Tod glanced at Donal. He did not know all the strange substances humans ingested in the belief that they would improve their health or happiness, but he had heard this word before. The look on Donal’s face confirmed his suspicions.
Ivy also noticed Donal’s expression. “Mama was…often ill just before…before everything was lost,” she continued, the defiance in her eyes belying her stammer. “She needed the medicine.”
“Go on,” Donal urged softly.
“My father was a gentleman of the Russian nobility,” she said, recovering her confidence. “He was smitten with Mama as soon as he met her at a palace ball. But her parents did not approve of him, and he was too highly placed to marry a mere diplomat’s daughter.”
Tod edged closer, turning her words about in his head. Béfind claimed that Ivy was her daughter, given to a mortal woman in an act of treachery. But who was Ivy’s father? Was this Russian the mortal lover of whom Béfind had spoken?
“In spite of the obstacles between them,” Ivy continued, “they found ways to meet in secret. And in time—” She glared defiantly at Donal. “Estelle had a child.”
Donal held Ivy’s gaze. “You think that I’d be shocked to learn that your parents were not married when you were born?” He shook his head. “Ivy, my own parents had not yet married when I was conceived, and they were separated before the legal union could take place. I am like you.”
Ivy unfolded her legs. “Truly?”
“Truly. I see no shame in it, if your parents loved one another.”
“They did. But…” She dropped her eyes. “Something happened. My father had to go away, and when Estelle’s parents learned that she was with child, her father arranged her marriage to an old man who was paid to take my mother as his wife.”
Donal closed his eyes, and Tod knew he was remembering the similar arrangement his own mortal grandfather had made to save his mother’s reputation. “You were born in Russia?” he asked.
“No. The old man died soon after their marriage, and Mama’s parents were to bring her back to England. But they were killed on the journey. My mother would have been lost, except that she had the jewels my father had left her…the ones she had hidden from my grandparents. They were enough for her to take a house in London. Her father’s connections enabled her to establish herself in society. She was considered a great beauty.” Ivy tossed her head. “Men were always pursuing her.”
“And what of you?” Donal asked.
“I had books and pretty dresses, and every night I watched Mama go out to routes and balls in her beautiful gowns.”
“She spent little time with you.”
Ivy shrugged. “I could do whatever I wanted, and I liked to watch the people who came to the house to see her. But after a while, the jewels started to run out. We had to move to another part of London. Estelle still went to parties, but less visitors came. The servants left. That was when she started taking the laudanum and talking about my father.”
“How old were you then?”
“Ten, I think. I don’t remember.” Her voice was light, as if the events that had shaped her young life were meaningless to her now. “Mama went out less and less, and our maid never had enough money to buy the food we needed. So I looked for ways to help. I went out into the streets and found out how other people lived.”
“That was how you learned the speech of Seven Dials.”
“Oi’m very good at copyin’, Oi am,” she said in a thick accent. “I was good at hiding, too. And I found out that I could sneak in and out of people’s houses without their noticing. So I went to the houses of my mother’s friends and took things they wouldn’t miss, so I could sell them for food and medicine. For a while that was enough. But then Mama got very sick, and no medicine would help her. I don’t think she could go on living as we had to live then.”
Tod gripped the tree branch, suddenly and inexplicably desperate to comfort Ivy with assurances that she need never suffer so again. But Donal was still in the way. He said, “I’m very sorry, Ivy.”
“I think Mama was glad to die. But then men came to take the house and everything in it, and they would have taken me away, too. So I went to live in the streets. I was fine until…” She touched the chain of the pendant that rested against her heart. “I knew what men could be like, so I stayed a child.”
Donal reached for her hand and cupped her fingers in his. “It must have been very hard for you.”
“It wasn’t so terrible. At least I was free.” She looked from his hand to his face. “But I was glad to go with you, once I knew…once I was sure you were safe.”
Donal squeezed her hand and released it. “Did you always dress as you did when I found you, Ivy? Sometimes you must have wished to act and look your own age.”
