Fortune and Fate

by Sharon Shinn

  “You have to keep those types of promises,” she said, letting her voice fill with mock scorn. “You know I’ll cut your heart out if you don’t treat me well.”

  He laughed out loud and swept her into his arms, bending his head to kiss her firmly on the mouth. This was a bedazzlement she hadn’t expected; this was a richness. Jasper Paladar kissed the way he talked, with subtle shades of nuance and an extensive vocabulary. Clearly he enjoyed kissing. Most men Wen knew didn’t bother too much with the preliminaries, so she was finding this a rare and enlightening experience. She let her hands creep up to lock around his neck and pressed herself against him with a purr of pleasure.

  When he finally pulled back, he was still laughing, or laughing again. “If that is a prelude to the evening’s delights, I see I am going to enjoy myself even more than I hoped to,” he said. “But I am just now struck with consideration of logistics.”

  She felt her face crinkling into its own laugh. “How to get me up to your room so that nobody sees me.”

  “Not that I wish you to interpret that as my being ashamed of your company,” he added hastily. “That was not intended to be disrespectful in the least.”

  She pretended to be offended. “I believe I am the one who has more of a reputation to lose,” she said. “I’m sure Karryn would be disappointed to learn how lax my moral standards are.”

  He kissed her quickly. “I think we must go up separately. Do you know which room is mine?”

  She nodded. “I know every room in the house, my lord.”

  For a moment he looked horrified. “You’re not going to call me that, are you?”

  Now she was laughing again. “No. Unless you like it.”

  “I mean—will you find it strange to call me Jasper? I use your own name quite freely, and yet I realize you almost never address me at all. Even by my title.”

  “In my mind, I have been calling you Jasper almost from the beginning,” she said. “It might take a little while to get used to saying it out loud.”

  “You might practice,” he suggested.

  She tilted her face up. “I like it very much when you kiss me, Jasper.”

  He responded most satisfactorily, then said, “I think you will like it even more when I do more than kiss you.”

  Which made her dissolve into laughter again. “And I always thought lords and ladies were so reserved.”

  “Did you? I think you will be quite pleased to see that I have very few inhibitions at all.”

  “In that case, let’s not waste any more time getting to your room!” she said. “You go first, and I’ll follow. I’m pretty good at covering ground without being seen, but if I run into anyone I’ll just say that I’m checking the house more thoroughly tonight after this afternoon’s adventure.”

  “An excellent notion,” he approved. He kissed her once more before releasing her. “Don’t keep me waiting,” he said, and left the room.

  For a minute, Wen stared at the closed door and wondered if she was mad.

  But her blood still shivered with excitement and her skin was flushed from contact. Gods and goddesses, she couldn’t remember the last time she had been this eager to give her body to a man. No one would stop her, not even masked assailants who might come flowing over the outer hedge. She was gliding through the halls to spend the night beside Jasper Paladar.

  Or what portion of the night she could spare before taking her turn to patrol.

  Chapter 30

  IT WAS A SIMPLE MATTER FOR WEN TO LEAVE THE LI BRARY and creep through the house to the servants’ stairway so she had less chance of running into Karryn or Serephette. It was not that late, in fact; any number of people could still be up and roaming the halls. But Wen was careful and did not encounter a soul.

  She gave the lightest tap on Jasper’s door and it was instantly opened; he had obviously been awaiting her faintest signal. She slipped into the room and into his arms in a single motion. They paused for another exchange of kisses before she looked up to glance around. The room was not nearly as opulent as some of the bedrooms at Ghosenhall, but luxurious even so. It was spacious enough to sleep twenty soldiers, though, of course, there was not nearly enough furniture to do so—a few groupings of chairs and tables; various armoires and dressing tables; a large four-poster bed piled high with a maroon comforter and a dozen pillows. The dark curtains were pulled against the night, but a dozen candles offered plenty of illumination. Wen couldn’t see any discarded clothing or cast-off shoes. Either Jasper Paladar was a very tidy man, or his valet was.

  She did see books everywhere—open on the nightstand, piled on the dressers, stacked with papers on the smaller tables. No servant had been allowed to straighten up those essential items.

  “Does my chamber meet with your approval?” he murmured, watching her appraise the space. “What are you thinking as you gaze around? Are you assessing the possibilities for attack through the windows?”

