by P. J. Fox
“You don’t need to practice for a new name,” Callas joked. “There’s none worse than the Viper.”
Rowena gasped.
“What,” Hart replied, “and risk losing my reputation as the most unpleasant son of a bitch in Barghast?”
“We’re not in Barghast,” Callas replied equably. “So you can afford to thank me for securing dinner.”
“And after dinner you’ll fulfill your wifely duty?”
“Every night, but you never visit my tent.”
“I prefer it when a woman’s a bit desperate.” Hart straightened. “Half an hour,” he said. “No more.”
As he strode off into the trees to relieve himself, Rowena stared after him in gape-mouthed horror.
He’d only gone into the woods to relieve himself, but kept walking after he’d done so on the pretext of scouting. Covering ground that Callas had already covered, and Hart was sure far better. He’d been even less pleasant than usual lately, a condition he knew his men attributed to his wounds. Which still pained him. In fact, it hurt like hell to walk.
He could have very easily ended up an eunuch. That would have been amusing. He wondered which he’d mind losing worse, his cock or his eyes. He doubted he’d get a chance to use the former much if he didn’t have the latter; and pity sex no longer interested him.
There was a time when any form of sex would have interested him.
There was a time when a great many things had been different.
He thought about Isla.
Things had been different for her, once, too.
She must have lost the baby. There was much Hart didn’t know and he’d filled in the meager amounts he did with guesswork, but even a fool could guess at the most likely cause of her situation. A situation Hart had observed before, in Enzie. More than once.
The duke had been infatuated with Isla from the first and she had, underneath that air of unwillingness that all women seemed to put on, been more than receptive to his advances. Had she truly been as indifferent as she claimed, she would have avoided him. Their manor hadn’t been so small that doing so was impossible. But instead she’d allowed him to court her, giving her presents and taking her for long walks through the grounds. And on one of those long walks, Hart was sure, she’d given him her maidenhead.
The angst, the confusion, her depression after he’d left. It all made sense. She was worried, no doubt, that he’d rejected her. Such things had been known to happen. Many a man professed words of love, words he quickly forgot after getting what he wanted.
And then, seeing each other again, they’d been like two strange cats. She must have dreaded telling him. Without the benefit of wedlock, he could have rejected the child as his and called off the wedding. But clearly he’d accepted her, and the child, for within hours of their arrival the situation seemed to have righted itself.
When had she lost the baby?
That she had was plain. Because no baby had ever appeared. Nor no sign of one. Hart might have so far avoided parenthood, but he knew that a woman was pregnant for roughly ten moons. Not like a boar, who was pregnant for only four. But still.
There was, too, the fact that she’d spent so much of the winter ill. Isla had always been thin and sickly; Hart had heard that it was sometimes difficult for such women to carry a child to term. But now she was positively gaunt. He wondered if she’d be able to quicken another seed. He’d heard, too, that after a miscarriage some women couldn’t.
The duke wouldn’t put her aside, though. Hart was confident of that. Tristan adored her. And besides, he had Asher. That Asher was the child of Tristan’s loins too was more than apparent.
At first Hart had wondered if Tristan was one of those men who favored children, in light of the special attention Tristan paid to his ostensible page, but then he’d spent more time with both of them and come to understand the truth of the matter.
Hart had heard that Maeve, Asher’s mother, was very beautiful. And that Brandon, his ostensible father, had been a coward and a fool. Who could blame Tristan for bedding her and who could blame Maeve, married or no, for seeking out a man capable of dominating the world as a man rather than relying on his pedigree for favors?
Then again, Rowena had chosen Rudolph.
He wondered if Lissa had children. And, if so, where they were. A woman could hardly bed men for a living without producing at least one, unless she had a defect of some kind. But few of those women kept their children with them, preferring instead for them to be raised in a more wholesome environment. If there was one. Hart doubted that the kind of woman who ended up selling her body for money came from the kind of home where a child could be happy.
A hard thing, for a mother to be separated from her child.
Whatever the circumstances.
He saw the gray-faced child from the pit in his dreams.
TWENTY-THREE
Greta had gone to bed and Isla sat alone, curled up by the fire. Her feet tucked up under her, she stared into the flames as her fingers plucked idly at the fur throw. She was cold, but she was always cold now. It wasn’t the cold she was used to, either, from the winters at Enzie Moor but a cold that ran bone deep. A cold that seemed to ache in places she hadn’t known existed, and that she couldn’t seem to escape no matter how many pelts she buried herself under. Although the cold seemed to have eased in the last hour or so.
She flexed her fingers experimentally. She could feel her fingertips again. She hoped the sensation lasted.
A vision flashed before her, briefly, of a winter’s night spent in the old library. She’d had perhaps fourteen winters. She forgot, now, what she’d gone there to read but remembered quite clearly how she’d dragged old blankets up to the frigid room from all over the house and built herself a sort of nest. Her own body heat had warmed the air inside and eventually she’d been quite toasty. She’d fallen asleep there, her head by the half-burned candle, scroll in hand.