“Sometimes.”
“And you had trouble with men when you did.”
Her blue eyes sharpened. “Not often.” She gathered her skirts to rise. “I must go now—”
“Ivy.”
She paused at the quiet but irresistible authority in his voice. “I’ve told you all I know,” she said.
“Are you quite sure?”
Leave her alone, Tod wanted to shout. Leave her alone, leave her—
“Was there a particular man,” Donal asked, “one who might have approached you not long before we met? Perhaps when you’d decided to be yourself, your true age, for just one night?”
Between one moment and the next Ivy changed from a rebellious young woman to a terrified child. She fell back against the tree trunk, her fingers driving hard into the bark.
“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” she whispered. “He wanted to…he was going to…and I didn’t want him to. I was so angry…” She covered her face with her hands. “I only hit him a few times, but he screamed so dreadfully, and fell. I ran…”
She broke off on a sob, and Donal quickly rose to stand beside her. She turned into his arms with a soft cry. Tod moaned with her anguish and his own.
“It’s all right,” Donal said. “You were the one who was attacked. You had a right to defend yourself.”
She lifted a tear-streaked face. “I…don’t know what happened. He was so much bigger than I. It was as if…as if all the anger I felt went into my hands when I hit him.”
Tod understood at once, though Donal could not. The anger of a Fane was no ordinary rage. With enough force and passion, it could even kill.
Ivy had reason enough for anger; anger against the cruel twist of fate that had left her to suffer, ignorant of her true heritage, in an uncaring mortal world.
“Why didn’t you tell me these things in the beginning?” Donal asked. “It would have made no difference to me, or to Cordelia.”
Ivy trembled, her body poised on the brink of flight. “How did you know? You weren’t there. No one saw…”
“I heard rumors,” he said. He stroked her hair. “I wished to hear the story from you.”
She drew away, her fingers clutching the lapels of his coat. “Please don’t let the rozzers take me. Please—”
“Hush. No one will come for you. You’re safe here.”
“Oh, Donal.” She strained upward, her neck arched like a swan’s, her lips ripe as summer berries. Her fingers crept up to tangle in his hair. “I know you will always protect me.”
Her mouth pressed to his. He stood utterly still. Tod clenched his teeth on a cry of protest, and a crow burst upward from the chestnut with a caw of distress.
Donal set his hands on Ivy’s shoulders and gently pushed her away. “I care for you, Ivy,” he said, “and I will protect you to the best of my ability. But this—” He touched his fingertip to her lips. “This is not for you and me. You’ll find someone you can love with all your heart, if you will only give yourself time….”
She broke free, hair whipping about her face. “Love?” she cried. Her laughter sparkled and spiraled skyward, silvering the leaves like a rime of frost. “Poor dull, serious Donal. Don’t you recognize a game when you see it?”
> Donal frowned. “Ivy…”
But she caressed his cheek with a drift of her hand and left him, trailing bubbles of mirth and mockery. Donal stared after her.
“Tod,” he murmured, “have I grown so old that I have forgotten what it is to be young?”
Tod did not answer. He was shaking, his thoughts blurred with shock and bewilderment. He had considered Ivy a danger to his master, to the bond he and Donal had shared for so many years. But Donal was not at risk from the girl he had rescued.
At last Tod understood the source of the malady that had afflicted him since he had first spoken to Ivy beneath the grandfather oak. He no longer despised her as a rival. He looked upon her now and felt emotions quite different but every bit as powerful: admiration. Affection.
Desire.
Tod’s heart swelled with joy and terror. He abandoned the tree and pursued Ivy, racing beside her as she ran to the river and immersed herself in its healing waters. She emerged with her face washed clean of all fear and sorrow, her supple body sleek as an otter, all the heavy layers of her underskirts abandoned to the current like the cast-off casings of a butterfly.
“Tod,” she said in surprise.
He swept her a gallant bow. “Tod has come to bear my lady company, if she will have him,” he said.
