Miss Landon and Aubranael (Tales of Aylfenhame Book 1) (22 page)

With a deep sigh, he abandoned his looking-glass and left his dressing-room behind. He ought not to indulge such reflections. Instead he should focus on Miss Landon: hers was the only opinion that really mattered. If she would only accept him as he was, everyone else may treat him as badly as they desired and it would not matter at all.

Grunewald let him take the carriage without a word of complaint or censure. His eyes, though, gleamed with something like contempt as he watched Aubranael settle himself inside, dressed in the very best of his clothes and wearing his nerves like a cloak.

‘Enjoy yourself,’ Grunewald said drily as the coach began to move.

Aubranael made no reply. Enjoying himself was probably out of the question, as his friend well knew. All he was concerned about was acquitting himself without embarrassment, pleasing Miss Landon, and surviving the evening without catastrophe.

But the promise of catastrophe seemed to hang in the air over the carriage, following him all the way to Alford. When he got out of the carriage before the Assembly Rooms, it settled about his shoulders, weighing him down and dampening all his best efforts at good cheer. He went inside with leaden steps and a heavy heart, suddenly gripped with a paralysing fear that Miss Landon had not sent the note at all and she was not here.

But she was. She was waiting near the door—just as he himself had done a few weeks ago, on the occasion of the Adairs’ private ball—and she stepped forward to meet him. Her face was alight with pleasure, her face lit with the sunny smile he loved so much, and his heart eased a little.

‘Miss Landon,’ he murmured, making his very best bow. ‘I am so pleased to see you safely returned from your journey.’

She curtseyed, and smiled on him some more. ‘How very kind of you!’ she declared. ‘Perhaps it was naughty of me to go off unattended like that. I ought to take a gentleman with me, next time.’

She smiled at him archly as she spoke, and the implications of her little speech were clear even to
him.
She held his gaze too long, and his cheeks flushed with warmth. What was she doing? He felt out of his depth.

Clearing his throat, he managed to say: ‘May I claim the next dance?’ with tolerable composure. She acquiesced gracefully, and they had only a few minutes of conversation—arch on her side, awkward on his—before the dancing began. He led her into the set with relief; at least for the next half-hour or so he could focus on getting the steps right and not on the strange verbal fencing-match that appeared to be going on with Miss Landon.

But he was soon relieved of this comforting expectation. It wasn’t only her manner that was different; so was her dancing. She came closer to him than was strictly considered proper; she stroked his fingers when he took her hand; she looked up at him from beneath coyly lowered lashes, held his gaze for long, long moments, and blushed frequently. Nothing could be more unlike the gracious, dignified warmth of her earlier behaviour.

‘You are different, Miss Landon,’ he ventured to say after quarter of an hour.

‘Oh?’ she said with a pleased smile. ‘In what way am I different?’

Aubranael stared at her, at a loss to know what to say. How could he describe her behaviour? He did not know the words—and besides, it could not be considered gentlemanly to throw her unseemly manner in her face in such a fashion. So he stuttered something incoherent, and she laughed. Was he imagining the glint of cruel enjoyment in her eye?

‘You know what people say of Aylfenhame,’ she said lightly. ‘It
changes
you.’

Had it changed her? She had been gone only two days. Remarkably fast work, if so. But did he disapprove of the changes? Grunewald’s reaction to her note had given him a bad feeling, and if the stares and whispers at the Assembly were anything to go by, the good folk of Alford did not approve of Miss Landon’s behaviour either.

But what did it really mean? Naive as he undoubtedly was, even he recognised that it signalled a very definite interest on her part. Previously, he had been left in considerable doubt as to the nature and strength of Miss Landon’s feelings towards him; she was always friendly and obliging, always seemed at least a little bit pleased to see him, but she had never given him anything that he could call
encouragement.

Now every word, every movement seemed designed to do just that. She was encouraging him with all her might, and no one could mistake it.

A flutter of pleasure ran through him at the thought. She liked him! Liked him a very great deal, in fact, and she wanted him to know it! He might venture to guess that her business in Grenlowe had not worked out as she had hoped; but since she had not confided her business to him herself, he felt he was not in a position to enquire after it.