Had she been happy then? She didn’t know. She’d had her happy moments, to be sure. But there’d been an ache, a sense of something missing that had never quite departed.
And then she’d met Tristan.
Even now, there weren’t words to describe what he was to her, or her feelings about him. He was, quite simply, her other half. A dark and disturbing other half, to be sure, and one she didn’t always entirely understand. But wasn’t that the point of an other half? To be dark and disturbing? No shallow, simple consciousness could be that appealing.
Or have anything real to offer.
She struggled to understand Tristan as, especially lately, she struggled to understand herself. She couldn’t explain her own choices, although she knew that to some—like Rose—they were easily explainable. She’d been well and thoroughly demonized in many eyes. Including, at times, her own.
She’d known, when she stood by and watched Tristan eat Alice, that she’d been making a choice. Just as she’d been making a choice, again, when she agreed to wear his ring. How much had been a choice after that, she wasn’t entirely sure.
Making a choice and fully understanding the consequences of that choice were two separate things. Part of her knew that she’d been too shocked in that glade to do anything but watch. Yet part of her still hated herself for her weakness. For the fact that she had chosen him—no, for the fact that she couldn’t have brought herself to do anything else. She’d loved him too much. And still did.
Still, she’d had no idea what she was agreeing to, when she’d agreed to marry him and—later. That it wouldn’t have mattered if she had known didn’t make her situation any less overwhelming. Indeed, she could only conclude that she was grateful for her early ignorance. Not knowing might, in the end, have been what saved her sanity.
She was still struggling to accustom herself to her new existence. To the intrusive presence in her mind, pressing, pressing. Like hands on an air-filled bladder, just enough to hold it in a certain shape. Although the analogy, while accurate, was an uncomfortable one: press too ha
rd, and the bladder broke. Her mind would break too, if Tristan wasn’t careful.
Like Katrina’s had.
Her mind would break, and there would be nothing she could do to stop him.
The lack of control made her fearful, even though her life thus far had been an exercise in lack of control. When she resisted the bond there was a strange kind of…not-pain that deepened as the minutes passed. Minutes that felt like hours, stretching on forever in her personal hell until she was all but immobile. That relented as soon as she gave in.
She was learning to let the bond flow through her, not to struggle for control but to let herself be nothing more than the tiniest twig born along by the strongest rushing rapids. At first the horror of knowing that her mind was laid bare to Tristan was revolting to contemplate. Humiliating. But there were times now when she all but forgot.
Like earlier, when she’d been talking to Greta.
She’d been her old self, laughing over the foibles of those around them. For all its dour demeanor, Caer Addanc was a simmering hotbed of gossip worthy of the most salacious bard. Grudges, love triangles…forbidden liaisons. Who needed a bard?
All castles were like this. As were all villages. Everywhere human beings gathered, noble and peasant alike. Winter meant living in close quarters, which in turn meant experiencing the best and worst of human nature. Huddled together and with nothing to do but drink and….
She smiled slightly to herself. There was a time when she wouldn’t have had these thoughts; wouldn’t have heard the word fuck whispering in her mind. But she’d gained something of Tristan’s…appreciation, she supposed was the term, for the vagaries of the flesh. Tristan…wasn’t afraid of his appetites.
And they were many.
She felt a stab of insecurity. How could she be enough for him? She’d come to his bed woefully unprepared, and with only the vaguest notions of what happened between a man and a woman. Many of the things that Tristan enjoyed, she hadn’t even conceived were possible. Which didn’t mean that she was precisely unwilling, just nervous. Of pain. Of humiliation. Of not knowing what to do. Of disappointing him.
He was a patient if unyielding teacher and what he let her experience through the bond confirmed that she gave him genuine pleasure. That he found her naïveté to be touching. He felt no true tenderness; his desire to protect her, and to guide her, was the closest he came.
She wondered if he’d been with other women. She’d have no way of knowing; he didn’t share with her as he forced her to share with him. What, if not his heart, bound him to her?
She loved him, but she didn’t understand him.
Greta wanted to be married. She and Isla were of an age; she was old enough. That she wasn’t married already surprised Isla, although on further reflection she supposed that Greta’s situation made sense. As eager as she was to find a man, she wouldn’t settle. She’d consciously avoided the trap that Isla worried Rowena had fallen into, of mistaking the best in a small group for the best available. Isla didn’t envy Rowena the first time she and Rudolph traveled, and Rowena discovered what else was out there.
He hadn’t been the most…loin-stirring of men within Ewesdale and its environs, although he might have been among the richest. Certainly he was compared to their father. And Rosie the sow had been manlier.
Any woman looking to be wed would do well to visit Barghast. Caer Addanc had its attractions in terms of single men but the city itself was full of soldiers, merchants of all kinds, and diplomats. Men of all races and backgrounds, many highly educated. The duchy’s indigo and woad made its capital one of the most important trading destinations in the known world. From Chad and the kingdom’s other neighbors to the East and even the Far East, men flocked. They flocked, too, to study with Barghast’s physicians and weapons masters. The church’s prohibitions on studying the body, which had so stifled medical advancement throughout both Morven and Chad, held no sway in the North.
