Duainfey Read Online Free Page A

moved down the room, keeping her steps sedate with a sheer effort of will.
    As she reached the hallway, she heard her brother's voice.
    "Tell me more of your Fey, now, Mother. What was her name, and why should she be searching for kin in our tenants' book?"
     
    The wild garden was ebony and silver in the moonlight. An urchin breeze capered playfully through the leaves, shaking a riot of scent into the silvered air. Rebecca paused by the spinictus bush, its flaming blossoms dyed black by the night, and breathed in the spicy aroma.
    Over the rustling of the breeze in the leaves came the high-pitched peepeepeep ! of the new froglings down in the pod. Rebecca looked up into the indigo sky with its sheen of stars, and awkwardly pulled her shawl tighter. The breeze carried an edge of chill this evening and her withered arm was sensitive to the cold. It hung, useless and aching, down her left side. She could move it somewhat, with concentration and paying a tithe in pain, but the fingers had no fine control, and the limb itself was without strength.
    Ruined and crippled into the bargain —Caroline's pettish outburst roiled in her memory, blighting her pleasure in the night.
    Sighing, she walked on, her feet sure on the shadow-filled path.
    If she had harbored any tender sentiment regarding Sir Jennet's offer, Dickon's candid assessment would have long since retired it. In fact, she had known for some time that the only man who would take her was one more in need of her portion than affronted by her history or her—affliction.
    By that measure, Caroline's jibes should not have wounded her—indeed, she had only spoken the truth. But it was Caroline's genius to always lay tongue to the most hurtful means of expressing the truth, as it was Dickon's to find the most gentle.
    And neither spitefulness nor kindness changed the fact that she had allowed Kelmit Tarrington to take her up into his phaeton, against her aunt's explicit wishes. Once up, she noticed what had not been apparent from the ground—that he was somewhat the worse for his wine.
    So much the worse, indeed, that his horses escaped his control while he was trying to kiss her, and it was she who snatched the ribbons from his lax fingers and brought the pair under control—too late. The phaeton went down in spite of her efforts, and Kelmit's neck was broken.
    She—she was fortunate to have escaped with her life, so they said to her face.
    Behind her back, they whispered that she and Kelmit had planned a secret elopement, which was, Rebecca owned, ducking beneath a tendril of wintheria vine, what anyone who had more sense than a girl of seventeen might well assume. The truth was simply that she, unbeautiful and indifferently courted, had been flattered that the man described by her cousin Irene as "the catch of three seasons" had offered her a mark of distinction.
    She followed the moon-bleached path 'round to the medicinal garden, and there she sank onto the bench beneath the old elitch tree, one-handedly pulling her shawl closer. The herbs swayed in the small breeze, silver-grey in the moonlight, and the scents of the night bloomers mingled into a minty sweet breath.
    Rebecca drank in the scents, raised her face to the moonlit sky and closed her eyes. By summer's end, she would be married and on her way to her husband's Corlands estate. She would need to take a careful inventory of the plants growing here, and prepare cuttings and seed packets for their journey. The Corlands climate, so she learned from the almanacs and geographies in her father's library, was cooler and drier than she and her plants were accustomed to. That would scarcely be a problem for the hardier of the plants, but there were several she considered indispensable which were more fragile. She would need to take herself into the village and sit with Sonet. Perhaps the herbalist had kin or contacts in the Corlands. Certainly, she would have good advice, and it was possible, Rebecca thought all at once,