Love Hurts, Page 27

Luce turned around slowly. Her body had never felt so strange. The part that belonged to medieval Lucinda was wilted and lethargic, flattened by the love she was certain she had lost. The part that belonged to Lucinda Price was holding fast to the idea that there might still be a chance.

  It was a struggle to perform the simplest of tasks – like conversing with the three girls standing before her, alarmed expressions twisting their pretty faces.

  The tallest one, in the middle, was Helen, Lucinda’s only sister and the oldest of five children in their family. She was newly a wife, and as if to prove it, her thick blonde hair was divided into two braids and pinned in a matronly chignon.

  At Helen’s side was Laura, their young neighbor, who Luce realized was the girl she’d overheard the two women gossiping about over the clothesline. Though Laura was only twelve, she was alluringly beautiful – blonde with large blue eyes and a loud, saucy laugh that could be heard across the city.

  Luce bit back a laugh, trying to reconcile Laura’s mother’s protectiveness with what Lucinda knew of the girl’s own experience – pressing palms with the page boys in the cool recesses of the lord’s wood. What Luce gleaned from Lucinda’s memories of Laura reminded her of Arriane. Laura, like the angel, was easy to love.

  Then there was Eleanor, Lucinda’s oldest, closest friend. They’d grown up wearing one another’s clothes, like sisters. They bickered like sisters, too. Eleanor had a blunt edge, often slicing dreamy Lucinda’s reveries in two with a cutting remark. But she had a skill for bringing Lucinda back to reality, and she loved Lucinda deeply. It wasn’t, Luce realized, so different from her present-day relationship with Shelby.

  ‘Well?’ Eleanor asked.

  ‘Well, what?’ Lucinda said, startled. ‘Don’t all stare at me at once!’

  ‘We’ve only asked you three times which mask you’re going to wear tonight.’ Eleanor waved three brightly colored masks in Lucinda’s face. ‘Pray, end the suspense!’

  They were simple leather domino masks, made to cover just the eyes and nose and tie around the back of the head with thin silk ribbon. All three were covered in the same coarse fabric, but each had been painted with a different design: one red with small black pansies, one green with delicate white blossoms, and one ivory with pale pink roses near the eyes.

  ‘She stares as if she has not seen these same masks every one of her past five years of masquerading!’ Eleanor murmured to Helen.

  ‘She has the gift of seeing old things anew,’ Helen said.

  Luce shivered, though the room was warmer than it had been for most of the winter months. In exchange for the eggs the citizens had offered as gifts to the lord, he’d repaid each household with a small bundle of cedar firewood. So the hearth was bright and cheery, giving a healthy flush to the girls’ cheeks.

  Daniel had been the knight tasked with collecting the eggs and distributing the firewood. He’d stridden through the door with purpose, then staggered back when he saw Lucinda inside. It was the last time medieval Lucinda had seen him, and after months of stolen moments together in the forest, Luce’s past self was certain she would never see Daniel again.

  But why? Luce wondered now.

  Luce felt Lucinda’s shame at her family’s meagre accommodations – but that didn’t seem right. Daniel wouldn’t care that Lucinda was a peasant’s daughter. He knew that she was always and ever much more than that. There had to be something else. Something Lucinda was too sad to see clearly. But Luce could help her – find Daniel, win him back, at least for as long as she still had to live.

  ‘I like the ivory one for you, Lucinda,’ Laura prompted, trying to be helpful.

  But Luce could not make herself care about the masks. ‘Oh, any of them will be fine. Perhaps the ivory to match my gown.’ She tugged dully at the draped fabric of her worn wool dress.

  The girls erupted into laughter.

  ‘You’re not going to wear that common market gown?’ Laura gasped. ‘But we’re all getting done up in our finest!’ She collapsed dramatically across the wooden bench near the hearth. ‘Oh, I would never want to fall in love wearing my dreary Tuesday kirtle!’

  A memory pushed to the front of Luce’s mind: Lucinda had disguised herself as a lady in her one fine gown and sneaked into the castle rose garden. That was where she first met Daniel in this life. That was why their romance felt like a betrayal from the beginning. Daniel had thought Lucinda something other than a peasant’s daughter.

