Kissed by Starlight Read Online Free PDF Page A

from the tray, Mary shook the last few drops of wine out the window.
    “Drink the wine,” she whispered, “and defend the drinker.”
    Felicia snapped her eyes closed as Mary lowered the sash. She was used to the “magic” of the Devonshire people, how they planted and harvested by the moon, how they relied on the folk medicine of their ancestors. With what she knew of modern medicine, she could hardly blame them for this reliance, for even kindly Doctor Danby killed more than he cured.
    Nevertheless, it was unnerving to see the magic practiced before her eyes. Usually it was something kept hidden from the “gentry.” Lady Stavely, for instance, strongly disapproved of such superstition and never missed the opportunity to scoff when the subject was broached.
    Her father, born and raised at Hamdry, had been more sympathetic. “There’s more bread put out for the fairies than ever reaches the master’s table. And unless Varley’s a habitual drunkard, I’ll lay odds more of my good burgundy disappears in sprinkled appeasement than ever wets a dry throat. The fairies are always thirsty, it seems.”
    Had it all been a fever dream? Compounded of grief for her father, starvation, and the onset of illness? Yet the man had seemed so very real. Even now, she could describe him in every detail, from the pale cut end of the thong that held his hair to the veins that ran down his muscular arms.
    She recalled other dreams, monstrous things dimly glimpsed in the depths of her fever. Yet in memory they were misty and confused. He was not. She remembered everything....
    “ I am Blaic, Prince of the Westering Lands. My liege lord is Boadach the Eternal, King of the Living Lands and of all the Realm Beyond the World That Dies .’’
    She remembered his voice and his words so well that they seemed to echo in her silent room as though spoken aloud. She opened her eyes, lifting her head above the ridge of her rumpled blankets to look around for him. Surely she couldn’t have dreamed him.
    “If I did, I can dream him again,” she whispered, and closed her eyes.
    She’d no sooner fallen into a doze than she felt someone standing over her. “Blaic?” she asked, her voice thick.
    “No, my child. But I am glad to know you are so much improved.”
    Lady Stavely, Viscountess of Hamdry, looked as mild as a nun in her simple black gown. She wore a cross of brown topazes on her bosom and her hair was neatly covered by a small, black lace cap. A woman of about forty years, she kept her figure well and her cheeks were relatively unlined. Yet her skin was dry, crisping into small wrinkles under her long-lashed eyes. They were blue, like her daughter’s in color if not quite so intense in tone. The white hands, stiff with jeweled rings to the knuckles, were never still.
    They moved over one another with a rustle like a snake gliding through dry grass. The rings clinked and clattered softly. “Liza tells me you have taken nourishment?”
    “Yes, my lady. Cook made soup.”
    “Ah, broth is excellent when one has been unwell. Doctor Danby said you might find it difficult to eat at first. You are fortunate to have been spared. The fever was at its height last night. He held out but little hope to us.”
    Felicia fought the paralyzing influence of Lady Stavely’s cold blue eyes. In another moment, she’d be apologizing for her failure to die. Then she remembered what she’d seen and heard in the conservatory the day of her father’s funeral. Her anger broke the spell.
    She struggled to sit up. Lady Stavely offered no support, not so much as the touch of a bejeweled finger. Though Felicia had but little strength, she tossed aside the blankets. Something about her father’s wife always made Felicia feel that she’d be more comfortable with her sword arm free, and she didn’t even know how to wield a sword.
    As the bastard child of Lord Stavely, Felicia had not looked for love from his wife. His infidelity had been a year before their