Magic by Daylight Read online

  MAGIC BY DAYLIGHT

  Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  Chapter One

  June 1800

  The bride sparkled like a newly opened rose touched with dew. When she gazed upon her husband, the words of their vows still trembling in the air, all her adoration was written in her eyes. Clarice saw with approval that Mr. Henry returned her dear friend’s love with full measure. Melissa perhaps deserved more than to share the future of a curate, but she would have at least the consolation of knowing he cherished her.

  When the young couple emerged from the church, Clarice was the first to embrace the bride, veil, flowers, and all. “From the bottom of my heart, I wish you happy!” she said. She smiled down at her shorter friend. “Now didn’t we vow we would not cry?”

  “I can’t help it. I’m so happy.”

  Mr. Henry shuffled his feet. Always a rather red-faced young man, he was blushing brightly beneath the indulgent gazes of the gentry and townsfolk of Hamford. Clarice turned to him with an outstretched hand and a warm smile. “Congratulations, Mr. Henry. I yield to you the dearest friend I have ever had. I know she will prove a great comfort and support to you all the days of your life.”

  ‘Thank you, my lady,” he said, bowing as gracefully as a royal bishop. “I count the day I came to Hamford as the most fortunate of my life . . . until now.”

  Clarice laughed and let the bride and groom go to greet the rest of their well-wishers. As she turned to follow them, she very plainly heard a farmer’s wife saying to her somewhat deaf mother, “ ‘Tis a pity she’s no younger.”

  “Aye,” the older woman said, nodding. “Young pullets do make the best layers. But she’s a very pleasant-spoken lady for all that.”

  As Clarice watched Mr. and Mrs. Henry shake hands and smile, never leaving go of each other’s arm, she could not help giving a sigh. Melissa Bainbridge was nearly a year younger than herself. If the townspeople of Hamford had long since given up expectation of seeing her wed, how much less hope had they of seeing the Lady of the Manor married? Their hopes could not be smaller than Clarice’s own.

  Fortunately, her position protected her somewhat from the pointed questions and sly comments that were too often the part of the unmarried at a wedding celebration. The fact that she was in somewise the founder of this feast didn’t hurt either. But good wine and fine food was the least she could do to mark the wedding of the dearest friend she’d ever known.

  “I’m afraid you’ll be lonely now,” her half sister said, approaching her after dinner. Felicia Gardner had the softest voice and the warmest eyes in the world. If anyone would understand Clarice’s feelings it would be she, who had been almost a mother to her. For an instant, honest words rose to her lips. But then, over Felicia’s shoulder, Clarice saw that Melissa was listening.

  “Lonely?” Clarice said brightly. “Not at all! I shall positively relish the silence. You don’t know, Felicia, how trying it is to live with people in love. If she was not sighing because he had not spoken to her in church, then she was singing because he had. If she was not over the moon with delight at receiving some little note, she was cast down into the depths because he had not written. I should appreciate some level ground after so many ups and downs.”

  “I have been a great trial to her ladyship indeed,” Melissa said, smiling. “And she has borne all my foolishness most patiently.”

  “Only out of friendship for you, my dear,” Clarice said, still merrily. “For I declare that my friendship for Mr. Henry has been severely tried.”

  “What’s that?” Blaic Gardner came up, Mr. Henry just behind him. “You have sinned grievously, sir, if Lady Stavely finds fault with you.”

  “I beg pardon ...” the curate began, not yet used to the jokes of the circle he’d joined by marriage.

  “As you should,” Clarice said, stern as a judge but for the twinkle in her eyes. “Why, you kept my dear friend waiting almost six months before you proposed, when anyone could see that you had fallen in love with her at first sight. That is a high crime, as you must agree.”

  “You are right. I felt an immediate inclination. However, I wished to give her time to know her heart,” he said, drawing Melissa’s arm through the bend of his elbow.

  “I will not add to her blushes by saying that you waited three months too long for that!”

  The bride hid her blooming cheeks in her husband’s lapel. “You are too bad,” she said in a muffled voice.

