A Brother's Price (20 page)

‘‘Sounds like Keifer, only Keifer kept changing his mind.’’

Jerin’s heart skipped a beat at the mention of Ren’s dead husband. ‘‘What was he like?’’

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‘‘Keifer? Oh, I hated him. He used to lie to me and make me cry. I was only nine or ten at the time. He told me that my you-know-what would fall off because I ate too many cookies. Then one day he smacked me, I forget why—actually, I’m not sure there was even a reason why—but we didn’t come back to the palace again until after he was killed.’’

‘‘Oh.’’ Jerin fiddled with a raspberry tart, saddened that Ren had had such a terrible marriage. At least she was out of it, able to marry someone better for her and Odelia and the others.

Cullen chattered on. ‘‘I suppose, though, he wasn’t any older than we are now. You know, I don’t feel old enough to get married and father children.’’

‘‘My father said you never feel old enough.’’

‘‘Oh, rats.’’

The conversation drifted off onto other subjects. Neither one of them liked to sew, or had any interest in clothes. However, they shared a love of horses. Jerin made the mistake of complaining that his sister would let him ride only the older, gentler mares who rarely would do anything more than a easy canter.

‘‘They let you ride! Good gods, Jerin, I would kill to be able to ride! My family won’t let me near horses. I had some great-great-grandfart that got kicked in the head and died. Lylia will sneak me out to the stable, but even she won’t let me do more than pet them over the stable wall.’’

There was a bang at the door, followed by Eldest calling, ‘‘Jerin? Jerin? Come open the door!’’

Jerin jerked up in surprise, and then all the worry he felt earlier came flooding back, chased by guilt that he’d forgotten about his fears. He rushed the door, unbolted it, and flung it open without a thought about Cullen. His sisters stood waiting in the hall—Eldest and Corelle in strange ill-fitting clothes for some reason—safe and sound. With a cry of happiness, he hugged Eldest.
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‘‘Where have you been?’’ he asked. ‘‘What happened to you?’’

‘‘Nothing happened,’’ Eldest laughed, lifting him up in a bear hug and walking him back through the doors.

‘‘Then what happened to your clothes?’’

He had never seen Eldest blush before.

‘‘You’ve been pinched!’’ Summer grinned at Eldest, using the cant word for ‘‘discovered’’ or ‘‘apprehended.’’

Jerin wondered what he’d caught Eldest doing, and why it had been necessary for her and Corelle to change their clothes. Summer’s smile faded as she spotted the table set with four cups and a host of dirty plates. ‘‘Jerin, who did you have tea with?’’

Eldest came to attention, moving Jerin behind her as she put him down. ‘‘You’re not alone?’’

‘‘Ummm.’’ Jerin peered over Eldest’s shoulder to discover the parlor was empty. ‘‘Cullen?’’

For a moment, he thought maybe Cullen had climbed back out the window. Then Cullen peeked around the doorway of Jerin’s bedroom. He had taken out the horse-blanket pin so his kilt fell to its proper length.

‘‘This is Cullen Moorland,’’ Jerin said.

‘‘My cousin Cullen, who shouldn’t be in guest quarters by himself,’’ a female voice behind Eldest clarified. The voice belonged to a girl in her mid-teens, with hair the color of a new copper coin and a rash of sun-darkened freckles. ‘‘And I’m Princess Lylia.’’ Lylia, the supplier of wine, cigars, and naughty pictures. She held out her hand to Eldest and they shook like equals. ‘‘I’m Cullen’s escort, when I can catch up with him. I was hoping to find him here.’’

‘‘I’m a boy, not a baby.’’ Cullen pouted. Eldest ignored the comment. She introduced herself, Corelle and Summer, and Jerin.

Lylia gave Jerin a long measuring look and smiled at what she saw. ‘‘A pleasure.’’

Cullen
tsk
ed as Jerin blushed. ‘‘No, no, you tilt up
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your chin, raise one eyebrow calmly, and state, ‘I know.’’’

‘‘Oh, but I like the blush,’’ Lylia said.

‘‘If he keeps blushing like that, you’ll have to use a pry bar to get the women off him,’’ Cullen said. ‘‘Arrogance. It’s the only way to have a moment’s peace.’’

‘‘As if you had practice,’’ Lylia said, tugging on Cullen’s braid. Cullen tweaked her cheek. ‘‘I’ll have you know that there are families out there that are willing to overlook a small streak of headstrongness.’’

