Miami Days and Truscan (K)nights

by Gail Roughton

  He sensed the change; I knew he did, and I could sense also the growing puzzlement and the mounting hurt. He was entitled to be both puzzled and hurt; I admitted it. He had done nothing to deserve the increasing distance I was putting between us, but I could only explain by telling the truth, and surely that would stretch the distance between us considerably, maybe irrevocably, which could all be avoided if my body would just cooperate.

  “And how far will that distance stretch if you carry another man’s child, Tess?” I asked myself, but I wasn’t ready to concede that possibility, and indeed, there were no symptoms of pregnancy at all except for my delayed period, no dizziness, no morning sickness, and no headaches. But I still couldn’t take the chance.

  Matters were thus in this state of armed neutrality on the morning when Kiera bustled into our chambers with my three new riding outfits over her arm. I had been saving my original riding clothes for my afternoon rides with Dal and so had been dressing for the most part in the kirsons. I was delighted; I had almost forgotten about my request in the last few days, so miserable had I been over the misery I knew I was causing Dalph. They were perfect, and I tried on the one that first caught my eye. It was done in black and I looked sensational. Kiera stood back and clucked.

  “It is very—different,” she said. “Our women do not wear such.”

  “Madeline did,” I reminded her.

  “Not around the Rata. Only when she went out with Brentar.”

  “Well, this queen’s wearing them around the Rata,” I said firmly. “You should try it. All of you should. You’d never wear a kirson again.”

  I looked at the braids, and remembered my resolution. I’d never liked my hair this long and was suddenly impatient with myself, and irritated that I had bowed to Carlos’ manipulations and allowed him to dictate on such a silly thing as how I wore my hair. That was one thing I’d say about Dalph; he never indicated any displeasure with anything I wore or any hairstyle Kiera arranged.

  “Kiera,” I said suddenly. “Do we have any scissors?”

  “Scissors? I do not know…”

  “What do you cut things with? Cloth, paper, hair, things like that?”

  “Oh! You want skelos! But why?”

  “Never mind why. Just get me some, please.” I said and sat back down at my mirror. She scooted off and I pulled the braids out of their roll impatiently and began to loosen the strands. I held up sections of my hair. Let’s see, now. Could I do this? I had watched my hair stylist cut this style for years, I’d worn it exclusively like this during college and grad school. Of course, I could do it. The trick was not to cut off too much at one whack. You could always go back and cut more.

  Kiera came in and stared at me in horror.

  “You do not want these to cut your hair!”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, I do.”

  “You cannot!!”

  “I beg your pardon, Kiera, I most certainly can,” I assured her, reaching for the skelos and turning back to the mirror.

  “By the sword of Trusco!” she swore under her breath, and sounded so upset that I did pause in my activity. “Kiera, for heaven’s sakes! What is it?”

  “Dalph will be most unhappy. Our women do not—”

  “I am not one of your women, Kiera. That’s my major attraction for Dalph, you know that!”

  “But since the time of Tarn, a woman’s hair has been long and braided!”

  “Then since the time of Tarn, you’ve all had headaches from having the damn things pinned too tight on your head.”

  “Even Madeline—”

  “Maybe she liked long hair. Lots of women do. It just so happens I don’t,” I said, and turned back to the mirror. “You don’t have to stay if it upsets you this much,” I said, and she moaned slightly and fled.

  I was glad, actually, her disapproval was disconcerting, and I turned back to the mirror, and taking it slow and easy, one section at a time, just like I remembered my stylist doing, I recaptured the full, chin-length page boy of my graduate school and college days. I had just brushed the last strand into position and was smiling at my reflection, immensely pleased at the result, when the door to the chambers flew open and a raging tornado came roaring in.

  He rushed across to the door of my dressing room and stopped at the threshold, staring at me in disbelief. The flood of Truscan was so rapid I couldn’t follow one word in five, but the intent was clear. Kiera had been right. Dalph was most unhappy.

  I was momentarily angered that she had run straight to the King with such a minor thing as my new hairstyle, but then I realized she’d probably been quite correct to do so. She obviously knew him better than I did insofar as what his reaction would be and the reaction being what it was, I would have hated to have him view my new coiffure in public, without warning, for the first time. That had undoubtedly been her concern, as well.

  “You’ll have to slow down,” I advised calmly. “I can’t understand you when you go that fast.”

  He paused and gathered breath. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing!?”

  “I don’t think I’m doing anything at the moment,” I said. “I’ve already done it. I wore my hair like this for years. It’s much easier and it goes much better with the riding clothes. The ones you ordered for me.”

  “I only ordered them for you to use when you rode!! I did not intend for you to parade around in men’s garb at all hours of the day and I certainly did not intend for you to parade around in men’s hair! It’s shorter than mine!”

  “I can trim yours for you if you like,” I said sweetly. He was left speechless for a moment. Then he spoke again, in a direct order.

  “You are never—do you hear me—never to lay skelos on your hair again! Trusco only knows how long it will take for it to grow back out!!”

