Kissed by Starlight by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

to scream, thank you.”
    His dark-eyed gaze traveled over her body. Whatever desire she’d glimpsed in them once seemed as dead as Caesar. She wondered if she’d really seen it at all. He said, “You must be cold. You have nothing on your feet.”
    “I’m too happy to be cold. If it weren’t so late, I would wake Clarice up this minute!”
    “Why don’t you? Do you think she’d mind it?”
    The temptation was strong. “No. Better let it seem to have happened overnight. But I don’t believe I’ll sleep a moment between now and morning! I haven’t felt this way since I was a child with Christmas morning twelve long hours away.”
    “Get into your bed,” Blaic said, swinging his arm wide in invitation.
    Not thinking of herself at all, Felicia laid aside her robe and climbed up the steps. “In sober truth, I shan’t close an eye all night.”
    “Yes, you will.”
    A yawn shook her. “Oh, that’s your doing.”
    “Is it?”
    He drew the covers up to her shoulders, holding the counterpane gingerly between two fingers, careful to avoid even the lightest brush of her skin. “Felicia,” he said.
    “Hmmm ... ?”
    “Be careful of me.”
    Blaic did not think she heard, and he was glad. Let her trust him completely. Only then, when he betrayed her trust, would he be free of his curse.
    As when he’d first met her, he stood above her sleeping form, staring down at her. Mortal women still did not appeal to him, yet there was something about her that pleased him now. Perhaps he was merely growing used to her peculiarities.
    He reached out as though to smooth her hair. He didn’t touch it, but he made a sweeping motion and the strands responded, flexing as though beneath his fingers. Blaic remembered that earlier the chestnut mass had been tightly restrained into a hard knot on her nape. He much preferred the wild curls of its natural state.
    She had a fine, smooth skin, unlined as yet. Though trouble left its marks under her eyes, he recognized that these would fade, leaving her with a wholesome glow. He wondered how old she was and sighed again, though without bitterness, for the fleeting substance of mortality.
    As soon as he vanished, Felicia opened her eyes. “It seems to me,” she said aloud to the darkness, “that he needs to practice his sleep spell.”
     

Chapter Five
     
    Felicia came down early to breakfast with the first good appetite she’d known since her father’s death. The butler, Mr. Varley, and the young footman were clearing the table of a place setting as she entered the room. Holding his miniature brush and pan in one gloved hand, the butler turned stiffly, for he was a martyr to rheumatism. “Good morning, miss.”
    “Good morning, Varley. Lovely day.”
    “Yes, miss, most clement for the season. Eggs, miss?”
    “Please, and some of that bacon. It’s from Yeo’s farm, isn’t it?”
    She tucked into her breakfast, savoring every bite. Her ears were open for sounds of excitement and astonishment. Nurse had a yelp like a trodden pug-dog that she displayed at every unusual event, from a dead snake on the path to the gift of a bouquet of flowers on her birthday. Felicia had half-expected to be awoken by this yelp in its most joyful inflection, but it had been the dark images in her dreams that had brought her awake. Surely she would hear that yap the moment Nurse realized what a change had taken place in her young charge.
    After a few minutes, Felicia asked, “Is Lady Clarice down as yet?”
    “Yes, miss. She finished just a moment before you came in. Didn’t you see her in the corridor?”
    “No, I...” She sipped her coffee. Asking Varley any more questions would fall under “gossiping with the servants.” She pushed her cup away, suddenly repelled by the bitter taste.
    She could decently ask, however, “Do you know where Lady Clarice has gone now?”
    “I couldn’t say,” Varley said. “But, if you’ll pardon me, miss, she seemed all lit up with