Clarice had borne it all as long as she could, smiling until her cheeks ached. Then she’d bundled on her coat, swirling a shawl over her head, and gone out through the garden to the hills.
Six months had passed since she’d bid Dominic a tender farewell in the morning after the peace celebration. He’d held her hard against his heart, whispering promises in her hair. His tears had mingled with hers as they kissed farewell again and again. They had made love again in the night, strong and sweet. Leaving him, even for the little time they’d promised, had been like tearing herself in two. Even leaving Matilda, though hard, had not been so painful. But the urge to go home beat insistently in her blood as though she were being summoned and could not resist.
She found herself lying on Barren Tor with a five-mile walk ahead of her, wearing a scarlet dress and slippers on what surely must have been the hottest day of high summer. When she reached a road at last, the slippers were slung around her neck by their strings and the dress was dusty and torn. She didn’t blame the first several wagons that passed for not stopping for such a disreputable female. But then a shiny black gig did, with a slewing, sliding stop. Mr. and Mrs. Yeo sat on the seat, staring at her.
“How are you?” she cried cheerfully, limping up.
“You’m not a ghost then?” Yeo asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Nay,” Mrs. Yeo said, bumping her spouse’s ribs with her elbow. “It’s her laidyship raight enow. Get down and help her in. We be on our way to the trial this very minute.”
“Bah. T’ain’t nothing in this world but one of these inquests.”
“What inquest?”
That was when she heard that Camber had been taken up for murdering her and burying her body so cunningly that no one had been able to find it. “Searched myself, I did. All ‘long the moor. Big job that.”
“Iss, fail,” his wife said. “Comin’ home covered in muck, two days out of three.”
“I can’t believe they’d think Camber murdered me. Surely someone has spoken up for him.”
“Oh, iss. T’other zervants been loyal to him. Then they was clapped up too. Don’t worry. Your zister routed ‘em out. That man of hers is in a fair way when he’s riled. Thought the constable’ll drop down dead after he come to visit.”
“Thank God Felicia and Blaic have kept their heads.”
If she’d been fond of creating a sensation, she would have gotten all she wished when she walked into the common room of the Ram’s Head tavern. Doctor Danby was the coroner and was handing the constable his head. “I put it to you that in the course of your blundering investigation you have discovered no evidence whatsoever that Lady Stavely has been done away with! Not a drop of blood, not a scrap of torn clothing, not a hair from her head!”
Constable Wroxhall was fighting back, his broad face red, drops trickling down over his plump cheeks. “Him and that Knight feller did away with her ladyship, then Camber killed his accomplice. He’s mortal clever is Camber. But he can’t answer me one question. Where’s Lady Stavely? If she be not dead, then where is she?”
“I’m here!”
Blaic said, that in terms of sheer pandemonium, the French Revolution played second fiddle to the riot at the Ram’s Head. She had not realized how much she was loved by her tenants and the townspeople until she came back from the dead. As for her servants, Camber could only put his head down on the table and weep while Rose and Cook threw their aprons over their heads and couldn’t speak for fifteen minutes by the clock.
Though she’d tried to think, in Yeo’s cart, of a tale to tell to explain her absence, she couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t leave her open to the worst kind of suspicions. So she told the truth. “I went walking on the moor and was taken by the pixies.”
In the heart of even the most cynical, the most sophisticated of those who dwell near the vast emptiness of the moor there lurks a belief in the power of the “good folk.” Some may have had their doubts, especially after some months passed, but no one dared call her a liar, for what would happen if the tale she told were true?
Clarice too had her doubts. Sometimes she thought it all a strange dream. Perhaps during those six days that she was missing, she’d struck her head and fallen into a dream.
As she walked in the snow on the edge of the moor, she put her hand on her gently rounded figure. In response, she felt an upward kick, faint as yet but growing stronger day by day. It had been no dream.
There’d been no way to tell Dominic she was pregnant. She’d seen no trace of any Fay since she’d returned. Morgain had not seen his grandfather, nor had Matilda come to visit her. Blaic could no longer pass through the secret ways that riddled the mortal world. So Clarice waited for Dominic with nothing to support her except faith and her sister.
