Solace Shattered (5 page)

“Well then.” Fassal extended his elbow to the princess, and they descended the steps.

Arvana wove her fingers together.
Please Maker, he must come
. Her hope soared as Captain Degarius’s footsteps sounded behind her.

Then they stopped.

She glanced over her shoulder. His elbows perched on his knees, he sat on the top step. Her shoulders sank. Of course, he was Miss Gallivere’s escort and a gentleman; he would stay. And she could not. She had to chaperone the princess. The Household Guards waiting at the carriage would certainly see if she neglected her duty. She would be dispelled from tutoring and sent back to Solace at the very moment her mission might come to fruition.

She quickened her pace to catch the couple when the prince turned around and with surprise, noted her. He spoke to Jesquin and then ran past Arvana to the porch where he exchanged words with the captain. Captain Degarius looked warily toward Arvana and the princess and shook his head, but Prince Fassal thrust an adamant fist to his hip and the captain rose. As they neared, she overheard the prince say, “Just a short way. Otherwise, we’ll not have a moment together.” So that was the reason the prince had fetched the captain—to gain a bit of privacy.

“Hera, you’ll forgive Degarius,” Fassal said when they reached her and the princess. “He’s spent too long on the frontier. Certainly, you must not walk alone.” As if suddenly realizing it sounded like he was inflicting a rustic on her, he added, “You’ll find him surprisingly learned. No one knows more about the weather. Now, let’s head to that stand of wood. We’ll tour the garden later. Perhaps Miss Gallivere will be recovered enough to join us.”

Though Arvana knew she should rejoice the captain had been delivered to her, a part of her wished him away if it was such a trial being separated from Miss Gallivere.

Fassal linked arms with Jesquin. In a few brisk steps, they were out of earshot.

Arvana clasped her hands behind her back. If the captain walked any slower, the prince and Jesquin would be halfway back to Acadia by the time they got to the woods. As it were, they were fifty paces ahead. “Captain, I must at least keep them within sight. It’s my duty.”

With his chin tucked to his chest, his brimmed hat obscured the top of his face. “Should I stay a pace ahead or behind? I thought Solacians...men and women...”

Arvana forgave him a little for his obvious unwillingness to walk with her. Of course, he felt awkward. In the street, people gawked at her; a Solacian in public was a rare sight. “In Solace, the women and men usually stay to their separate sides of the valley. When we meet, we keep our gazes down. In public that is hardly possible and is not a rule. But I imagine at the moment we look to be perfect Solacians.” Simultaneously, they glanced to each other. She wanted to die from embarrassment. He locked his gaze back on the ground, and she turned her head completely to the opposite side. They had just entered the woods. She plucked a thick, narrow leaf from a rhododendron and rubbed it between her fingers for something, anything, to do other than look at him.

He laughed uneasily. “No one would mistake me for a Solacian.”

“Perhaps not. The uniform is all wrong.”

“I’m afraid more than the uniform is wrong. Our professions couldn’t be more different.”

“Except for the discipline, obedience, and subjection of self to the vocation.” Arvana didn’t know where the words came from or how they could have made sense.

“That is the extent of our likenesses. Our ends are different.”

“Peace?”

“Not all soldiers have peace as their goal. There are as many warmongers in our ranks as those who fight from a sense of justice and for the protection of their people.”

“
You
have peace as your goal.”

“I like to think so...but...what I meant...what I do, have done...our
ends
must surely be different.”

His voice was blithe, but his words had a hollow sound at their centers. Dear Maker, did he think himself beyond mercy? “You bear a special burden. You take upon yourself the worst of sins, the taking of life, so that others may live in peace. It’s far more of a sacrifice than I’ve made. For this there must be a special grace.”

“Is that Solacian dogma?”

Not exactly. How could she respond? How could she dare say that her unworthy heart intuited the Maker’s will? Yet, how could it not be so? “Some things one just knows to be true.”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.”

Despite her vow not to look at him, she desperately wanted the smallest knowledge of what expression he made the comment with, but the path narrowed and he fell back to let her walk first.

“You remind me of a soldier in my last regiment. He had a philosophical bent. Perhaps our professions—” Suddenly, he brushed past her, his black cape catching in his wake. Ahead, the trail split in two around a table-like stone slab. He peered down each path. “I can’t tell which way they went.”

Arvana dropped the leaf she’d absently rubbed raw. It wasn’t hard to chaperone one girl, yet she’d failed. Why had the superior trusted her to choose the relic bearer?

His back turned to her, still looking down one of the paths, he said, “This is my fault.”

“I should have paid closer attention. I’ll take one path.”

“No. You don’t know the grounds. I’ll not have everyone lost.”

“We should call for them.”

He shook his head. “The guards will come. That won’t end well for anyone. We’ll wait here. You have my word that the prince is honorable. They’ll be back soon.”

She sighed. “The princess is young and impulsive.”

“She is full young; I have thought so myself.”

Arvana wondered at his comment. Miss Gallivere was only recently of age and the captain could pass for her father as readily as her suitor. It was hypocritical of him not to see
her
as full young.

Jesquin thrust out her hand. What a pretty hand it was. It would be even prettier when it wore his ring, Fassal thought.

“I win, Gregory. I told you we could escape. Where’s my coin?”

Fassal shook a coin from his purse. She pinched it from his palm and held it temptingly before his nose.

