He whirled her around and started kissing her hand. "Your skin is fair as a lily, kissed by the first blush of dawn."
She snatched her hand away. "Stop that."
"Your eyes are like limpid pools."
"They are not." She was getting frightened now.
"Your lips ... ah, your cherry lips ... If I might just once touch—"
He reached as though to lay a finger across her lips, and she slapped his hand down. "Back off, you," she warned. But her voice shook, her heart pounded. There was a wooden bench on the path, and she stepped behind it, to force Leonard to keep his distance.
"Your lips say
no,
but your eyes say yes," he told her.
"My eyes say no such thing."
He began circling the bench. "You're beautiful when you're angry," he said.
But she circled also, and managed to keep the bench between them. "No, I'm not. And what about your fiancée?"
"The betrothal's off." He feinted to the right, then lunged to the left, and she just managed to pull back so that his hand closed on empty air instead of around her wrist.
"
The betrothal's off?
" she repeated, to keep him talking, to keep him distracted. And she had thought Algernon was dangerous. "Why?"
"Because I challenged Baylen but he won the joust. That means his lady is fairer than mine was. I'm not going to be stuck marrying someone who makes Baylen come off better than me."
"That doesn't make any sense." Deanna thought he looked as though he was considering climbing over the bench, and she didn't know what she'd do if he did that. She had no idea how fast she could run in her long gown and thin slippers. "And anyway, suppose Baylen's lady is fairer than me?"
"She won't be. She can't be. And, anyway, to be on the safe side, I won't challenge him."
Thanks a lot.
She stepped away as he reached over the bench but wasn't fast enough: Leonard caught hold of her wrists. "Let go of me," she cried. She jerked back, and her tall hat slipped down over her eyes.
"Don't toy with my emotions, icy goddess of love." Leonard put a knee on the seat of the bench and tried to draw her toward him.
She dug her heels into the grass and leaned backward.
"I love the fire in your eyes," he insisted.
Her foot slipped in the grass. He was still pulling on her arms, so that she lost her balance. She fell across the back of the bench and he, with one knee still on the seat, was unable to counteract the effect of her weight. The bench tipped, then rolled: Leonard ended up flat on his back with the bench on top of him and Deanna on top of the bench.
"My lady," he gasped. "My lady, you're squashing me!"
Deanna became aware that someone was standing next to her. She could see boots, but she was having a hard enough time figuring which way was up, never mind who it was standing there. She brushed the hat back.
Leonard's face was turning an interesting shade of purple as she pushed on the bench, trying to lift herself up. "My lady! Stop. You're killing me."
Oliver stooped down where Deanna could see him. "Does he really mean that?" he asked, indicating Leonard. "Or is that just an expression?"
"If I'm lucky, he means it," Deanna said.
Oliver nodded. "Are you just..." She could see him groping for exactly the right words. "...amusing yourself? Or do you need help?"
"I could use a hand up."
Oliver pulled her to her feet. "Are you injured?" he asked. "Have you been harmed?"
Leonard rolled the bench off himself. "No, no," he answered sulkily. "Don't worry about me. I'm quite all right."
"I wasn't worried about you," Oliver answered evenly. "I was asking about Deanna."
Leonard got to his feet. He stood directly in front of Oliver, who, being considerably shorter, had to look up at him. "Sort of an idiot, aren't you?" Leonard growled.
"I'm not the one who was lying on the ground with a park bench on my chest," Oliver pointed out.
Leonard snorted. But he must have become aware of how he looked, all rumpled, with grass and leaves stuck to him. And perhaps he became aware too of Oliver's hand, resting on the hilt of his elfin sword. Leonard glanced at Deanna, gave a curt bow, snorted at Oliver again, then strode
away as though he had more important things to think of.
"Oh, Oliver," Deanna said, unable to resist the impulse to hug him. Maybe he could help her save the world after all. "You're a treasure."
"I am?" He sounded a little confused but was obviously pleased that she was pleased.
She linked her arm with his and started walking him back to the castle. It must be late afternoon and he wouldn't have had anything to eat since breakfast at the farm. "What we've got to do is find you some food. I'm sure if we go to the kitchen—"
"No," said Oliver. "I've already found food."
"Oh?" she asked innocently. "What?"
