Luckstones (8 page)

“Well, then, there’s the matter of my payment.”

Velliaune drew her head back. She had rather hoped Nyana
would forget the question of payment, but her expression suggested that this
was not likely. Gracelessly, she stepped away from Nyana, took up her purse,
and counted out twenty
senesti
.

“Is that sufficient?” she asked sullenly.

“Almost.” To Velliaune’s astonishment, Nyana me Barso
stepped forward and kissed her. It was no trivial embrace: her lips were soft
and seeking, and one hand tangled itself in Velliaune’s curls. After a moment
of surprise, Velliaune relaxed, and returned the kiss, her insides fluttering.

It was Nyana who broke off the embrace.

“There. Your debt is paid. All through school, I wanted to
do that, and now I have.”

“All through school? But—” Velliaune held out a hand as if
to draw Nyana back. “You’re not going to kiss me like
that
and leave!”

“I believe I am, Vellie. Have you learned nothing about the
wisdom of leaping into action you may later regret? If you want more, you may
always find me in the Dedenor. But remember that price may be more than even
the Archangel could buy you.”

Nyana smiled, not unkindly, bowed, and was gone. Velliaune me
Corse sank down to sit upon her bed, staring after her schoolmate in wonder and
alarm.

LUCKSTONES

Three Tales of Meviel

Madeleine Robins

Book View Café 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61138-527-4
Copyright © 2015 Madeleine Robins

Acknowledgments:

“Virtue and the Archangel,”
Lace and Blade,
ed. Deborah J. Ross, Feb. 1, 2008
“Writ of Exception,”
Lace and Blade 2,
ed. Deborah J. Ross, Feb. 1, 2009
“A Wreath of Luck,”
The Feathered Edge,
ed. Deborah J. Ross, Sky Warrior, February 22, 2012

Cover illustration by Francesco Hayez 1791-1882

Production Team:

Cover Design: Amy Sterling Casil

Proofreader: Phyllis Irene Radford

Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Digital edition: 20150512vnm

www.bookviewcafe.com
Book View Café Publishing Cooperative
P.O. Box 1624, Cedar Crest, NM 87008-1624

Madeleine Robins
has been a nanny, an administrator, an actor, and a swordswoman; has trafficked
book production, edited comics, and repaired hurt books. She’s also the author
of five Regency romances available through Book View Café, the
New York Times
Notable urban fantasy
The Stone War
,
Daredevil: The Cutting Edge
, and three Regency-noir mysteries,
Point of Honour
,
Petty Treason
, and
The
Sleeping Partner
, starring the redoubtable Sarah Tolerance, agent of
inquiry.
Sold for Endless Rue
, an
historical retelling of Rapunzel set at the medieval medical school in Salerno,
was published in 2013. She is a founding member of the Book View Café.

A native New Yorker, Madeleine now lives in San Francisco
with a dog, a husband, and a hegemonic lemon tree. And as always, she’s working
on another book.

Collection

Luckstones: Three Tales of Meviel

Novels

Althea

My Dear Jenny

The Heiress Companion

Lady John

The Spanish Marriage

www.bookviewcafe.com

Book View Café
is a professional authors’ publishing cooperative offering DRM-free
ebooks in multiple formats to readers around the world. With
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science fiction, Book View Café has something for everyone.

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Book View Café
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New York Times
and
USA Today
bestsellers, Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Award winners, World Fantasy and Rita Award nominees, and winners and nominees of many other publishing awards.

www.bookviewcafe.com

Sample Chapter

A Regency Romance

Madeleine Robins

Book View Café Edition
May 22, 2012
ISBN 978-1-61138-172-6
Copyright © 1984 Madeleine Robins

Despite the heavy layers of her borrowed novice’s
habit—black gown and scapular, long white veil—Thea shivered slightly in
the cool dimness of the Superior’s sitting-room. The motion, slight as it
was, must have caught Doña de Silva’s eye: she looked up, frowned
reflectively, and scolded: “You are pale as a ghost, Dorotea. Go walk in
the garden.”