“Would you like to try and win it back?” she asked.

“Or lose another?”

“I bet you can’t answer my history question. I’m an authority on the subject.”

“An authority? What period of history?”

“Ancient history. Upon penalty of death, answer true, Gregory. Have you ever loved a woman? No names, of course.”

By choosing his definition of love as one beyond the physical and with the potential of ending in a legal bond, Fassal could answer honestly. “Even without the penalty of death hovering at my throat, I will answer true—not until I reached Acadia.”

“Well answered.” She put the coin back in his hand. “Now, you must let me try to win it back with another question. Did you know I have never kissed a man? Really kissed.” Her eyes sparkled with expectation.

“Then add this moment to your history.” Fassal grasped her hands and pulled her close. Her lips parted eagerly, inviting him to them. As he kissed her, deep and hard, he counted himself the luckiest man in the world. She’d enticed
him
to the woods for a kiss. He pulled away and looked down on how her breasts raised with each breath. He lifted a brow. “Was it what you imagined?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps you must kiss me elsewhere, too, before you give me back my coin.”

He eyed the delicate earlobe hung with a swaying gold earring, the tempting curve of her neck, and the supremely enticing heaving breasts.
Please let it be the breasts
, he prayed, then grazed his forefinger over the plush flesh peeking from the top of her dress. “Here?”

“There.”

Blessed Maker
. The coin slipped from his fingers and he cupped her breasts in his hands and pushed them upward so that they nearly spilled from her bodice. Body and mind throbbing with desire, he bent and nuzzled his face into the warmth, pushed his tongue into the soft valley.

She giggled. “Your whiskers tickle.”

Pausing for a breath, he looked up at her smiling face.

“I didn’t say stop,” she said and, lacing her fingers into his hair at the nape of his neck, gently guided him back to her chest.

If time stopped and he was left for an eternity to lie upon the pillow of her flesh, so be it.

“Oh, that is lovely,” she cooed, and then her hands lighted on his shoulders and began to press downward. He resisted, unwilling to let his lips part from their pleasure, until she added, “Elsewhere, too.”

“Elsewhere? Where on the map is elsewhere?”

“The very center of the map, silly. I have heard splendid things happen when one is kissed
there
.” A hand drifted from his shoulder to pull up the hem of her skirt.

Before his wits departed him completely, he listened for anyone approaching.

Silence.

He owed Degarius mightily. As he went to his knees, the yellow of her dress completely filled his vision. “By the Maker, I love you,” he said.

Like opening a curtain to admit the beauty of dawn, she raised her dress. “I love you, too, Gregory.”

Degarius’s feet had not bothered him until they stopped walking. In truth, he hadn’t noticed them at all. Now, his heels ached. They might as well sit while they waited. He unclasped his cloak, folded it so that the medals were to the top and side, draped it over the rock’s edge, and then sat beside it. The Solacian remained standing. Did she not understand his intention or had he violated some bizarre Solacian rule that men and women might walk, but not sit, together? He extended his hand toward the cloak. “I thought we might sit.”

She hesitated, looking from her dress to the cloak. His cloak was a much finer fabric than her dress, and she probably didn’t want to spoil it. Damn, this was all so awkward. Why in the hell had he engaged in that bizarre conversation about professions? How had it even started? He should have stuck to weather. Fassal owed him mightily. He gestured again to his cloak.

“You’re too kind.” She sat.

First she thought him a good man, and now kind. She was deluded, naive.

Through the gap in the canopy, the sky showed clear blue. “It will be cooler tonight. No cloud cover. Light breeze.”

“For Valor in Service.” She was reading aloud the inscription on his medal. “This is what you received for killing the creature?”

“I can’t say for certain I killed it.”

Her fingers hovered over, but didn’t touch, the stag’s head with a mother-of-pearl full moon in its open silverwork antlers. Her wrist was fine, seemed so delicate in contrast to the coarse gray weave of her sleeve. How could a simple dress make one want to stare? He didn’t look any farther. It might not be their rule in public to avoid a man’s eye, but it didn’t make it any easier for them to accept it. He’d made that mistake at the Provincial Meeting when she was studying his sword and then again when she commented about him looking like a Solacian. It had obviously embarrassed her. Though these Maker’s women might move in public, they didn’t want notice. Living in society had to be especially hard for her. She was handsome. He didn’t need a second, or rather, a third look to confirm that.

“What was it like,” she asked, “fighting it? How did you find the courage?”

Before he realized it was happening, he found himself looking into her earnest, questioning eyes. They were a muted green, a familiar color, the color of a river, of the deep pool in which he swam at Fern Clyffe to relax after a long day of work in the fields. “Pardon?”

“How did you find the courage to fight the creature?”

“Courage? You do what you must.”

“Would you do it again?” she asked.

His artist’s eye took in how the gauzy, gray veil fluttered over her soft cheeks. “I would do it differently.”

Her full lips made a perfect circle as she asked, “Why?”

“Two of my men received the same medal posthumously.”

“The philosopher soldier?”

The strange daze of the last few moments dispersed. “How did you know?”

“You spoke of him in past tense.”

“It was his first patrol, and I meant to make it his last, for him to go on parade duty in Sarapost. But he had a way with the horses so I took to him Sandela. The other was my longtime lieutenant. He rowed the boat onto the lake for me.”