  “That is nothing. Wait till you hear the speech I mean to give, being in loco parentis as it were to the bride. But now, there is to be dancing! Gentlemen, take your wives away unless you wish to incur more of my displeasure!”

  She knew Mr. Henry did not disapprove of dancing, and indeed his rather large foot was already tapping to the sound of fiddles and drum. The early summer evening was warm, while moonrise and sunset met to give the sky a soft, opalescent gleam. Out on the lawn of Hamdry Manor, twenty couples had already joined hands on the wooden platform Clarice had ordered built for the occasion.

  Blaic too was whistling almost soundlessly along with the music. His eyes, green as new-budded leaves, looked at his wife with an eager light that not even ten years of marriage had dimmed. Felicia smiled back in a mysteriously tender way that seemed the special property of married women. Yet she took a moment to say, “Don’t try so hard, Clarice. Everyone knows you are sorry to be losing your friend.”

  Before Clarice could answer, Blaic took his wife to the floor. Suddenly the joyousness of the music and the delight on her friends’ faces was too overwhelming. Clarice turned away. The windows of her beloved home, welcoming with candlelight, beckoned to her but she did not go in. For the moment, she could not find comfort there. Too soon it would contain her alone, with no equal or even near-equal to share her days, her occupations, or her thoughts.

  Slipping away unnoticed, and feeling absurdly neglected even though it was her own wish, Clarice wended her way through the garden. The gravel paths were laid out to wind and bend among an assortment of statuary, classical and modern. Though elegant and civilized in its contents, the famous Hamdry Gardens rested upon the very edge of a wilderness. The great moor rose beyond this hedge, seemingly wind-swept and empty, yet filled with secrets and danger enough to rival the deepest jungle.

  Melissa, for one, had always thought Clarice’s love for the moor bordered on the macabre. “How can you stand it, knowin’ your ma ... died there?” she’d asked once, not long after leaving Tally ford Orphanage to live with Clarice, orphaned herself.

  “I don’t mind that. I never feel unwelcome.”

  “You’re Viscountess Stavely. Where do you ever feel out of place?” Melissa had been only a young girl then and, despite her illegitimacy and the hardness of her life, she’d still kept some illusions. Those few that Clarice knew had all been shattered the morning they’d found her mother’s clothing beside one of the sucking green pools that looked so innocent in the sunshine yet concealed such deadly depths.

  But she did not blame the moor for that.

  The sounds of the party were dim as she walked out through the gap in the thick hedge at the back of the manor property. The wind pulled at the pale yellow silk of her gown, loosening the mass of curls piled upon her head. She had a sudden fancy to walk up to the top of the hill where the rising moon seemed to dance among the clouds like an Arabian princess among her veils.

  Though the thin-soled slippers she wore were only good for dancing, she didn’t notice any stones beneath her feet. Nor did she pay any particular attention when the moon hid herself away. She wasn’t afraid of the dark. There was a greater chance of her losing her way in her own drawing room than here on the moor, even in the darkness.

  As she walked, sh
e thought about the men she knew and why she was not married to any of them.

  They’d asked her. Ever since she’d come of age, there’d been a suitor or two to squire her to Assembly Balls, to routs, and to whatever other amusement this fold of the Devonshire landscape offered. But always when the moment had come to answer “Yes, I will,” she had said, “You are very kind but. .. no.”

  Part of the problem was that she did not need to marry to better herself. “I have money,” she said aloud to the night. “I have a title in my own right. I have everything a woman marries for, yet I also have the extra benefit of complete freedom of action. If only there was a man I could . .. respect.”

  She was thinking of the look on Melissa’s face as she took the vows that made her a wife when she realized that she’d reached the top of the hill. For a moment, she stood with her eyes tightly closed as she caught her breath. Then she opened them, expecting to see the land she knew so well spread out before her like a giant’s map.

  But instead of familiar landmarks, she saw a tumbled, broken line of stones before her that looked black as obsidian in the moonlight. “But this is Barren Fort,” she said. “I can’t have walked five miles. That’s impossible.”