  “Oh, I did that weeks ago,” she retorted. “Second-story room, not hard to reach. There’s a gutter that offers a handhold, but it’s a little rickety, so someone who weighs too much would probably end up pulling it down, which would be loud enough to catch my attention—”

  He was almost doubled over with laughter. “Enough—I see—I have underestimated you again,” he finally said, practically gasping out the words. “So we may lose ourselves in love without worrying about being surprised by assassins.”

  “Well, there are four guards patrolling,” she said. “They ought to minimize the chance of assassins as well.”

  “Willawendiss, Willawendiss,” he said. “You are the most extraordinary girl.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” she said, and she kissed him.

  In no time at all, they had drifted over to the bed and collapsed on top of it. Wen lay on her back and stretched her arms as wide as they would go, and still couldn’t touch both edges of the mattress. “I have never slept in a bed this big,” she told him.

  “Even when you were sleeping next to someone else?” he inquired. He was lying next to her, propped up on one elbow. With his free hand he was slowly untying the laces on her vest. They’d both already discarded their shoes, but the rest of the disrobing was going at a relaxed pace. Both of them were enjoying themselves too much to rush.

  She grinned up at him. “Well, you know, if you had a few minutes of privacy in the barracks with someone, you never wasted it sleeping,” she said. “And the beds in most of those quarters are about two feet wide and hard as iron. And if I happened to take a lover who had his own room somewhere, it was usually rented from some old lady, completely furnished, and not designed for extravagance.”

  “You need to upgrade your quality of bedmate,” he said.

  She made an equivocal motion with her head. “Let’s see how well this goes,” she said pessimistically. “I might find the gentry aren’t worth the trouble.”

  That made him laugh, of course, and apply himself with a little more determination to her vest and shirt. All the while, she was helping him from his own clothes, though she couldn’t help noticing the differences between their attire—his all silk and fine wool, well-made and almost new; hers leather and cotton, well-worn and broken in. They were both half naked, and his hand was moving in a slow, sensuous sweep along the slope of her ribs, when she realized that most of the laughter had gone out of him. She gave him an inquiring look.

  “What’s wrong?”

  His fingers traveled lightly over the long, faded scar that cut its jagged way from her navel to her left breast. That was the worst of them, but he took a moment to touch the marks on her arm, her throat, her right shoulder. She thought that just now he probably couldn’t see the two that crossed her back, and she shifted her weight a little so he’d have less of a chance to notice them.

  “You look like you’ve been badly hurt,” he said softly. “Over and over again.”

  She wasn’t sure how to play this, so she chose her words cautiously and made them sound c
asual. “That’s a soldier’s life,” she said. “You expect to receive wounds, and get them bound up, and go out to fight again. Any blow that doesn’t kill you becomes a badge of honor. A symbol of your skill and determination.”

  He traced the longest scar again. “Well, I always knew you had plenty of both. But it troubles me to see the evidence written in such a brutal fashion.”

  “You find them repulsive?” she asked, because she wasn’t sure what he meant. “We could blow out the candles so you don’t have to see them.”

  He shook his head. “No. No, no, no. Not repulsive, and certainly quite honorable. I just—I don’t like to think that at some point you were hurt and in pain.”

  She let that pass, because she didn’t know how to answer. To her, pain had never seemed to be the point; surviving was the point. Instead, she flattened her hand against his chest, the unmarred flesh partly covered by a light sprinkling of curly gray hair. “And look at you,” she said, her voice half teasing, half admiring. “Skin as smooth as a baby’s. I never touched an aristocrat’s body before. It’s so clean! I think you must bathe every day and then cover yourself with scented oils.”

  “I have some of those very oils in that cabinet over there,” he drawled. “Shall I fetch them? I think you might like the way they feel.”

  She laughed back at him. “I think I might.”

  He hooked his fingers in the loop of her trousers and began to pull down. “In a minute,” he said, his voice a little husky. “First, let’s see what else we’ll find.”

  What he found was her ankle sheath strapped to her left leg, with the small, deadly dagger still in it. She snorted with laughter at the expression on his face. “You never know when you might need another weapon,” she explained.

  “Could you—do you think—take it off? Just for a while?” he asked.

  She pretended to consider. “I don’t usually. Not for any reason.”

  “Not even in situations such as this?”

  She raised her eyebrows in a skeptical fashion. “When I’m sharing a bed with a new man for the first time? When I’m at my most vulnerable? That’s the last time I’d want to give up all my protection.”