He gave her that same level look he had given Leonard. "I don't think you really want to know."
Deanna opened her mouth, closed it. Opened it again, closed it again. Let go of his arm. "Right. Well." She readjusted the hat, which had suddenly developed a tendency to lean to one side. She kept on walking, without looking at him. He looked so real, she kept forgetting. "You came just in time, you know."
"I didn't know. What happened?"
"Well, you heard Leonard and Baylen were fighting to see whose fiancée is the fairest. It turns
out since Leonard lost so badly, he figures his lady must be a real dog, so he wants to replace her with me."
Oliver stopped and stared at her. "
Leonard is marrying a dog?
"
Deanna sighed. She reminded herself that he had come to her rescue twice already today. She sighed again. "It's just another expression, Oliver "
"What we've got to do," Deanna told Oliver as they climbed the garden stairs back to the higher level, "is find that watch fast and get back home. I have a bad feeling about that wizard Algernon. If he gets to the watch before we do, we'll never get it back in time." Oh, why hadn't the elves been more helpful? Just because it wasn't their lives that were on the line...
"Maybe he has it already," Oliver said.
"No." Oh, surely it was more than wishful thinking. "No, he can't."
They stepped onto the packed earth of the
courtyard, and she spied Algernon. "Speaking of the devil..." she murmured.
"Who was?" Oliver asked, even as Algernon, hanging around the front door as though waiting for them to return, caught sight of them.
"We were." Deanna lowered her voice as the wizard approached.
"No, we weren't," Oliver said, without lowering his. "We were talking about Algernon."
The wizard heard that and smiled, a smile involving only his lips, never his eyes.
Watch out
, she told herself.
"You were talking about me?" Algernon asked in a pleasant enough voice that nevertheless set goose bumps surfacing on her arms. "What a coincidence. I was just thinking about you." Incredibly, the smile broadened. "I don't believe in coincidence, do you?"
Deanna's heart thudded guiltily, blocking her throat, blocking any answer.
"If there is no such thing as coincidence," Oliver asked him, "why would there be a word for it?"
Algernon shot him a glare which was no doubt meant to be withering. But by the time he returned his attention to Deanna, the lump in her throat was dissolving, never mind the peculiar glint in the wizard's eyes. "On the contrary," she managed to tell him in a wonderfully grown-up voice, "I've recently found that fantastic coincidences happen all the time. It's logic and rational explanations I no longer believe in."
His lips twitched condescendingly. "How interesting. Have you, by chance, read Aristotle on the subject?" He started again without even giving her time to shake her head. "I have an early manuscript of his. I think you'd find
that
fascinating."
"Oh, that sounds very exciting," Deanna said.
Exciting
was her mother's catchall word. Deanna suspected her mother used it when she hadn't been listening and wasn't sure what she was supposed to say. "Very exciting, indeed." She was feeling self-confident and in control and in another second might even start giggling.
But Algernon was looking at her with those dark eyes of his that somehow seemed to sparkle, and there was something wrong here, though she couldn't say what, and—as though she were thinking about someone else—it occurred to her that she didn't have the strength to look away from whatever it was that sparkled and flashed in the wizard's eyes. "Fine," he said from far, far away. "It's right up in the tower room I use for
my experiments. I'm sure you'll find all of it 'exciting.'" And the lights that had no business being in his eyes swirled and tightened, drawing her in, just as he was drawing her in, pulling her toward the castle. Her body moved sluggishly, as though wading through water, so that she didn't even feel the pressure of the wizard's fingers, though she could see the indentations they made in her arm.
People disappear,
she remembered Leonard telling her. Leonard? she asked herself.
Leonard?
Did she know a
Leonard
? She let the wizard guide her steps.
Someone had caught hold of her other arm. She realized that when the wizard was pulled up short and turned to look slightly beyond her. Deanna fought the thick air that weighed down her entire body. A youth was standing there, his long fingers wrapped around her wrist. Dark hair framed a face that looked as though it never smiled, but he had pretty green eyes. There was something wrong with those eyes, too, but she couldn't quite say what.
Too?
she thought
Too?
Absently, she wondered who he was.
"We'll return shortly, boy," she heard her good friend Algernon tell him.
