He looked in the mirror once more. The face that stared back had weathered and matured. It showed capabilities a girl the age of Ravenna could not appreciate. The geis was wrought of stupidity. He was a man of forty. He deserved a woman by his side, an equal, not some stupid young girl who could not keep up with him. It was obvious beyond even articulating that the only thing he and a girl twenty years younger than himself could have in common was a bed, and he didn’t take young girls to his bed. He wanted more than just a mattress binding them together. A woman could satisfy him where a girl could not.
He studied his eyes where the day’s sun had highlighted each crinkle. The girl Ravenna might think him old, especially in comparison to his smooth-skinned cousin and his cohorts, but it made no difference to him what she might think. She was not the companion for him. He shuddered just thinking about her, the barefoot hoyden with her ripped dress and dirty face.
He tapped his foot, impatient to be gone from under the razor. He wanted to clear the name Ravenna from his mind.
But she stayed in his thoughts like a haunting melody.
She was just another young woman, he told himself. A babe in many ways. And yet…
His eyes darkened. Today, when he had found her in the clearing, there was something about her that belied her young age. There was a sadness, a quiet dignity, that made her seem older than her tender years. Her demeanor had mystified him because it was so unexpected.
So … womanly.
He didn’t like it. She lingered in his thoughts like a mystery that begged to be solved. And mystery, he instinctively knew, was a dangerous thing. It was the essence of womanhood. It was the thing that drew a man in, left him aching for each new clue until the snare closed, and he was lost in the maze, seduced, vexed, and yet so deeply grateful to be there. To his intense dismay, Ravenna, the illegitimate girl saved from the tavern and the field by his mercy alone, possessed mystery. It unsettled him.
His jaw tensed. The razor paused once more. He made a conscious effort to relax.
A union between them was unthinkable. He was modern, literate, educated. A thinker. Old men and superstition weren’t going to rule his life. And even if he had believed in the geis and been deliriously pleased with his chosen bride, it would not work. As a wife, the girl would prove to be a disaster. She was not the kind to marry an earl; her class and her poverty aside, she was much too outspoken, much too defiant. Even as a child she had had that defiance. He remembered it well when he’d caught her in the tower. She’d been less than a grubby street urchin, looking then as she had today, with dirty bare feet and a smudged face. But she’d stared at him with those brilliant eyes, like a vixen caught in a trap, just daring him to try and tame her.
He took in his reflection and the face being slowly uncovered by the hand of his valet. Now the child had grown into a woman. There was no doubt about that, he conceded, reluctantly picturing her as he had seen her in the woods, her blouse torn, revealing womanliness in the fragility of her collarbone, a delicate contrast to the full, plump swell of her breasts.
He closed his eyes, shutting out both the view of himself in the mirror and the vision of her in his mind. He wanted no business with her. She’d spent years at a fine English school, but even they had been unable to wring the Celtic wildness out of her. The baggage was a full-grown woman now, and once more he’d caught her trespassing, barefooted, dirty-faced and brilliant-eyed. The thought of a marriage between himself, the scion of intelligence and refinement, and an untamed Irish peasant was beyond the pale. Too, there was no resolving their difference in ages. The girl was nineteen years old, and he was forty. A tender age wasn’t his usual fare at all. That she had grown from a foolish girl into a beautiful woman was of no consequence. She was too young and too inexperienced and too raw-edged to interest him.
He gritted his teeth as the steaming towel was placed on his freshly scraped cheeks. An old anger simmered within him. The geis could be damned all to hell. He wasn’t about to give in to it. To ask him to win this girl’s love was ridiculous. Certainly he could marry her, he could bed her, he could lure her with money and status, but taking a young girl to wife seemed only for those out to prove their manliness and youth, neither of which was in question for him. Love was the only question, and he couldn’t imagine it. It was rare if not impossible to find a girl of her years who could truly give her love to a man old enough to be her father. He was not going to ever be able to fulfill the command of the geis, and deep down he wondered if he wasn’t almost relieved by the futility of it. He’d spent twenty years rebelling against the idea of his courtship with the chit, at great cost if the geis were true, he thought grimly, reminded of the two gravestones out in the Trevallyan cemetery. He wanted nothing to do with such ideas now.
