Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
The fairy stood and walked toward the clearing, her pink cloak floating over the forest floor.
Twigs and lichen-covered stones, freshly shed leaves, and fertile earth, created an enchanting music beneath her slippered feet.
Halting before him, she surveyed his haphazard encampment with eyes Julian now saw were hazel.
Green with bits of gold and orange just like the woods.
She knelt before him, her cloak billowing forth a scent of ripe cherries.
Rummaging in her white gown, she brought forward a ruby-red candy and displayed it on her small palm.
Her fingers were slender, long for her size.
She wasn’t tiny enough to put in his pocket.
She was small. Just, maybe, a small girl.
“Take it,” she urged. “It’s cherry.”
Julian swiped the sweet from her hand and plopped it in his mouth. Cherry, tart and sweet, like her scent.
“You look sad,” she said.
He rolled up his chin. “I’m not sad.”
She tilted her head, her hair shifting in springy, ebony waves. “Oh.”
“Oh what?”
“Well, I understand why a person would be forced to hide their sorrow. But there is no need to with me.”
If she were a human child, she had to be much younger than him. But her speech was older, her reasoning out of place for a bit of a thing just out of leading strings.
“Are you a fairy?” he asked.
She smiled, a dazzling dimple marking her left cheek. “Am I?”
“That’s what I asked.”
“You did.”
“I did,” he answered, irritation in his tone. “Well?”
She motioned a graceful hand to his lap. “What is that?”
Julian followed her line to his drawing forgotten in her presence. He flipped it over. “My ship.”
She dared to reach for the drawing, brushing his thigh and turning the paper face up. Admiration lit in her eyes. “How beautiful.”
It wasn’t much, since he’d only finished the hull and masts, but what did a fairy, if she were one, know about ships? “Thank you.”
“I should love to sail.”
“Can’t you just use your fairy wings and fly wherever?”
She swept out her arms like a figurehead on the bow of a ship. “But to glide upon water with the wind in my face would be magical.”
“Flying is magical.” Leaping to his feet, he loomed over her. “Are you or aren’t you a fairy?”
Gathering his belongings, she folded the shawl, placing it and his papers and pencil and the bottle of brandy in the pillowcase. A shaft of sunlight shone down on her head.
Her hand tucked suddenly in his, sending a hum up his arm. It curled around his chest and settled strange and warm in his belly. “Would you like to see something magical?” she asked.
Before he realized it, Julian was being led behind her assured little figure, swerving between trees and brambles. The music of the forest murmured and snapped beneath their feet. Not his imagination, birds flitted and followed them from the canopy. A red squirrel leapt from tree to tree.
Was she leading him to a bad end? Why was he dying with curiosity to know?
A tree branch whacked him across his face—too high to affect her—shocking him out of his trance. He yanked his hand free from hers and dug in his heels.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To my lair.”
“Your lair?”
She giggled. Her arm swept behind her to an old, gnarled tree trunk as wide as a coach. Within its twisty folds was a narrow opening. She skipped to the tree, turned with an impish smile, and after waving him near, disappeared inside.
What did fairies do to their captives? He was going to find out.
He strode to the tree and took a last look at the world as he knew it. He hoped his family never found a trace of him and his father mourned the day he sent his monster son away. But he knew the earl wouldn’t. He had Oliver as his heir. Julian was the worthless second son.
He swept into the tree and blinked, his jaw dropping in awe. If he’d been pressed to describe a fairy’s lair, Julian would have described it exactly as what lay before him, down to the lamp casting light over the enchanting home.
Cross-legged on a green-and-white quilt spread out over the ground, the fairy reached for his hand again, drawing him to his knees.
Moss crept up the gnarled walls, like hairs on an old man’s grizzled face.
A nosegay of wildflowers rested in an alcove.
From a chest, books, ribbon, and a yellow-haired doll spilled out.
And food.
She unwrapped a napkin, displaying the most beautiful pastry dotted with raisins and sugar. From another cloth, buttery biscuits appeared. And purple berries. And firm cheese. And was that cream sitting on a book? Thick, yellow cream in a translucent cup with a dainty spoon to serve it.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
Julian’s stomach growled. “No.”
She tilted her head.
Julian grabbed the pastry. “Just to oblige your generosity.”
“Yes, of course.”
He gobbled down the bun. The fairy was polite enough to turn away. She pushed her cloak from her shoulders and plucked out a carrot slice from a salad in an earthenware bowl. Salad? When there were biscuits?