He suffered a note of discomfort at that thought; was she, as Grunewald had put it, trying to ‘catch’ at him because she had no other option? That was hardly flattering, and he would not wish such a desperate situation upon her for the world—not even if he was the eventual beneficiary of it. But nonetheless, her manner began to please him. They danced again and again, with no objection at all from her, and he began to feel increasingly elated. She adored him; she would forgive him anything! Everything would be well after all.

Relief and delight soon drowned out his misgivings, and for the first time he allowed his extreme partiality for her to show. The rest of the ballroom was a blank to him; he saw nothing of anyone else’s doings, had no interest in anything they had to say. All he saw was Sophy.

Late in the evening, when they had danced as much as they could desire, Miss Landon cast him a significant look, smiled invitingly at him and took his hand. ‘Come with me,’ she whispered, and drew him towards the door. Unhesitating, he followed.

She led him out of the ballroom—oblivious to the mutterings they left behind—and through the corridors beyond until she found a quiet, dark nook away from the bustle of the assembly. She drew him close to her, and still closer, until her face was only inches from hers; only then did she release his hand.

‘Mr. Stanton,’ she breathed. ‘Aubrey…’ She slipped a hand behind his head, twined her fingers in his hair, and drew his face down to hers.

Her lips were incredibly soft. He returned her kiss—only the second of his life—with fervour, holding her soft, warm curves close to him. She kissed every bit as well as Hidenory; better, even, because this was
Sophy
and he would give anything at all—the whole of Aylfenhame, if he had it—if she would only accept the gift of his heart.

He grew breathless, but Sophy continued to kiss him and he couldn’t let go of her. His knees grew so weak he could barely stand, and his hands shook as he held her to him. When she finally pulled away, he could only rest his face against her neck and gasp, ‘Sophy… marry me?’

She beamed up at him. ‘I thought you would never ask,’ she whispered.

He gripped her. ‘Is that a yes?’

‘Yes! Of course it is.’

For a few minutes, Aubranael entirely lost control of his emotions. He could only cling to her and smile and kiss her again and again, his whole body shaking with relief and excitement and desire. His heart swelled with happiness and he could barely breathe.

At length, however, some unwelcome recollections pierced his cloud of happiness and he was obliged to calm down. She had said yes—yes! She was
his
Sophy at last—but she had done so without knowing the whole truth about him. His promise to Hidenory rang in his ears, and today was the eighth of June.

‘Sophy,’ he said in a serious tone, gently disengaging her arms from around his neck. ‘Before we… I mean, there is something I must tell you. I should not have asked you before I had… that is, please listen to me for a moment.’

She said nothing, only smiled up at him with such a sweetly loving expression that his heart spasmed and his stomach jumped with fear. Would she take back her beautiful
yes
once she knew? Would that loving expression turn to hatred?

His shakes were back. Taking a small step away from her, he hid his trembling hands behind his back and opened his mouth. But he couldn’t speak. The words would not come. All he could see in his mind’s eye was Sophy’s sweet face turning white with horror; of her rejecting him, storming away, never consenting to see him again. If
he
had been in her position he would probably have done the same. How could he claim to love her when he had lied so deeply, and for so long?

She watched him for a long, awkward moment, her smile faltering. Then in a whisper she said: ‘What is the time?’

Aubranael blinked, confused. He was on the brink of making a confession—he had prepared her for something very important indeed—and she was asking about the time?

‘I hardly know,’ he said. ‘Late.’

She smiled. ‘Almost midnight.’

Midnight! It had not occurred to him to wonder exactly
when
Hidenory’s enchantment would wear off. He had not expected to be standing with Miss Landon when it did. He had thought that he would go to bed on the night of the eighth, and wake on the morning of the ninth with his own face restored. But midnight was the precise end of the eighth of June—it would make perfect sense for the enchantment to be over on the stroke of twelve.

