“But I am a—a whore. You paid for me.”
“You are not a whore. You are a princess. And if I paid for you, then I have the right to decide when to take you to my bed. Is that not so?”
The perfect column of her neck moved slightly as she swallowed. No sound came from her lips.
I pulled the blanket around her again and raised her to her feet. “Are you afraid?” I asked, holding her in my arms because I could not resist doing so. Not after loving her, wanting her, mourning for her for so many long, empty years.
Elisabeth nodded.
“Don’t be,” I whispered. “Because I would sooner destroy myself than do anything to hurt you. All I want is to look after you—”
“I’m not a fine lady, like you’re used to,” she murmured. “Is that why you don’t want me?”
I laid an index finger to her nose, remembering so many things we had done together, things I knew she could not recall. “But I do want you,” I said softly. “I want you desperately.”
“Then, why—?”
I bent to kiss her lips, but only lightly. Only briefly. “We have time,” I told her.
She trembled against me. “Well, I can’t stay away from the Horse and Horn forever, you know,” she protested, drawing back in my embrace. “There be those who’ll be asking after me. I’ve got to look out for me lads, or some other girl will have them—”
An unholy rage surged through me at the thought of her giving herself to another man, whether for love or for money.
I caught her chin in my hand, perhaps a touch too roughly at first, and immediately relaxed my hold. Still, I knew from the fear that rose in her eyes that I had hurt her a little, and that she had not missed the look of fury I had been unable to disguise.
I closed my eyes for a moment, cursing myself for a rash, intemperate fool.
“I’m sorry,” I said hoarsely. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Her lower lip quivered as she gazed up at me. “I’m not that other girl—the one you used to know. I’m just plain Betsey Saxon, who lifts her skirts for them what can pay.”
I should have listened to her. It might have saved us both so much pain.
Instead, I turned furiously away. “Don’t ever say that again,” I rasped, and she made no other attempt to reason with me for the rest of that night.
50
Elisabeth Saxon
Colefield Hall, 1457
Elisabeth lay alone and puzzled in Valerian’s enormous bed, watching the firelight flicker across the ceiling. It was unheard of for a man to offer coins and then not take his pleasure, and she was troubled. Perhaps the gentleman did not think her fetching—the idea nettled her sorely—or perhaps she just wasn’t fine enough for the likes of him.
Well, come the morrow, she’d take her bag of gold—it was tucked safely away beneath her pillow—and go straight back to the Horse and Horn. There were men there what appreciated a sweet-natured woman, and they wouldn’t try to drown her in hot water or bum her eyes out with soap, neither.
She stretched, enjoying the feeling of the clean, smooth sheets against her bare skin, and sighed. She’d known a queer sense of recognition, when Valerian had entered the inn, as if she remembered him from somewhere beyond the reach of her memory, but she’d worked out why he’d seemed familiar. He was the living specter of a figure in a painting she’d seen, up in London Town, when she was a girl of eight.
Her father was still alive back then, and they’d gone to the city, the pair of them, hoping to sell off a cartload of cabbage in one of the marketplaces. They’d done well and shared an eel pie to celebrate, but as they started back toward home, a storm had come up, washing the cobbled streets and stinking gutters with rain.
They’d left the cart and pony in the mews and taken refuge inside a vast church, where there were paintings on the walls, and statues all about, and what seemed like thousands of candles. The place was empty, except for a priest and two or three old women kneeling in prayer, and as Elisabeth looked about, she marveled at the grandeur of it all.
The biggest painting loomed on the rear wall of the sanctuary, and Elisabeth’s father, cap in hand, had told her in a whisper that it represented the aftermath of the great battle between God’s angels and those who followed Lucifer. They’d been tussling on and off ever since, the good sorts and the bad, by his reckoning.
The eerie reality of the picture fascinated Elisabeth. The sky was filled with angels that appeared to fly, wings fluttering gracefully, while below their dangling, snow- white feet, amidst leaping flames, hideous demons thrust their pitchforks upward and leered in defiance.