She smiled and settled beneath a willow, patting the ground beside her. “I am sorely in need of amusement. Tell me another tale of the Fane. Let me forget this world for a little while.”
And so he did, though he burned with humiliation and dreadful longing. He might worship at Ivy’s feet, but his adoration could never be returned so long as he remained trapped in this stunted and ridiculous body.
He remembered the day when the priest of the White God had laid the curse upon him….
He walked upon the beach on the shores of the island men called Eire, listening to the cries of the gulls and the lap of water on the sand. He lingered in the mortal realm, for he, unlike so many other High Fane, still found some pleasure in the world his people were slowly abandoning. The company of mortals amused him, and on occasion he paid court to their females.
His thoughts touched briefly on the girl he had lain with eight months before. She had resisted him at first; she had wept and claimed loyalty to the man she was to marry, as if some silly mortal custom could stay him from taking what he desired. In the end she had surrendered. He’d had his pleasure and left her, seeking other entertainments.
Yet still he thought of her. He even considered returning to the cottage she shared with her sire and dam to see how she fared. It was possible she carried his child. He might leave her with a few trinkets to pay for the rearing of the brat. Mortals could not simply pluck their food from trees and vines as did the Fane in Tir-na-Nog, and she—
The sound of heavy human feet grinding in the sand diverted his attention. He turned, surprised that any mortal should dare approach him in his solitude. But when he saw the creature’s long robes and the wide silver cross that hung about his neck, he stiffened with foreboding.
The man stopped, clutching the cross in one broad, calloused hand. His face was stained red with anger.
“You are the one they call Aodhan?” he demanded.
Aodhan took a single step back, his boots only a handbreadth from the tide. “Who are you to question me, mortal?”
The priest lifted the cross. Sunlight glared from it, casting spears of light that pierced Aodhan’s eyes. “Speak, spawn of wickedness. I know what you are, and you cannot harm me.”
Ire rose in Aodhan’s heart, and he lifted his hand to call up an enchantment that would put the mortal in his place. But the words failed him, and his power shriveled like the skin of an overripe fruit.
“I am Aodhan,” he said, meeting the priest’s insolent gaze. “Why do you disturb my peace?”
“You are the one who lay with the maiden Cliona eight months past?”
“And if I did?”
The priest closed his eyes, his hand upon the cross white about the knuckles. “She died,” he said. “She died giving birth to the child you sired when you raped her.”
For an instant Aodhan felt the pull of regret. Surely it was no coincidence that he had been thinking of Cliona this very day. He would never have condemned the girl to such suffering. It was easy to forget that mortals lived with pain and death every day of their short lives.
“I regret this occurrence,” he told the priest. “I shall recompense her mother and father for their loss.”
“Recompense?” The priest opened his eyes, and his chest heaved with his passion. “Yes, creature of the Sidhe. You shall pay. Too long have your kind wandered our land and taken what you wish with no thought to the evil you do. Your time is nearly ended.”
Aodhan laughed. “Shall you drive us away, little priest?”
“I am not so powerful, but He who is my Master will claim this island for all time. As for you…” He held the cross high, and his lips began to move in some silent incantation.
Aodhan turned to walk away, but some invisible force held him captive. A strange tingling began in his feet and worked its way up into his legs and hips. He looked down and saw, to his horror, that his boots flapped on feet far too small, his trousers pooling about his ankles. His hands were lost in the sleeves of his tunic. The ground was far too near.
He lifted his hands to his face. His lips, his nose, his eyes were all in the correct position, but they had changed. And when he opened his mouth to speak…
“What have you done?” he croaked.
The priest looked down upon him, all the anger gone from his eyes. “It is not I who have punished you,” he said. “Hear me, you who were once known as Aodhan. You shall wear this shape and spend the rest of your days in service, until you learn what it is to be human.”
Tod sat up, the taste of fear in his mouth. Ivy slept beside him, unsullied by his memories.