A bubbling, purring sound arose from her breast. He leaned around her left. Tucked in a scarf wrapped around her flat chest, a creature with white whiskers and a pink nose nibbled on the carrot.
“What the bloody hell is that?”
“Daisy.”
“That doesn’t look like a daisy.”
“She’s a guinea pig. Would you like to hold her?”
Not giving him the chance to answer, she pressed the snuffling rodent to his chest. He was forced to hold it, and so as not to insult her, he lifted the creature’s nose to his chin as she directed.
“Isn’t she magical?” she enthused. “One cannot be sad with whiskers tickling your face.” Daisy made a sound, something between a whistle and a squeak. “Oh, she likes you. Don’t you girl? She has a soft spot for those who are sad.”
Daisy snuggled at his neck and the fairy traced a finger down the beastie’s back. As her hand lifted, coming back to the creature’s head, she touched Julian again. On his jaw. He hadn’t been touched this much in his entire life.
“You’re beautiful,” she said to him.
He really couldn’t hit a fairy or a girl, so he let the insult lie. “One day, I’ll have a scar and a beard and look more like a man.”
“But you look like one now.” The back of her hand grazed his cheek. “Like Adonis.”
“What do you know about sadness?” he asked.
She shrugged. “My mother died. She gave me Daisy.” She settled the guinea pig in her skirts, dropped a few more carrot tidbits there, and gazed over the space.
Behind the winsome curve of her mouth, Julian saw the sorrow.
“And together, we found my lair. And she read me these books and taught me to read. And how to play cards. Would you like to play cards?”
Rummaging in the trunk, she brought out a deck of cards and a velvet purse. Loosening the gold string, she upended the purse.
He gawked at the neat pile of coins spilled out to the quilt. “You gamble?”
“Is that what you call it?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Then, yes. My brother lost five pence to me last Christmas and refuses to play with me again. But you are strong and brave. You aren’t afraid to play me, are you?”
“Of course not,” he said, looking down his nose at her. Julian had fleeced Anthony of ten shillings once. “But I have no money.”
She studied him. “I say we split my coin, and in payment, you give me a lock of your hair.
“Done.”
She withdrew a basket from the trunk and snipped a length of blue ribbon. He held still as she searched his hair for what he assumed to be the perfect specimen.
Swish. She cut close to his scalp, smiling over a very generous length of his black hair. But what of it? It was only hair. Like the devil, his father called it. Like Julian’s left-handedness.
After tying the ribbon to his hair at three points, she slid it in her pocket. “Now, one more request before we play. You tell me why you are sad.”
She wheedled like a girl. Boys didn’t give a scratch about feelings. The only thing inside a person of importance was courage. “My father sent me to my uncle’s, and the old man made me sleep in a closet and fed me porridge.”
Her eyes rounded like an owl.
“I’m running away.”
She clasped his arm. “Where to?”
He could get used to being touched. At least, touched by her. Every time she did, he felt like the pudgy, piebald guinea pig sounded. All bubbly and warm.
“London,” he said.
“Oh, I should like to run away. But London’s days and days away.”
“Only a day’s ride if you start early and the going’s good.”
Maybe he could tell her tales about London, teach her how to climb and sail and curse. If he wasn’t leaving this stupid place. Which he was. As soon as he won all her coin.
“Do you want some brandy?” Fishing in his sack, he offered her the bottle.
She uncorked it, sniffed, shivered, and gulped like the drunken sailors roaming the London docks with their gin. From her forehead to her neck, probably everything else below it that he couldn’t see, she flushed beet red. He saved Daisy when she fell backward, gasping and choking.
She clutched her middle. “That’s the most awful thing I’ve ever tasted.”
“Have you eaten a snail?”
She bolted up to sitting. “You ate a snail?”
“Alive.”
“The poor snail!”
“Got a sixpence for it. And a shilling for horse dung. Which tastes like bitter hay paste, by the by.”
“Fresh or dry?”
“Fresh and steamy. Hence, the shilling.”
Her face squished. She dared another sip of brandy as he gathered the cards and shuffled.
“It’s not so bad on the second taste,” she said.
“Because you’re happy to be alive. Are you going to eat those biscuits?”
She laid them out with the berries and cream while he dealt the play. And he was happy to be alive, with a fairy at his side and his means of boarding a coach to London within his reach.