“Time is different there. What seemed like weeks to you was only days here.”
“So months to me is—what? Years in Mag Mell? He cannot have forgotten me so utterly.”
Felicia sighed sadly. “I’m trying to help and all I do is make it worse. I don’t think there’s any formula for it. Time speeds up and slows down there so strangely. It may have been six months for you but only three days to him. There’s no way to tell.”
“Forgall could tell him. My mother could tell him. Why haven’t they?”
For this, there was no answer. Felicia did her best to keep her sister’s spirits high, but Mrs. Gardner could not be there always. The nights were the worst. Clarice would lie awake, longing for Dominic. She remembered how proudly she’d said that she didn’t need him for her happiness. If that were true, why wasn’t she happy now?
Overhead, the sky looked low and gray. Knowing full well how dangerous it was to be out on the moor when the weather turned, Clarice thought about returning to the house. But she simply couldn’t face that much merriment. She walked along, her eyes on the ground, remembering the night of Melissa’s wedding, how she’d found herself on Barren Tor with a man on horseback leaping over the stones. She wondered, and supposed she always would, if that had been Dominic or the Rider.
But that had been nighttime and now it was broad daylight. As the first fat white flake melted on her nose, she looked up and realized she had no idea where she was. This wasn’t Barren Tor, or any hill she’d ever seen in all her years of wandering on the moor.
The top was rounded and so deep in snow that her feet were quite buried. Towering before her, unsupported by any wall or lintel, were a pair of doors. The black stone of which they were carved had a glossy shine, unmarked by any rune or carving. They were closed, but she could see a line running between them and, faintly, a keyhole showing as a dull speck against the black stone. The keyhole was just big enough for her fingertip.
Clarice inserted her finger, wondering if she’d ever get it back. A chime, incongruently soft to come from such hard things, sounded in the curlingly crisp air. Clarice tugged her finger out and jumped back clumsily as the doors began to open. They swept aside the snow, piling it up before them.
Inside, there was darkness. Standing there, Clarice called, “Hello?”
Her voice echoed back hollowly.
Was something trying to tell her that the Living Lands were gone? Had all that wonder and beauty been lost somehow, in some terrible cataclysm? She did not want to walk into that echoing emptiness.
Then she heard the clatter of hooves—not racing frantically to escape, but coming along at a considerate pace. A rider appeared, sitting tall in the saddle, a bag or two slung on behind him. He wore a black cloak, the hood fallen back to reveal his dark hair and the intent look that squared his jaw and deepened his eyes.
The dark horse came all the way through the doorway, and the doors closed with a click. Clarice was looking only at Dominic and didn’t even notice when the doors sank silently into the ground. She waited for her beloved to come to her. As yet, he hadn’t even seemed to see her.
“Dominic!”
She saw surprise strike him. “Clarice
!” He swung down effortlessly. “What are you doing here?”
Laughing, she said, “Waiting for you.”
She was in his arms at last, having the breath kissed out of her, while all her doubts and fears were washed away on a tidal wave of joy. As when they had parted, their tears mingled but this time so did their laughter.
She laid her head on his shoulder and said, “I was wrong. Being with you is my only happiness.”
But he wasn’t listening. His hands were on her hips as he tried to see down between them. “Clarice, is that... ? Are you ... ?”
“Yes and yes.”
“I’m just sorry I’m so late.”
“I was meaning to ask you about that, but later. Right now, all of a sudden, I seem to feel the cold.”
“Oh, stones! Yes. Come on. You can ride the horse. I thought I’d have to travel for miles because even For-gall didn’t know where these doors would put me, whether in your garden or in the Forbidden City half way around the world. They’re new.”
“New?”
“Specially created just for me. The method had been all but lost. Took some time to find the right kind of stone too. But let’s get you out of this snow first. What are you doing, tramping around in this with nothing on but a shawl?”
“I was lonely so I went looking for you. I’ve been doing that quite a bit.”
“I am sorry, Clarice. You see, I couldn’t come here at first. Every time I went through the portal, I wound up at Priory St. Windle in my own time. The first several times I was six years old again. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Then when I was sent through as I am, I still found myself standing in back of my house at Priory St. Windle. Apparently, a werroeur can only go back to his or her own time, not another. It’s some kind of safety control.”
