“Yea, my lord,” Stephans agreed. “I’ll see to it.”
As the knight rode off, leaving him alone, Ronen sighed. His body ached, not so much from being on his horse, but from the long, empty hours he spent pining for Jayne. How could he have been such a fool to tell her he cared for her when it was clear she wanted nothing from him? Each night that scene played in his head. What didn’t play was a repeat of their connection. He waited for those moments when he would feel what she felt or see what she saw. Whatever the connection had been, it was gone now. As much as he longed to see her, he wasn’t ready to go back.
“Those who are not staying, we ride for Daggerpoint Castle,” Ronen ordered the small group. I cannot avoid my lady wife forever.
* * * * *
“Any word?” Jayne rubbed her sore wrists absently as she slid in the seat next to Dersly. She peered over her shoulder to make sure they were alone. Her two guards sat three tables away as she commanded them to do whenever she was in the hall. If she had to be escorted by them all day and locked in her chambers at night, then she didn’t want to have to eat with them too.
Dersly looked up at her upswept hair and pressed his lips tightly together to hold back his amusement. “Lessons going well, my lady?”
Jayne grunted.
“You are a vision of womanly—”
“Don’t make me punch you again,” Jayne grumbled, stealing Dersly’s goblet to take a drink. She’d already confessed to him how miserable the queen’s lessons on ladyhood made her. Dersly, being of a fighting mentality himself, well understood her pain. “Tell me, any news?”
She didn’t have to explain what she inquired about. It was the same question she asked him every time she saw him.
“No word from Lord Ronen or his men,” Dersly answered just as softly, lifting his hand to a servant to motion for another goblet. “Your husband is a great knight and leader. You should not let the men see you worrying about him.”
“Do not give me the honor and duty lecture,” Jayne warned. She scratched at her head, hating the way the weight was distributed toward her brow. It made her feel like she was about to fall face first onto the table. “I have had enough lessons and lectures to last a lifetime. I have half a mind to shave all the hair from my head after today. Let’s see the queen try to test me on hairstyles tomorrow when I am bald.”
Dersly frowned. “No, my lady, do not. I am sure Ronen would not—”
“I was jesting,” Jayne drawled. “Besides, I tried it once. Easy to manage, but not pretty.”
“My lady is always beautiful,” Gerald announced, appearing across from her. He grinned and winked, taking a seat.
“Thank you, good sir,” Jayne laughed, not taking anything the man said seriously. Gerald was a charmer, delightful and funny, but a charmer nonetheless.
“What were we discussing?” Gerald asked, glancing expectantly between Dersly and Lady Jayne.
“My lady wished to challenge me to another drinking game,” Dersly said.
Jayne laughed, appreciating his discretion. As far as she knew, he’d not told a soul about her inquires into Ronen’s health. For that she was grateful. After what Ronen said to her, she couldn’t help but worry endlessly about him. People who cared for her never lasted long. “That is not true. I have had enough of this mead to last a lifetime. Besides, I have already proven myself capable.”
“Is this when we tell her Lord Ronen ordered her cups watered down and she does not hold her liquor as well as she thinks?” Gerald smiled innocently at Dersly.
“What?” Jayne gasped, looking to Dersly for confirmation. “He did not!”
Dersly merely took the goblet offered by a servant and chuckled into it as he drank.
“Oh! I can’t believe that miserable lout did that!” she exclaimed, a little peeved at having her victory taken away.
“I can only assume you’re talking about me.”
Jayne tensed, her heart suddenly quickening. As many times as she imagined his voice, she didn’t expect to hear it now. “Ronen?”
“My lord,” Gerald greeted.
“Lord,” Dersly repeated, nodding his head slightly.
Jayne turned to see Ronen standing behind her. Tired half-circles marred the flesh beneath his eyes, darkening them. Exhaustion radiated off him like heat. Almost stunned, she said to Dersly, “I thought you said there was no news.”
“Methought there wasn’t.” Dersly shrugged. Then to Ronen, he added, “Is all well at the borderlands?”
