Closer to the Heart

by Mercedes Lackey

  Coot kept passing among the guests, offering top-ups to their wine-cups, and Mags followed him with hulled strawberries and single grapes heaped in a silver basket. You more or less had to offer something to eat, he supposed, but Lord Jorthun’s plan was that the young bucks gathered here should get enough wine in them that they might start being loose-tongued. Strawberries would do next to nothing about soaking up the wine, of course. And offering them just underlined how wealthy Keira was supposed to be.

  Jorthun was sitting back, playing his part to the hilt—that of an indulgent father who might be enjoying the wine a little too much himself. Not so much that he was getting tipsy, nor so much that he was too talkative. On the contrary, he was mostly silent, merely sitting back in his chair and appearing to be a bit inattentive. Inattentive enough that he was completely missing all the flirtation going on.

  He wasn’t, of course. On the contrary. He was probably taking more mental notes than Mags was, and when this soiree was over, they’d all sit down and consolidate those notes.

  Meanwhile Keira was playing her part to the hilt, being charming to everyone, and flirting with every young man equally.

  There were seven of them. None of them were outstandingly handsome, which really didn’t matter. Keira had already had a poor experience with an outstandingly handsome young man, and Mags had had a bit of concern before they arrived that she wouldn’t be able to play her part as well if any of her targets had been good-looking. So that was one worry taken care of.

  All of them were very alike in coloring, and it was apparent there had been a lot of cross-marrying in this part of the world, which was hardly surprising. The local mine-owning families had probably been intermarrying for as long as the mines had been here.

  Their hair ranged in color from chestnut brown to a somewhat washed-out variation on the same color. They were all very tan. In this, they differed strongly from the wealthy young men of the Court. In this part of the world, being tanned meant you were well-to-do enough to be out-of-doors a great deal, and enjoying yourself in the sunlight doing things like hunting and fishing, rather than spending all your time underground or inside, sorting, grading, and cutting gems, or making them into jewelry. Of course, farmers and herdsmen were tan, too, but they’d never be mistaken for one of these fellows.

  Mags was taking a particular fancy to one of them, who was not treating him like an invisible lackey, was trying to amuse Keira rather than impress her, and seemed to have a great many interesting things to talk about. His name was Tiercel, and his father was Mendeth Rolmer. Rolmer was not one of the gentlemen who had needed commiseration on a bad run of luck the other night, and he owned, not just one, but several mines. Mags hadn’t yet been out to the Rolmer lands, but from the way Tiercel treated him, Mags fancied that Rolmer treated his mine workers fairly.

  Tiercel had the typical local face—nose a bit too much like a hawk’s beak to be handsome, cheekbones and chin both square, so that he looked as if he had been carved from a block of stone by an artist who either hadn’t quite grasped that human faces have curves, or who was trying to make a point about the family connection to rocks and gems. His medium-brown hair was untidy—not the purposeful untidiness that some of the Court dandies sported, but as if his hair had a definite mind of its own and was determined to counter any effort to tame it. He smiled a lot, but not too much. He was drinking moderately compared to some of the others. Each time Coot and Mags came around with their burdens, he always thanked them, and looked into their eyes while doing so.

  Mags actually felt sorry for him. He had come here, with intent, no doubt, to court a fine marriage prospect. He was very much taken with Keira. And this was all a sham. Poor lad, here he was, thinking he might have found someone he actually liked that his father would approve of, with no idea that his hopes were entirely in vain. It hardly seemed fair.

  On the other hand, he was competing with several other young men who were just as much in the running—if this had been real—as he was. So his chances had never been outstanding in the first place. One out of seven, at best.

  Mind on the job, lad, he reminded himself. Tiercel could be anything other than what he appeared to be. Just because someone was young, it didn’t follow that he was callow. And if his family was slipping gemstones out of their mines to finance the Menmellith rebellion, there was no telling what was really in his mind at this moment. He could even be eyeing Keira with the idea of siphoning some of her income to the rebels. In that case, it was literally his job to be accommodating and pleasant to everyone here in order to leave the best possible impression with Keira.

  “. . . oh, no,” Keira was saying, in answer to someone’s flattering statement that she must sing like a bird and play like a bard. “Father never wasted time on music lessons for me.” She laughed. “And I do mean the time would have been wasted. I can’t tell one note from another. Fortunately, this saves me from having to suffer through many, many mediocre performances of other girls. Not that I leave, of course, but it’s no worse than listening to them read. It doesn’t matter to me if they sing like a mule and play like a chicken pecking out notes! I can’t tell the difference anyway!”

  They all laughed, as they were intended to.

  “Quite right,” said Jorthun benevolently from his corner. “Gets it from me. Can’t tell a Master Bard from a street-singer. Useful lessons, now, that’s a different story. I made sure Keira had everything she wanted on that score.”

  “And what do you consider ‘useful,’ my Lord?” Tiercel was bold enough to ask, looking interested.

  “History!” said Lord Jorthun. “Lots of useful things in history. If you know history, you’re seldom unpleasantly surprised by what people do around you. And mathematics. Girl should know how to be able to check on her stewards and make sure they aren’t cheating her. And shopping!”