  That was why the thought of donning that fine red gown again and pretending to make merry at a festival was a staggering prospect to Lucinda.

  But Luce knew Daniel better than Lucinda did. If he had an opportunity to spend Valentine’s Day with her, he would seize it.

  Of course, she could explain none of this inner turmoil to the girls. All she could do was turn away and subtly wipe her tears with the back of her wrist.

  ‘She looks as if love has already found and dealt roughly with her,’ Helen murmured under her breath.

  ‘I say, if love is rough with you, be rough with love!’ Eleanor said in her bossy way. ‘Stamp out sadness with dancing slippers!’

  ‘Oh, Eleanor,’ Luce heard herself say. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘And you do understand?’ Eleanor laughed. ‘You, the girl who wouldn’t even put her name in Cupid’s Urn?’

  ‘Oh, Lucinda!’ Laura cupped her hands over her mouth. ‘Why not? I’d give anything if Mother would let me put my name in Cupid’s Urn!’

  ‘Which is why I had to toss her name into the urn for her!’ Eleanor cried, seizing the train of Luce’s gown and pulling her around the room in a circle.

  After a chase that toppled the bench and the tallow candle on the casement ledge, Luce grabbed Eleanor’s hand. ‘You didn’t!’

  ‘Oh, a little fun will do you good! I want you dancing tonight, high and lively with the rest of the maskers. Come now, help me choose a visor. Which color makes my nose look smaller, rose or green? Perhaps I shall trick a man into loving me yet!’

  Luce’s cheeks were burning. Cupid’s Urn! How did that have anything to do with a Valentine’s Day with Daniel?

  Before she could speak, out came Lucinda’s party dress – a floor-length gown of red wool adorned with a narrow collar made of otter fur. It was cut lower across the chest than anything Luce would wear back home in Georgia; if Bill were here to see her, he would probably grunt a ‘Hubba hubba’ in her ear.

  Luce sat still while Helen’s fingers wove a stem of holly berries into her loose black hair. She was thinking of Daniel, the way his eyes had lit up in the rose garden when he first approached Lucinda . . .

  A rapping startled them all; in the doorway, a woman’s face appeared. Luce recognized her instantly as Lucinda’s mother.

  Without thinking, she ran into the safe warmth of her mother’s arms.

  They closed around her shoulders, tight and affectionate. It was the first of the lives Luce had visited where she felt a strong connection with her mother. It made her feel blissful and homesick all at once.

  Back home in Thunderbolt, Georgia, Luce tried to act mature and self-sufficient as often as she could. Lucinda was just the same, Luce realized. But at times like this – when heartbreak made the whole world cheerless – nothing would do but the comfort of a mother’s embrace.

  ‘My daughters, so fine and grown up, you make me feel older than I am!’ Their mother laughed as she ran her fingers through Luce’s hair. She had kind hazel eyes and a soft, expressive brow.

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ Luce said with her cheek against her mother’s shoulder. She was thinking of Doreen Price and trying not to cry.

  ‘Mother, tell us again how you met Father at the Valentine’s Faire,’ Helen said.

  ‘Not that old tale again!’ Their mother groaned, but the girls could see the story forming in her eyes already.

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ the girls all chanted.

  ‘Why, I was younger than Lucinda when I was a mother made,’ her willowy voice began. �
��My own mother bade me wear the mask she’d worn years before. She gave me this advice on my way out the door: “Smile, child, men like a happy maid. Seek happy nights to happy days . . .”’

  As her mother dove into her tale of love, Luce found her eyes creeping back toward the casement, imagining the turrets of the castle, the vision of Daniel looking out. Looking for her?

  After her story was done, her mother drew something from the pocket strung around her waist and handed it to Luce with a mischievous wink.

  ‘For you,’ she whispered.

  It was a small cloth package tied with twine. Luce went to the window and carefully unwrapped it. Her fingers trembled as she loosened the twine.

  Inside was a lacy heart-shaped doily about the size of her fist. Someone had inscribed these words with what looked to Luce like a blue Bic pen:

  Roses are red,

  Violets are blue,

  Sugar is sweet,

  And so are you.