  “Whoa!” I said, losing my own anger and, truth be told, the tensions of the past week. “It’s my hair, and I will wear it as I please. I do not require your permission to cut it, or to wear my riding clothes, or to—”

  “You forget yourself and where you are!”

  Oh, so now, for the first time since our marriage, he thought he was pulling the “I’m the King” number on me? I didn’t think so.

  “Okay, buddy, let’s get this straight! You have amply made your position clear. You don’t like my hair. Now let me make this clear. I don’t give a flying flip! So what do you think you’re going to do about it? Glue it back on?”

  “You don’t, in fact, give a flying flip about anything or anybody as long as you get your own way!”

  So. The gauntlet was thrown; the die was cast. He was not upset about my hair; it was merely an excuse to vent his own tensions, the ones I had created in the past week. But I could not stop the words which dropped from my own lips in reply, knowing even as they sounded that they were unfair and untrue.

  “You should know about that, it’s the only way you operate, isn’t it? L'etat c'est moi and all that jazz. How’s it feel to get it thrown back in your face?”

  He stared at me for a few more seconds. I could see his hands clenching and unclenching into fists. Then he turned on his heel and stalked out of the room, a flood of Truscan flowing in his wake. I thought it was probably a good thing that he was speaking too rapidly for me to follow him. The door slammed after him with such force that the frame shook, and I leaned my head into my hands and gave in to my private tensions of the past week. I cried.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I did go out on my customary rounds with Dal that morning, who surveyed me critically and advised that though he had never seen such a style on a woman, it did look—he paused and I could sense him groping for the tactful words.

  “I got it!” he exclaimed. “It makes you look younger.”

  This kid was going to be a killer with women, for certain sure. “Younger?”

  “Yeah. It frames your face better. I like it Tess, I really do.”

  I sighed. “Glad somebody does.”

  “Abba’s seen
it, huh?”

  “You could say so.”

  “He’ll get used to it,” Dal assured me. Somehow I didn’t think so.

  I excused myself from his company again that afternoon, saying that I didn’t feel like riding, and he surveyed me shrewdly.

  “Is my little brother in the works, Tess?”

  I had to remember how astute this young prince was.

  “No, Dal. I guess the last few weeks have been catching up with me, that’s all.”

  The hour of lammas approached, and I called for Saraya and told her I’d like a tray in my room. I knew the entire Rata had stared after me in my wake all morning, and I knew that they probably surmised that their King would not be pleased, just as Kiera had, and I probably ought to go down lest they think I had been consigned to the dungeons, although if the Rata had dungeons, I didn’t know where they were. Then I thought, “Screw it,” and prepared to wallow in self-pity until such time as I thought Dalph would come in after the “den” time with Dal, when I would go to bed and again pretend to sleep. For sure, he wouldn’t be anxious for my company, and he might not even come in at all. As he had observed, it was a big Rata.

  I got into my robe and picked at my lammas tray, and then I passed a profitable half-hour staring out the window while seeing nothing. Thus, I was caught off guard when the door opened and Dalph walked in, already bathed and in his robe, smelling and looking wonderful.

  Trapped. He’d never believe I was really ready to go to bed this early. As there was nothing else to do, I merely remained in my seat.

  He walked over and stood in front of me. Then he swore softly under his breath and reached over and picked me up, sitting back down in the chair and settling me in his lap.

  “Tess,” he said gently. “What is it? I thought, in those first days, the first weeks—it might be possible—you seemed to enjoy my company—I thought we were building something, you and I. But this last week, you’ve changed, you’ve built an even bigger bridge between us and I don’t know why or what I’ve done. I watch you and Dal as you roam around the Rata, for all the world like you’re ten years old, too, I see you ruffle his hair, and I—it’s a terrible thing for a man to be jealous of his own ten-year-old son. But I know I can’t change anything if you won’t tell me what’s wrong. I don’t know that I can change anything, I honestly don’t know what else to do that I’m not already doing.”

  I felt horrible, and miserable as I was, I felt myself slide even deeper into misery. The tears were gathering again, and I mustn’t cry, I never cried.

  “So tell me, let me try,” he finished, putting the frosting on the cake.

  The gathering tears overflowed and spilled silently down my cheeks. My throat ached with the effort to hold back the sobs and I kept my head down so that he wouldn’t see.

  “Tess? The Tornans ride tomorrow night and I don’t want to leave you like this. Please talk to me.”

  When I made no answer, he lifted his hand and gently turned my face toward him.

  “Tess!” He stared at me, as helpless in the face of tears as any other man in any other world. “What is this? My Tess doesn’t cry, not when she’s thrust into a world beyond her own, not when a savage snaps the neck of her pilot, not when she stands in front of the barbarian king to whom she finds herself unwillingly wed. My Tess shouts defiance and throws goblets of wine. What have I done to make you so unhappy?”

  I didn’t answer. I threw my arms around his neck and buried my face on his shoulder, and the sobs I had been swallowing poured in a flood, along with the tears that soaked his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry I shouted about your hair, is that it? It’s true that no woman wears her hair such, but it’s also true that it’s your hair, and you do look—you’re beautiful however you wear your hair, and no one would ever mistake you for a man.”

