“No, but it’s not exactly something my people are unfamiliar with. In fact, we self-inflict it on ourselves all the time in the form of dating.”
Martha made a snorting sound. “I have your definition of dating and it doesn’t include-”
“Hold on, I meant what goes on when two people are getting to know each other. A few dates can lead to heavy petting, with the guy expecting to score, but the girl still undecided, so they both end the date frustrated. They could avoid the heavy petting, but since that’s a learning-about-each-other process, too, they typically don’t avoid it.”
“Trust a low-tech human species to do things the hard way.”
“I suppose advanced worlds have figured out easier ways?” Brittany retorted.
“Certainly. Computer-matched compatibility, works like a charm.”
“We happen to have computer dating, and I promise you, it doesn’t work like a charm.”
“Antiquated stuff,” Martha scoffed, adding, “and irrelevant to our subject. So the proven effective Kan-is-Tran punishment didn’t bother you at all, eh? If that’s the case, I’d say you’ve got such an advantage over that boy it isn’t funny.”
“How do you figure?”
“The fact that their idea of Punishment doesn’t faze you. The fact that he’ll be drowning in guilt and the need to make amends every time he has to punish you. I’d say that puts you in the driver’s seat.”
Seeing it that way, Brittany couldn’t help grinning, “You gonna tell him?”
“Me? Now, why would I do that? I happen to like pulling the wool over on these guys. It’s just so priceless when their culture conflicts with logic they can’t dispute. Makes my day, I tell you.”
Brittany snorted this time, to which Martha just chuckled. But after a moment, Martha added, “By the way, Dalden didn’t take anything to help him get through that. It’s standard for a warrior to at least drink the dhaya juice first. He didn’t. He was determined that if you had to suffer, he was going to suffer with you. And your body might be conditioned to shrug that kinda stuff off, but his isn’t. At the moment, he’s in a good deal of discomfort. He continues to impress me, that boy, with the depth of his caring. Has he told you he loves you yet?”
“No.”
“He may never say the actual words, but you needn’t doubt it now.
Brittany smiled to herself. No, she didn’t doubt it at all.
52
�� ^ ��
BRITTANY WASN’T SURE HOW TO DEAL WITH JORRAN, High King of Century III. She’d been briefed more thoroughly on the way to the room where he was waiting, about why he was there and what he had hoped to accomplish. He’d had every intention of more or less kidnapping her and forcing her to become his queen. He’d had every intention of killing Dalden, too, if he could have found him with her.
He’d brought a modern weapon with him this time to do it, since his razor sword hadn’t been effective the last time they fought. It was what he’d killed the sa’abo with, without having to get close to it, and it horrified her that he could have killed Dalden just as easily with it.
He hadn’t been let inside the castle with that weapon, but he’d agreed to come unarmed into the enemy’s camp, so he could speak with Brittany. She’d been warned that he would probably try to talk her into leaving with him. She’d been warned not to trust anything he had to say, that duplicity was second nature to someone like him, who would say or do anything to accomplish his goals.
Jorran’s relatives had already gone home. Martha had done no more than park the Androvia in the middle of their fleet of ships to make them rethink their demands. Considering that all twenty-three ships could fit inside the Androvia’s cargo bay, there hadn’t been much to think about. The Centurians were a medieval people, and they recognized when they were outclassed and outgunned.
Challen hadn’t been all that thrilled with the peaceful outcome of the “invasion.” But when the Ly-San-Ters had become indebted to Jorran, that had pretty much ended any retaliatory sword practicing.
Dalden also couldn’t do as he would have liked, which was to make sure Jorran never bothered them again in a more final way this time. Brittany was learning that warriors here weren’t called warriors just because it sounded good. They could defend, exact retribution, and conquer just like anyone else, only they could do it in a big way if provoked.
She was left alone with him. Well, not really alone, since she had Martha’s link with her. It had been Jorran’s request, that privacy, and Martha wasn’t going to reveal herself unless she had to. Dalden had refused to allow Brittany to get anywhere near Jorran without Martha’s presence. He wasn’t the least bit happy that she was being allowed to see him at all. It had taken his father to get him to agree to it. And all because of the debt they owed Jorran.