  “I assure you,” he said solemnly, “I have no designs on your life. Only your virtue.”

  “And I could fend you off if you tried to overpower me,” she said.

  “I’m bigger and heavier than you are,” he pointed out.

  She gave him a derisive look. “You’re weak and untrained,” she said. “No conditioning.”

  His eyes gleamed in the candlelight. “And yet, I think you’ll find my endurance remarkable.”

  She sat up just enough to unbuckle the sheath, though she very ostentatiously laid it on the nightstand within easy reach. “I hope so,” she said. “Let’s begin the demonstration.”

  WEN had thought she had enjoyed making love in the past, with partners who brought a range of passion to their encounters. Sometimes she had found the sex act to be a laughing romp, other times a brief and intense coupling, other times a clumsy and unsatisfying physical bout.

  But Jasper Paladar made her laugh and made her gasp and made her feel cherished and then started all over again. She found she liked the sweet-scented oils. She liked the feel of the fine linen sheets against her skin. She liked the way the aristocracy considered lovemaking a leisurely pastime, as much to be savored as good wine or good food.

  Or maybe that was just Jasper.

  She was pretty sure not all Thirteenth House lords recited poetry to their bedmates once the lovemaking was over. He ran his fingers with a delicious lightness over the curves and surfaces of her body as he murmured verses about someone remembering a night of abandoned passion.

  I am awake now, but then I was surely dreaming.

  Few hours come so laden with content.

  Few pass with such luxury, gorged and heavy-seeming,

  And I know this, and I will not repent—

  No, not though six days or sixty years pass by,

  Clamorous with struggle, tense with strife and plot,

  And holding no other treasures . . .

  She liked the words more than she would have expected. “Who wrote that?” she asked. “You?”

  “Hardly. I have put my hand to a verse or two, but never with particularly felicitous results. That was Martolin Brassenthwaite. Related in some distant fashion to the current marlord.”

  “Write it down for me,” she said.

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll give you one of his books.”

  She was doubtful. “I don’t know that I want to just sit around reading poetry. And, you know, I pack light. I don’t keep too many unnecessary possessions.”

  “It’s a very small volume,” he assured her. “Illustrations on half the pages. Anyway, books are necessary possessions.”

  “Weapons are necessary possessions.”

  “Then I suppose you might give me a dagger to commemorate this night?”

  “You ought to have one. Just in case. But since you don’t know how to use it, I don’t know that it would do you much good.”

  “You could give me private lessons.”

  “Oh no,” she replied. “If you’re going to learn to fight, you should learn it in the training yard like Karryn does.”

  He sighed. “You have such a soft and romantic way about you.”

  “I’m a practical girl,” she said. “It’s what you like about me.”

  “It’s one of the things I like about you,” he corrected. His hand continued its idle stroking, but she had the sense that his mind had moved on to another matter. Fair enough. She had matters of her own to attend to. She pushed off against the pillows and sat up.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, sitting up beside her.

  “You didn’t expect me to stay the night, did you, and risk being seen leaving in the morning?”

  His face was blank. “I hadn’t thought about it at all,” he said. “Though I would like it if you could stay a little longer.”

  “I could come back tomorrow night,” she suggested.

  His eyes widened. “Of course you can! I mean, I assumed you would! Must I issue an invitation every day, or will you understand that you are always welcome in my room?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I think, with all our restrictions, we will have to make sure we are both free any night we want to meet,” she said. “There are people who are paying attention to my movements, even if they can’t call me to account, and there’s no end of people watching you.”

  “So we must accept the necessity for a certain degree of subterfuge.”

  “Yes,” she said, grinning again, “but sometimes that’s half the fun.”

  He didn’t smile back. In fact, he looked a little worried. “I have something to tell you that you won’t like,” he said.

  She casually reached for the dagger and began restrapping it to her ankle. She wondered if he was about to confess some long-standing betrothal or other commitment, something that would make it clear how very different their stations were, how transitory their relationship. “Yes?”

  “Remember, though, that you promised you wouldn’t leave for another month? At least?”

  “I don’t think I did make that promise.”

  “Well, make it now.”

  The sheath in place, she settled back on the bed facing him. She was quite comfortable being naked, and he didn’t seem discomposed, either. At least by his nudity—something else was clearly on his mind. “This seems like a bad time to be making you promises,” she said. “Just tell me what you’re so worried about.”