“You do not have one?”
Oh. This was so much worse than she had feared, even when her doubts had been greatest. “People do not have tails, Ash,” she said.
“No,” Ash said, unaware of her inner turmoil. “Mine is gone, too.”
Flight seemed the better part of valor until Mariah realized what she was seeing in Ash’s black, sparkling eyes. He was teasing her. Teasing her, for heaven’s sake.
Relief eased the pressure within her chest. “It is a very good thing, too,” she said, “or you would look quite out of place in the world.”
“The world.” He looked over her shoulder at the door leading to the antechamber. “Outside.”
“Yes.” How long since he had seen anything but these whitewashed stone walls?
“We shall go outside,” she said. “When you are ready.”
“Now.”
It was a command, not a request, not a plea. She better understood what she faced now; she must firmly remind him who held command, or he would never become manageable.
“Not yet,” she said. “First you must learn to dress, converse…”
And remember. That most of all.
With a deep sigh that further revealed the complexity of his emotions, Ash took the shirt from her and shrugged into it, the handsomely formed muscles of his chest and shoulders rippling with the easy motion. He buttoned it without the slightest difficulty, letting the tail hang over his trousers. Mariah knew she must choose her battles, and asking him to tuck in his shirt was the very least of them.
She had not remembered to bring braces, but that was a complication she didn’t need at the moment. Garters were also out of the question. But stockings, even if they would not stay in place, were a necessity. She presented them to Ash.
“These go over your feet,” she said.
He looked at his feet, then at the stockings. “I don’t like them.”
Just like a child…in that particular way, at least. And it was much easier to view him so, she decided. “You will get used to them,” she said. “You must have worn them in the past.”
“Never.”
At least he understood the concepts of past and present, which could not be said of many lunatics. “It is not in the least difficult.” She sat in the chair and unlaced her boot. “I am taking off my shoe. This is my stocking.”
Blushing would be ridiculous now, in light of all she had already witnessed. She lifted her skirts to her ankle and pointed. “Stocking,” she said.
His unfortunate habit of staring at her would likely be very difficult to break, but in this case she could forgive it. She replaced her boot self-consciously and returned to stand before the cage. “Let me see you do it,” she encouraged.
He took the stockings, sat down on the floor—doubtless dirtying his otherwise spotless trousers—and pulled the stockings over his long, very handsome feet.
And now you find feet attractive. How gauche of you. How very…
Ash stood—or rather leaped—to those very attractive feet, scowling. “I don’t like them,” he said in a lordly manner that would have brooked no argument had it come from Donnington. It would be so easy to forget that Ash was not the man he claimed had imprisoned him.
Stop it, she told herself. She rose and resolutely picked up the shoes. “Shoes are next.”
The difficulty of getting the shoes through the bars was daunting, but Mariah was determined to accomplish it, with or without Ash’s help. He, however, was equally determined to keep them out, and his strength was considerably greater.
The third time he pushed them back, she lost her temper.
“That is quite enough!” she snapped. “You will wear them, or I shall…I shall—”
“Go!” he said, his shout all but rattling the bars. “Leave me!”
A prince could not have spoken more decidedly. Or more arrogantly. Mariah spun for the door. She was almost out when the hiss of ripping cloth spun her around again.
Ash was removing his shirt—except “removing” was far too fine a word for the damage he was inflicting on the perfectly fine linen. In a moment, it would be in shreds on the floor and she would have lost the battle entirely.
“No!” she said, and returned to the cell. “No,” she said more softly. “No shoes.”
He stopped, his hands clenched on the ragged edges of his shirt. “No shoes?”
Not today, my friend. But soon. She picked up the shoes and tucked them under the chair. “You will wear the stockings.”
His scowl didn’t waver, but she fancied she saw a hint of yielding in his eyes. “Yes,” he said.
Mariah blew out her breath. “We shall do without the jacket today,” she said. “It is time to discuss what you remember of your previous life.”
The endless night of his eyes threatened to swallow her. “Let me go,” he said.
“Not today.”
Deliberately he pressed his face to the bars. The welts appeared before her eyes. She gave a cry and rushed to push him back, her hands thrust through the bars to press the firm muscles of his shoulders.
“Are you mad?” she cried. “You…you…”
She found herself near tears and took control of her wayward emotions, withdrawing her hands before he could think to grab them.
“I shall not be blackmailed,” she said, anger spilling out of her like poison. “I have seen what happens. You…”
Heal yourself. As he’d healed her thumb. Now it was happening again. The marks were disappearing, gone in the space of a dozen short breaths.
Ash was someone, something, even she could not define. Either she was beginning to lose her mind, or he was more than…
Not even a moan of protest could make its way past the constriction in her throat. She gathered up the lantern and fled…ignominiously, thoughtlessly, and as swiftly as her feet would carry her. She had stumbled halfway down the stairs before she remembered to return and lock the door.
