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

own hair was as bright as rays of the sun worked into an artless kerchief over her shoulders and down her back.
    She wore a silk dress, as white as Nan’s night apparel, but cut lower, though perhaps it shouldn’t have been. The elven maiden had prodigiously little to display to the eyes of men.
    She had been introduced to Nan the night before, as a Duchess of the Air Kingdoms and handmaid to the two dead queens of the fairy realms.
    Now, she’d be Nan’s servant and companion. Which told a lot about the king’s intentions toward Nan. Nan thought of him with mingled pride at his courtship and annoyance at his daring. Beautiful he was of course, like all his kind, and noble. But he was not Will. And thinking of Will caused Nan too much pain.
    How much did Ariel’s service cost the little elven maid? How long had she been in love with her king?
    Nan remembered the king’s hand, hot and unmerciful, clenching hers, and silently apologized to Will for the heat that had coursed through her own veins. She had not lied. The king was a fine man in all parts. And yet he was not a man, was he?
    No, not a man and, despite the beautiful countenances that peopled his court, not an angel either. Nan had seen raw lust in his eyes and something else. Something dark, like a shadow lurking beneath his bonhomie.
    Nan looked at the lovely Ariel’s reflection and hugged herself. No, these were not angels, save perhaps the darker kind, banished forever from the sight of God.
    Nan had heard stories about the people under the hill, and what she remembered made her wonder what company she’d fallen in with and how grievously she must have sinned, to deserve such exile. She’d heard of women taken by these beings because they’d missed church, neglected their prayers. What had she done?
    It couldn’t be the small matter of giving herself to Will while not yet married, could it? So many did it, and so often. And yet, perhaps she had enjoyed it more than most. Perhaps her lack of repentance . . .
    She shivered.
    What would Will have thought of this, of her servitude? And how fared it with Will, her own sweet Will who’d made her a woman and a wife, though he was himself barely more than a boy? She held onto the image of Will, to combat the remembrance of Sylvanus that kept coming to her mind, all velvety and fine, and smiling at her with lust in his eyes.
    “Is milady well?” Ariel asked.
    Nan nodded, but felt guilty color flow into her cheeks. Looking at herself in the mirror, she thought that she didn’t blush prettily like Ariel. Her own blush was a coarse thing, an orange-red peeking through her sun-hardened skin. Once she had been as pretty and young as Ariel, but those days were long gone, and she had spent them in her father’s farmhouse, scaring away what he mistook for suitable suitors, or wandering the forest, playing at being an unruly boy.
    Without realizing it, Nan tapped her foot against the floor beneath the dressing table, and regarded Ariel’s hands as they moved the brush slowly through Nan’s long hair.
    Nan’s father had told her that her problem was that she wouldn’t be tamed, couldn’t be tamed. He’d made the point often enough, with a switch and a belt, both expertly handled by a man who’d raised four sons before trying to subdue his first daughter.
    Yet Nan took her punishment and went on doing exactly as she pleased, not so much an ungrateful daughter as a hardheaded one.
    So, why was she tamed now? Why did she cower here, within the hill, held prisoner by creatures that weren’t even human?
    Yesterday she had been half-asleep, her wits damped, like a fly in treacle, caught and swimming but making no headway.
    But today . . .
    Today, she would find her way out with or without Ariel’s help.
    Only, Ariel was a hindrance. With Ariel there, Nan could not hope to escape.
    Nan had never had servants before. Oh, her father’s house had its serving wenches, of course, as all prosperous farmers’