Lord of the Beasts Page 9
“I expect Benjamin to arrive any moment with fresh bread and cheese,” Donal said. “When Ivy returns, allow me to speak to her alone.”
“Then you no longer have any objections to my proposal?” Cordelia asked.
“Not if Ivy is willing to try.”
Cordelia quickly looked away, and once more Donal caught a glimpse of the vulnerability he had seen after she had spoken with Ivy. “Thank you, Dr. Fleming,” she said, her voice not entirely steady. “You shall not regret it.”
“IT WILL ONLY BE for a few weeks, Tod,” Donal said, crouching beside him in the loft of the byre. “Mrs. Hardcastle—the lady I met in London—wishes to give Ivy a permanent home. I know you’ve never had the opportunity to know her, but this may be her best opportunity for happiness.”
Tod kicked his feet over the edge of the loft, hiding a scowl behind the fall of his hair. “Why must my lord go with her?”
“I’ve taken responsibility for Ivy. I must make sure this is the right course for her future.” He patted Tod’s shoulder. “You’re welcome to accompany me, of course. You’ve never been to the south of England; there are more humans there than here in the north, but Gloucestershire is filled with hills and woods where you can run in freedom.”
“The Fane left those lands long ago.”
“That may be true. But I wouldn’t be surprised to find that a little Fane magic still lingers, even so.”
Tod sighed, knowing he could not win this battle. He had thought himself rid of the girl, and still she’d returned; now there was a good chance that she would be out of Donal’s life forever. Tolerating her presence for a few more weeks was a small enough price to pay.
“When we come back,” he said, tossing hair out of his eyes, “it will be as it was before. My lord and Tod, together.”
Donal looked away, and his voice was strange when he spoke. “Only in Tir-na-Nog does everything stay the same,” he said. “In this world, change is inevitable.”
“Tod never changes,” Tod said, touching Donal’s hand. “Tod will always be here.”
Donal smiled, but Tod felt his grief. It was these females who brought him such pain. But soon they would be gone.
“Tod will go with my lord,” he said firmly. “And it will not be long before my lord has peace again.”
Donal only bowed his head and gave no answer.
“SHE IS FOUND, MY LADY!”
“She is found!”
“Found!”
The incessant chatter of the sprites clanged like raucous bells in Béfind’s ears, but she did not chastise her servants. She smiled indulgently as they darted about her head, crying out their victory until even they grew weary and settled to the glistening floor at her feet.
It was one of her hobs who gave the report. He related how they had searched high and low, seeking over the mortals’ island until they had sensed Fleming’s presence in a place far from the humans’cities. There they had watched and listened, learning much that could amaze even one who had lived three thousand years.
Donal Fleming. It would have been a stroke of astonishing coincidence had the players in this drama been human. Fleming, son of the exiled Forest Lord, had found the girl living in squalor in the mortal’s great Iron City and taken her to live with him on his little farm in the north. It was clear to Béfind’s servants that Fleming had made himself her guardian and accepted his new responsibility with a mortal’s tedious gravity. It was equally clear that he didn’t know what she was.
Béfind called for a cup of mead and idly tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair. Everyone in Tir-na-Nog knew Hern’s story: how he, one of the last of the High Fane to linger on earth, had fallen in love with a human woman and surrendered his Fane powers in exchange for a mortal life as Cornelius Fleming, Earl of Bradwell. Donal was the bastard offspring of his first, illicit union with his beloved, Eden Fleming, six years before he had returned to the mortal realm to woo and win her as his wife.
It was well-known that Donal, whom Queen Titania had sought to claim for Tir-na-Nog, had chosen a dull existence of isolation on earth rather than enjoy a life of ease and eternal pleasure in the Land of the Young. But he kept one companion to remind him of his Fane heritage…a hob called Tod, who had once been his father’s servant.
Béfind accepted the glass of mead from the hands of a sprite and sipped the honeyed beverage thoughtfully. It should have been a simple matter to reclaim the girl Ivy, but there were a few small complications. Perhaps she could dispose of one of them here and now.
Idath kept her waiting, as she had known he would. He strolled into her palace with a lazy air of indifference, his eyes hooded as he took in her entourage of hobs and sprites, each and every one still drenched in the smell of the mortal realm.
“Béfind,” he said, inclining his head. “To what do I owe the honor of this summons?”
She smiled and offered him a golden chalice of mead, which he refused. “Why must we quarrel, my friend?” she purred. “It has been too long since we have lain in each other’s arms. Is it so strange that I would ask you to attend me?”
Idath returned her smile with equal warmth. “What do you want, Béfind?”
“I have found the girl.”
“Oh?” He yawned behind his hand. “What girl is that?”
She bared her teeth. “I know the truth, Idath. You took my property. You told me the babe was dead and delivered it to your mortal paramour to raise as her own.”
“Ah, yes. I begin to remember.”
“How could you have forgotten? You believed you could wound and confound me with your lies.”
“As you believed you could prove your indifference to me by casting me aside and remaining with your mortal lover for a full year.”
Béfind laughed. “Ah. You finally admit your motive—simple jealousy. How petty. How very human.”