Once it was done, she leaned against the heavy wood and sobbed for breath. She knew she ought to go back inside immediately, face her fears, prove to herself that the conclusion she had just reached was utter nonsense.
But she found she could not. As she walked away from the folly, the key still in her hand, she comforted herself with the knowledge that Ash had everything he needed for the time being and she would return before his keeper made another visit.
A little time. That was all she required to compose herself, to plan, to think rationally again. She must be prepared to find and question the keeper, and to continue her visits without arousing Vivian’s suspicions. She must keep her wits about her at all times.
Especially when she faced his direct, merciless gaze, tempered only by that strange, contradictory innocence. That desperation combined with arrogance and subtle mockery. That mysterious past, that handsome face, that magnificent body…
She would never be free of him until she had all the answers.
ASH—FOR THAT was now his name—held on to the bars until the pain became more than even he could bear. He released them, flexing his fingers until his hands ceased burning, and sat in his usual place where the cool curved wall met the cage of iron.
She was gone. He had known she would leave him; she had another existence, one he could not touch. Yet she had given her word. And now he knew she would keep it. She could no more stay away than he could walk through the bars and out the door.
He dropped his head into his hands, weighted with sudden despair. He hadn’t meant to frighten her. His feelings would not be still, driven this way and that like golden hinds during the hunt.
Hunt.
The word stung worse than his flesh where it had touched Cold Iron, but he still could not remember why.
A drift of warming air spiraled down from the small openings in the top of his cage, carrying with it the smell of flowers. Poor, pallid things they must be to produce such a faint and common scent, yet he would have given everything to touch them.
Everyth
ing but his freedom. Even if he should never see Mariah again. He would surrender the taste of her flesh, the softness of her skin. He would sacrifice the chance to hear her voice again, reading stories in which bears turned into men and were saved by the love of beautiful women. He would no longer wonder why his body tightened when she gazed upon him, or how she would appear without the ugly mass of cloth she wore.
Yet he could not win his freedom without her.
Freedom to what purpose? From whence had he come? What did he seek?
He held up his hands, turning them forward and back. They were still unfamiliar to him, though he knew much time had passed since he had been put behind these bars. He rose and stared down at his legs, at his feet in their “stockings.” His limbs, too, had been wrong from the beginning, of that much he was certain. He could make them obey him, but that did not alter their strangeness. Nor could he explain the changes in sight, smell and hearing that rendered his senses so dull and distant. And when he had spoken to Mariah of a tail, he had not meant to make her smile. The question had come from memory, from a time when he had been other than he was now.
Beautiful. Perfect.
His gaze fell on the basin. He knelt before it and stared into the clean water. He touched his jaw, his cheek, the line of his nose.
Human.
He jerked back, the word ringing inside his head. He knew it well, though Mariah had never spoken it nor read it in her book. It described what she was, just as much as the word “woman.” He touched his chest, feeling the organ beating beneath his ribs.
Am I not human?
He looked into the water again. The face was that of a man, like Mariah’s and yet different. A face he almost recognized. But behind that face he saw another, pale as his hair, as different in form as iron was from silver: long, elegant, noble in shape and form. From the broad forehead sprang a horn, spiraled and sculpted as if from stainless ivory. A horn of incalculable value to those who would use it to command the obedience of others.
He touched his own forehead, naked and smooth. But the appendage was not entirely gone. It was only hidden, like the gleaming white hide and pearlescent hooves and the speed to outrun either human or Fane.
I am not human.
Rocking back on his heels, he felt the knowledge sweep through him in a rush like liquid fire. Not human, but rather that other he had seen in the water. A lord. A king.
A unicorn.
He tossed his head as the name slipped out of his grasp. He searched through the images that had come to him so suddenly, and another word arrested his thoughts.
Fane.
In his shattered memory he saw something that looked like a man, tall and wearing garments that sparkled as they caught the light. But its true self was to a human as Ash’s former shape was to this foreign body he wore: seductive, certain of its power, outshining everything that stood in its presence.
Fane. His enemy. The one who had sent him into exile.
Shuddering with anger, Ash bared his teeth, and a growl rumbled deep in his chest. They had been together, the Fane and Donnington. They had conspired against him. They had made him nothing.
Nothing except to Mariah, who had given him a name and a purpose, though that purpose was only beginning to take shape in his mind. Escape, that first. Then find the ones who had done this, and…
No. There was more. More he must do.
A well of longing opened up inside him. A yearning to be again what he had been, to live his life among others of his own kind.
Why am I here? Why have I been punished?
There were no answers. His memory remained clouded; Mariah had no idea who he was now, far less what he had been in that other world. But punished he had been, driven from his home, given this mortal body in which to suffer pain and humiliation.
He upended the basin and watched the water darken the hard stone floor. Only a few moments ago he had been thinking of surrendering Mariah in exchange for his freedom. Now he began to see the course he must take. Mariah was not merely the path to escape.
Mariah was the key. The key to everything.
To give her up would be disaster.