The valet lifted the hot cloth. Trevallyan stared into the mirror, again watching his face, but thinking of her.
Thinking of the flat, soulless nights that lay behind him, and lay ahead. He wondered if one day the loneliness would become unbearable. Not finding her was a terrible secret fear. That it was inevitable was the worst.
Where were the children and noise and happy confusion he’d once thought his due? Where was the life he longed to have?
Ravenna of the black hair and stunning eyes.
Ravenna of the geis.
His scowl deepened.
She was baggage. And she shouldn’t be allowed to wander through the countryside without escort. He thought of Chesham and the expression on his cousin’s fool face when he set eyes on the girl. Chesham and his lackey friends were going to have to leave tomorrow; he would escort them out with an iron fist if need be. He wasn’t going to be responsible for the girl being mauled. Hounds were not the only danger in Lir’s fields. He’d been pretty loose about letting his cousin and his cousin’s friends come and go about the castle, but only because Chesham was brilliant at the hunt. There was still one passion in the joyless Trevallyan existence, and it was chasing down a fox, galloping through the four fields of Lir as if the devil whipped at his back. But the hunt would have to be postponed, and Chesham and his friends encouraged to return to London. The girl Ravenna might think herself more than capable of taking care of herself, with her flashing, rebellious eyes, but an unprotected girl with no title or family was fair game, and no one loved a chase more than Chesham.
Against his will, Trevallyan again pictured the woman they’d found chased down by his hounds that afternoon. The night of her birth rang as clearly in his mind as if it had been yesterday. The mother, Brilliana, had been beautiful even in death, but it would be pointless to deny that the daughter was more beautiful by half. If in her living days Brilliana had been earthy and sexual, her daughter was the antithesis. It rankled to admit it, but now in his chamber alone with his thoughts, he could be truthful with himself. His first glance at Ravenna that afternoon had taken his breath away. She was beautiful. Unutterably beautiful. So lovely that in his mind she seemed a spawn of the heavens, unattainable and wild as the winds that blew across the ogham stones.
The valet used the whisk broom on his shoulders. He was finished. Niall looked at his face to see if any spot was missed. The damning lines had returned. The razor had taken away only the hair.
He stood, and his lips twisted in a smirk. It didn’t matter. The geis would not rule him. He was beyond it; he was above it. It was inconsequential, and it would stay that way if it took all his strength and reason and will.
In fact, he already found his indifference toward the fair Ravenna a comfort. He wished Chesham luck in his courtship of her. The idea amused him. Despite all his cousin’s drawing-room expertise, he had yet to meet a man in all of Ireland who could hold the wind in his palm.
Then a darkness fell upon the land.
It was a time of druids and Celtic sorcery, and Skya’s people, it was said, were blessed with magic, but only once in many a generation. Skya knew her grandmother had had the powers, yet, she knew also that magic had become the old woman’s
curse. Her grandmother had died alone, punished and exiled as a witch by the very peasants who could have benefited from her kindness.
One fine, frightening day, Skya knew she was indeed her grandmother’s offspring, for she discovered that she possessed the powers, too.
It started in the Royal Garden. Skya and her sisters were admiring the carved yews, just after the harvest rain. They ran and laughed through the copse and delighted in each other’s company. Hiding, Skya fled into the Royal Maze. Her sisters quickly followed, and soon, though they found much humor in it, the princesses could not find their way out. They turned one corner after the next, searching for an exit in the perfectly clipped hedge. But every end was a dead one.
Then the giggles quickly turned to screams. Skya was forced to pick up her heavy velvet kirtle and run to her sisters hidden from her in the yews. She found them huddled in one corner, terror etched on their lovely fair faces. Opposite them, a small blue dragon chewed on the bushes, every now and then spewing fire from its long, pointed mouth to char the branches of the hedge, as dragons do, in order to make them more palatable.
“Save us! Save us!” the girls cried out to Skya.