On an outcropping of rock, well below heaven, but not quite in hell, or so it had seemed to Elisabeth, stood a magnificent figure, gazing up at the angels with a look of such sorrow and yearning that she’d wanted to weep for him. “Who is that?” she’d whispered and would have touched the image with a small, dirty finger if her father hadn’t grasped her hand to stop her.
A monk had crept up behind them, leather-shod feet moving soundlessly over the cold stone floor, and it was he who answered Elisabeth’s question. “That, my child, is Lucifer—once God’s favorite angel.”
“Why does he look so sad?” she’d asked.
The monk spoke briskly and without compassion. “He knows that he is forever damned. As are all who willfully disobey God. Have a thought for the well-being of your soul, or you also will know the wrath of heaven.” Elisabeth had shuddered and moved a little closer to her father, who had put an arm about her shoulders. He had often remarked, in the privacy of their poor hovel in the outmost edge of the village of Lower Bilby, that kinder gods had once ruled in England, before the Christians came, bringing their devil with them.
Now, lying in a warm bed, with her belly full of good food, Elisabeth realized only too well why the master of this grand house had seemed familiar.
He looked exactly like that beautiful, solemn being in the church painting.
She shivered and pulled the covers up under her chin. “Don’t be a dunce, Betsey Saxon,” she murmured to herself. “The master’s a strange one, I’ll give you that, but he’s no more than a man.”
A shadow moved next to the window, took on solidity and shape. “Ah,” said that cultured, resonant voice she had come to recognize. “But I am ‘more than a man,’ Elisabeth. So much more.”
Valerian.
Elisabeth’s heart thundered; indeed its beat seemed to reverberate into every part of her body, but she couldn’t rightly say she was afraid. “Where did you come from?” she demanded. “You wasn’t here a minute ago.”
He laughed, and the sound, rich and masculine, moved over Elisabeth like an intangible caress. “No, I wasn’t,” he said. He took the candle from its pewter stick, carried it over to the hearth, and squatted to touch the wick to the embers.
Thin, golden light gilded his face, his hair, and the fine, strange cut of his clothes as he crossed the room again. He stood at the foot of her bed, holding the tallow at chest height, seemingly unaware of the hot wax dropping onto the flesh of his hand. In the candle’s glow, and the silver wash of the moon, it seemed he’d been sculpted from alabaster or ivory, like the statues in that London church.
“I just wish you’d make up your mind, that’s all,” Elisabeth said. “About whether you want a tumble or not, I mean.”
Something moved in the exquisite, shadowy face at her words. Some fleeting emotion she supposed was better left unrecognized.
“Must you speak like a common trollop?” he asked after a moment’s silence.
Elisabeth sat bolt upright in bed, and it never occurred to her to cover her full breasts. Modesty had no place in her life; she survived by enticing men with coppers to spend. And she had not been unhappy or ashamed, for she’d only done what she must.
Her cheeks were as hot as the last coals tumbling through the grate. “That’s what I am, sir. Who else would I talk like now, besides me own self?”
Valerian looked as though she
’d struck him, then he whirled suddenly and flung the candle into the fireplace. The tallow melted and caught fire before he turned to face her again.
“I can’t bear it,” he murmured, rubbing his temples with a thumb and forefinger. “This is worse than if I’d never found you at all.”
Elisabeth felt a sudden, sweeping sympathy for him, just as she had for that lonely fellow in the painting, standing on the very brink of hell. Rising onto her knees, she made her way to the end of the bed. “For tonight,” she said softly, “I can try to pretend that I’m her. I ain’t been around so many ladies as some others might have been, but I think if I just kept quiet—”
He made an odd, strangled sound that might have been either a sigh or a sob. Then he came to where she knelt, placed his hands on either side of her head, and pressed her close against his chest.