It was Brittany’s debt, actually. She was well aware of that. He’d saved her life. There was no getting around the fact that she’d be dead if he hadn’t found her. So in an odd way, she could be grateful that he’d tried to kidnap her. How weird.
She waited for him to speak first. He looked nothing like the Jorran she’d met at home. He was wearing clothes from his own country, which included a fur-trimmed royal cloak, a long fancy tunic, and high boots. He looked now exactly like what he was, a medieval king, and his own clothing suited him much better than a business suit.
He must have been thinking something along the same lines because his first remark to her was, “Their barbaric clothing does not suit you. I would dress you in fine silks befitting a queen.”
“I’m old enough to dress myself, thank you.”
“I did not mean to insult.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to give offense, either. I owe my life to you. I am deeply grateful.”
He nodded, expecting no less. “Grateful enough to give that life into my keeping?”
“I’ve already given my life to another for keeping. You know him well. He is my lifemate.”
He waved that aside. “Their barbaric means of joining in marriage are not recognized on my world.”
“Nor on mine, but in my heart I recognize it. So it’s binding for me.”
He seemed surprised to hear that. “You want to stay with him?”
She couldn’t imagine why he might have thought otherwise, but perhaps a little explaining was in order. “Jorran, when I said I would help you in my world I lied. I was wholeheartedly against what you were trying to accomplish. I was assisting the Sha-Ka’ani in stopping you. If you’ve been thinking otherwise all this time, I’m sorry.”
He shrugged indifferently. “None of that matters. I saw in your eyes, on their ship, your real feelings for me.”
She frowned in confusion, trying to remember that day of major shocks. “Sympathy? You mistook my compassion for something more. I didn’t like it that they were denying you medical treatment, even though they assured me you weren’t in pain. I wouldn’t have liked seeing anyone left like that-but I see you’re whole again. You must have come across a meditech between then and now.”
“Only today,” he replied with some bitterness. “In their Visitors’ Center. We have not such things on my world.”
“Then I’d say you have reason to be grateful as well, that you have no lasting scars from what happened. My people would have put you in prison for the rest of your life for what you attempted, if they’d been the ones to stop you. The Sha-Ka’ani only returned you to your own home with a few deformities they knew you could eventually fix.”
“So in your mind that exonerates them?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say that in her mind, he was the villain, but she diplomatically bit her tongue. “I’m just glad that no lasting damage was done-to anyone.”
They’d been standing a good ten feet apart. He approached her now. It was all she could do not to try to keep that original distance, he made her that nervous. And as she’d feared, he touched her, though harmlessly, a mere brush of his fingers against her
cheek.
“You have a strange way of looking at things,” he remarked softly.
“Not strange, just different from how you view things. It doesn’t mean I’m right and you’re wrong, or vice versa. We just come from vastly different cultures.”
Jeez, was she telling him what she should be telling herself? What Martha had tried to make her see all along? The Sha-Ka’ani weren’t really barbarians, they were just different. Their way of doing things was normal for them, worked for them, so it was the right way. To compare them with other cultures, her own in particular, was ludicrous. They were unique. They’d evolve in their own way.
“You would like my culture,” he said wistfully. “I would make you a queen. What can your barbarian offer you to equal that?”
There was no hesitation in her answer. “Himself, which is all I need to make me happy-because I love him deeply, with all my heart.”
53
�� ^
MARTHA APOLOGIZED FOR NOT WARNING HER THAT Dalden had listened in on her conversation with Jorran, that it was the only way he would allow her to be left alone with the man. Brittany wasn’t too happy about that. They hadn’t spoken since he’d punished her. She had wanted to enjoy some of his amends-making before she officially forgave him, not have him hear secondhand that she still loved the heck out of him.
Not that it mattered, When she did finally see him again that day, he wasn’t interested in talking. He marched her straight back to their room, where they spent the rest of the day and half of the next making sure neither of them were still suffering over that silly punishment.
She was beginning to wonder, though, if his dragging her off to places without a word of explanation was going to be a standard practice, because he did it again the next afternoon. He tossed a white cloak over her shoulders, took her hand, and pulled her behind him out of the castle, across most of the town, and through some of the park that fronted the edge of the mountain.