  The young men smothered laughter but a snicker or two snuck out. Jorthun merely smiled. “Oh, you laugh, but you won’t laugh if you discover your wife spent a small fortune on some shoddy stuff for gowns that won’t last a year! Or gets cheated in other ways! My girl knows how to find the best of everything and get it bargained down to a good price, and she doesn’t send some steward to do it for her, she does it herself!”

  Now, if this had been a Court circle, the assembled young men would have had far different reactions to this statement. They’d have ranged from astonished to appalled. Highborn women just did not do that sort of thing . . . or if they did (like Lady Dia), they took care to keep quiet about it.

  But this was not Haven, and most, if not all, of these young men had been raised in extremely practical households where at least the men were overjoyed to hear this sort of thing about a prospective object of courting.

  Keira smiled, and not at all coyly. “I was a young woman who was wedded to a kind, but very old man, who bought me anything I fancied. The household accounts were entirely in my hands, and I could lay those hands on as much of the income of his estate as I cared to. Merchants who assumed I would squander my husband’s fortune on trash and trifles turned up at the door every day. My husband wanted me to have pretty things. Father made sure I was able to keep from being cheated over those pretty things. Father had experts in all manner of things teach me how to tell the good from the bad, and how to price it all.” She reached across the distance between them and squeezed his hand. “He was a fine man, and so are you, Father.”

  Jorthun chuckled. “And no one taught you how to flatter, my girl, you had that from birth.”

  “Well, if I got a silver tongue it had to be from you,” she countered.

  They bantered playfully like that for some time, and Mags finally realized that they weren’t doing this to kill time, they were doing it to create a particular impression—the impression that Lord Jorthun would approve of any young man who managed to capture Keira’s fancy—and that Keira would not be easy to win, so they had best exert
themselves in that department. But at least they were not going to have to fight their way past a protective guardian. All they had to do was win Keira herself.

  You clever beggars.

  He’d had no idea just what Lady Dia had been teaching Keira, and it was possible that some of this had come from Keira watching her own relatives. But Keira was putting on a masterful performance, and like every masterful performance, it appeared to be utterly unplanned and unstructured.

  For that, she had his full admiration.

  They brought the banter to an end on a natural note, as Jorthun asked Coot for a refill, and Keira turned her attention and bright smile to the company. And Mags could only watch with admiration as she manipulated them.

  • • •

  “Where’d ye ever learn t’lead fellers around like that, Keira?” Mags asked, after the last of the company had gone, leaving him and Coot to clean up the empty goblets and set the room to rights.

  There wasn’t much to clean up. The guests had been mannerly. Most of the work was setting the chairs back in their usual configuration facing the fireplace. The goblets had all been borrowed from the inn, which kept them for “gentry.” Coot was picking them up and placing them carefully in the basket that had held the strawberries to take back down to the kitchen.

  “Dia,” Keira said, simply. “She pointed out that it was just acting, and I was always rather good at that as a child. I used to put on plays for mother and father, since we hadn’t any money to spare on entertainment, and only got to see things like that when father’s liege-lord invited us to his manor. The part I am playing is one she outlined for me, I merely have to make up the right words for it.” Keira helped Coot with the goblets; poured the last of the wine into a carafe and added the wine pitchers to his burden.

  “Dia is a good teacher, but you, my dear, are an apt pupil. I think you are going to make a capital agent for the Crown,” Jorthun applauded, no trace of inebriation anywhere to be seen on him now. “I, for one, am grateful to the impulse that led you to apply as one of the Queen’s Handmaidens.” Jorthun remained where he had been the entire time; comfortably ensconced in his chair at the window. Then again, there wasn’t much he could do; they were handling what little needed to be done. The last of the tidying up, Keira had said to save for the inn servants to do while she got her bath.

  “And I am grateful that you accepted me,” she replied, “And the only regret I have is that I am inevitably going to have to disappoint these nice young men.” She turned and shrugged helplessly. “What am I to do? This is the job I am here for. I just feel rather sorry for them.”

  “You can certainly feel sorry for them, my dear,” Jorthun said. “Just don’t allow your sympathies to get in the way of doing that job.”

  Her expression hardened just a little. “No fear there. Really, I am seeing their best faces, and I know it. For all that I can tell, in private, they are beasts, and I keep reminding myself of that.”

  “As well you should, my dear,” Jorthun replied, finally getting up from his seat. “Now, if you would all care to join me in my rooms, I’m having dinner sent up for all of us there. I think we have earned it, one and all.”

  “Coot, you jest go on over with m’lord and m’lady,” Mags said, taking the basket from him. “Ye done right good fer your first try at playin’ page-boy.” He thought a moment. “Iffen ye ain’t gonna starve, might could be a good time t’learn how t’wait on gentry at a meal.”

  “I ain’t gonna starve!” Coot said with more enthusiasm than Mags had expected. “Iffen m’lord an’ m’lady don’ mind doin’ the teachin’.”