“I am perfectly fine as I am, Silvy,” Thea
protested. Since their arrival in Spain, Dorothea had chafed under her duenna’s
increasing tendency to condescend, to speak as if Thea were a schoolgirl,
instead of a young woman of nearly nineteen years. At the convent matters had
only gotten worse.

“Doña de Silva is right, child,” Mother Beatriz
said. Thea clenched her hands in frustration: everyone addressed her as “child.”
“You have been too much inside,” the Superior went on.

That made Silvy wince and flush unhappily; she was well
aware that it was her illness that had kept Thea indoors in the first sunny
days of spring. Thea could have struck the Superior for her well-intentioned
words; she and Silvy had become fiercely protective of each other in the last
months of their journey, and, with Silvy still weakened from her long fever, it
was all Thea could do to distract her from fretting over their future. It was
bleak enough, inarguably. Neither Dorothea, nor Mother Beatriz, nor Sister Juan
Evangelista, the convent Infirmarian, saw any point in Doña de Silva’s
undoing the hard work of her cure with worrying.

“Do you hear me, Dorotea? Go walk in the orchard. Your
blessed mother would never forgive me if I were to let you fall ill, and
besides that, you make such a muddle of that linen it hurts me to see it,”
Silvy added with heavy humor.

That was that. When Silvy invoked the memory of her mother
Thea understood that capitulation was the wisest course. She rose, made her
curtsy to Mother Beatriz, kissed Silvy’s narrow, dry cheek, and left the
room. She managed the awkward weight of the habit as best she could. After three
months it was still unfamiliar and cumbersome to her; to a girl raised in the
muslin dresses of an English schoolroom, the heavy layers of the borrowed habit
were not only a sorry trial but, at times, an absolute menace. She had tripped
over her skirts more times than her dignity permitted her to admit.

Once she had closed the door behind her she was unable to
keep from stopping for a moment, hovering near the door, listening for what
they would say. They would be speaking of her. Not vanity, but an absolute
comprehension of her situation and of the trouble she posed to her guardian and
to the nuns made Thea think so. There was Silvy’s long sigh, the
inevitable, unanswerable question: “What am I to do with her? If only her
father were still alive, if only she had a vocation. . . .”

“Clara,” she heard Mother Beatriz begin. Then
old Sister Ana came shuffling down the hall; she eyed Thea knowingly.

“None of that, Señorita,” the old woman
admonished. “Mother and your duenna will talk, if they must; you have no
business to be listening. What sort of manners do the English teach their
daughters, after all? Go play in the garden like a good child.” To ensure
obedience Sister Ana settled herself heavily on the bench by the doorway, took
her rosary in her hand, and began a mumbled
Ave.
Left with no choice,
Thea gathered up her skirts and swept down the hall to the garden stair.

She emerged from the cool and the damp of the hallway into
the full noon glare of the courtyard and waited for a moment until her eyes
could adjust; she picked out the darkened doorway of the kitchen to her left,
the little pathway beyond leading to the Chapel, the scuttling shapes of
chickens wandering across the yard. She paid no attention to what she saw: her
mind was still on Silvy and Mother Beatriz in the dimness of the sitting-room;
she wondered if they would come up with a new solution to the problem of her
future. She doubted it.

“I will
not
take vows,” she muttered to
herself. “Silvy cannot ask that of me, and Mother won’t take me
without a vocation. I hope.” For a moment Thea had a vision of herself: a
member of the order, subject to the perpetual, sighing goodwill of the sisters—one
of them herself. Feeling ungrateful at the same time, she shuddered. They had
been kind—more than kind—since she and Silvy had arrived seeking
refuge. In these days, to take in an Englishwoman, no matter if half-Spanish,
was beyond kindness: it was bravery. After the months when she had realized
that none of her own people, neither her father’s family in England nor
her mother’s people in Spain, wanted her, Thea was grateful to these
women who had taken her and her duenna in—strangers—and treated
them with such open kindness.