Julian’s eyes flew open. Had it been the last of a dream or was someone, something, outside the enchanted lair? He lifted his head, straining to hear, but with his heart pounding in his ears, it was hard to tell.
Was that breathing? More like blowing. Something huge right outside the tree.
At his chest, the fairy nestled in his right arm, her black curls at his chin, her fruity scent mixing with the smell of moss and dirt.
They’d fallen asleep after she’d fleeced Julian of his coin and then, taking pity on him, given it back.
He didn’t have so much St. Clair pride that he hadn’t accepted it.
“Wake up,” he whispered into the fairy’s hair.
She didn’t budge. And how was she going to save them? By casting a spell? More like change her shape to a guinea pig, scurry away, and leave him as a sacrifice to be eaten alive.
Huffffff. Huffffff.
How big was the beast?
Huffffff. Huffffff.
Stretching his right arm from the fairy, he patted his hand over his pillowcase, curling his hand around the candlestick and slowly, drawing it out. He switched it to his left hand, gripped it hard, and wriggled his right arm free from beneath the fairy.
Something tickled the back of his hand. He started to smash it.
Squeeeeek.
He curled his hand around it and came up with a guinea pig.
Underbrush snapped. A wallop followed, like a leaping giant. “Fee, fau, fum, I smell the blood of an English man!”
Julian scrambled to the tree’s entrance, candlestick and guinea pig at the ready. “Stand back! Or I’ll—”
Afternoon sun cracked through the trees, momentarily blinding him. A breeze blew the forest canopy shut, and the beast shifted into view.
His cousin Georgiana stood beside her massive chestnut, Turk. “Julian?” Her gaze lowered to his hands, back and forth between his weapons. “Is that Daisy?”
Daisy snuffled and squeaked, not keen on being brandished. Julian snuggled the beastie to his chest, and the blasted rodent started cooing.
Georgiana grinned. “Ah, she likes you.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to see Kitty.”
“Kitty?”
“Yes. My friend. This is her home.”
“You mean the fairy?”
Georgiana lifted her face to the sky with a great belly laugh. “It’s not really her home, cousin. Notfelle is, but we play here.”
Kitty. She was a girl who played with his cousin. And what was funny about this? He had acted chivalrous for the first time in his life and might have rescued this Kitty. It was a sign he wasn’t meant to be the chivalrous sort.
The fairy, that is, Kitty, squeezed out between him and the tree’s archway and kissed Georgiana’s cheek. This Kitty touched everyone.
“Look what I found, Georgiana,” she said. “A lost boy. Isn’t he beautiful?”
“I’m not lost,” he countered.
“Not anymore. You have us.” To Georgiana, she said, “Do tell him not to run away. He must stay and be our friend.”
Georgiana looked Julian up and down. “Hmmm. Let me think on it.”
Plucking Daisy from his hold, Kitty scooped up Julian’s right wrist and pressed it to her breast. “Please say yes, Georgiana. I shall keep him with me forever.”
Julian took in the amazing vision of his palm against white cotton. The first time my hand has ever touched a female’s breast. He needed to remember this, the exact date and time, to tell Anthony Philips who’d only touched one with an elbow, and had received a slap on the face.
Based on the dimples sparkling in her cheeks, Kitty had no plans to slap him. And she kept his hand planted on her breast—which weren’t actually breasts, more like a chest—but she was a girl, and therefore, it counted.
“Don’t you agree?” she asked Julian bold-faced. “We are fated for one another. Like Eros and Psyche.”
“More like Isolde and Tristan,” Georgiana said. “I say we keep him. We need someone to play the villain. Let’s go to the tower and play. My cousin will make an excellent executioner.”
Kitty dropped Julian’s wrist. “This is your cousin? Andrew?”
“Julian,” he bit out.
“Oh, what a beautiful name. For a beautiful boy.” Kitty sprang up on her toes and smacked a kiss to his jaw. “Welcome to Notfelle, Sir Julian. I am Lady Katherine.”
Julian warmed at the peck. In one day, a girl had: touched his face and hair, held his hand, kissed him, and willingly placed his hand on her breast.
Maybe London could wait. Georgiana played like the best of the boys and Kitty…
She was just a girl. He knew nothing about fate, but her smile, her giggle, her adoration felt like something ordained. Plus, with all those firsts in one day, if he stayed, who knew what other firsts she’d give him?
No, he couldn’t leave her just yet.