‘‘Small? Ha!’’ Lylia rolled her eyes. ‘‘I was going to suggest a walk in the gardens.’’ She tilted her head in the direction of the door. ‘‘Just the six of us.’’

‘‘A pleasure,’’ Eldest murmured.

Lylia did not take Cullen’s arm, as Jerin expected her to do, but let her cousin lead the way. Summer and Eldest fell into step with Cullen, flanking him. On a hand signal from Eldest, Corelle took Jerin’s arm with a sigh of the long-suffering, and Lylia walked beside them.

‘‘There are actually several gardens inside the palace walls,’’ Lylia explained as they strolled down a flight of stairs and several hallways to the porch where the Queen Mother Elder had first met with them. ‘‘The family is mad about puttering about in the muck, bending nature to their will. I don’t have the madness, so I don’t quite understand it, but Trini and, strangely enough, Odelia are both crazy about it.’’

The gardens were a riot of color, in full bloom with early-summer flowers. Paths of pea gravel meandered through drifts of peonies to archways leading to other gardens.

‘‘The back wall is sixteen feet tall and is patrolled night and day. The gardens are as safe as the house.’’

Lylia pointed out the wall a few hundred feet away. ‘‘We can walk around without fear in here.’’

‘‘My favorite area is down here.’’ Cullen led the way to a well-shaded grotto, where water spilled over a water-
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fall into a deep, rock-lined pool. ‘‘The cliff was built here for my uncle. If you look carefully, you can see the individual slabs of stone they fitted together to make it.’’

Jerin studied the wall several minutes before finding the finger-wide joints of the very natural-looking cliff face.

‘‘The water is pumped by that windmill.’’ Lylia pointed to a picturesque structure, its sailcloth arms creaking in the stiff wind.

‘‘Oh.’’ Pieces of Jerin’s education came together in his mind. ‘‘We’re at the top of a sandstone cliff. The ground is probably too porous to keep water up here.’’

His reasoning seemed to please the princess for some reason. Lylia grinned widely at him. ‘‘Exactly!’’

Beyond the grotto, there were lily pools and a hedge maze. They strolled on, he and Lylia falling behind the others, frightening hidden frogs into the water with a soft
plop, plop
.

‘‘Does the windmill pump all the water for everything, or just the gardens?’’

‘‘There are several water supplies. Specially lined cisterns collect the rainwater; plus there are several wells. If you look up there, on the roof, there are tanks that the windmill fills. In the family wing, there are indoor privies with running water. Mothers had them installed when I was little.’’

‘‘My aunts needed to build a new wing to their home, so they designed their house to have a indoor privy,’’

Jerin said. ‘‘It’s very clever.’’

‘‘It’s just a tank of water high over a piss pot with a hole in it,’’ Lylia said, grinning as if she enjoyed the innocent rudeness of the conversation.

‘‘It’s that the tank fills itself to exactly full and stops that I think is amazing. A human would know that the tank is empty and could fill it and then stop when it was full. It’s like they made it intelligent, yet inside the tank are only little pieces of metal and cork.’’

She covered her mouth on a laugh. ‘‘Oh, please, you’ll
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make me nervous to sit with my pants around my ankles with these ‘intelligent’ tanks of water above my head.’’

He laughed. Lylia surprised him by taking his hands in hers and looking up at him.

‘‘Kiss me,’’ she demanded.

‘‘What?’’ Jerin blinked in amazement.

‘‘Kiss me.’’

Jerin glanced around to see if anyone was about to observe them. Where had his sisters and Cullen gone?

‘‘Would it be proper?’’

Lylia seemed to consider for a moment, or maybe it was just an act of considering. ‘‘Proper enough. It’s not like I’m asking to mount you.’’

‘‘No,’’ he admitted uneasily, ‘‘but one seems to follow the other.’’

She giggled, and then leaned forward—pressing her body full against his, wetting her lips before whispering again, ‘‘Kiss me.’’

He supposed this was why the sisters were princesses. They commanded and everyone else was helpless not to obey. Certainly he also was helpless not to enjoy. Her lips were warm, moist velvet, her taste of apples, and her scent of cinnamon. She put her arms about his neck, ran her fingers down his braid, and tugged at the end. A moment later his braid uncoiled and his hair cascaded forward, a waterfall of silky black. She ran fingers through his hair.

‘‘Lylia,’’ Ren said from behind her sister. The younger princess broke the kiss. ‘‘I’m behaving.’’

She skipped backward, grinning, until she collided with Ren. She rolled her head back on Ren’s shoulder to look up at her older, taller sister. ‘‘He’s dreamy.’’

