by Sean Stewart
“I regret to tell you that a pang of conscience smote me and I burned it, Gail. It had suffered enough.”
Gail scowled.
Mark looked over at Lissa, who was checking off their belongings one by one as servants packed them onto a brace of ponies. “In a world where I’m subtle and Val’s brave,” he said, “I want to see you giving orders, not just taking them. I’m going to make you Seneschal, Lissa. That’s managing all my lands, reporting straight to me. You’ll be riding out from Borders half the summer, mebbe, poking here and yon. Can you handle it…cousin?”
Lissa’s perfect eyebrows arched a fraction of an inch. “I can indeed.” Her cool blue eyes sparkled. “There will be much to do, I think: you left all in a shambles, Mark. We must first make sure of stores to see us through the spring. We need an ironmonger more, and a tapister besides, though that can wait. We should secure a weight of seed for—”
Suddenly Lissa stopped dead. “But—!” She took a deep breath. “My lord, you honour me in such an offer. But if I were to be your Seneschal, then who would attend your lady wife?”
“We can always find another lady-in-waiting,” Gail said softly.
“You think it so simple! What woman could you find to scare you up a dyer in the middle of the night?” Lissa demanded. “What wench will you employ who knows a hundred ways to excuse you from a dreary dinner? Where will you meet that maid that sews as well as I a knife-sheath in a ball-gown sleeve?”
Impulsively Gail took Lissa’s hands. “Nowhere, Lis. But a lady-in-waiting doesn’t need to know those things; those are things only a true friend knows. And I hope we’ll still be friends, even if my idiot husband gives you work equal to your genius.”
“You make things happen,” Mark said briskly. “That’s the sort of head I need to be my Seneschal.”
“Mark is right. You deserve a greater part in life than looking after a brainless royal brat,” Gail said, smiling.
Lissa stopped and did not speak. She gripped Gail’s hands, and then hugged her tight. A miracle rolled slowly down her cheek. “To be your friend was all the honour I ever wanted from my life.”
Gail reached up with a teary smile and ruffled Lissa’s hair. “Well I know that, and you know that, but try to tell my idiot husband!”
Mark chuckled. “I know squat about statecraft, Lissa: I need you more than Gail does.”
“Which is saying something,” Gail said, laughing and crying at once. “I don’t know if I can breathe without you, or put my boots on in the morning. But I think I’d better learn.”
“Well, you can ride,” Mark said. “And that’s all you need to know for the next week, until we get home!”
“Ride!” Gail said suspiciously. “We’re not riding anywhere.”
Mark groaned. “If you really think I’m going to walk back to Borders in the middle of winter—”
“It isn’t the middle of winter yet. There’s barely any snow,” Gail wheedled. “I love walking, Mark! Besides, by this time next year I might be pregnant, and you can’t expect me to traipse all over the countryside then.”
Mark looked at Gail in shock.
Sudden joy flamed in his breast, like fire bursting from blown embers. Hers was the sly, bold, laughing face he had seen in the flames. They would be friends and lovers too: they were meant to be after all.
And he would have sons, sons to take down to the river, and hold in his arms, and teach the finer points of fishing to.
“We’ll walk,” he gasped. “But, but what made you change your mind?”
“Might! I said I might be pregnant,” Gail cried. She was blushing, and once again Mark had the sense of a little girl, peeping out from behind her Princess mask. Gail glanced over at Lissa. “A wise friend of mine once told me that there are only four great Adventures in life: being born, being married, being a parent, and dying. I didn’t used to believe that, but now I’m coming to think it’s true. About being married anyway.” She scowled comically. “There’s nothing so broadening as having to put up with someone else’s foolishness all the time! And I looked at my sister Willan with her new baby, and she didn’t look like her life was over, and I thought, I can do that! I mean, what if I want to travel about and be a wife and be a mother and have a wonderful time? Who is going to stop me? I want everything, Mark: and you know I’m very good at getting what I want.”
“God help us,” Lissa murmured.
Gail grinned and took Mark’s hand. “Have you any girls’ names you particularly care for? I feel quite certain our first child will be a girl. She’ll take after me, of course.”
Mark looked at her, eyes wide with alarm. O my Lord, he thought.
A daughter?