Idath’s expression didn’t change. “You have always found it amusing to mock the blood of my halfling mother,” he said, “and yet I learned much from her that you will never understand.”
“Such as love?” she sneered.
“Once, perhaps. There was a time when I cared enough to punish you for making sport of my devotion and cleaving to your mortal for no reason but to show how little you felt for me, even after a hundred years.” He gazed out at the lawn. “It was all a game to you, Béfind. I only decided to play by your rules.”
“By handing my child over to one who would corrupt her as your mother did you.”
“If I had believed any real harm would come to the girl, I would have left her with you. But you did not deserve the acclaim you would receive by bringing a healthy child to Tir-na-Nog.”
Béfind burned with fury. “Perhaps you did not know that the child was found living alone in the worst part of the Iron City, hunting her food in the gutters like a beast.”
Idath leaned against the nearest column and smoothed the scarlet silk of his tunic. “I am grieved to hear it.”
“Unfortunate indeed that your lover is dead.”
He couldn’t quite hide the flash of sorrow in his eyes. “Mortals die. It is their nature.”
“But the girl lives. None other than the son of Hern has discovered her.”
“Hern’s son?” Idath cocked his head. “What does he want with her?”
“His mother’s blood taints him with what mortals call ‘compassion,’” she said. “He pitied her. And now he intends that she shall have a life among humans.”
“She has already lived among humans.”
“And suffered because of your spite,” Béfind said. “That is over. I will bring her back to Tir-na-Nog.”
“I wonder how you will manage that, a mhuirnín?”
She stepped away from her chair and came to stand before him. “You cannot stop me.”
“It is not I who will stop you.” He glanced about at Béfind’s servants. “Did they not tell you of the amulet?”
Béfind bristled. “Idath, if you do not—”
“What?”
“I knew you would find her eventually, a chuisle.”
Béfind was momentarily speechless. “You…you would go so far—”
His eyes grew cold. “Perhaps I judged her better off away from you.”
Béfind turned away and composed herself. She faced him again with a smile. “An amusing trick, Idath. But surely the game has gone on long enough.” She stroked his sleeve. “Remove the enchantment, and I shall give you whatever you desire.”
He looked her up and down. “You possess nothing I desire.”
She tore his sleeve with her nails and let him go. “You will not win this battle, Idath. I shall go to the mortal realm myself. I shall tell her who she is, and then—”
“Tell her who she is?” Idath chuckled softly. “Alas, the charm on the amulet does more than forbid any Fane to touch her. None may reveal her true nature. You may speak the words, but she will not hear them.”
“You hate me so much?”
“Hatred is a mortal curse, leannán.”
“So is jealousy, mighty lord.”
“And blind ambition. You want the child only because your pride has been wounded and she is proof of your fecundity, a valuable object to be paraded before the Queen and High Fane like a pretty bauble. Perhaps you will not find the prize worth the effort.”
“It shall be more than worth it to lay your pride in the dust.”
He bowed. “As you wish, Béfind. The battle continues.”
He swept from the room, scattering the lesser Fane from his path. Béfind shrieked in rage and snatched a delicate crystal sculpture from its stand, shattering it against an ivory column.
“So he thinks he shall win?” she hissed as the hobs and sprites cowered at her feet. “He dreams that he can best Béfind?”
She threw herself down into her chair and coiled her hair between her fists. So she could not tell the girl what she was. That was not quite the defeat Idath believed. There would be ways to approach the child and groom her for her rightful future, all without challenging the amulet’s enchantment. Béfind would not leave such an important task to inferiors. She would go through the Gate herself. She would learn how best to handle Donal Fleming, if he should prove to be an obstacle to her ambitions. And she would have what was rightfully hers, once and for all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THERE WAS NO PART of England, Donal reflected, more thoroughly English than the Cotswolds.
The view from the carriage window was one of gently rolling hills dotted with clouds of grazing sheep, low stone walls turned golden in the clear sunlight, homely farmsteads and quaint cottages with thick thatched roofs. Westmorland and Yorkshire still had their shares of wilderness in crags and sills, heaths and moors, becks and forces and lakes—hidden sanctuaries where patches of ancient woodland and unsullied mountains crouched just beyond the fringes of civilization—but Donal doubted he would find such places here.
He leaned back in the seat and pinched the bridge of his nose. The minds of the animals he had heard along the winding road to Edgecott had been largely contented ones that knew neither worry nor anticipation of the future. Even Sir Geoffrey Amesbury’s matched bays were well fed and glossy of coat, never asked to push beyond their endurance or forced to suffer the brutality of the bearing-rein. In the amber sunshine of a bright spring morning, it was almost possible to forget the cruelty and indifference that seemed so much a part of human character.
Donal did not forget. But he allowed himself to be distracted by the look on Ivy’s face as she craned her neck to absorb every detail of the neat little village that gave the Amesbury estate its name. Round-faced children and prosperous cottagers waved from the verge of the cobbled lane that passed through the center of the village, and Ivy waved back.
