Free Ill Met by Moonlight by Sarah A. Hoyt Page A

company, but not with Nan’s escaping him, since that transgression would likely give him too much pain.
    Ariel had turned around, all in a rush, and opened the painted trunk at the foot of the bed. “If milady will stay indoors, then we’ll put on this gown.”
    To Nan’s eyes both gowns looked much the same, both green and embroidered with jewels, both too lavish, too ornate, and too fine, and she didn’t much care which she wore. She nodded at Ariel, while reasoning that, yes, surely that was it. The girl was in love with her sovereign. It would explain the girl’s damped look, her bruised eyes, her grief-bearing countenance.
    Nan’s mind quickened, like a heart that jumps at a chance half offered. She didn’t want the king, and if this maid wanted him, then perhaps . . . perhaps Nan could use Ariel’s love to snag the love of the king to its proper place. And perhaps he would let Nan go then. Perhaps other milk could be procured for the elven princess, or perhaps—sad to say—the king would disdain his first get when there was the chance of fathering others.
    “The king,” Nan said, baiting her hook, even as she picked now at this, now at that bottle on the dressing table, and reclined on the green velvet upholstered chair in front of it, admiring their workmanship, smelling their contents. So many bottles, some of them looking as if they’d been carved entire from a single crystal. And how different each fragrance smelled. All were pleasant scents, but some were deep and spicy and strong, others floral and light and airy. “He’s a fine man in all parts the king is, is he not?”
    Ariel started.
    Looking at the maiden in the mirror, without appearing to observe her at all, Nan marked the wide-open eyes, the lips that parted to let fast breath through. She watched the blush that crept up Ariel’s cheeks, like a tide climbing the riverbank in spring. Color seeped through pale skin, till red stood in vivid patches on Ariel’s cheeks, giving her the look of one afflicted with a raging fever.
    While Ariel’s lips parted for a response, the door to the room opened and Nan jumped, startled, as one suddenly awakened. In flew a troop of the little winged creatures who did all the real work around the palace. Humanlike and exquisitely beautiful, the tallest of them did not exceed a palm in height. On their backs they had wings like a dragonfly’s, only larger. They swooped in, lights flashing around their bodies, and pulled the covers on the bed, straightening them taut over the mattresses and making it all quite as neat as Nan herself did at home.
    A pang for her Henley Street home prickled Nan’s heart. She’d felt like a prisoner there, and resentful that Mother Shakespeare and Father Shakespeare intruded in her life, watched her every step and took fully half of Will’s pay for their own maintenance.
    But now, truly imprisoned in a supernatural gaol, she longed for Henley Street and felt as though her heart had remained there with Will.
    Who was making her bed now? And how did Will fare, with neither wife nor cook? A young dreamer with scholarly notions, Will might know by heart the arguments of long-dead Romans, but had no idea how the bread was made that she set in front of him every night, or how the ale was brewed that he drank daily.
    His mother would call him over to her side, and feed him her bread and ale, and talk to him of how he had been wrong to marry Nan.
    A week of that, and Nan might well not have anyone to return to, even if she escaped this gilded prison. Will was so young . . . Her heart skipped a beat at the thought of how young Will was, how frightfully trusting, how eagerly willing to please.
    “Would milady have her hair dressed?” Ariel had recovered from whatever feelings mention of the king had awakened.
    Stepping behind Nan and, smiling at Nan in the mirror, a smile of near apology, she took the brush from Nan’s hand, and started brushing Nan’s hair gently.
    Ariel’s