Free Of Midnight Born by Lisa Cach

enjoyed flaunting themselves, she knew that they had enjoyed it only while they had control over the baring of their nether parts. Certainly Briggs had not reacted well when she—cringing in disgust the whole while—had reached out and given that little mouse a quick yank.
    Something in her balked at the idea of spying on Woding at his bath, though. She didn’t know if it was fear of him that stopped her, or unease with her own desire to look upon his naked body.
    She would leave Woding, his buttocks, and his stars to themselves for the present, until she decided what course to follow with him. There was always more than one flank onwhich to attack an enemy. It was time she herself went to battle.
    “Dickie, bring up a cask of beer from the cellar, will you? There’s a good lad,” Horace Leboff, the cook, told his young assistant.
    “Yes, sir, Mr. Leboff,” Dickie said, glad enough to set down his paring knife and give his cramping knuckles a break from potato peeling.
    He took a candle and went round the corner of the kitchen to the doorway that led down to the cellars. This household was small enough in numbers, and Mr. Leboff was large and strong enough that no one dared to filch spirits, and so the beer cellar door was left unlocked. Dickie liked that. Although he and a few of the other younger servants had talked about how easy it would be to steal a cask, there was some element of pride in knowing they were trusted not to be thieves.
    The stone stairway to the cellar was dark and cold. He lit the candles in their brackets as he went down, the flickering flames turning his own shadow into that of a grotesque, misshapen man upon the opposite wall. He wished there were gas lighting down here, as there was in the king’s hall chandeliers.
    He thought of Marcy, who lived two houses down from his parents, and how her big hazel eyes would go wide with awe when he told her how he and a few of the others all but ran the castle. She had thoughts herself of going into service, but he doubted she could find a posting as plum as this one.
    He did not much miss home, except for Marcy. Mayhap it was seeing no one but men all day that put her so much in his mind. Mr. Woding was a strange one, having no women in his house, but Dickie wouldn’t complain. A man could let down his guard this way, and be himself. He didn’t have toapologize for a belch, and no one shrieked and said he was disgusting when he passed a bit of gas.
    He raised the candle high when he reached the bottom of the steps, looking over the humped shapes of the casks. Marcy would ask him if he’d seen the ghost of Serena. They had both grown up hearing the legend of the murderous lady of Maiden Castle. He almost wished he would see her, to have something other than secondhand, half-imagined rumors to tell.
    He felt a hand lay itself against his cheek, the flesh as damp and cold as a corpse in the night.
    He jumped, a strangled shriek gurgling out of his throat. The sensation vanished, leaving his heart pounding painfully in his chest. He stood motionless, breathing like a winded horse, bulging eyes darting about, seeking movement in the flickering shadows.
    Nothing happened. He shivered, his skin chilled, the cold going to the bone. All was quiet beyond the noise of his own thundering body. Had he imagined it?
    He set the candle in the last bracket, nearly dropping it before managing, with a shaking hand, to wedge it in tight. He went to heft the nearest cask onto his shoulder.
    There was a slow creaking sound from the top of the stairs, and he stopped to listen, prickles running up the back of his neck. The sound quickened, the creak going higherpitched, louder, recognizable now as hinges, and then the door slammed shut, all the candles along the stairs blowing out in a rush of frozen air.
    He trembled, unable to move, the cask wobbling on his shoulder. Don’t let it touch me, he thought. If it didn’t touch him again, he would be all right. He could hold