He stood behind her, wrapped his arms around her, and said nothing while she absorbed the incredible view before them. All of the verdant green valley that spread at the base of Mount Raik could be seen, woods and lakes beyond, and in the far distance, even a long range of other mountains which were a mere purple haze.
It took her breath away, all that beauty. And then Dalden said, “You will build our house here.”
She swung around to stare at him incredulously. “I will?” she gasped.
“The design will be of your choice,” he replied matter-of-factly, as if he weren’t astounding the hell out of her. “You will keep in mind, however, that a warrior requires a good deal of space to keep from feeling confined.”
She grinned at that point. “You’re talking a big house, I take it?”
“Yes. “
“A really big house?”
“Yes.”
She beamed ecstatically-until she recalled that his country didn’t have lumber mills. “I’m not sure I can work with the materials you have available here.”
“Martha has assured me that she can obtain anything you require.”
“It will take me a long time to build something of the size you’re talking about,” she pointed out next.
“You will have help. Kodos and his lifemate, Ruriko, would like to assist you. Corth II will be available, also. And I will rarely be far from your side, kerima. You are likely to have other volunteers as well, once the town sees what you are doing. Sha-Ka-Ra has stood here for centuries without change. Change is not required, but it is not discouraged, either, and there are many who regret that we have no knowledge of creating things. Kodos has shown that clearly in his desire to learn your craft.”
“He actually agreed to let his lifemate work beside him, when your women have never known real jobs?”
Dalden gave her an aggrieved look. “To keep peace in his household, he was-persuaded-to agree. He made the mistake of telling her too much about your culture. She was greatly intrigued.”
Brittany winced. “I’m not heading for trouble here, am I? I really don’t want to go down in history as the instigator of the women’s movement in Sha-Ka’an. Not that you don’t need a women’s movement, but it’s been pointed out to me that you need to figure these things out for yourselves, not have them forced down your throat by other species.”
He cupped her face in his hands. “Do you intend to make trouble?”
“Well-no.”
“Then no trouble will occur.”
“Yeah, sure,” she mumbled.
He chuckled at her. “I am teasing you, chemar. I should tell you that I have come to a realization that has taken a burden from me. Long ago I made the decision to follow my father’s ways completely, to ignore my mother’s. It was a good decision at the time. It was not easy when I was young, to be so divided by such vastly different beliefs. But this left a hollowness in me, as if I were not whole. Finding you, knowing you, loving you, has shown me that-”
She squealed and threw her arms around his neck. “You said it! You said you love me!”
He set her back from him, gave her a stern look. “Do not try my patience, woman. You know very well the depth of my feelings for you.”
“Well, yes.” She grinned, not the least bit intimidated by that look. “But it’s still nice to hear it occasionally.”
He rolled his eyes, but drew her back against him. “What I wanted to share with you was that I am no longer divided. Half of me is Kystrani, and I can embrace that half, which comes with full knowledge of other worlds, other beliefs, other ways-including yours. Such things will no longer be ignored simply because they are unknown here.”
“You’re trying to tell me you’ve got me figured out?” she asked.
“I am telling you that you do not have to change completely just because you will live here now. I am telling you that your ways are understood, that such understanding will temper how you are dealt with. This does not mean you can ignore what you have thus far been taught of our ways. Until a warrior will not take for himself any woman he wants who is not obviously already claimed, you will obey our laws for your own protection.”
“Yes, I will.”
“Until our world is rid of beasts that can cause you harm, you will obey my orders.”
“Yes, I will.”
He frowned at her. “Why do you not argue with me?”
“Because this is Sha-Ka’an. These rules work here. They wouldn’t work anywhere else, but here they work just fine. Besides,” she added with a grin, “after the gift you’ve given me today, you’re in my good graces bigtime.”
He kissed her deeply, then gently-they were a long way from any privacy. “You may build hundreds of houses, whole towns, if it will make you happy.”
“I was talking about your love,” she replied in a softly purring tone.
That did it: he took her hand again and started dragging her off to find some of that missing privacy.
Brittany laughed to herself. He wasn’t really barbaric, her lifemate. A warrior, yes. Adamant when it came to protecting her, yes. A bit domineering, but understanding, too. And gentle. And caring.
And how the hell did she get so lucky?
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Heart of a Warrior l-3 Page 30