Tristan’s personal physician was married, but there were others. And many in the North took two wives, Isla knew, a remnant of their tribal heritage. Some tribesmen had as many as three or four wives. Or more. The idea appalled Isla. Although, to be honest, more for the man than for the women.
Her smile returned, just the faintest upturning of her lip. She’d seen Callas eyeing Greta appreciatively. Not Hart, although she hadn’t seen much of Hart and from what she had seen, he’d cooled a bit. Where once he would have been tumbling the serving girls into his lap, one after the other, and them squealing with delight, now he barely seemed to notice their existence.
Only the fire in his eyes betrayed a desire now kept hidden.
She wondered if Hart would marry. She hoped so. He was too good to be alone. For all that he thought himself a monster.
He thought her pregnant, too. Or had. And with that turn in her thoughts, her smile vanished altogether. She watched the flames dance, sweetened with pine cones and cedar. Cedar was used often in winter, as it was an insect repellant.
Caer Addanc was cleaner than her old home had been but still, lice and worse were an ever-present problem. As stale as the air was during winter, a moment’s lapse in vigilance could lead to being overrun. Isla shuddered at the thought.
Hart had always made fun of her for being so fastidious, Hart who now bathed daily and never cracked a smile. She wished he’d been right: that she had been pregnant and was now cradling a baby, or would be soon. She’d happily give up her nights of undisturbed sleep for the throaty, wailing cries of a brand new person. Chubby, moist fingers wrapped around hers and a wrinkled, angry face.
It was only sinking in now, the painful truth that she’d never be that woman.
Never be like the other women at court, their eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep as they competed to out-horrify each other with tales of screaming and vomit. Of course, some women waited years to have children. Some never did. Rumors had begun to circulate that the queen was barren. But at least the queen had hope. Barring her possession of some secret knowledge that Isla did not have, she had every reason to believe that she could be with child. Eventually.
Outside the natural order of things, that’s what Tristan had said.
She sighed.
And then started, a moment later, as a hand rested on her shoulder.
She hadn’t sensed him approaching, because he hadn’t wanted her to. She suspected that he liked catching her in unguarded moments like these, not because he wanted to humiliate her but because he craved her unvarnished reactions. His hand was gentle, a steadying touch. His full strength would crush her.
“Darling.” His voice was rustling leaves.
“I decided to wait up.”
He walked around behind her to stop before the couch. Where he stopped, studying the fire. “Has it been difficult on you?”
“Actually, I feel a bit better.”
“I’m pleased.”
And he was. She felt that. She was pleased, too. That he was, and that he was home. She worried about him, when he left. As ridiculous as that was. Theirs was a world of danger, to be sure, but if anyone was equipped to survive it then Tristan was.
Still.
She felt better when he was home. Safer. Not because she feared for herself, too, but because she truly was her other half and without him she felt lost. She supposed that that was because she knew, now, finally, what it was to be complete. Before, when she’d thought herself so capable, she hadn’t known anything but that sense of loss. That void.
Now….
“Asher loves you as a mother,” he commented.
A long moment passed. “I hope so.”
“He does. He…needs a mother.”
Isla agreed.
“We could…adopt another child, if you wished.” He turned to face her. His eyes flickered in the gloom. “No one need know that it was not yours. Provided, of course, that it was a girl.”
A girl, because a boy would threaten Asher’s primacy. Gideon the Conqueror aside, natural children w
eren’t accepted in the South as they were in the North. A second boy, a boy ostensibly born in wedlock, could become a rallying point for those who found disfavor with the current regime. As Asher almost had.
But for his father’s intervention.
“But…how?”
“It is custom, is it not, for a woman to sometimes recuse herself during her latter months?”
It was in the South. Although, from what Isla could see, not necessarily in the North. Several members of the household, including the chief brewer, were up and about well past a point that would be considered proper in Ewesdale. The chief brewer was in her ninth moon. Still, she nodded.
“And before that point, many women show no sign.”
Isla nodded again, uncertain where this was going.
“There are…other women. Village women. Tribeswomen. Brought to bed of children they do not want. Such women often seek arrangements. No one need know.” He paused. “If a woman should choose to spend her last months apart, in the company of a trusted handmaid, and reappear after the birth…?”
“Someone would know. And tell.”
“Not all women survive childbirth.”
“I don’t….” I don’t want to kill anybody. But didn’t she? Hadn’t she all but killed Alice? Wouldn’t she kill for a child of her own?
“A great many deaths occur in this kingdom, on a daily basis, unaided by me.”
There was no reproach in his tone. Her concerns were valid. There might be certain aspects of his life that he chose not to share but there were no true secrets between them. There never had been, from their first meeting. The ring only validated the preexisting desire of her heart. And, she supposed, of his.
“This…would please you?”
“It would please me to please you,” he said.
He sat down beside her, his eyes still on hers.
“I love Asher,” she said. And she did.
“Many women conceive, and bear, multiple children. My understanding is that they love them all equally. Nor is the desire for another indicative of a lack of fulfillment but, I would think, rather the opposite.”