Once she had made the decision to visit Edgecott, her hard shell of defiance and suspicion had dropped away like the halves of a ripe walnut. Soon after she and Donal had boarded the train in York, she had cast off her fears with the impulsiveness of youth and wholeheartedly embraced the excitement of the journey.
Her enthusiasm eased Donal’s mind. Seventeen years old she might be, but her childhood had been robbed of so many simple pleasures that she devoured each new experience with innocent delight. Sir Reginald, who had chosen her as his new lifelong companion, perched on her lap and laughed with a lolling tongue, sharing her joy.
Neither girl nor dog had been in the least constrained in Donal’s presence. He had no interest in enforcing arbitrary rules of conduct, and ignored the occasional pointed stares and whispers aimed at “that wild young woman” by starchy matrons and stiff-rumped gentlemen who resembled exotic fowl escaped from their pens. Ivy had not yet been introduced to corsets; her blossoming figure was now quite apparent to Donal’s previously ignorant eye. Yet he had no desire to cut short her last days of freedom before Mrs. Hardcastle applied the shackles of rigid morals and genteel hypocrisy.
He prayed that Ivy’s courage and adaptability would enable her to accept the world Cordelia intended to make for her.
The carriage rattled out of the village and past fields and pastures bordered by light gray dry-stone walls. Soon it reached the high iron gates that guarded Edgecott’s stately park.
The gates stood open in welcome, but Donal regarded them with a shiver of foreboding. They were merely symbols of power and prosperity, harmless in themselves, but to Donal’s mind they resembled nothing so much as a cage. A part of him believed that once he passed through them, he would be caught in the snares of civilization forever.
“Look at the trees!” Ivy said. “I never saw such tall ones in Yorkshire!”
The woods of Edgecott’s park were indeed impressive. They reminded Donal of the ancient forest of Hartsmere, where his father had roamed for millennia as guardian and protector of every living thing within it. Yet most of these trees had been grown, not by nature, but by Amesbury ancestors who had planted the wood to enhance their prestige and shield their property from the eyes of lesser mortals.
Donal was so lost in thought that he didn’t see the great house until Ivy drew his attention with an exclamation of approval. She had good reason for her admiration. The main house at Edgecott was built of the fine native stone, and while it had obviously been altered over several centuries, with a classical wing and ornamentations added well after its original, Elizabethan construction, it was a handsome building as such things went.
Standing in a neat row at the foot of the stairs were several male and female servants, including footmen, maids, an older woman who must have been the housekeeper and a tall man of impeccable dignity whose demeanor declared him master of the household staff. As the carriage rounded the gravel drive, one of the footmen broke ranks and hurried up the stairs.
The coachman eased the horses to a stop before the stairs, and the footman leaped down to lower the steps. Ivy hopped out, ignoring the footman’s proffered hand, and stood gazing up at the massive limestone facade.
Donal descended more slowly, not in the least eager to deal with a bevy of servants whose only purpose was to wait hand and foot on their employers. He avoided them by going directly to the horses, thanking them for their work and examining their legs and hooves while the coachman watched curiously.
Ivy inched up beside him, Sir Reginald in her arms. “They’re all staring at me,” she whispered, glancing back at the servants. “Where is Cordelia?”
Like Donal, Ivy had taken to referring to Mrs. Hardcastle by her given name, and Donal had not discouraged her. “I’m certain she will wish to welcome you herself,” he said, giving the horses a final pat.
Ivy gripped his sleeve. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to come here after all,” she said. “I don’t belong in a place like this.”
“How do you know, wh
en you’ve scarcely seen any of it?” he said. But she gave him a narrow look that suggested she knew he was every bit as nervous as she.
“You really are going to stay?” she demanded.
“As long as you need me.”
Her shoulders relaxed, but her gaze remained fixed on his face. “You like Cordelia, don’t you?”
“Of course I do, Ivy. She has been nothing but kind to you, and the animals—”
“No. I mean you like her.”
He reminded himself again that she was no child, and that her very survival in London had depended on the keenness of her observations. He pretended a sudden interest in the knot of his cravat.
“I admire her, certainly,” he said. “She is a formidable woman.”
Ivy snorted. “You’re no good at lyin’, guv. I seen ’ow you watched at ’er at the farm, roight enough.”
“And how did I watch her, pray tell?”
“The way ol’ Rooster Tom looks at the ’ens after ’e’s ’ad ’is fill o’ crowin’.”
“Ivy!” Heat rushed to his face, and he steered her away from the avid ears of the footman who lingered nearby. “It would be best if you abandon rookery speech at Edgecott, since Mrs. Hardcastle hopes to give you the advantages of a lady.”
Ivy thrust her nose in the air and performed a deep curtsey. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
He sighed. “Also, consider what you say. I have no objections to your frankness, but you’ll find that it may be advisable to think before you speak.”
Ivy’s playful demeanor melted into seriousness. “It sounds like a lot of work.”
“It is work to be grown up, Ivy, no matter where you are. Whatever you may face here, it will be nothing compared to London.”
Ivy pressed her face into Sir Reginald’s warm coat. “Do you think I could be a lady, Donal?”