Nobody's Son (11 page)

Most of what he knew of swiving was from watching rams on ewes. A Princess now: a Princess would have expectations.

They must know things, these thin-fingered gentlemen. Probably that’s summat else you get taught if you’re Somebody’s Son.

Gail wore tights and a tunic the first time he laid eyes on her. Tights! What did you do about tights? The girls he had lain with were wearing dresses and nothing else: you didn’t need to be too handy, and they were helpful anyways. But tights! And corsets! These women wore corsets. Mark groaned.
Nails to nuts the wedding dress will be a lace-and-button nightmare
.

How long d’you think she’ll wait while you paw and fumble? How long d’you think she’ll stay with a jack who doesn’t know how to please a lady?

She’d take a lover. He knew it. And everything he had worked for would be in ruins. His house would be a cuckoo’s nest, some smirking courtier would be slipping his powdered pizzle into his wife, his servants would sneer at him, his soldiers would make horns behind his back.

“Shite!” He grabbed the brass-handled poker and jabbed at the fire, breaking its red heart.

And another thing: you swear too much.

Well.

No point in getting sick ower things that might never happen. Hell, the only times you’ve seen her, she hasn’t had much use for well-dressed pricks like Peridot.

The looks she’s given you, good and bad both, have been proud and sharp and straight as arrows. She’ll not take a lover behind your back, Shielder’s Mark. If she wants quit of you she’ll stick a dagger in your belly from the front!

And you could learn. You’ve clever hands for most things: no reason swiving should be different. It won’t be your body that lets you down.

She liked him well enough to look at, or she wouldn’t have challenged him with her eyes, daring him to ask for her hand. She’d seen him dirty then, and it hadn’t been his silver tongue that caught her fancy.

He had come back from the Ghostwood.

He could be a husband now, and a father too.

And to be a father…

They would be man and wife, after all.

A sudden memory rushed over him from some tipsy holiday night, the press of skin on skin, the smell of a woman’s hair in his mouth, her laughter smothered against his shoulder. Her stomach pressing up hot against his and his hand in the small of her back.

Mark drifted slowly to his bed, sat on the edge and pulled off his boots. Unbuckled his belt.

That could be Gail, nipping on his shoulder, her slender arms vined around his back.

A spark jumped through him. The salt taste on his lips could be her royal sweat; it could be her brown eyes kindled with candlelight, her thighs that made a valley for him to;—

There was a knock at the door.

Goat’s-piss and puppy-guts
! “Coming, coming!” Blinking to rid his mind of his fantasy of Gail Mark leapt up, swore, ran to the door in his stocking feet and wrenched it open with what he prayed was an easy smile.

Lissa, Gail’s serving woman, stood on his threshold. Her eyes flicked from his stockinged feet to his strained smile: adding him up like a manor steward toting rents.
She’s got you pegged to the last penny-piece, lad. O god
.

“I beg your pardon, worthy sir, for my untimely interruption.”

Demure, attentive, and unthreatening, Lissa was just what Mark expected a princess to be: tall and willowy, with wavy gold hair that framed her face. Earlier it had been plaited into an elaborate coiffure, but now, long after bed-time, it fell free, and rustled against her satin shoulders as she walked.

She was leading him down one of the darker, narrower, draughtier corridors in the Palace. Clearly the way was not much used; instead of glass lamps, empty torchbrackets hung upon the walls.

Lissa walked ahead with a taper in her hand. “We thought it best to be discreet; some gossips out of malice love to speculate, and could to their advantage turn the seeming impropriety of your visit to my Mistress’ chambers.”

“So why give them the chance?”

“The Princess willed it.”

Ah. “I bet this wasn’t your idea.”

Pause. Carefully, Lissa said, “The Princess is so well-equipped with judgements of her own, she seldom feels the need to borrow mine.”

Mark grinned. “I’ll bet.”

Thrown by the light of Lissa’s taper, their shadows snuck after them like cut-throats. “What if someone sees us going into Gail’s chambers?”

Lissa turned and cast Mark an amused glance. “Anyone who wishes to outface the Princess is very welcome to try.”

Gail’s quarters were not what Mark had expected.

On a peg near the door hung a heavy, ravelling felt cloak that had once been brown. Below, a pair of battered leather walking boots leaned like drunks against the wall.