“No,” he whispered brokenly. “No, love. You needn’t change to suit me. I adore you—I always will, no matter what you do. Yours is a splendid and brave spirit, and the truth is, you are far better than any woman, anywhere—” She raised her hands to his shoulders and gazed up into his magnificent face. She didn’t understand a great deal of what he said, it was true, but she knew how to console a man. “Let a girl lend a bit of comfort, won’t you?” she said. “It won’t be so bad, I promise.”
He gazed into her eyes, idly smoothing the pads of his thumbs over her cheekbones. “Such charity,” he marveled, and she knew by the tender despair in his voice he wasn’t mocking her. “Have you no inhibitions at all?” She was eager to lift his spirits. “I don’t know,” she said quickly, “but if you’ll just explain how that’s done—”
Valerian threw back his head and gave a shout of laughter, and when he looked at her again, it really did seem that there might be tears glistening in his eyes.
Elisabeth flushed, closing her hands into fists against his chest. “What’s the joke?” she demanded.
He lifted her until she was standing, her feet sinking into the feather ticking as her knees had done before, her face on a level with his own. “Stay here with me,” he pleaded quietly. “I’ll give you whatever you want—all the gowns and kirtles you could wish for—a bucket of gold to celebrate the setting of every sun—anything.” Elisabeth relaxed her hands. No man had ever spoken to her that way, as if she had the option of granting or refusing his petition, when he was willing to pay so dear a price for her company. “And I don’t have to be her—that other woman?”
Valerian lifted his face for a few moments, as though silently begging some favor of heaven, and then lifted her into his arms. “You only have to be Elisabeth,” he said in a husky tone. “Tomorrow, after the sun goes down, you and I will be off to London, and we’ll buy you so many baubles and ribbons that you won’t be able to carry them all.”
“You wouldn’t make a promise like that and then change your mind, would you?”
He smiled and shook his head. “No, sweet. A promise is a promise.”
She thought he would lie with her at last, since he carried her around the bed and set her so gently atop the smooth covers, but instead he just stood there, looking down at her.
Elisabeth caught hold of his hand, realizing that she wanted very much for him to stay. A peculiar state of shyness had overtaken her, though, and she could not confess what she was thinking.
“Couldn’t we go in the morning?” she asked eagerly. “To London Town, I mean.”
“I shall be busy then,” he answered, and his words had just the faintest edge. “Have your evening meal early. We’ll set out as soon as the moon rises.”
Something compelled her to argue, to stall, so that he might stay longer. “But there’s wolves about then, ain’t there?”
“I am not afraid of those poor creatures,” Valerian replied, “nor should you be. They’ll do you no harm.”
Despite the gentle tone in which he spoke, Elisabeth knew he would not change his mind. For reasons of his own—only the saints knew what they were—he did not wish to travel the road to London by day.
In Elisabeth’s opinion, it was daft to take such a chance, for there were not only wolves to lie in wait along the way, but brigands, too. She told herself it was for the gowns she was going, and the gold he’d promised—a bucketful of it for every day at sunset, he’d said! Of course, he was probably bluffing about that.
She sighed. If things didn’t turn out to her liking, why, London was a big place, and it would be easy to slip away and make a new start for herself. Especially with money saved and good clothes to wear.
“Won’t you stay?” she said, still clasping his hand, which felt strangely cool and hard.
Valerian bent just far enough to brush his lips, shiver- light, across her knuckles. “Some other night, my love. When you’ve learned to trust me. And don’t think of running away once you get to London—there are creatures far deadlier than wolves wandering its streets.” Elisabeth gasped, for she’d only thought of losing herself in that great city—she certainly hadn’t spoken of it aloud. “You’re a warlock!” she accused, meaning to sit up again, to flee the room, nay, the castle itself, and take her chances with the wild animals and thieves she might well meet on the road.
She could not move. Valerian held her with nothing but his gaze, and yet she was pinioned to the bed.
“I pray you,” he said evenly, “do not insult me so again. I am no such creature.”
