“Rather beautiful, isn’t it?”
The staring contest broken, she looked round to find the monster from her dream in the doorway, his rich black tunic and trousers pushing the limits of outlandishness, as though Hamlet had somehow stepped off his stage into her life. He carried a pair of hawking gloves in one hand.
“Be a gentleman,” said Margaret shakily, “and go away.”
He strode into the room. “Let’s have none of this bashfulness, my dear.”
Gathering herself up, she ground out, “I am in my nightgown!” and she swung backhanded at his shins.
In a single fluid gesture he was down on one knee, her arm firmly in his iron grasp, her eye fixed in his. His hand hurt like claws—and it burned. “I know,” he said softly. Once again there was that dangerous laughter in his eye which she knew she could not fight. She relaxed and he let her go.
He got back to his feet and gazed out the window, eyes narrowed against the glare. With her arm tucked up to her chest Margaret pulled herself together, sitting with her back ramrod straight, her eyes averted.
“You looked up,” he said presently. “Did you look out at the garden? They are very beautiful, my gardens. You will like them.”
I shan’t, she thought venomously.
He turned. “What was that?”
She sniffed. “I said, I shan’t.”
“Of course not.” He resumed his perusal of the gardens from the window. “Not yet, but presently you will. You do not yet know what my grounds look like, nor my power, nor my offer.”
Her gut spasmed with the same broken, panicked laugh. “I’m sorry, was there an offer?”
“No,” he purred thoughtfully. “No, of course not. I find that if you want a woman, leaving the choice up to her doesn’t prove satisfactory.”
“That is very efficient of you, I’m sure.”
His voice was flat. “I should have known not to pick an Englishwoman.” He bent down and forced his hand under her chin, drawing it up. “I’ll be back, my sweet. Feel free to explore your new realm.” And he planted a stinging kiss on her lips before she could wrench back out of his grasp. With an angry gasp, head reeling, she fell against the wall and sat there in a furious daze, listening to the echo of the shut door and the receding sound of his boots.
Presently, with some effort, Margaret pushed off the wall and used it to support herself as she got to her feet. Her nightgown was far too thin for comfort and she wanted a heavier dress. There was no Amy. Who did one call for in a place like this? She hesitated, then decided with defiance that she would dress herself, God help her, just to spite the horrid man.
An adjoining room was a bath and closet, both very spacious and lavishly outfitted. Perversely, Margaret chose a black gown, though it made her skin look deathly pale. A mourning dress was certainly the most applicable attire she could wear at such a time as this. She washed her face and tended to her thick, unruly brown hair, and with her teeth gritted and her stomach clenched, wrestled bodily into the dress. It was a fight, but at last she stood before the mirror with hot cheeks and a gown that made her look ghastly, and she could honestly say that she was satisfied.
She would have stayed in the room, too, to spite de la Mare further, but hunger drove her at last out of her suite on the wide upper hallway. She looked over the railing at the atrium a story below. There was a pool and a fountain, tinkling softly away to themselves, skirted by plants and beds of rose quartz and the figures of the servants that were going to and fro. With a rush of black taffeta Margaret backed away from the rail, careful to keep out of sight as she tiptoed down the hallway toward the stairs. If she took the main stairs and kept in the shadows—de la Mare seemed to be lavish with his shadows—there was a good chance the servants, using the servants’ passageways and stairs, would overlook her. She glided along easily, quiet but for the sound of her skirts and the occasional rumble of her belly. She was not sure how she was supposed to get any food if she was bent on avoiding the servants, but she would rather try her luck alone first and give in to unwanted company later when she had run out of options.