  I will look for you tonight—

  Love, Daniel

  Luce almost sputtered with laughter. This was something the Daniel she knew would never write. Clearly, someone else had been behind it. Bill?

  But to the part of Luce that was Lucinda, the words were a chaos of scribbles. She couldn’t read, Luce realized. And yet, once the meaning of the poem was processed by Luce, she could feel an understanding break open in Lucinda. Her past self found this the freshest, most captivating poetry ever known.

  She would go to the festival and she would find Daniel. She would show Lucinda how powerful their love could be.

  Tonight there would be dancing. Tonight there would be magic in the air. And – even if it was the only time it ever happened in the long history of Daniel and Lucinda – tonight there would be the particular joy of spending Valentine’s Day with the one she loved.

  3.

  Delight in Disorder

  ‘Eleanor!’ Luce shouted over a dense crowd of dancers as her friend bounced past in the spirited line of a jig. But Eleanor didn’t hear her.

  It was hard to say whether Luce’s voice was drowned out by the delighted hoots of a crowd at a puppet show in one of the movable stages set up on the western edge of the dancing area or the raucous, hungry crowd lining up at the long food tables on the eastern side of the green. Or maybe it was just the sea of dancers in the middle, who bounded, twirled, and spun with reckless, romantic abandon.

  It seemed as though the dancers at the Valentine’s Faire were not just dancing—but also hollering, laughing, belting out verses to the troubadour’s music, and hollering to friends across the muddy dance area. They were doing it all at once. And all at the top of their lungs.

  Eleanor was out of earshot, spinning as she stamped out dance steps all the way across the oak-ringed green. Luce had no choice but to turn back to her clumsy partner and curtsy.

  He was a spindly older man with sallow cheeks and ill-fitting lips whose slouched shoulders made him look like he wanted to hide behind his too-small lynx-face mask.

  And yet Lucinda didn’t care. She couldn’t remember ever having had this much fun dancing. They’d been dancing since the sun kissed the horizon; now the stars shone like armor in the sky. There were always so many stars in past skies. The night was chilly, but Luce’s face was flushed and her forehead was damp with perspiration. As the song neared its end, she thanked her partner and sidled between a line of dancers, eager to get away.

  Because despite the joys of dancing under the stars, Luce hadn’t forgotten about the real reason she was here.

  She looked out across the green and worried that even if Daniel was somewhere out there, she might never find him. Four troubadours dressed in motley gathered on a wobbly dais at the northern edge of the green, plucking on lutes and lyres to play a song as sweet as a Beatles ballad. At a high school dance, these slow songs were the ones that made the single girls, including Luce, a little anxious—but here, the moves were built into the songs and no one was ever at a loss for a partner. You just grabbed the nearest warm body, for better or for worse, and you danced. A skipping jig for this one, a circling dance in groups of eight for another. Luce felt Lucinda knowing some of the moves innately; the rest of them were easy to pick up.

  If only Daniel were here . . .

  Luce withdrew to the edge of the green, taking a break. She studied the women’s dresses. By modern standards, they weren’t fancy, but the women wore them with such pride that the dresses seemed as elegant as any of the fine gowns she’d seen at Versailles. Many were made of wool; a few had linen or cotton accents sewn into a collar or a hem. Most people in the city only owned one pair of shoes, so worn leather boots abounded, but Luce quickly realized how much easier it was to dance in them than in high-heeled shoes that pinched her feet.

  The men managed to look dapper in their best breeches. Most wore a long wool tunic on top for warmth. Hoods were tossed back over their shoulders – the weather that night was above freezing, almost mild. Most of their leather masks were painted to mimic the faces of forest animals, complementing the floral designs of the ladies’ masks. A few men wore gloves, which looked expensive. But most of the hands Luce touched that night were cold and chapped and red.

  Cats stared from dirt roads around the green. Dogs searched for their owners among the mess of bodies. The air smelled like pine and sweat and beeswax candles and the sweet musk of fresh-baked gingerbread.

  As the next song wound down, Luce spotted Eleanor, who seemed happy to be plucked from the arm of a boy whose red mask was painted like a fox’s face.

  ‘Where’s Laura?’