As the thought formed in his mind, he heard the church bells beginning to chime the hour. One, two, three chimes… quickly, he had only seconds to make his confession! Four, five, six, seven, and he could only stare dumbly at Sophy, his stomach churning with dread as eight, nine, ten and eleven sounded…

Twelve.

The deep chiming of the bells faded away on the night air, leaving silence in its wake; silence broken only by the distant babble of talk and laughing voices from the assembly rooms. He stared at Sophy and she stared back. Her face didn’t change, and he began to feel confused. Was he still Mr. Stanton? Was he back to himself?

He glanced down to find that his fine evening clothes were still there. But of course they were: Grunewald had given them. They were not part of Hidenory’s enchantment.

Slowly, he reached up a shaking hand and touched his cheek. His fingers met the rough texture of his ruined, twisted flesh, and his heart broke.

‘I’m sorry…’ he whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’

But Sophy did not look horrified. She watched him calmly, and when he began to apologise she actually smiled.

‘So,’ she said. ‘I knew you had a secret.’

He stared, stunned. ‘Wh-what? How?’

‘It is funny,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘When one lives with a secret, it becomes easier, somehow, to sense when others are hiding something.’

‘I cannot understand you,’ he stuttered. ‘You… have a secret?’

‘Yes! A very important one! And I will tell you what it is, but first you must tell me who
you
are.’

So he explained everything, and now it was suddenly easy. He talked and talked, relief making him almost incoherent. At length, Sophy stopped him by placing a gentle hand over his lips.

‘Enough,’ she smiled. ‘I think I understand everything. I have only one question.’

He lifted his brows to show that he was listening.

‘How did you come by this curse?’

She removed her hand, inviting him to talk, but this time it was not easy. He took a deep breath, and another, trying to order his thoughts. The tension of the evening—the excitement, the elation, the fear, the relief—had sent his thoughts into chaos and it took him some few moments to summon the clarity—and the resolve—to answer Sophy’s question.

‘I grew up in a palace,’ he began at last. ‘That sounds wonderful, does it not? But in truth I was one of several stray children. My mother had been a servant; she probably died in childbirth, but no one seemed to know. And my father was rumoured to be one of the gardeners, but nobody could say for sure.

‘I had many friends, however, as there were other children like me; belonging to no one, living wild in the grounds. But the person I loved best was Lihyaen. I should have had nothing to do with her: she was the princess, and I only a wild boy. But how could I help it? She was perfect.’

Sophy had turned white, but he hardly noticed, so involved in his story was he. ‘We were the same age, we loved the same things… her nurses kept trying to chase me away, but we were too cunning for them.

‘Then one day…’ His throat tried to close and he was forced to stop and clear it. ‘One day,’ he continued, ‘Well, even now I hardly know what happened. Lihyaen had asked me to wait for her in the second potting shed—we had a secret way in and out, and we often used to crouch there, telling each other stories. She had a way with the flowers—truly remarkable. Anyway, she did not appear. I went looking for her.’

He took a deep breath. ‘I found her in the nursery. She was lying in the cot she had used as a baby; it was too small for her by then, and she was all twisted up inside it. Her face was blue, and her eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.

‘I realised someone else was in the room, someone I didn’t recognise. He or she was wearing a white cloak that covered everything—face, body. I had no idea who it was, but I
knew
that he or she was an enemy. I threw myself at them—I don’t know what I expected to achieve, but I was distraught. I got a face full of dark magic for my trouble, and when I awoke I was like this.’ He touched his face.

He could not bring himself to tell the rest of the story. Ayliri lived for a very long time, ordinarily, but Lihyaen’s family had been dogged by tragedy. Soon after Lihyaen’s death, her mother had died as well; some said she had died of sorrow. Then scarcely a year later, her father disappeared. He had left behind a document abdicating the throne of Aylfenhame in favour of his next heir, whoever that might be—even he did not know. He had never again been seen in Aylfenhame.

Since then, there had been no monarch. Many had laid claim to the throne, but none had been able to prove their right to it above any other. There had been many years of turmoil and instability, and people often spoke of the king’s return with longing.