The stairs took her down, not to the atrium, but to a round vaulted entryway. Through the fractalled front windows she could see twisted images of the landscape outside, green and white and dark farther off; but she did not look long, for the threat of the looming earth in the sky still murmured on the periphery of her consciousness. Glancing several ways to be sure she was alone, she took a doorway past the atrium, pushed between two rich hangings that served as doors, and slid into a dim-lit dining room. The room was built for many, sporting a long, beautiful table of polished wood and numerous chairs of matching make with feet of lions’ paws and padding of striped gold and green. She moved through, past the head of the table and the biggest, grandest chair which must have been de la Mare’s, past the sideboard and the china cabinet full of the most glorious-looking drinks and chinaware, and on through a low wooden door at the other end of the room.
Skulking through this doorway, feeling at once like a child on holiday and a prisoner trying to escape, she found herself in a narrow hallway of white with countless doors on either hand. Sound suddenly broke over her: the rattle of pots, the bang of pans, the clatter of silverware and dishes stacked on dishes. Hot scents of cooking and washing bloomed in her nose. With a start of panic Margaret realized she had made the wrong turn and plunged herself into the kitchen hallway. There was nowhere to hide: she was black against the clean white tile surfaces around her. Pure stubbornness forbade her from going back, so when she heard the opening creak of a door down the hall she impulsively seized the handle of a door by her elbow and pushed it open, lunging through and hoping to find it empty.
With a little gasp she pushed the door shut with infinite care and leaned against it, listening to the footsteps passing. The room around her was small and dark, bereft of any gleam of light. The door fit snugly in its frame: not even a thread of light seeped through. The footsteps died away and Margaret stood a moment longer, listening now for sound of anyone or anything within.
The only sound she could hear was the soft rush of plumbing overhead and to her right.
He had given her leave to explore his realm—her new realm, he had called it—but she wondered if he had meant this little room. Perhaps it was only the boiler room. She put out her hand and felt for heat, but a constant damp coolness washed against her skin. “Brr!” she said, and let go of the doorknob. With a rather delicious sense of doing what she was not supposed to, she took a few tentative steps forward, her hand brushing the wall to ensure her balance. It was bone-chillingly cold; beads of slick damp stood on the stones. With one careful foot set in front of the other, keeping vigilant purchase on the stones and eyes wide open for any hope of light, Margaret came to the head of a stair. She stood for quite some time on the top step, imagining what she would look like dashed at the bottom after missing her step in the dark. She could not be sure anyone would find her, and even if de la Mare did find her, she was not sure she would appreciate his support even then.
Thank goodness I am English, she thought sourly, and put her foot on the next step down. Gingerly, painfully, with the utmost care, she climbed down the stairs in the dark. She ran against a wall once, which thoroughly confused her, until she found she was on a landing and had to turn off and continue the downward plunge. She ran into three landings until she found no more, and there were no more stairs, and she was standing in a room of inky blackness whose dimensions she could not make out, not though she strained until her head pounded. She almost called out, just to hear the sound of her voice, but she touched her tongue to her dry lips and made herself move on, both hands out to catch herself in case she ran against anything.
It seemed like all of earth’s autumn must have gone by while she walked in that lightless place. Once, with a calm clarity, she thought to herself, This must be the valley of the shadow of death. This must be the last road of all. It was strange how muffled all her senses were�
�her sense of fear, her sense of direction, her sense even of hunger and loneliness. The only sense that was keen was a heady, formless sense of standing with each step on the edge of a cliff, waiting for the empty step, waiting for the fall, and not minding it very much.
A sudden light winked out at her from her left, down amidst the well of the dark. She paused, perplexed, and bent down to stare at it. It took her some time to realize that she was standing at the head of another stairway, and she was gazing down the stairs at a little glow of light. She put her foot on the top step—then stopped.
This would be a nasty place to meet de la Mare. If she had thought the train car difficult, what about now, seemingly miles beneath the ground, cut off from civilization? Her lips burned. She might have hated herself in the kitchen hallway if she had gone back, but some things were not worth the risk run. She turned back, retraced her steps along the endless hallway, and tripped back up the slippery stairs.