Ash returned to his usual place and slid down against the wall. Mariah would come to him again. And when she did, he would begin to remember why she, more than anything else in the world, could save him.
CHAPTER FOUR
“WHY DID THE countess take Lord Donnington’s clothing from his room?”
Nola shivered, afraid—as well she might be—to have been summoned into her former mistress’s presence, but Vivian was in no mood to salve the girl’s anxiety.
“Come, girl. I know you spoke to Lady Donnington privately. Why did she ask you to attend her?”
The maid gulped audibly. “My…my lady…the countess only wanted to ask about the coal and…she said she had taken a chill and would like a bit more to—”
“You are not a practiced deceiver, Nola, I can see that well enough.”
“I beg your pardon, your ladyship.” Nola straightened, and Vivian almost wondered if she were attempting some pathetic sort of defiance. “The countess only wanted to talk.”
“To a chambermaid?”
“She was very kind to me, your ladyship. I didn’t know the countess took any of his lordship’s clothing.”
This time Vivian’s well-honed sense for duplicity told her that the maid was telling the truth, however much else she might wish to conceal. “Most peculiar,” Vivian said, displeased. She folded her hands in her lap and leaned forward, fixing Nola with a gaze that had intimidated many a greater personage. “She said nothing about Lord Donnington?”
“She said she knew how much your ladyship missed his lordship.”
Her words bordered on the impertinent, but once more Vivian detected a large element of truth in what the maid disclosed. Odd that Mariah should be concerned about her mother-in-law’s feelings for her son.
“Did she say she missed him, as well?” Vivian asked shortly.
“Perhaps…” Nola brushed at her uniform and gazed at the figured carpet under her feet. “Begging your pardon, your ladyship, but if she took Lord Donnington’s clothing, perhaps it was because she wanted something of him near her.”
Nola’s imagination was impressive for a girl of her age and occupation. Vivian allowed a little of the starch to go out of her spine, selected a biscuit from the silver tray on the table beside her and broke off the most minute piece she could. Her hands began to stiffen and ache with the old complaint.
“You are quite well-spoken for a maid, Nola,” she said, doing her best to disregard the pain. “Where did Mrs. Baines find you?”
“In the village, your ladyship.”
“Is your family there?”
“No, your ladyship. My mother is in Barway, and is not well. She must have medicines. I was employed as a seamstress’s assistant.”
Then her coming to Donbridge was a great improvement in her circumstances, for which she must be daily grateful, Vivian thought.
“I am sorry to hear of your mother’s affliction,” she said.
Nola curtseyed. “You are kind, your ladyship.”
As kind as you are stupid, my dear, Vivian thought. “You have some education,” she said.
“A little, your ladyship.”
“Enough to make you worthy to converse with a countess.”
Nola never lifted her gaze from the floor. “I never expected such an honor, your ladyship.”
Vivian was rapidly growing weary of the interrogation. “Let me get directly to the point, Nola,” she said. “I would like you to make the most of this new confidence.”
The girl finally looked up, a flash of alarm on her round, seemingly guileless face. “I don’t understand, your ladyship.”
With the most delicate of motions, Vivian crumbled the bit of biscuit into a napkin without tasting it. “I should think a girl of your obvious intelligence would comprehend me very well. Are you capable of discretion?”
Nola hesitated, but not a moment longer than she should. “Yes, your ladyship.”
“There are many things my daughter-in-law prefers to keep to herself, and I wish to get to know her better. You might be of great assistance to me in this enterprise.”
“How, your ladyship?”
“By making yourself easily available whenever she wishes to talk. By proving yourself her most loyal confidante.”
“But my duties, your—”
Vivian brushed the crumbs off her fingers. “You shall be excused from any duties which might interfere with your new appointment. There shall be no penalties…unless you choose to decline my suggestion.”
Their gazes met. The girl was under no illusion as to what Vivian implied. “Am I to report anything she says to me, your ladyship?”
“I see we understand each other, Nola.” Vivian permitted herself a beneficent smile. “You shall also discreetly follow her when she walks the grounds, especially in areas out of sight of the house. You must by no means allow her to see you.”
“Does your ladyship fear she might injure herself?”
Such questioning from a maid was beyond anything Vivian would ordinarily have allowed, but she had set her course and intended to follow it to the end.
“I do fear for her,” she said with a sigh of mock concern. “One never knows what a young matron might do when she is so early separated from her husband.”
Which was a topic even this bold chit didn’t dare to address. “Yes, your ladyship,” she murmured.
“You shall find me very appreciative of your services to me. Perhaps your mother will recover more quickly than you anticipated.”
Nola flushed. Angry, Vivian guessed. But not prepared to let such unsuitable emotions rob her of her position and the hope Vivian had offered her.
“I am honored to serve your ladyship in any way,” Nola said with a deep curtsey, which effectively concealed her true feelings.
“Excellent.” Vivian glanced toward the drawing room door, aware that Barbara might return at any time to take the tray and refresh the tea. “Do you have any questions? Is anything I have said unclear to you?”
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