“Begone, you horrible beast!” Skya cried at the dragon.
Her sisters’ screams had gone unheeded, yet at the sound of her voice, the creature looked at her.
Skya stared at the dragon, noting everything about it, in hopes that it might give her a clue as to how to rescue her sisters. The creature kept its head below the hedge-line so as not to be seen by a knight who might slay it. The heavy coat of slime on its back marked it as young and healthy, a terrible curse for those who sought to escape it. Its scales glistened iridescent azure blue beneath the transparent slime. Blue dragons were the smallest and least dangerous. Still, they were quite capable of eating young princesses, and Skya knew if she did nothing, her siblings would perish.
“Begone, you most wretched of creatures!” She stepped forward, thinking that if she could divert it, her sisters might flee.
The dragon inched forward until she could feel the heat of its unlit breath. Terror gripped her, and in a mindless moment of panic, her hands unhooked her chatelaine and swung it over her head in the manner of a ball and chain. “Begone from here!” she screamed, knowing her heavy gold chatelaine was a puny weapon against such a powerful beast. Still, she flung it at him, hoping her sisters could find escape while the dragon turned its wrath upon her.
She cringed when the chain and keys lay upon the dragon’s jade-colored nose. The creature would be angered and surely take her in its angry jaws.
But then the magic happened.
Sparks flew from her chatelaine and covered the dragon’s body. The creature glowed as if on fire. In a second, the sparks were gone. And it was the dragon’s turn to cower in the corner of the hedge.
“Wh-what?” Skya murmured, her mind unable to comprehend what had taken place.
“Save us, Skya. Save us,” her sisters whimpered from another corner, their blue eyes huge as they watched their sister battle the dragon.
The chatelaine had fallen to Skya’s feet. She picked it up and wondered how such a mundane article could hold such powers. Turning it over and over in her hands, she thought to throw it again at the dragon, but the creature appeared to be hurting, and she could see the whites of its eyes as it watched her in terror.
“Begone!” she screamed, hoping it would now flee at just the sound of her voice. She threatened with the chatelaine, but the creature didn’t move, it remained cowering in the corner. “I said be off with you!” she commanded with a lordly finger. To her shock, sparks flew from her fingertip and hit the dragon anew. The creature made a growling, hissing sound, then it broke through the hedge and fled.
She ran out of the trampled hedge after it. “Begone!” she screamed, shooting sparks at it as it trundled through one of the kingdom’s fields of rye. When it was no more than a speck of blue in the distance, she held her finger in the air and stared at it in wonder, amazed at the discovery of her new powers.
“Witch!”
A cry sounded behind her.
“Witch!” Another came from afar.
She spun around in the waist-height grass and found some of the kingdom’s field peasants beginning to surround her, suspicion and fear turning their faces ugly.
“Witch!” they chanted again and again, encircling her as if she were a creature they had hunted down.
Skya looked at the finger she held in the air. One little finger. But it had saved her sisters.
And yet, not herself.
Her grandmother’s fate now loomed ahead for her. The peasants feared the powers of the Otherworld more than they feared the king. So the girl that loved to laugh and sing and dance with her sisters would either burn as a witch or choose, as her grandmother did, to live alone in exile for the rest of her earthly years.
Skya stared at the hate-filled features of the peasants. With a mournful realization, she knew that to save her sisters, she had just sacrificed herself as surely as if she had given herself to the fiery jaws of a dragon.
Ravenna put down her pen, wishing desperately that she could remain within the text of her fable. Even Skya’s tragedy seemed preferable to the humiliation of what surely lay ahead of her during the evening at Trevallyan Castle.
“I can’t wear this. It’s so dark, so … dull,” Ravenna lamented in the mirror. She wore her old blue wool dress with the black scratchy collar. There was no passementerie on the sleeves, no lace accenting the basque. Nothing but coarse dark wool from neckline to hemline, with no dressmaker’s touch to break the monotony.
“When ye return from the castle, we’ll have Fiona make ye a really fine gown,” Grania told her reflection in the bedroom mirror.