So long. So long it had been since that meeting upon the shore. He remembered returning to Tir-na-Nog, begging Queen Titania to lift the curse, knowing that only she might have the power to counter the White Priest’s magic.
Titania had laughed. Instead of raging that a mere mortal had so violated one of her own, she had mocked him and bid him accept his new condition. And so he had fled to the forests and mountains in the north of the English isle, where he had become servant to Hern, the Forest Lord.
A thousand mortal years had passed, but neither Hern nor his son had ever learned of the curse. Tod had finally accepted that he would always be a hob and nothing but a hob. Until today.
Now there was reason again to approach Titania…if one of exalted blood could be found to plead on Tod’s behalf. Donal would never understand, but there was another who might.
Tod gazed upon Ivy’s face, his fingers aching to touch her. This torment must end. No matter what he must do from this moment on, no force in the two worlds could keep him and Ivy apart.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“IT SIMPLY WILL NOT DO,” Cordelia said, holding on to her temper by a thread. “The state in which you returned to the house yesterday is not acceptable, Ivy. You cannot run about the countryside—no, not even Edgecott—missing half your petticoats and your shoes. You are not a child to let your hair become a bird’s nest, and tear your gowns among the brambles…”
She broke off, dismayed at her own anger and the rebellious look on Ivy’s face. The girl knew better. She had once enjoyed the comforts of an ordinary home. She was bright, far brighter than most. And yet, in spite of all the work Cordelia had done with her, all the weeks at Edgecott, Ivy was still wild. Wild and completely unrepentant.
Indeed, Cordelia’s own, once-predictable existence had taken a chaotic turn, and she no longer knew what to expect from one hour to the next. Her quarrels with Sir Geoffrey, previously mild and quickly settled, had become strident in tone as he grew more erratic with every passing hour. He shifted rapidly between days of lethargic melancholy, when nothing at all could pry him from hi
s bed, to periods of extreme emotion when he complained of bizarre, terrifying dreams. Only this morning he had shouted himself hoarse with half-mad ravings Cordelia had barely understood. His insistence upon her marriage to Lord Inglesham took on the violence of obsession, while his dislike of Donal, with whom he’d had almost no dealings, bordered upon irrational hatred.
As for Inglesham himself, he remained a constant and solicitous visitor. Too solicitous by half, though the pressure he brought to bear was of a much subtler variety. She could no longer turn to him as a friend when her emotions were so vexedly disordered.
And then there was Donal. Donal, so quiet and sure, always watching her, looking into her very soul. Distracting her from duty with the mere fact of his presence.
He was certainly no help with Ivy. How could he be, when he refused to admonish her for behavior that must surely undermine all Cordelia’s plans for the girl? He wanted no part of society’s rules. How could he do anything but inadvertently encourage Ivy to break them just as he did?
Cordelia calmed her thoughts with an effort and distractedly poured cooling tea into her half-empty cup. “Do you understand me, Ivy? If you are to succeed in this world, you must learn to compromise a little of your freedom. There is no other way.” She sipped the tea, suppressed a grimace, and set the cup down again. “Will you not try a little harder, my dear?”
Ivy thrust out her lower lip in a deplorable but all-too-effective pout. She scuffed her feet under the sofa. “What if I don’t wish to succeed in this world?” she demanded.
Cordelia’s heart rattled against her ribs. “You cannot return to what you were. This is your home now.”
Ivy said nothing. After a while Cordelia realized that further conversation was pointless, and she was weary to death of constant disagreement.
“You may go to your room, Ivy, until dinner.”
Ivy got up and strode for the stairs. “Flounced” might have been an apt word for any other young girl, but Ivy was far too light on her feet to be anything but graceful even in the throes of revolt.
“She is still very young for her age, in spite of what she has experienced,” Theodora said from the drawing room doorway. She took a chair across from Cordelia, her plain face drawn in lines of rueful sympathy. “It has not been so very long since she lived on the streets of London.”
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