“Did O’Hannon go back all right?”
“He danced through the portal, leading that mare. I promised I would look him up in an encyclopedia when I came home, to see if he made a noise in the world.”
“And now you are home.”
“Now I’m home.” He gave her that grin that never failed to make her heart turn over. Gazing at him, thinking that there was no magic that could create such a feeling, she again missed the moment when she went from a place she did not know to the place she did. Moreover, the gravel they walked on was her own drive.
Just as before, Drake and his sons came up to take the horse to the stables. When Dominic handed the head groom the reins, Drake couldn’t speak. Dominic lifted Clarice down. She paused an instant to put her hand on the groom’s sleeve. “It will be all right, Mr. Drake. Don’t worry.”
The groom was not the only one left speechless by Dominic’s reappearance. But the crowning moment for Clarice was when she introduced him to Felicia and Blaic. The two men from another realm shook hands, sizing each other up. Dominic said, “I hope you can show me how to adapt myself to life in this century.”
“If you’ll marry my sister, it will be a pleasure. If not, I’ll take pleasure in our next meeting, but you won’t.”
“Blaic!” Clarice and Felicia both exclaimed. But Dominic only said, “We won’t need to fight each other— at least, not for that reason.”
This did not bode well for their future meeting, but when Mr. Hales read the marriage ceremony over them a week later, Blaic stood up with Dominic. The banns had been waived, due to the condition of the bride, but for all that, it was an exuberant wedding. Clarice wore one of the gowns that had “mysteriously” appeared in her wardrobe shortly after Dominic’s arrival. It had even been cut to fit a pregnant figure. With it, she wore Forgall’s wedding present, a rope of pearls that a queen would sell her teeth for. Clarice thought that her mother must have told the king what to send.
In addition, she wore a chaplet of spring flowers that looked as though they’d been picked that morning, despite the extra three inches of snow that had fallen in the night. They were a gift from Morgain and his grandfather who had, at last, paid a visit.
After a party that rivaled the best the Fay could show, the bride and groom were at last alone,
“They meant well,” Clarice said as he carried her over the threshold of her bedroom. “There’s been so much talk already; they didn’t want any more.”
“I don’t blame them. But it has been impossibly difficult to see you alone.”
Dominic pulled her onto his lap and started kissing her. Clarice gave herself up to the delightful sensations he aroused. Though it had been so long, the feelings had merely been lying dormant until he came back to reawaken them. As he kissed and nibbled on her throat, she said, “Dominic, you’re not jealous of Blaic anymore, are you?”
He stopped and stared up at her. “You knew?”
“I guessed. You were always so sharp when you spoke his name.”
“I’d been told you were in love with him.”
“Those Fay! I do love him, as my dear brother. That’s all.”
“Now that I know Felicia I can see that he never would have been in love with you.”
She raised her hand, feigning a slap. “Thank you so very much, Mr. Knight!”
He caught her hand and began kissing the fingers. “You were waiting for me,” he said.
“Yes. I would have waited forever, but I was starting to get a little impatient.”
“You were impatient. The Wyrcan who made the doors would hide whenever they heard me coming. But they didn’t have the incentive that I had.” His hands were roaming over her body, noticing the changes. “I’m in awe, Clarice. What an amazing creature you are. I’ll never think anything a Fay did is miraculous again after the miracle of you and our baby.”
As Clarice lay down against the pillows she seemed to have a vision of the future. There would be long, wonderful years of life with the man of her dreams and his children. They would live together in this house of Hamdry, which had seen so many strange things. The moor would shelter them forever, yet give them those mysteries that added so much interest to life.
Dominic asked, “What are you thinking of? You have the strangest smile"
“I’m thinking of the future.”
‘To the future,” he said, kissing her.
The future, she thought, her lips being otherwise employed.
To my darling daughter, BETTIE,
who brings me a magical world of joy every day.
Copyright © 1999 by Cynthia Bailey-Pratt
Originally published by Jove (ISBN 0515127019)
Electronically published in 2011 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228
http://www.BelgraveHouse.com
Electronic sales: [email protected]
This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.
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