  Yet even as she stood there, she became aware that the soles of her dancing slippers were worn right through. She felt the damp scrubbrush-like grass beneath the ball of her foot. A certain trembling in her lower limbs told her that she’d walked far, and at an unaccustomed speed.

  She had knelt down to untie the silken laces of her ruined shoes when she felt the ground tremble. Once, while accompanying Blaic and Felicia on their wedding trip to Italy, she and Melissa had been on a Naples street when a tremor had shaken the city. This was the same vibration, yet who’d ever heard of an earthquake or volcano here?

  Clarice looked around on instinct for someplace to take shelter. Except for the stones, the top of the hill was indeed barren. The trembling grew more furious, accompanied by a colossal groan as the earth twisted itself in resistance to its own violence.

  Then she realized there was something oddly rhythmic about the way the ground shook. It was a beat she knew well, part of her blood ever since her father had put her on her first mare. Somewhere quite near, a horse galloped at a frenzied pace, coming closer by the instant.

  But who would be made enough to gallop over treacherous ground beneath the insubstantial light of a coy moon? Clarice straightened up, shoe in hand, looking around for the animal and owner. She’d deliver a stern lecture to the foolhardy person! She cared little whether the rider broke his neck, but she cared deeply about the horse!

  She saw nothing. A strong breeze blew up, blinding her with strands of her own hair. She pushed it back as the wind died away as abruptly as it had come.

  Then he was there, taking the jagged stones of Barren Fort in a leap at least as daring as it was insane. The horse was black as the stones and from its back great wings soared out, flung wide in the tempest of its passing.

  He passed so close that Clarice cowered, afraid of the slashing hooves over her head. They wrung red and gold sparks from the underlying stone as he landed.

  Staring, Clarice saw the horse bore a rider. Yet the words she’d thought to say of his recklessness perished in her throat at the uncanny sight before her. Perhaps he wore only a hooded cloak. Yet the effect was that of a shadow riding a shadow. She could distinguish the outline of a figure astride the black animal, nothing more.

  Rider and horse were as still as statues in the liquid light of the moon. Neither of them gave any sign of the strenuous exercise they’d just completed, by so much as a deep breath. The horse did not paw the ground, nor did the rider make any move to dismount. The dimly seen head moved as he seemed to scan the horizon for something.

  “Shall we about it?” he asked.

  The voice was so sudden and deep that Clarice jumped. The hooded face turned toward her despite her having made no sound beyond the thud of a shoeless foot in short grass. Clarice froze like a rabbit that feels the shadow of the hawk pass over. She even shut tight her eyes so that no gleam of white could draw his attention. Every tale of bogle or banshee that she’d ever heard in her life suddenly filled her head. She did not want to see whatever baneful face was hidden in the hood.

  An eternal moment later, she heard again the ring of hooves striking rock beneath the thin covering of soil on the tor. She opened her eyes partway to see him ride down the hill, the sides of his long cloak flying open like wings upon a horse’s back. She half thought he was looking back at her, so she shut her eyes tight again.

  “Here she is!” a voice called on a note of triumph.

  Clarice opened her eyes to find the handsome face of her brother-in-law bending low over her. The lines at the corners of his eyes deepened as he smiled reassuringly. “Sit up, Clarice. You’re cold as ice from lying on the ground.”

  “On the ground?’ she asked. She realized the strange prickling all over her body was from the blades of grass poking through the silk of her gown.

  Blaic gave her his hand and pulled her up. She felt her head whirl. “Here now,” he said, sliding his arm around her. “You’re not going to faint?”

  “I haven’t fainted since I was sixteen. What happened? I was out on the moor a moment ago.”

  “Were you? Where?”

  “Barren Tor. I don’t know how I...”

  “Barren Tor? But that’s five miles away.”

  “I know. Yet I swear I was there. And a man on a horse came out of nowhere.. .” Suddenly, her knees seemed to lose all their stiffness. She started to sink.

  “Hurry!” he called, even as he bent to pick her up. Though he was at least forty, his arms were strong and his shoulder broad enough to lean her head on. “You need a glass of brandy,” he said more quietly.