“Yea. Nothing to be alarmed about,” Ronen answered, not taking his eyes from Jayne’s face. The exhausted depths bore into her, but she wasn’t sure what they were trying to express. Anger? Rage? Exhaustion? Nothingness?
Jayne grew uncomfortable under his scrutiny and automatically became defensive. “Are you worried that I’m without my guards? Don’t. They’re over there taking a break.” She motioned behind him.
“Guards?” Ronen frowned. He started to speak, then shook his head as if it wasn’t worth the effort to continue.
“My lord?” Jayne asked, wondering what was wrong with him. Maybe he was injured in a way she couldn’t see. Well aware of how people stared, she refrained from asking. The truth was, she didn’t know how to act. She’d put on a tough front for so long, she didn’t know how else to be. Jumping up and hugging him was too out of character, even if every part of her being wanted to do just that. Then there was the fear—fear of what would happen to him if she allowed herself to get close.
“I go to rest.” With that, he left her, walking around the table toward their chambers.
“I go to greet the riders. Since ordered to stay at the castle, I am starved for entertainment,” Gerald said, pushing up from the table. He bowed, wishing them a good day before leaving.
“You are more like the people here than you know, my lady,” Dersly commented when they were alone. “You have our hardness.”
“What do you mean?” She looked at him in shock.
“You ask me fifty times a day about Lord Ronen’s health and when he appears, you show nothing of your emotions when I know you care for him deeply.”
Jayne stared at her drink, as she contemplated denying it.
“What you do not have is our Starian sense,” Dersly continued. “Life is to be lived, for it is a short time on this earth for a warrior. Go after your lord husband and give him some peace in this world. He should not have to wonder about your heart when he has the responsibilities of this country resting on him. If you truly care for him, you will go be his constant. A man needs that, even if he doesn’t say it.”
“I thought I told you no lectures,” Jayne mumbled, hating the wisdom in his words. “What makes you think you know anything about it? I see no constant in your life, unless Gerald—”
“My wife, stubborn wench that she was, never told me until it was too late. Had I known she cared before her deathbed, I would have done things much differently. But I was young and foolish and still believed the honored teachings of the war gods I’d grown up hearing. It never occurred to me to confess an emotion I could not name. Warriors were not supposed to love, not romantically, not wholly. Now, methinks our people would do well to look at the other deities of our ancestors for guidance. It is why I find hope in you otherworlders. Perhaps you can reawaken our spirits and give us more to live for than war and death. Staria needs more love in its veins to go with the fire in its heart.” Dersly stared at her until she was forced to meet his eyes. “Do not make the same mistake I made in my marriage and do not wait for him to confess what he feels for you first. Most likely, he won’t. He won’t know how. None of us really do.”
Jayne started to deny her feelings when the knight stood, cutting her off.
“I do not ask you to do anything that is not in you, but it would be good for this land if you could make your marriage work. Rumor has it Lord Ronen asked the king to stop all otherworld marriages through Divinity. I suspect it has something to do with you otherwise he would
not have urged a decision to be remade. There are several versions of the story, but the disheartened result is the same. Without Divinity, we’ll have to go back to praying for women to fall through the fairy rings as gifts from the gods. Many men will die childless and without knowing the pleasure of a wife.” Dersly cleared his throat, all sentiment falling behind the warrior mask. “Methinks I will find Gerald and see what news from the borders. Good day, Lady Jayne.”
Dersly walked in the opposite direction Gerald had left from. Jayne watched him in silence until a servant appeared to clear the man’s goblet. “Margaret, have food sent to Lord Ronen’s chamber. He looked half starved.”
“That would be the hard beef and bread they live on while riding. Horrible stuff, but it does its duty.” Margaret nodded knowingly. “And for you as well?”
“No, thank you, just Lord Ronen.” When she was again alone, Jayne’s eyes trailed toward her bedchamber. She respected Dersly as a fellow fighter and they’d become friends over the last couple of weeks. But his words didn’t change the fear she carried. He couldn’t expect her to try to give hope to a country of knights. She barely got by for herself.