Still smelling of smoke, bits of newly cured leather were scattered across a worktable under the far window. Also on the table was a woman’s corset; a strip had been cut from it, as if to make a belt. A stuffed goose stood just left of the fireplace, peppered with spark-holes.

Somehow Mark had imagined more lace. More pinkness. More finery. He looked at his bride to be.

“I shot him,” Gail said.

She was sitting on the edge of her bed, hunched over the worktable, sharpening a skinning knife as long as her forearm. The whetstone circled expertly up and down the blade: sliz sliz sliz sliz.

Mark looked at Lissa, but her smile was blank as winter. “Uh—shot him?”

“The goose. On my fourteenth birthday. I’m a good shot. Very good, for a woman of the Court. I practise most days. I ate him too,” she added. Sliz sliz sliz. “I hope you’re not one of those stupid people who kills for sport.”

Mark looked at Lissa again, beseechingly. She replied with a tiny, definite shake of her head.

Gail put away her whetstone and wiped the blade of her skinning knife with a rough oiled cloth. “I was hoping you would break the rules and try to see me, but frankly you don’t seem the wooing type, and I hate waiting.”

“You said I wasn’t supposed to—”

“Of course you aren’t.” Gail frowned up at him; it made her triangular face even sharper. “I just hoped you would try. But you are here now, so let me tell you how we will proceed.”

“Princess.” Mark bowed as correctly as he knew how. Turning, he bowed also to Lissa, a little less deeply. “My lady.” He stepped politely back into the corridor. “1 look forward to seeing you both at the wedding.”

“Where are you going?” Gail demanded. “You just got here.”

“I am going to bed,” Mark said. “I’m not a servant, Princess, nor a dog neither. I come when I’m asked, not when I’m called. I’m a free man born. I didn’t grovel for your father, and I won’t do it for you.”

Gail was looking at him in genuine surprise. “But—”

A spark smouldered in Mark’s voice, of anger and desire. “Your eyes, your hands, and even your bloody proud highhanded manners are in my heart like fishing hooks, Princess, but by the Devil you’ll get a fight before you land me.”

Gail blinked. “Lissa? Was that a curse or a compliment?”

“I would ask the gentleman,” said Lissa diplomatically, biting her lower lip and trying very hard not to meet Gail’s eye.

Gail turned to Mark and cocked her head on one side with the strangest expression, commanding and vulnerable at once. A real person peeped around the Princess then, like a child peering shyly from behind a mask. “Well?”

Like iron leaping to a magnet, Mark’s spirit jumped to meet her, the woman who would be his wife. “I meant to curse, but my tongue tripped ower my heart.”

To his amazement Gail flushed. “You’re a better wooer than I deemed,” she whispered.

Mark felt Gail touch him with her eyes, with herself. As some women bared their flesh she bared her soul, and from across the room he was stung by the shock of her nearness.

He could know her, if he dared.

That was the challenge in her eyes.

Mark’s fantasy returned to him, of holding her naked beneath him. He blushed, shamed to have such a picture in his mind while the real woman sat before him, head bowed and strangely vulnerable. For a panic-stricken moment he was sure she could see his vision of them making love. Resentment and tenderness and desire swirled in his heart.

He stood awkwardly in the doorway until by chance his hand brushed the iron dagger at his side. At its cool touch a weight settled through him, anchoring his heart firmly in his chest.

Gail said, “Please don’t go.”

Mark stepped back into the room. A moment hung between them then, clear and fragile as a bubble thrown up by a waterfall, drifting, delicately dancing between them.

Lissa closed the door behind him, and the moment was gone.

Better say summat, lad. You can’t stand around stiff as a plank forever
. “What is all that?” Mark asked, pointing at the worktable with its scraps of leather and gutted corset.

Gail smiled mysteriously. “You’ll find out on your wedding day. —Which is what I wanted to talk about.” She sheathed her skinning knife and put it on the table. She was wearing her gold earrings, Mark noticed, the long teardrops that swung in tiny circles as she looked at him. “I’d like Janseni to do the music.”

“Good. Yes.”

“Do not answer quickly,” Lissa said. Her voice startled Mark; he had almost forgotten he and Gail were not alone. “Such a choice is not without its consequences. It will seem an insult to Lord Peridot, and through him to Duke Richard.”

