“I don’t want to dance,” Felicia said. “All I want is to go back to Tallyford.”

“But you are already dancing.”

Felicia looked around and found that it was true. Still in her bedraggled blue silk gown, she caught hands and swung, minding her steps with care though it was a dance she’d never learned. Everywhere she turned, she saw intelligent eyes gleaming at her behind grotesque masks—here a wildly feathered bird with a sharp yellow beak, there a crescent moon smiling dreamily. An insect with clicking jaws, a clown with jutting chin and nose, a cat with silver whiskers, a dragon crowned with sparkling fire—all passed by in a whirling pattern, with herself in the middle. All were brilliantly painted; all were hideously exaggerated.

Felicia was prey to the nagging notion that these were not the masks but the true appearance of her dance partners. If they wore masks, it was to make themselves more human, not less.

Frightened for the first time, she put her hands to her cheeks, gratified to find herself still as she had been. Yet she could not stop dancing. The music seemed to have gotten into her very bones, so that she could not stop; yet she did not feel tired. Her partners were all laughing as they headed down to the barge, carrying her along with them.

Blaic was already there, waiting under the canopy. He held out his arms, yearning to enfold her against his heart. “Come, Felicia. Come with us. My friends are waiting to welcome you. Leave the sorrows of the mortal world and come with me. You will never grow old. You will never die. I will love you forever and forever.”

She looked into his eyes. He was far from her, yet it seemed as though they stood close together. She realized that he truly did love her and, though she still did not know why he’d betrayed her, she forgave him.

He seemed to know it. His brilliant green eyes sparkled with tears. “Come with me,” he said. “Do lovers vow to love until the stars die? We shall watch them die and I will love you still. I will take you to the deepest valley in the heart of the ocean and love you. In the east are mountains so high they hold up the roof of the world. There too I shall love you. Come.”

Felicia wanted to rush the length of the ship, to fling herself into Blaic’s arms — not for the promises he made but because she loved him so much that being apart from him was pain. Yet something held her back. Not anything so strong as a doubt; more as if the voice of her native caution was reasserting itself. “You are not telling me everything,” she said.

It was as if she’d broken some kind of spell. Suddenly, it was obvious that the background was painted. She could see the individual brush strokes. The revelers held perfectly still — toes pointed, arms extended, hands lifted in the exact movements of the dance. One woman seemed to have been caught in mid-leap, for the light could be seen under each foot.

Blaic alone moved. He walked the length of the barge to stand at the edge, though the water no longer lapped beneath it.

“What are you not telling me?”

“Do you know me so well?”

“I know you with all my heart, yet....”

“You don’t trust me?”

“How can I?” She had not meant to say the words so loudly, but against the utter silence of the painting they seemed to crash like cymbals.

“Yet you have forgiven me.”

“That is easy to do. Who could not forgive you? Whatever your reasons....”

“I had very good ones. Come, sit with me, and I will tell you all about it.”

She looked at his hand as she would have looked at a loaded pistol. “No. Stop trying to fool me.”

He shook his head at her, slowly, lovingly. “It would be my fate to fall in love with a stubborn, clever woman. Why couldn’t you have been a fool, ready to believe any tale I chose to tell?”

“You should not love me if I were such a one as that.”

“No, I should not. But if I had, I would not be in such a predicament now. Shall I tell you a fairy tale, my love?”

“Please.”

“You see, the king cursed me when he made me stone. If it were not for the advice of some good friends of his, I should have remained in that state for eternity. But they thought of him and knew he would regret it if he left me no loophole.”

“They thought of him? Surely he must be an evil tyrant!”

“That is as it may be. But he had been king for a long time, and they were still his friends. And mine, as it turned out.”

Felicia watched Blaic as he told her of the conditions laid upon his release. He spoke simply, without putting in any humor to lighten the tale. “I knew no woman would ever shed a tear for me as myself. But the curse only said a woman must weep over me. That is what you did.”

She remembered her tears falling on his boot and smiled. “So I freed you.”

“Yes, and brought sorrow on yourself. For I had to betray you if I was ever to come home.”

“Was that all?”

“No. I must sing as well as Cuar the Harpist, the greatest of all our musicians, and learn to be as wise, or as devious, as Forgall the Wily, who, it now appears, is king.”