Felicia stayed for a moment, smoothing the sadly flattened golden curls. The too-bright eyes closed and Clarice began to snore softly. Felicia crept out. As she opened the door to slip through, Clarice said, “You will tell me his name as soon as you can, won’t you?”
“As soon as I can.”
She met Nurse on the landing. The woman carried a covered tray and wore furious creases in her forehead. She was muttering in a fierce monotone under her breath. “Proud...inconsiderate.... Oh! Miss Starret!”
“Good morning, Nurse. I was just visiting Lady Clarice. She seems fevered.”
“That she is. Poor thing. Stands to reason she’s ill. Such a shock — one day a child, the next all grown up, or nearly. She still needs me....” She bustled away, pausing as she rested the tray on her hip to free her hand for opening the door. “Have you come to see her ladyship? She’s gone out.”
“Where?”
“To see that Mr. Ashton. She was in the library and I heard kind of a shouting. She brushed right against me when she came out and all but spilled this soup! Black in the face she was, black as a raven, and pushed past me like I wasn’t even there! Not a word about the child — not one!”
The nurse went into Clarice’s room before Felicia could form any of the questions that leapt to her mouth. Confused, but glad that Nurse was remaining at her post, Felicia left Hamdry, hurrying to where Blaic waited for her. At first, she didn’t find him, though she looked high and low.
“Let me think,” she said when he at last appeared from behind the trunk of a tree she knew she had looked behind. Obligingly, he leaned his elbow against the bark and waited.
“Everything is in utter confusion in the house. Did you see Lady Stavely leave a few minutes ago?” He nodded. “Did she look angry?”
“Furious. She waited outside for the barouche to be brought around and paced back and forth like a lioness deprived of meat. When the driver asked for orders, I thought she was going to leap at his throat.”
“Where did she go? Never mind! I can guess. Mr. Ashton?”
“Exactly. Do you think they’ve fallen out?”
“I don’t know. But I do know that my father left this world owing no debts! Oh, fifty pounds to his tailor, a few odd bills for wine or books, but never more than a just amount. Certainly not enough to swallow his entire fortune! I kept his accounts; I know.”
“Who said your father left debts?”
“Mr. Ashton told Lady Stavely that he had. That Clarice inherits the title by right of blood succession but that she and Lady Stavely were otherwise left penniless.”
“Yet you don’t believe a word of it. Well, I’d trust your word over an attorney’s any century. Where shall we go? We can be ahead of Lady Stavely if you will but touch my hand.”
Felicia remembered all too well what had happened the last time she’d touched him. “You’ll show restraint?”
“Though it kill me.”
“That’s hardly a reassuring vow.” With a tender yet wary smile, she slipped her hand into his. He passed the firm pad of his thumb over the tops of her knuckles. She had never thought of the bony protrusions as wickedly arousable, but now she knew better. She snatched her hand away and said, “Take me to Mr. Ashton’s house.”
They did arrive before Lady Stavely, but not by many minutes. Felicia had just turned from standing on her toes to peer into an uncurtained window when the two-horse conveyance came rattling down the street. Lady Stavely did not wait for the coachman to hand her down—she flung the door open almost before the horses had stopped.
Though she wore a mantle over her mourning, she had not taken time to put on a hat. She hurried up the half-dozen stairs to Mr. Ashton’s door. His house, tall and narrow, stood a little apart from the others on the street and had, as it were, a shoulder turned against them.
Felicia came out of the area beside the stairs as Lady Stavely pounded furiously on the grimy white door at the top of the landing. “Open this door!” the older woman demanded. “I know you’re there!”
Farther down the street a window slid open. A head popped out, too far away for one to make out whether it belonged to a man or a woman. Felicia noticed; Lady Slavely did not. She’d added kicking to pounding. The driver, after one surprised glance at his mistress, kept his eyes focused between the off-horse’s ears.
“Your ladyship?” Felicia said hesitantly. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone at home.”