At the head of the stairs she stood leaning against the wall, breathing heavily, drowning out the sound of plumbing. “Well, Mother!” she gasped, and shoved away from the wall as she had shoved away from her bedroom in Aylesward. “I hope you’re happy!”
Dizzy with fatigue and hunger, cold, damp, and feeling dirty, Margaret stepped back out into the kitchen hallway, looking both ways, and managed to retrace her way back through the dining room and up into the first story hallway without being spotted. She almost lost herself, having forgot to mark which door was hers. She stepped in on a library and another bedroom before finally opening her own door. She locked it behind herself and fell into a chair, exhausted.
For a while she stared up at the vaulted ceiling, breathing unevenly, listening to the blood drum in her ears. In a few moments she would have to rouse enough energy to step into the bath, but for now she stared unblinkingly upward, breathing, being alive, and thinking. Her body felt beaten and somehow distant, which made thinking easier.
I must not forget earth, she told herself. I must get back home somehow. Even Mother and no husband and my cousin running off with some n’er-do-well is not as bad as this. And above all, I will not marry Rupert de la Mare, not even if my queen and country depends upon it. The queen can ask someone else, if it comes to that. And he will not be allowed to kiss me again. She pulled her arms up, pushed away from the chair with great effort, and limped to the bath.
She had shut and locked the bedroom door; she shut and locked the bathroom door too. Something about de la Mare made her doubt locked doors would prove any difficulty to him, which was discomforting, but she did not know what else to do. She found a robe and put it on while the water ran, pipes shaking and booming and rattling, and heated in the bath. She sat down in the single chair by the tub to wait, breathing in the scent of steam and lavender and something like muffins. At last the bath was ready. She cast a wary glance at the doorway. Giving in to her sense of paranoia she tiptoed over and peeked out. The bedroom was empty. She shut the door again and locked it, and, slipping off the robe, eased her body into the bath.
The hot water, the smell of lavender, were all familiar to her. She lay back, cupped in the buoyant hand of the water, feeling the heat crawl into her tightness and quietly work it loose. Her mind sorted itself as she relaxed. When she was done, she resolved to go down and get something to eat, even if she had to talk to all the servants in the house. She would survive, she would thwart de la Mare, she would get back home. She would not let her resolve waver over a trivial fact such as her inability to conjure up dragons to translate her back to earth. She would find a way, somehow.
Overheated and shaky, Margaret slowly made her way back down from her bath to the dining room. A little bell stood by de la Mare’s chair on the table, and with daring she leaned across and struck it sharp, listening to the sweet peal of it ring through the ground floor rooms.
There was a momentary pause, then the door to the kitchen hallway clicked open and a man stepped through, looking subservient but also surprised. When he saw her he checked, but asked with distant politeness, “May I help you?”
“Please prepare something for me,” said Margaret. “I will take a light meal.”
“Will you take it here?”
She glanced around the room. It was dark and depressing, but she could think of no other place in which to eat. “Yes, I’ll take it here.”
The man nodded and retreated through the door, leaving her to find a seat and wait the agonizing length of time until he returned. She found a pleasant place near the window which overlooked the park. She had nearly forgot about the thing in the sky, but now it was a little less grotesque to her and she could look at it from time to time without flinching. Now that she beheld it at a distance, she realized that it was rather beautiful as a whole, and shone with a silvery-blue radiance in the light of the sun. It was beginning to lose its eastern edges to the turn of night; it was strange to see the empty sky slowly eating up the edges of her planet. And while it was night down there—or was it up there?—it would still be daylight here. How many people were gazing up at her now—or was it down?—not knowing at all what they looked at? How many times had she looked and not known? How many times had she not even looked?
The man appeared at her side without a sound and slipped a tray of coffee, tomato soup, and two wedges of bread and cheese before her. She nodded her gratitude and began to eat once he had gone away. The food was excellent: the bread and cheese filled her, the soup warmed a hollow place in her that was more than her stomach, and the coffee she held close until it was cool. She was more accustomed to drinking cocoa than coffee, and until she took her first sip she had mistaken it for the former. So she held it until it was cool and then put it away on the tray.