  “Mind?” Lord Jorthun laughed. “I never mind teaching. To teach is both a privilege and a pleasure. Come, my lad, and together we shall explore the graceful art of meal service—an art that is seldom appreciated, and invisible when done well.”

  “Oh!” said Coot, as Mags went out the door carrying the basket. “Then it’s ’xactly like pickin’ pockets!”

  • • •

  Mags rode the appropriate number of paces behind Lady Keira; she had scandalized most of the town by appearing in a riding outfit with a divided skirt, much to his amusement. He couldn’t imagine why all the pointing and whispering. It wasn’t as if these people didn’t see women in trews, after all. Female Heralds only wore dresses and skirts on formal occasions, and women who had physical jobs to do often wore breeches or trews, though some of them wore such garments under a knee-length skirt. But evidently the idea of a lady in a divided skirt was unheard of. He didn’t blame her, though; the very few women he’d seen in that bizarre contraption called a sidesaddle had looked terribly uncomfortable.

  :The only “ladies” they see in a very prosperous village like Attlebury are the wives and daughters of the well-to-do, who have their own rather stilted notions of propriety,: Dallen told him. :Women like that seldom ride. When they do, it’s on a pillion, behind a manservant or a relative. They don’t ride to hunt, for instance, and they don’t have property to oversee.:

  Well, that made sense, then. When he’d been on circuit, they hadn’t stayed long enough in any of the truly well-off places for him to get a notion of village manners. :Seems I have plenty t’learn.:

  Dallen chuckled. :Everyone does.:

  Once they were out of sight of Attlebury, Mags responded to Keira’s gesture, motioning him to ride beside her, by urging his horse up those two lengths. When he got there, he could see she was smiling. “I shocked them, didn’t I?” she said.

  “Reckon so, Keira.” He chuckled. “Dallen tells me that there’s the difference ’tween Haven an’ a village like thet. Odd little thins shock folks that don’t see bigger towns much, and don’t got much call t’leave their own streets.” He gazed out over the fields on either side of them. “Country folk, not much shocks ’em. It’s th’ ones in towns thet git stuffy.”

  “Hmm,” she agreed. “Well, they’ll have to get used to me.”

  “Prolly you’ll set a new fashion,” he pointed out. “Been doin’ my due snoopin’ ’mongst th’ servants. Maybe the mamas’re shocked, but the gels’ll be cuttin’ up their skirts in no time.”

  She just chuckled.

  They remained side by side until the walls of the estate Tiercel had invited them to shone as a gray line in the distance, marking the boundary between open fields and the estate and mine proper. He dropped back then; it wouldn’t do to appear presumptuous, not if he wanted to remain invisible.

  The last time Mags had seen a mine, his circumstances had been . . . rather different. Then again, it was evident from the moment that he and Keira rode in through the gates of Master Rolmer’s property that this was nothing like the mines he had been forced to slave in.

  Instead of the untidy sprawl of nearly wild forest that had been behind Cole Pieters’ gates, the land on the other side of the walls here stretched out in neat fields alternating grazing and cultivation. Master Rolmer evidently didn’t see any reason to waste good land in ornamental plantings, but he also didn’t see any reason to put people off who were riding the lane up to his Great House, either.

  Cole Pieters’ Great House had been situated right at the mouth of his mine, and it had been the first thing you saw when you passed through his gates and got on the other side of his forest. Imposing, and more than a bit grim, there had been nothing ornamental about it.

  Rolmer’s Great House was something of a cheerful sprawl; it had several additions in different styles, probably added as the family had grown from the original Rolmer who had discovered the mine. But more to the point, unlike Pieters’ unfriendly place, this Great House was surrounded, at least on this side, by a very tidy little village of well-constructed and well-maintained cottages. Mags had a very good idea of how many people it took to run a mine, and it looked to him as if this village was perfectly large enough to support two, and possibly even three shifts of workers with their famili
es, and the folk it would take to tend those fields.

  :I can’t hardly believe my eyes,: he told Dallen, wishing that the Companion was underneath him and not a league or more away. Not because he was in the least fearful; more because he wanted someone who had been with him and seen the conditions at the Pieters’ mine to see this.

  :I really wanta believe this, an’ I’m feared to,: he said, after a few more paces of his rather stolid horse. :I wanta believe there’s people that treat folks proper—:

  At about that moment, Tiercel appeared at their end of the road that led through the village, mounted on a good strong hunter. He waved at Keira enthusiastically, and sent his horse trotting toward them with a huge smile on his face. “Lady Keira!” he called as he neared them. “Welcome! We’ve been expecting you this past candlemark. Thank you for accepting our invitation!”

  “Well, how could I fail to, when it was presented so hopefully?” she asked, with a smile. She waved her hand at the village. “What is this charming little village?”

  “It’s called Rolmer’s Roost. We helped build it for our miners, and the folks that work the Home Farm.” He wheeled his horse and brought it in beside Keira’s. “My family has always been of the opinion that when you treat your workers well, they not only work well for you, but their children and children’s children will want to work for you.”