Tears, more of wonder and amazement than fear, sprang to Elisabeth’s eyes. She had given up struggling beneath his invisible hold, having found it futile to do so. “What are you, then?” she persisted, barely breathing the words. “You said yourself, when first you came out of the shadows beside the window, that you are more than a man!”
“Brave, foolish Elisabeth,” he said, withdrawing a little way into the darkness. “That was your fatal flaw before as well, you know. You were not wise enough to be afraid, and that’s why the sea took you from me.”
“What do you mean?” Elisabeth might have been bound by visible ropes; the spell he’d cast over her was that strong. “What are you, if you ain’t a man or a warlock? And what do you mean, saying the sea took me away from you? What have you done to me?”
Valerian did not reply, but simply retreated another step, and then another. In the next instant he was gone, without so much as stirring a draft.
The enchantment was broken; freed from whatever mysterious power had held her pressed to the mattress, Elisabeth leaped off the bed and rushed to the place where Valerian had been until a mere heartbeat before.
Furious because she could not comprehend his trick, she stomped one foot and let loose with a string of curses that would have turned the River Thames back upon itself.
Valerian did not return that night, although Elisabeth kept her eyes open as long as she could, waiting for him.
Daisy
Las Vegas, 1995
The trip back from Telluride was never quite clear in Daisy’s memory. One minute she’d been driving down the highway in the predawn darkness, sensing rather than seeing the mountains and Christmas-scented forests all around her. The next, she found herself cruising through the Nevada desert in the bright afternoon sunlight, only a few miles outside her hometown.
Either she really was losing her mind, or Valerian had come through with a version of broomstick travel after all.
Turning onto the roadside, Daisy put on the brakes and shut off the engine. Then she just sat there, trembling, her forehead resting against the steering wheel, until she was sure she wouldn’t a) hyperventilate or b) go into hysterics.
After a few moments of recovery, she reached up and wrenched the rearview mirror toward her, peering into her own eyes, noting the shadows beneath them and the pallor of her skin.
“You’re not crazy, Chandler,” she said aloud and with conviction. “Have you got that? If you saw a guy disappear, he damned well disappeared! And if you think you made the trip between Telluride and Vegas in practically the blink of an eye, then tha
t’s what happened!”
A swirling blue light flashed across her reflected image, and she sighed and tilted her head back against the seat to take a deep breath, hold it to the count of five, and release it slowly. It was an antistress technique she’d read about in a magazine article while waiting in the dentist’s office.
The state trooper approached the car on the driver’s side and rapped on the window.
“You feeling all right, ma’am?” he inquired through the glass.
Daisy rolled it down. The trooper was young, and probably still convinced he could change the world, and her heart went out to him. According to the plastic tag on his uniform shirt, his name was Wilson.
She nodded and smiled. “I’m okay. I guess I’m a little tired, though—I just drove over from my sister’s place in Telluride.”
Okay, so that might have been a small lie, Daisy conceded to her twitching conscience. What was she supposed to have said—that she’d been zapped from Colorado to Nevada, without even touching down in Utah? Badge or no badge, she’d wind up in a room with upholstered walls if she told the truth.
“I’d like to take a look at your license and registration, please,” Wilson said, with an endearing all-American smile.
Daisy reached for her purse, but slowly. She was a cop herself, after all, and she knew well enough how a quick move would look from the trooper’s perspective. She handed him the requested license along with her badge and was removing the registration from the clip on the visor when he cleared his throat.
“That’s all right, Detective Chandler,” he said, returning the laminated card with her mug shot on it, along with the small leather folder containing her police ID and badge. He was blushing a little. “You know how it is.”
“Yeah,” Daisy said good-naturedly, “I do.”
“I could drive you into town if you’re too tired to go on.”
Daisy shook her head. “I’m okay. I just needed to take a breather, that’s all. Thanks.”
The trooper nodded, touched the brim of his hat, and strode back to his car. Daisy watched his retreating figure in the mirror, grinning slightly and thinking there was nothing quite like a man in a uniform.
The Black Rose Chronicles Page 75