If her body wasn't being so slow to respond, she would already have turned back to the castle. But the youth was faster than she was. He was faster than Algernon was. Without releasing Deanna's wrist, he grabbed the wizard's free arm. His voice came from as far away as Algernon's. "We travel together," he said silkily.
Did they?
"Not this time." Algernon tried to jerk away but couldn't break his grip. He narrowed his eyes at the youth—Oliver: she knew that!—and directed the sparkling whirlpools at him.
Perhaps the wizard could only work his spell on one person at a time, Deanna thought, for she found she had cut through the thickness around her. Suddenly she was moving in real time instead of slow motion, and the fuzziness was gone from inside her head. "Let go of me," she cried, twisting in Algernon's grip. She kicked his leg, trying to distract him before he caught Oliver up in his magic.
Algernon kept hold of her arm (Oliver had her other arm and one of Algernon's—to anyone watching, she thought, they would have looked like an impromptu ring-around-the-rosy), but the wizard gave all his attention to Oliver. The lights in his eyes whirled faster and faster. Sweat beaded on his forehead. The veins in his neck were distended and the tense line of his jaw showed that his teeth were clenched in concentration.
Oliver made no attempt to break away. His eyes, which always looked too long, too deep, never left Algernon's. And it was Algernon, finally, who wilted, who released Deanna first. Slowly Oliver uncurled his fingers from around the wizard's forearm.
Algernon stepped back away from him. Subdued, he glanced at Deanna, too fast for her to avoid his eyes, but the unnatural glint was gone. "Who are you?" he asked, sounding shaken. "That's worked on every person..."
Deanna, looking at him sidelong, saw it hit him.
"What are you?"
Nothing flickered across Oliver's bland face. Deanna felt a chill spread up her own back. For a moment she could see nothing that was human in Oliver's expression.
They stood there evaluating each other, Oliver impassively, Algernon with fury on his face, neither one ready to give an inch and both willing to stand there all day to prove it, and it was Baylen who saved the day.
"Uncle Algernon," Sir Henri's elder son called from the doorway of the stable.
Algernon turned, slowly, as though to indicate he'd keep on glaring at Oliver if pressing business didn't interfere.
Baylen, who looked as though he'd been winding himself up for another bellow, waved for the wizard to join him. "That horse with the broken leg," he shouted.
Algernon spared one more look of disdain for Oliver and Deanna, then strode away.
A horse with a broken leg. Two summers ago Deanna had read all the novels she could find about horses. She knew what was done with a horse with a broken leg, and it figured they'd call Algernon to do it.
Watching him walk toward the stable, she found herself shaking over what he had been able to do to her will. She also found herself avoiding Oliver's eyes as fastidiously as she had avoided Algernon's. Oliver wasn't human. She kept forgetting because the fair folk had done such a good job in making him look like one. What was going on in his mind? She'd never know. Algernon's spell had had no effect on him—which was good, which had saved her from ... who knows what? But it also showed that she'd never, ever be able to take things for granted. She couldn't assume she understood Oliver, couldn't try to guess how he'd react in any given situation.
Stop it,
she told herself. After all, he had just rescued her from the wizard. She forced herself to look directly at him. "Are you all right?" she asked, her voice a little squeak.
He looked at her coldly, which did nothing for her sense of unease. Cats were hunters, she recalled suddenly. Perhaps he was evaluating her weaknesses. Her unease teetered on the edge of fear.
Stop it,
she repeated to herself. Oliver wouldn't even be here except that he had tried to save her when she'd been pulled into the well.
"Why, there you are!" Lady Marguerite's voice chirped, coming up from behind them. "I've been looking all over for you."
Oliver turned, and something about the shift of muscles or the way the light fell across his cheek ... the alien quality was hidden, or gone.
Lady Marguerite climbed the garden steps into the courtyard. Despite the exuberance of her greeting, she sounded out of breath, a bit frazzled even. She was dressed in a long-sleeved gown, with gloves and a shawl and a wide-brimmed hat to protect her from the sun. She must have been wandering around the garden for some time. There were bits of twigs and leaves trailing from the hem of her gown and stuck to the scarf around her hat. Her forehead was damp and smudged. But her gaze had lit on Oliver, and her face glowed. "Well," she said, looking down to Oliver's hand on Deanna's wrist, "so how are you enjoying your stay so far? I hope you found the garden to your liking."