When nighttime came, I washed my face again, combed out my dry hair to let it hang in a foamy golden cloud down my back, put on one of Mama’s gowns and my cloak, and sneaked away across the meadows. At the Dower House I took off the cloak, hung it carefully over the terrace railing, where I could find it again, and walked down the terrace to the room where Naughty Ned always sat at his ease after his evening meal. I knocked. He came to the tall window himself and let me in, his face a perfect picture of surprise.
“Good evening, Edward,” I said. “I am Beauty, the daughter of the Duke of Westfaire. I have come to keep you company and tell you tales to allay your boredom.”
Then I sat down by the fire and told him the future of the world. I was witty. I was amusing. I laughed gently and forestalled his advances. I drank but little wine and kept my wits about me. When the bell in the Wellingford chapel rang for Matins, I excused myself and left him there, disappearing into my cloak on the terrace. He came out after me, searching, calling my name. I ran away, down the long terrace and home across the meadows, just in time to put my gown away, get on my boy clothes once more, and catch a scant few hours sleep in the hay.
It had been, I told myself, done as well as I could do it. When I saw how well he liked the wittier lady, I remembered a book I had read in school in the twentieth. It was called the Arabian Nights, and it was about Scheherazade who told clever tales for a thousand and one nights in order to avoid being put to death. I had nowhere near that long. If I couldn’t fascinate him sooner, the whole thing was hopeless anyhow. Going to bed with him would not accomplish what I had in mind. He had done that over and over again with many women without wanting to be married to any of them. And though he had tried several times, out of habit, to interrupt me by suggesting something improper, I had always put him off and gone on with my tales. I thought possibly the mystery would reach him where the carnality hadn’t.
As Havoc, I watched that day as Edward set off to ride to Westfaire, which was known by most local residents to be under an enchantment. I heard Edward talking about it with the men who were riding with him. “An enchantment of roses,” is the way he put it, sounding excited. That evening, when he returned, he looked scratched and frustrated. One of the men told the head groom that Lord Edward had not been able to penetrate the roses around Westfaire though he had repeatedly tried! I considered it a hopeful sign.
That night I put on the second gown—I had brought only three from Westfaire—and went to the Dower House again. Again I told him tales until Matins, and again he pursued me when I ran away.
On the third night I took my cloak in with me, set it beside me on the chair, and in the midst of my discourse sighed and interrupted the tale. When he asked me why, I told him I was under an enchantment. That until I was married to a man who would ask me no questions, I could appear only after dark and the barrier around Westfaire would remain. I said this twice, being sure he understood it, before I directed his attention to a spurious spy at the window and disappeared while his head was turned. He looked around him wildly, cursing and crying my name. I had done it as well as it could be done, I told myself again, making my weary way home across the fields.
The fourth night I did not go at all. Nor the fifth.
On the sixth, I returned in the gown I had worn when he saw me first. He was stalking up and down on the terrace outside his window, clenching and unclenching his fists, muttering and sighing. This was a good sign. I took off the cloak and sighed loudly, myself. The moment he saw me, he went to one knee and asked me to marry him. I turned away, thrusting out one hand as though my maidenly modesty had been deeply surprised. He begged. I looked at my hands and wrung them dramatically. He begged the more. At last, on an expiring sigh, I said yes. I would meet him at the Wellingford chapel at dusk, three days afterward, and marry him there.
He would have time for second thoughts. So did I, when I was awake enough to have any thoughts at all. Lord Robert cursed at me for being asleep in a horse’s stall, and Lady Janet told me to wake up when I dozed against the side of the steed she was mounting. Mostly I thought that I did not want to be married. I would not have minded if Giles had been there to marry me, but I did not want to marry Ned. What I really wanted to do and had set out to do was find my mother. I longed for a mother. Someone to tell my troubles to, a shoulder to cry on, a sympathetic hand on my forehead, a voice saying, “There, there, dear, we’ll work it all out.” I thought of using the boots, assuming they would take me wherever she was, but the thought of going to my mama pregnant! She had told me to come to her at once, before I grew older. Coming to her in my present condition did not seem appropriate. It would