Run, Jayne, her thoughts whispered.
She didn’t move. What if she ignored instinct and stayed? What if she gave Ronen a try—a real try? If she were honest with herself, she did miss him while he was gone and had begun to miss the boxing ring even less. How did one compare what she did, fighting for money, to what these men did? They fought for honor and right. They didn’t get paid an obscene amount of gold or get splashed across magazine covers. Their fame was earned by valor, not a well-paid camera man and creative biographer who invented a fake family for their little orphan street urchin.
Stay, Jayne, she consciously chanted. Stay.
Determined, and a little nervous, she finished her stout drink and stood from the table. Barely aware of her two guards right behind her, she forced her shaking legs to carry her across the main hall, through the passageway that seemed suddenly very long, and to the bedchamber door. Glancing behind her, she said, “Ronen is home now, you can stop following me.”
“Not until the queen gives her order,” Harol answered. “She was very specific, especially since you kept getting caught trying to leave the castle.”
I was trying to hide from her lessons.
“The queen ordered me followed? Not Lord Ronen?” Jayne asked. Harol nodded. “Why didn’t you say?”
“My lady did not ask.” Richard shrugged.
Jayne arched a brow, but refrained from arguing with him again. To do so would only be a way to run from what she needed to do. Pointing down the hall, she ordered, “Stay twenty paces away.”
The men nodded, backing out of eavesdropping distance, but close enough to see her door should she try to come through it. Satisfied they wouldn’t be listening, she slipped inside. Her eyes went hungrily to the bath, instantly finding Ronen amidst the curling steam.
“You were gone a long time,” Jayne said, trying to figure out what exactly she wanted to say to him. You were gone too long, Ronen. I missed having you in my bed. I thought about you. I fantasized about you. I’m glad you are safe. I worried about you. I sound like an idiot.
“Not so long,” he answered, not looking at her. Didn’t he care she was there? She couldn’t force her eyes off him as they devoured every visible inch. Her fingers flexed, itching to feel his flesh. Moisture pooled between her thighs, her sex aching to the point she adjusted her weight from one foot to the other in hopes of relieving some of the pressure.
“Did you,” she paused, trying to think of anything that might get him talking, “fight?”
“No.” Again, flat and emotionless.
“So, no Caniba?”
“No.”
Jayne glanced over her shoulder at the door. It wasn’t too late. She could run. Maybe this time Richard and Harol would be off their guard. Whatever sentiment Ronen had professed as he left her bed seemed to have dissipated like the steam rising above him. Hot one second, gone the next. “So, nothing happened?”
“I am exhausted, Jayne. What is it you wish to ask?” He still didn’t look at her. She thought of taking her fingers through his damp hair and jerking his head back to force him to.
“I’m just making small talk.” Then, cringing, she added, “The queen says that it’s a lady’s duty to inquire after her husband, I mean her man’s, um, wartime activities.”
Ronen gave a derisive laugh. “Since when do you care about being a lady?”
“I don’t,” she answered honestly before she could catch herself. “I mean, I’ve been taking lessons. Did you see my hair? I did it with only my fingers and touch of water.”
“It’s lovely.” The words hardly sounded like a compliment.
“Yeah, I know I need some work. I keep feeling like my face is being pulled toward the ground.” Jayne tugged at the locks, roughly pulling them down. He didn’t seem to care either way and there was no reason for her to be uncomfortable if he wasn’t going to notice her efforts.
“Then take it down.” Calm, logical and still not looking at her. One of her clips fell on the ground and she wanted to throw it at his head. Maybe violence would get his attention. She picked it up, bouncing it in her palm.
“Dersly promised to show me how to wield a sword if you said it was all right.” Jayne sat on the bed, keeping her eyes on him. “He says it’s well and good that a lady can throw a punch, but to truly be effective against an attack, she should be able to wield a blade.”
“There is no reason. I will protect you,” Ronen said. Finally, he moved to look at her and she felt a hopeful leap inside her chest. She held her breath. He arched a brow, drawling, “Unless it is me you wish to attack?”