There was a sudden gust of wind and a door banged somewhere. She jumped, undone by the suddenness of the sound, and only just recovered before the tall, black, stalking figure came striding into the dining room, head erect, his pale blue eyes searching for her. He came over, stripping off his hawking gloves as he did so. She could see that he was spattered with mud. But when he bent down, presumably to try for another of his impulsive kisses, she jerked her head away.
She could feel how motionless he had gone beside her, still inclined with his cheek at her ear; she could feel his breath against her neck. She could feel, above all, the dark, shifting thundercloud that was brooding inside him. She wondered if her resolve might cost her life: he seemed the sort of man who could kill.
With a rather pale face, but a steady voice, she asked, “Did you have a nice ride?”
“How domestic a question,” he purred, and released himself, drawing back upright. “As a matter of fact, I did. The game was swift, but I gave chase, and I got it in the end. I always do.”
His words sent a shiver to her soul. “Tell me,” she said, turning round and staring him squarely in the eye. “If you always get your quarry in the end, what count am I?”
He smiled mirthlessly down at her. “I hunt many things, both of wood and water and air, but you are the first of your kind for my chasing.”
“Then how can you be sure you will get it?”
“I always catch my quarry,” he said simply, and she found herself believing his words.
Through their reflections in the glass, she gazed across the lawn. The first forerunners of darkness were falling across the grass: a haze of shadow, a purple hue in the air. Looking up she could see the high sun swallowing up her earth in a blaze of white light. The feather-silver planet was blinking out of that colourless sky and the colourless sky was swiftly fading into a sudden night.
“An eclipse,” she said, mostly to herself. Then, with a harsh laugh, “I never thought I would see it from here.”
“A rare, fine sight,” said de la Mare.
She refocused and took in his reflection. He, too, was gazing upward, reflection pale in the glass, his eyes even paler, his dark hair lost in the hawk-plunging dusk of the sky. In a few minutes he would be swallowed up in the twilight of
the room, save for his skin which, like her own, was ghastly pale against black clothing. Strangely disembodied by earth-shadow, he seemed even more a figure of dark magic. An uneasy energy hummed in the air.
When she looked again, the darkness outside was complete.
De la Mare let out a long-held breath and turned into the room. With a double snap of his fingers the room sprang alight: every candle in every holder flashed and flared and stretched up its flame to throw its light around the room. A sudden warmth burned away the swift evening chill. “I am sorry you have just eaten,” he said, casting a look at her over his shoulder. “I was hoping you would dine with me tonight.”
“I am sure you were,” said Margaret. She was disquieted by his figure, fair to see and slender as a racehorse, pacing down the room toward the sideboard. He had a strange, compelling handsomeness about him which she loathed.
“You have not touched your coffee.” He unstoppered a flask of gleaming amber-coloured liquid and turned a tumbler out from among its fellows, meticulously filling it. “Would you like something stronger?”
Margaret folded her hands in her lap with a little bird-wing rustle. “I think it would be unwise to trust your vintage.”
He laughed, high and bright. Swinging round with the flask in one hand, the tumbler in the other, the candlelight playing in the depths of both, he said, “What a careful creature you are. I like that.” He shook his head. “There were many pretty girls, but then there was you. You will do well. You have wit and gut and cunning, and hell knows I need that by me.”
“Hell would know what you need,” agreed Margaret.
De la Mare set the flask down and leaned back against the sideboard, supporting himself with his legs crossed at the ankles. The light glittered in his glass, swaying a little to his almost imperceptible movement. For a long while he gazed at her, silent, his face inscrutable behind a cool little smile. She felt uncomfortably that his pallid eyes could see right through to her skin and she held up under that gaze only through sheer power of will. She could not bear the thought of caving to him. He wanted her to, and she could not do it.
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