  “Oh, no. I loathe the stuff.”

  She could hear more voices, anxious, questioning voices, coming nearer. In the forefront was Melissa, closely followed by Felicia and several servants with torches alight. Their wavering light made the shadows move. Clarice gave a convulsive shudder, prey to the sensation known as “a goose walking over a grave,” and tried to see past the shadows. Did someone in a black cloak stand there, concealed and watching?

  “I’ll carry you into the house,” Blaic said. “You’re not well.”

  Clarice shook her head with a smile, “Put me down, Blaic, do. I’m perfectly well.”

  “Is she hurt?” Felicia asked, her lovely face tight with anxiety.

  “A little faint,” her husband answered, ignoring Clarice’s repeated request. “She’s been overdoing it, I think.”

  “Don’t spare my feelings,” Clarice said, responding as always to any ugly emotion like this unreasoning fear that gripped her, fighting back with a smile and a joke. “Tell the world I’m naught but a dissipated rake. Can a woman be a rake?”

  “Oh, it’s my fault,” Melissa said, wringing her hands. “She took too much on herself with this wedding.”

  “Carry her to the house, Blaic,” Felicia said. “An early night and a glass of hot milk will do much to restore her. I’ll make your excuses to the other guests, Clarice.”

  “Nonsense! Put me down. I’m very well able to walk. I merely wanted to be alone for a little. I had a bit of a headache, if you must know.”

  “Then why .. .” Blaic began, only to receive a nip of his sister-in-law’s fingers all too close to his ear.

  “Sssh,” she hissed. “Don’t worry them.”

  He only shook his head as he swung her down. Just as she stood on her own two feet, Melissa caught her breath on a gasp. “Clarice! What has become of your shoes?”

  The grass of Hamdry Manor was cool and rich beneath her naked soles. Close-shearing made it as delightful to tred on as cut velvet. Very different from the dry, coarse grass on Barren Tor. Clarice looked down at her feet, white and long against the seemingly black turf. “I—I took them off. One of the laces broke.”

  “Would this be before
or after you had the headache?” Felicia asked with the raised eyebrow and drawling tone of a skeptical older sister.

  Clarice just laughed. She stepped over the grass to kiss Felicia’s pale cheek. “Come along,” she said. “I’m in no danger. I shall go to the house and find another pair of satin slippers. Then I shall dance with your gallant husband and he shall tell me all the doings of my brilliant nephew.”

  “Brilliant indeed,” Blaic said, his fair brows twitching down in a way that promised and threatened all in one. “He takes after his father, who is not to be fooled.”

  When Clarice returned, last year’s silver slippers safe upon her feet, her brother-in-law did not dance with her. They sat down together at a table with glasses of wine before them. Clarice imagined that to anyone else, they looked like a friendly pair of relations by marriage. Yet their talk was far from ordinary.

  “So he appeared out of nowhere?” Blaic asked.

  “It was dark. The moon had gone in among the clouds. I might not have seen a rider clad in black riding a black horse until he was upon me.”

  “Did he speak to you?”

  “No. And I said nothing either. I—I was afraid.” She paused an instant. “No, not afraid. Just. . . Anyway, what could I have said? I was not even certain of how I had come to be there.”

  “Clarice . . .” Blaic began. Then he shot a cautious glance over his shoulder. No one stood near enough to overhear. “Did you think at all that it might be one of the People?”

  “One of the People?”

  Clarice too, on instinct, glanced around before answering. Though many of the country-folk believed in the “piskies,” most of their betters did not. Little did any of them know that Blaic Gardner, well-respected gentleman and author of the soon-to-be published Notes on the Life-span and Social Structure of the British Bee, had once been a prince of a mysterious race far older than mankind. Felicia’s love for him had made him the man he was today, in more ways than one.

  Clarice not only knew of Blaic’s former station, she herself had had an enchantment laid upon her. Therefore, she considered Blaic’s suggestion with due care. “No. Although ... no. I didn’t think of it; I don’t think it.”