“That’s the point,” Gail said. “‘If you can’t strike the master, kick his dog.’”

Lissa frowned. “No hope of any marriage to the Duke can now remain, Princess. You need not fear his band upon your finger: why antagonize him? The Lord of High Holt may decide to yield before inscrutable Fate, but never will he pass a challenge by, if you choose to offer one. He is not a gracious loser.”

“He better learn to be,” Gail snapped.

“Good by me,” Mark said. “Janseni will do the music. Was there owt else?”

Gail uncrossed her legs and swung her heels so they thumped against the edge of her bed. “Well, there was one other thing,” she said reluctantly.

There are certain things a young man does not like to hear about his wedding night.

“What!”

“I’m sorry,” Gail said firmly, “but it’s out of the question.”

Mark stifled a curse. “Can’t we at least fight about it in private?”

“You mean Lissa?” Gail’s head drew back, and her earrings whirled in angry circles. “You think I am the sort of woman who tarries alone with a man before her wedding day?”

Mark stared at her amazed. Her gall left him speechless. “As if it would matter!” he spluttered at last.

“Lissa is my oldest friend and closest companion. I suggest you get used to her. Wherever I go, she comes with me.”

“Even when you come, she doesn’t go,” Mark muttered.

“That kind of comment is ill-suited to a gentleman,” Lissa snapped.

Great. Now he had angered even the statue. “Did her remarks become a bloody lady?”

“Princesses don’t have to be ladies,” Gail said. “It’s the best thing about being one. Look, it isn’t as if I’m saying
forever
. Just, not now, that’s all.”

Guess I should be bloody honoured. I bet not many folks hear the vixen plead.

Gail looked at him with a shy smile, as if to say, I know I’m being very difficult, but we have a special relationship, you and I: I know you will understand. “I can’t stand all these cages! City walls, castle battlements…” She held up the drooping corset and laughed. “They tie the cages to our bodies! I can’t breathe here for all the perfume!… I need to get away from that. When you came before my father like a hawk among the songbirds, you brought a taste of free air on your wings, Mark. Don’t ask me to give it up now.”

A shiver ran down into Mark at the sound of his name on her tongue.

“I want to go with you, be with you, travel the wide world. And I can’t do that if I have children,” she finished simply. “I’m an heir of the royal line. They’ll say it’s too dangerous for me to go out while I’m pregnant. Then will come the confinement. I might die, Mark. Some women do. And if I don’t, I’ll be a mother… and that’s a cage that never opens.”

“You’ve never been out in the wide world,” Mark protested. “It’s cawd, Gail! It rains and it’s muddy and it’s full of bandits and pox. You say you want to go out there, but how do you know? You’ve been a Princess all your life; you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I shot him,” Gail said coldly, pointing to the stuffed goose. “I shot him and I gutted him. I handle a bow a damn sight better than you, I’ll bet. I had a tanner teach me to cure leather and a dyer showed me how to draw colours from madder and woad and blackberry root. Don’t you ever patronize me, Shielder’s Mark.

“You will not come into my bed until I wish it. Nobody else can see how I can bear to wed myself to such as you. If I implore this marriage be annulled, the Bishop will comply before you can count ten—if you can count to ten; My father will have paid you what was owed, and you will then be left with
nothing
.” She glared fiercely at him. “Nothing! Is that clear?”

Bull’s-eye.

Slowly, Mark said, “When boys fight, they have rules. Because if you don’t, people get hurt. We have only known one another two days, Princess, and already you’ve drawn steel on me. Was it fun for you to tell me that everyone here despises me, Princess? Was it nice? Was it
smart
? In fifty years of life together we will have plenty of chances to bare our steel at one another.

“Tell me, Lissa. Is it well-done to throw my birth at me like this? Is this how nobles talk to nobles? Or is this how they talk to their servants?” Pale-faced, Lissa stared at the flagstones and did not answer.

“Who do you think you’re dealing with?” Mark yelled at Gail. “Your butler, your stable-boy? Or does everyone let you get away wi’ shite like this because of who your father is? Is that what being noble means? Hiding your bad manners behind your father’s cloak?

“I may not be some Duke’s son, but I’m the only man to make it back from the Red Keep. I walked through time and crossed the moat where the dead things live. If I was good enough to break the Ghostwood’s spell, then I’m good enough for you.”