“What?” Lady Stavely swung about, her hand thrown up, possibly to defend herself against this soft-spoken menace. When she saw who it was, the mad passion that made her knock on the door until her hands were bruised faded. She stood there, once more haughty, cold, and inflexible.
“Felicia? What do you want?”
“I’ve come from Hamdry. I meant to see you or Mr. Ashton regarding the paying-in of the children’s allotment.”
“Hmph,” Lady Stavely said, exhaling forcefully. She held her skirt up with great care, then minced down the steps. Stopping before Felicia, she said in a voice too low to carry, “You and those brats may whistle for that money. He’s taken it.”
The face pushed close to hers was a ghastly white. Felicia wanted to step back, but Lady Stavely held her tightly just above the elbow. Her hard fingers pinched.
“He’d been skimming a little off the top of your father’s fortune for years! He’d take half of what the men would pay toward the upkeep of their ill-gotten brats and let the directresses keep a percentage of the rest so that they wouldn’t give him away.”
“You let him steal from your own husband?”
“Why not? Palamon Ashton is a genius. Why shouldn’t he have money?”
“Because it’s Clarice’s money.”
“Clarice will be much better off after Palamon is done investing her funds for her. No doubt that’s where he’s gone.” She looked around furtively. “I — I don’t know what came over me just now. Of course, he’s taken it all up to London to put on the ‘Change.”
She released Felicia’s arm and brushed her fingertips together lightly. She’d forgotten to wear gloves, but each finger still bore its burden of gems. Felicia supposed, wryly, that her stepmother could always sell those.
Felicia said, “Clarice told me that Papa left nothing but debts.”
“That is a tale we are putting about simply to avoid the death duties. It’s all been explained to me. Palamon — Mr. Ashton — is so clever about these things.”
“All too clever...? Oh, for heaven’s sake, Matilda! I’ve never thought you a fool until this moment!”
“What did you call me?”
Felicia ignored that, as well as the murderous look in her ladyship’s eyes. Catching her stepmother by the wrist, she towed her over to the window.
“Let go of me! Have you run mad?”
“Look in there. If he’s only gone to London, why is his house empty of furnishings?”
Still sputtering, Matilda lifted herself up as best she could to peer into the room, weaving from side to side in the attempt to see more clearly. She said, “There must be some mistake. Perhaps this room is never used.”
Felicia stepped away from Matilda. She whispered to Blaic, whom she could not see yet knew was nearby, “Can you open the front door?”
When no answer came, Felicia walked up the stairs and turned the knob, confident that the lock would yield. “That’s careless,” Felicia said over the railing. “He’s left his door ajar.”
Matilda Stavely made no reply, but she was inside the house before Felicia had turned away from the iron rail. Inside were several narrow, darkly paneled rooms that smelled of dust, mice, and, faintly, yesterday’s cooked cabbage. There was not a stick of furniture, nor anything else, only clean marks and trails to show where furniture had once stood before being carried out.
Lady Stavely’s footsteps ran from one end of the upstairs to the other. That pattering echo alone gave away the intensity of her feelings. They descended the stairs with a deadly deliberatio
n. When she appeared in the doorway, her face seemed locked and barred against any further display.
Clarice had said that Felicia could never understand Lady Stavely. Felicia understood her all too well. She locked her feelings away from herself. That others could not see them either was a mere by-product of fierce self-discipline. How had Mr. Ashton ever brought her to acknowledge her depths of passion?
“Lady Stavely....” Felicia began.
She held up an imperious hand. “Please! You are quite right. I have been made to look a fool. Spare me your exultation.”
“What shall you do?”
“Do? Don’t think for an instant that I will summon that asinine constable. I shan’t pour the tale of my idiocy, my folly! into his ears. No, let it stand. Lord Stavely left debts and that’s all there is to be said.”
“But Mr. Ashton? Is he to escape?”
The small, proud head lifted. The simple, matter-of-fact quality of her next words turned Felicia’s blood into a cold pool of anticipatory dread. “I send my curses after him. The money he has stolen will bring him nothing but death.”