‘‘You’re supposed to be escorting your cousin.’’ Ren lifted her arm to point back up the path. ‘‘Go!’’

‘‘I’m gone.’’ She spun to duck under Ren’s arm and cantered off.

‘‘Um.’’ Jerin ran his thumb across his forehead, gath-
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ering up his hair and pulling it out of his face. ‘‘I’m not sure how to say no to you princesses.’’

‘‘I suppose not,’’ Ren said quietly. ‘‘Our society can’t allow men to learn how to say no; it’s too important they say yes to so many women. Maybe if there were one man for every five women, or every three women, we could afford for men to say no.’’

‘‘What if there were five men for every woman?’’

Ren studied a cloud as she considered. ‘‘Interesting question. Five sisters can share one man because each of them is individually rewarded with a child. Five men
could
share one woman, and be individually rewarded, but only if the woman was careful in allotting her pregnancies. It seems to run against human nature, though. Waiting five nights for one’s turn is not the same as waiting almost five years. Allowing your husband to impregnate your sister is not on the same level of commitment and risk as letting your wife carry and give birth to a child for your brother. Plus, any midwife can tell you, space the babies too close together, and each subsequent child is unhealthier than the previous one. Which brother gets to go first? Which brother has to be last?’’

‘‘It would seem that the power would remain with the woman,’’ Jerin said.

‘‘It does indeed. The very nature of intercourse—an act to produce a pregnancy—and the risks to the woman’s health as such, I think will always make the choice of yes or no the woman’s.’’

‘‘So the man can never say no.’’

‘‘Actually,’’ she said as she gathered up his hair into a ponytail, ‘‘you can always say no. I suppose I sound the hypocrite, but you have the right to choose who does what to your body.’’

‘‘Even though I belong to my sisters, as much as a chair or a table belongs to them, and they can sell me to whoever they want, despite my wishes?’’

‘‘I have never believed that to be right and good.’’

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She began to rework his hair into a braid. ‘‘Nowhere in the holy book does it say that a sister has the right to treat her brother as something less than human. Sometime, somehow, simple human greed worked its way into the law. The greed says, I will not give up something I have without getting something in return, even for someone I should love dearly.’’

‘‘But if you are giving up the only male you have, you’re giving up the ability to have children, even if only by means of incest. No babies to love, no daughters to tend you when you are old, no descendants to honor your memory.’’

She picked up his ribbon from where her sister had dropped it and tied the end of his braid. ‘‘If it didn’t cost you to gain a husband, you wouldn’t have to sell your brother. The ability to sell a brother leads to circumstances such as your uncle’s, who was sold to finance a trading house.’’

‘‘My mothers allowed him to choose his wives. He loves them dearly.’’

‘‘Your mothers are particularly noble, then, compared to stories I have heard at court. The most pitiful ones are widows suing their husband’s sisters because he committed suicide after the money was exchanged.’’

He nodded slowly. ‘‘It is hard knowing I won’t be going back home, that I’ll only see my youngest sisters and little brothers again if my wives allow it.’’

‘‘That, unfortunately, is the nature of marriage and not an evil that can be banished by law. The husband has to go live with his wives.’’

‘‘I suppose it’s because a man’s little sisters will grow up and become women with a husband to fill their thoughts, run their house, and raise their children. In his wives’ home, a man’s wives and children will always need him.’’

‘‘You are wise beyond your years.’’ Her eyes sung his praises.

He suddenly realized that he was wasting this moment
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alone with her, maybe the last he would have. Perhaps it wouldn’t be wise of him to kiss her, but he had been wanting to since she left the farm. He stepped closer to her, leaning awkwardly forward, torn between wanting to close his eyes and knowing that he’d probably miss her mouth if he did shut them.

For a moment he thought he was horribly wrong in trying to kiss her, because the slight smile on her face faded. But then she was pulling him close, her lips pressed to his in unmistakable desire.
I love you! I love you!
But he was afraid to speak the words aloud, because if she didn’t crush him down with some cruel remark, he knew that his feelings would grow. Even now he found great comfort in her returning his kisses as if she was as starved for his touch as he was for hers. When the edge of their mutual hunger was dulled to bearable, they stood, foreheads gently touching, his arms about her neck, her hands on his hips, holding him to her. She would exhale, and he would inhale her warm breath, feeling at one with her. He finally whispered much safer words that those that shouted in his heart. ‘‘I’ve missed you. I’ve dreamed of you.’’