  Eleanor pointed toward a stand of trees, where their young friend leaned close to a boy they didn’t recognize, whispering something. He was showing her a book, gesturing in the air. It looked like he took a great deal of care with his hair. He wore a mask made to resemble a rabbit’s face.

  The girls shared a giggle as they made their way through the crowd. There was Helen, sitting with her husband on a wool blanket spread out on the grass. They were sharing a wooden cup of steaming cider and laughing easily about something, which made Luce miss Daniel all over again.

  There were lovers everywhere. Even Lucinda’s parents had turned out for the Faire. Her father’s wiry white beard scraped her mother’s cheek as they sashayed around the green.

  Luce sighed, then fingered the lace doily in her pocket.

  Roses are red, violets are blue, if Daniel didn’t write these words, then who?

  The last time she’d received a note allegedly from Daniel, it had been a trap set by the Outcasts—

  And Cam had saved her.

  Heat rose on the back of her neck. Was this a trap? Bill had said it was just a Valentine’s party. He’d put so much energy into helping her on her quest already, he wouldn’t have left her alone like this if there had been any real danger. Right?

  Luce shook the thought away. Bill had said Daniel would be here, and Luce believed him. But the wait was killing her.

  She followed Eleanor toward a long table, where plates and bowls of casual, pot-luck-style food had been set out. There were sliced duck served over cabbage, whole hares that had been roasted on spits, cauldrons of baby cauliflowers with a bright orange sauce, high-piled platters of apples, pears, and dried currants harvested from the surrounding forests, and a whole long wooden table filled with misshapen, half-burned pies of meat and fruit.

  She watched a man loosen a flat knife from a strap slung around his waist and cut himself a hefty slice of pie. On her way out the door that evening, Luce’s mother had handed her a shallow wooden spoon, which she had threaded through a wool tie around her waist. These people were prepared for eating, fixing, and fighting, the way Luce was prepared for love.

  Eleanor reappeared at Luce’s side and held a bowl of porridge under her nose.

  ‘Gooseberry jam on top,’ Eleanor said. ‘Your favorite.’

  When Luce dipped her spoon into the thick concoction, a savory aroma wafted up and made
her mouth water. It was hot and hearty and delicious – exactly what she needed to revive her for another dance. Before she realized it, she had eaten it all.

  Eleanor glanced down at the empty bowl, surprised. ‘Danced up an appetite, did you?’

  Luce nodded, feeling warm and satisfied. Then she noticed two brown-robed clergymen sitting apart from the crowd on a wooden bench beneath an elm tree. Neither was taking part in the festivities – in fact, they looked more like chaperones than revelers – but the younger one moved his feet in time with the rhythm, while the other, who had a shriveled-looking face, glared darkly at the crowds.

  ‘The Lord sees and hears this lewd debauchery perpetrated so near His house,’ the shriveled-faced man scoffed.

  ‘And closer than that, even.’ The other clergyman laughed. ‘Do you recall, Master Docket, just how much of the church’s gold went toward His Lordship’s Valentine’s banquet? Was it twenty gold pieces for that stag? These people’s festivities cost nothing more than the energy to dance. And they dance like angels.’

  If only Luce could see her angel dancing toward her right now . . .

  ‘Angels who’ll sleep through tomorrow’s working hours, mark my words, Master Herrick.’

  ‘Can you not see the joy on these young faces?’ The younger vicar’s eyes swept across the green, found Luce’s at the edge of the lawn, and brightened.

  She found herself smiling back behind her mask – but her joy that evening would be vastly increased if she could be there in Daniel’s arms. Otherwise, what was the point of taking this romantic night off ?

  It seemed that Luce and the shriveled-faced vicar were the only two people here not relishing the masquerade. And generally Luce loved a good party, but right now all she wanted to do was pluck the masks off the face of every boy who passed. What if she’d already missed him in the crowd? How would she know if the Daniel of this era would even be looking for her?

  She stared so baldly at a tall blond boy whose mask made him look like an eagle that he bounded past the toymaker’s stall and the puppet show to stand before her.

  ‘Shall I introduce myself, or would you rather just keep staring?’ His teasing voice sounded neither familiar nor unfamiliar.