* * * *
If the thousands of years he had lived had taught Blaic one thing, it was that fate had a sense of humor. Dry, sometimes even grisly, yet real, fate’s humor made a mockery of all human hopes.
After conveying Felicia home to the Tallyford orphanage, he had gone in search of Mr. Ashton. Unlike Lady Stavely, Felicia was not content to nurse her pride and let the solicitor escape punishment for his misdeeds. She wanted him found.
Having never met Ashton, it was not easy to find him. Blaic did not have a scrying stone such as the great king of Mag Mell could use to keep an eye on his subjects. Other sources, such as the eyes and ears of the wyrcan who sometimes spied on mortals, would be hidden in the Living Lands until he won his full rights there.
At last, Blaic returned to the seemingly empty halls of Mag Mell to visit an oracle pool. It took a long time, and much more concentration than he had been accustomed to using prior to his unfortunate term as a statue, before he saw a response in the water. The swirling gray mists parted to reveal a scene of bloody murder.
Blaic hurried to the spot in the mortal world. There, the signboard of a rampant lion hung in shreds of fog above a body half-sunk in mud. Though he had only Felicia’s description of the attorney to rely on, Blaic knew enough about fate to guess that Lady Stavely’s curse had focused unwelcome attention on the man.
When yellow light and laughter spilled out of the tavern with the opening of the door, Blaic blended with the shadows. A big man came out, his arms looped loosely around the necks of a couple of painted doxies. They all seemed to be holding each other up, and were looking over their shoulders at the merry crowd within.
The man threw a ribald jest to his friends, not looking where he was going. His left-hand woman topped it with a bawdy gesture.
The other woman turned her head to make sure she was not about to step in mud. Her shriek of horror drowned out her friend’s laughter.
Quickly, a crowd came pouring out of the tavern, those that weren’t utterly awash with gin retaining just enough wit to send for the landlord. He sent the potboy to hotfoot it for the constable.
“E’s dead, innit ‘e?” whispered the woman who’d all but stepped on his head.
“Aye,” the landlord answered, letting the face drop back into the mud. “Stabbed between neck ‘n’ shoulder.” The big, meaty hands patted coat pockets. “Robbed too, I warrant, for there’s not a copper on him. Any of you lot know him?”
Shakes of the head all the way around, though Blaic noticed several men at the back of the crowd disappearing into the mists in a manner not so far different from his own method.
A dark-haired woman in a torn and soiled red gown said, “Raise his head a minnut.”
She studied his pale face, the half-opened eyes, the mouth twisted with shock or pain. “Aye. He was on me not twenty minutes ago. Paid up like a little gentleman. Said I 'membered him of some’un and laughed. Nasty man. Coldest hands I ever felt in all my life.”
“He have much on him?” the landlord asked.
“Paid me with a guinea...as you know, Joe Mutton, considering I paid you it just now.”
The landlord nodded. “Where there’s one, there’s bound to be many. Murdered for it, poor fool. Did you hear his name, Jenny?”
The woman laughed. “We was introduced by the duchess, Joe. You know how I don’t take no man without references.”
Blaic saw that Jenny did not look unlike Lady Stavely, especially when the doxy shook back her tangled hair and adopted a pose mocking great refinement. He considered that the corpse in the mud was undoubtedly Mr. Ashton and that Lady Stavely’s money was now in the hands of some thief who would, in due time, be hanged.
He went home to tell Felicia the news.
Chapter Sixteen
“She’m be upstairs,” Mary said, greeting him at the door. “And you’ll have to go up alone zeein’ how I has me hands full with bathin’ that lot.” The sound of splashing and shrieks of the newly drenched children floated up from the doors she’d left open behind her. She had her sleeves rolled up her plump arms as far as they would go and even then the edges were wet.
“I won’t trouble you another moment,” he said with a grin that stayed on his lips all the way up the stairs.