Ravenna spun around and faced her, her expression one of horror. “There’s no need for that. I won’t be going back to the castle. I’m sure Lord Chesham is only a guest of Trevallyan.”
“Mayhap, but I think ye’ll be seeing more of the castle with or without Lord Chesham.”
Ravenna looked at her grandmother in exasperation. She was only going to this dinner because she’d been foolish enough to let Trevallyan anger her into a quick response. Now she dreaded the evening ahead. It would be so much more pleasant just sitting by the fire, spinning further tales of the Princess Skya. If she relented and went, she knew she’d feel as at home in the Big Lord’s castle as a beggar would. It wasn’t worth putting herself through the agony of it.
She raised her hands to her nape and unhooked the top hook of her dress. She wouldn’t go. It was best. She would tell the coachman when he arrived that she wasn’t feeling well and to give her sincere regrets to Lord Chesham for his kind invitation.
Resolved to do just that, she unhooked another hook until she felt Grania’s hands on her back.
“Ye must go tonight, child. ’Tis important that you face the lion.”
“Trevallyan is no lion,” she answered.
“Sometimes lions lie within.” The old woman laid her gnarled hand where Ravenna’s heart beat.
Ravenna turned around and held her grandmother with all her might. When she pulled away, Grania’s tears matched her own.
“I don’t want to go. You know I don’t, but I can’t let him win. He sent me away, Grania. ’Twas a just and deserved punishment perhaps, but I’ve paid my ounce of flesh. I’ll never bow to him again.”
“Trevallyan waits. The coach is here.”
Ravenna heard the squeal of iron carriage wheels as they halted. She glanced at Grania and shook her head. The old woman’s eyesight was poor, but her hearing was excellent, almost as if she heard things that no other person could hear.
“’Tis Lord Chesham who invited me to dinner, Grania, not Trevallyan. As far as I’m concerned, Trevallyan shall be invisible to me tonight.” She stared at her reflection in the mirror one last time, dread filling her bosom. She inspected her hair for stray, unruly wisps, and was relieved to find none had escaped th
e tight, unforgiving bun at her nape. Still, she was less than pleased with her appearance. Her unfashionable hairstyle had no sausage curls, and the plainness of her gown made her feel bland and grim. There was no gaiety in her appearance at all. The night would be torture, as the years had been torture at the Weymouth-Hampstead School. She would feel churchmouse-poor and shabby.
She should not go.
But she would go, she thought with a gleam of determination in her eye. She grabbed her black wool shawl, kissed Grania on the forehead, and climbed into the lacquered carriage before she lost her nerve. They might laugh at her, but she would hold her head up proudly, as she did in the dark carriage with only the swing of the carriage lamps to cast away the gloom. She would go forth with confidence—not because she fit in at the castle, but because she had to show up Trevallyan. He had tried to belittle her, and she had thwarted him. No one had been more displeased at her acceptance of a dinner invitation than he had that afternoon. She was going to the castle because he had thrown down the gauntlet.
Indeed, she thought, the challenge had been accepted.
Ravenna arrived at the castle a little past eight. The carriage pulled up in front of the lichen-covered entrance to the great hall, where not a torch or lantern burned to welcome her. The driver helped her from the carriage and escorted her to the ancient doors framed by a moldering Gothic arch. Without a warning of her arrival, all at once the doors were thrown open from within, and she met with a rigid, stern-faced butler.
He took her gloves and rigolet with utter efficiency, but she couldn’t help think he was an odd sort of fellow to be butler to the Trevallyans. The man was stiff and dignified and possessed a certain English-butler stare that went right past her, as if the fingerprints on the windowpanes were far more interesting than her appearance at the castle. He also had his eccentricities. To begin with, he lacked one arm. She hoped she had done well to hide the shock on her face when she realized the sleeve of his black wool coat was empty, for it was unusual, to say the least, to find a man such as he holding the position of butler. But yet another oddity assailed her. While the man almost pointedly refused to look at her, she could have sworn he was looking, for they seemed to be playing tag with their eyes—with the old man looking away at the precise moment she turned her gaze toward him—until she felt cross-eyed.
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