“Why would I try to kill you?”
He turned his back on her once more, sitting as if he hadn’t moved. “To escape me because that is the only way I will let you out of our arrangement.”
Jayne began to smile.
He continued, “The gods willed it for whatever reason and now it is our misfortune to bear.”
Her smile dropped into a grimace. This conversation wasn’t anything close to what she’d hoped. Sure, she didn’t have clear plan for what she aspired to have happen between them, but if she did, this definitely wasn’t it.
“That’s a little harsh,” she mumbled. “Clearly someone had a few weeks to brood.”
“What?”
She didn’t repeat the comment. Making a none-too-graceful transition, she rushed, “For the longest time I wasn’t allowed to talk about my past because of the contract I signed with Divinity Entertainment. It had to do with the Public Appearance clause. Since my past was a bloody misery, I really didn’t care if it stayed buried.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The P.A. Department at Divinity. They wouldn’t let me talk about my past until it became second nature not to say anything about who I was. But I suppose now if they kidnapped me and shipped me here, I’m probably no longer in contract. There are things in my life that I—”
He held up the back of his hand, cutting her off. “Jayne, if this is an attempt to leave me, please stop talking. As unfortunate as it is, I did not kidnap you and bring you here. You chose me at the ceremony. After witnessing the pain of my brother’s first marriage, I had no plans to marry, ever, but you chose me and I accepted. Please, I’m exhausted and do not have the energy to fight with you tonight.”
“No, I wanted to explain something, not fight. Would you just shut your mouth and listen? When I was little…” she paused in agitation. She hadn’t intended to yell at him. Words jumbled in her head. Why did he have to interrupt her? She wasn’t any good at this stuff. Calming her tone, she continued, “There was this girl, Clariah, and we entered the orphanage around the same time. After the first year, we both came to realize that we would never be adopted, which was for the best since the boys normally got taken to a workhouse and the girls became…” she grimaced, �
��used goods.”
Ronen moved slowly along the edge of the tub, stopping when he was seated facing her. He looked at her, but said nothing. With those steady eyes on her, she now wished he’d turn around once more so she could talk to his back. Jayne found it ironic she wanted his full attention one minute only to dread it the next.
“Clariah was smart. Really smart.” She pushed up from the bed and began to pace, moving her hands nervously before her as she spoke. “She could keep these complicated facts stored in her brain. She knew the exact time a guard would make their rounds on what day without even looking at a timepiece. She’d look at a new girl for two seconds and deduce what kind of person she’d be. She knew how the weather would affect Madam Gary’s mood down to the degree. She calculated the number of days each month we’d go without food dependent on how many times Madam Timms smiled.” Jayne stopped her story, explaining, “Madam Timms had a lot of male friends and when she met someone new she always took the food money to buy a new dress and get her hair done.”
“So you went without,” he stated.
Jayne nodded. “We were rationed anyway and the food was terrible, so it wasn’t so bad not to eat it.”
His look said he didn’t believe her. “You speak Clariah’s name as if she is no longer. I take it you lost her?”
“It turned out she wasn’t smart enough. After we’d been there for three years, she planned an escape. It was supposed to be the two of us, but after seeing a new girl get beaten, we decided we had to take her with us. However, in our empathy, we misjudged her. Susan changed her mind and told Madam Gary in return for favors. That daughter of a whoring dog ended up becoming the child guard six months later. She’d sell out her own dead mother for an extra bit of bread and grog.”
“Did you make it far when you escaped?”
“Oh, they let us crawl through air ducts, choke and burn ourselves in the smoke room, before scaling a snow-covered wall. Just as our bare feet touched free ground, they caught us. They could have stopped us before we started, but they wanted to teach us a lesson.” Jayne gripped her hands tight. “Punishment for runaway orphans on my dimension was harsh. From the first day we arrived, we were told we were property of the central government, which was afraid we’d ruin their clean city streets. So instead we were swept away into these giant cement homes and kept out of society’s eyepiece.”
Fighting Lady Jayne Page 15