Felicia sat musing in her chamber. He stopped on the doorstep to look at her. The room was far smaller than the room she’d occupied at Stavely, with a low ceiling stained by damp. Her personal items looked out of place amid the battered furnishings. Yet the only comment she had made to him was that she enjoyed the window seat between the deep and narrow windows.
She sat there now, looking down at her hands. There was a half-tender, half-rueful smile on her lips and Blaic knew she was thinking of him. He didn’t need to read her mind to know it; he’d felt the same smile on his own lips whenever he thought of her.
Blaic entered, and shut the door behind him.
She looked up at him, startled by the decisive click of the latch. Then her face softened into a welcoming smile. She picked up a sheaf of papers from the cushion beside her. “I’ve been thinking about what to do.”
He took the papers from her hand and hardly glanced at them before laying them down on a nearby table. “Felicia, Ashton is dead, murdered for the money he stole.”
Her hand flew to her lips. “Oh, no. I had hoped to recover...you didn’t...”
“Murder him myself? No, though the thought had occurred to me.” He knew he was staring at her, trying unconsciously to memorize her every feature. In the recess of the window seat, she looked cool and untouchable, like a rare jewel in a case. What was it about her that spoke to him so insistently? Blaic felt he could spend a dozen lifetimes asking himself that question and never come nearer the answer than he had already. She was Felicia, and that was enough.
She had been sitting with her legs tucked up under her, her long skirt falling away in a fluid arc. Now it shifted as she made to stand up. Blaic reached out and ran his hand up her long tight sleeve.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am that all this has happened. The shock must be terrible for you.”
Leaning against the pressure of his hand on her shoulder, she closed her eyes. “You forget,” she said softly. “I have been poor before this. I have not lost the ability to manage poverty. It is far more difficult for Lady Stavely and Clarice. They do not know that poverty can be a friend.”
“When I go back to the Living Lands, you will come with me. You don’t have to acquaint yourself again with this ‘friend.”
Felicia stood up, making his hand fall away. He could not tell if she’d shrugged it off or not. “Even if I could leave, who would take care of the children? I feel as responsible for them as for Clarice. Yes, I feel I must even help Lady Stavely, if only for Clarice’s sake.”
He spanned her hourglass waist with his hands, feeling the stays flex. He shook her lightly to give his
words emphasis. “Don’t turn yourself into a martyr, Felicia. You were born for better things than a virgin sacrifice.”
“I’m not—”
Blaic kissed her. Her mouth was cool and tasted faintly of parsley. The command of the Law tugged at him but it could scarcely be heard in the midst of the music he heard upon touching her. The melody grew louder, triumphant, when she melted against him and returned kiss for kiss, her mouth sweet and liquid.
He delved into the mysteries, feeling the smooth porcelain of her teeth and the furtive answer of her tongue. That answer seemed to shock her, for she stiffened, flexing her hands against his chest.
She pushed back to look in his eyes, but he’d already put a hand behind her head so that their touch was not broken. He wanted to stroke his fingers through the heavy chestnut waves but didn’t know if that was enough contact to keep the Law at bay.
“Felicia, remember to keep your hands on me. I want you, but I want you on equal terms. You were right: If we are to be together, I cannot command you; you cannot command me.”
Her pupils were huge, and the deep, full breaths she took, her breast pressed against him, were a delightful torture for him. He saw the hesitation in her eyes as she searched his face. Blaic promised himself that if she retreated again, he’d accept it. Mortal women had been trained for centuries to put a high, high price on their virginity. He breathed in her warm fragrance and wondered if his vow would hold against her temptations.
“I will remember,” she said. Her smile, though small, had a shy valor about it that went straight to Blaic’s heart. “At least I know you don’t love me for my fortune.”
He didn’t answer, except with a kiss. Blaic drew her close to his body, excitement bursting in every vein. He’d read a certain amount of human love poetry. It had always seemed that they were making a huge fuss over a simple, though sordid, business. The way of The People had seemed so much neater and more controlled.
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