  “Oh, Trusco damn my hair!” I sobbed, and he laughed softly.

  “Then it’s not my reaction to your hair. Tess, enough. Or I’ll have to stop trying to find the lost stone of power and look for a love potion.”

  I made a strangled sound.

  “See, you’re laughing. If we can laugh together, Tess, what is so wrong between us?”

  And in a flood of incoherence from which I don’t know how he picked up one thought from another, I told him. Once I began I couldn’t stop, and when I finished, I waited for him to withdraw his arms, move me off his lap, turn away from me and wait for confirmation, one way or the other, of my maternal status but he merely sat quietly. His first question was not the one I expected.

  “Women of your world do this once a month?”

  “Don’t Truscan women?”

  “No. Only a couple of times a year. Haven’t you noticed that Truscan families are not large?”

  “There were four of you.”

  “And our mother was from your world. Well, I will be damned. That explains it. Once each month, no one who knew her well dared cross my mother, not even my father. Especially my father, now that I think on it. So that was her secret of fertility, she was just born with it.”

  I reflected that certainly a mother didn’t discuss her monthly cycles with her sons, and that the occasion had probably never come up when Dalph and Johnny had had a need to converse on such. But still, this sense of wonderment wasn’t what I expected.

  “Dalph, don’t you understand what I’m telling you? I don’t see how it’s possible, but it could be! And you need to know, to be certain, who the child’s father is!”

  “But I know who the child’s father is, Tess. If a child exists, which, from what you’re telling me, I doubt seriously. It’s me.”

  “Dalph—”

  “Tess, it’s your own code of honor that’s the problem here, not me. You didn’t lie to me, you didn’t betray me. You came to me straight out of a relationship common in your world, one that carried, in that world, no dishonor with it. And I knew that. So consider your code of honor satisfied. It’s highly unlikely you’re carrying a child. But if you are, then I’ve made my own bed, and I’m perfectly willing to lie in it. As long as you’re in it. Children are prized in Trusca, Tess. Surely you’ve noticed that?”

  I had indeed. I hadn’t realized that in fact, they were so much harder to conceive in Trusca. A couple of times a year?

  Dalph continued. “I tricked you into marriage, and I waved the banner of your virginity over the battlements. Any child, in the eyes of the people, is mine. There’s nothing I could do to change it if I wanted to and I don’t. I can’t even understand why—do you know how hard it is for me to imagine a world where people go to such lengths to actually avoid having a child?”

  I struggled to translate this. “So you’re not mad at me and you’re not upset?”

  “What reason would I have to be?”

  “Men don’t usually need a reason when a woman’s telling them something like this!”

  “Are the men of your world really such bastards?”

  “Frequently.”

  He nodded slowly. “I begin to see why it’s been so hard for you to trust me. Look, consider it this way. You love Dal, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Well, because—because he’s Dal, he’s—remarkable, he’s—”

  “He’s a person in his own right, with all his faults and virtues. And maybe, just a little bit, because he’s mine?”

  I nodded agreement.

  “Then is it really so astounding to you that I could love a child as it grew just because of who and what he was? And also because it was your child? You really, even now, after the last weeks, have that low an opinion of me?”

  “Dalph, I don’t—I keep trying to judge you in terms of the most likely reactions of men in my world. You don’t react to anything like anybody I’ve ever known, and I should know better by now. I’m sorry.”

  “As you should be, my Queen,” he said, and gave me a gentle push to indicate that I should rise. I stood up and he followed suit. The
n he picked me up again and carried me over to the bed, depositing me carefully on top of the coverings. “And now—”

  “Now?” I asked, as he moved beside me.

  “Now, I think the time has come again to talk of many things. ‘Of shoes and ships and sealing wax—’”

  I smiled.

  “And if Tess can love the King.”

  “Oh, I’d say that was a done deal some while ago,” I said. He leaned over and kissed me. My lips parted, and he tasted just as good as I’d known he would. I felt the sweetness flow into passion, and he moved his lips down, over my throat, down to the opening of my robe, moving the fabric aside. His kisses moved across the tops of my breast, and down, his mouth capturing and teasing. I felt his hand pull on the belt of my robe, and moved my own hands over the lapels of his robe, savoring the warmth of his bare skin. I didn’t think the convenience of the robe was an accident.

  “You came prepared,” I commented.

  He raised his head and laughed softly. “Prepared to beg, if I had to. I didn’t know what else was left.”

  “Come here,” I ordered, pulling him up, and reaching my hands inside the robe to pull it aside. I ran my hands over his shoulders, down his chest, through the thick mat of dark hair. I felt his muscles bunch and ripple, and his hands moved lower, over the inside of my thighs.

  I sent my own hand downward and decided it was a good thing I wasn’t a virgin; he would undoubtedly send a virgin screaming in terror from the room. I felt his gasp, and he raised his head. Surely he wasn’t surprised at my touch? But he seemed to be. Then I had it.

  “Truscan women don’t—” I whispered.