Heart Fortune (Celta)

by Robin D. Owens

  The lady withdrew her fingers. “As I treasure her,” D’Hawthorn said. Jace sat again.

  She pulled up a chair and sat, too. “And, Laev, did you think to warn GentleSir Bayrum about hurting Glyssa without telling me?” she asked.

  “A gentleman’s understanding,” Jace murmured, thinking it might get the GreatLord in more trouble. T’Hawthorn glowered at him.

  “Uh-huh.” D’Hawthorn translocated a pretty china teacup in a pale green and poured the last of the tea from Jace’s pot into it, sipped and stared at Jace with serious eyes. When she put down her cup, she said, “I’m not a gentleman, and I’m not as noble and honorable as Laev here, and I know what it’s like to be poor and scrabble to keep body and soul together, like you. Not all nobles are rich, you know.”

  He’d probably known that, if he’d given it some thought.

  “My bottom line here with regard to your . . . relationship with Glyssa, is that if you hurt her, I’ll hurt you.” She nodded to the teapot. “Despite your excellent taste in tea. Understood?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, then leaned forward and gave her a flirtatious smile. “But you drank the last cup of my tea, and I wanted it.”

  She laughed and more gazes fixed on their table. The waitress hurried over with another pot, no doubt summoned mentally by D’Hawthorn and replaced the old pot with a new one. D’Hawthorn poured more tea into his cup and hers. “I like you. May I call you Jace?” she said.

  He wasn’t used to people asking. “Sure.”

  “And you can call me Camellia.”

  “You can call me Laev,” T’Hawthorn said.

  Like hell. That man didn’t mean it.

  Camellia glanced at her husband. “Are you done here?”

  “Who scried you?”

  She grinned. “One of my regular customers came from here to Darjeeling’s HouseHeart to ‘buy some tea’ she couldn’t get here.”

  “Nonsense,” Laev said. “You stock all your teas in all your shops and you don’t run out.”

  Camellia’s smile softened, and she reached out and touched one of her husband’s steepled hands. “That is true. How well you know me, HeartMate.”

  For the first time since they’d met, Jace saw Laev T’Hawthorn transform into a casual man instead of a powerful lord. He linked fingers with his wife, kissed her lips. When they’d parted, T’Hawthorn nodded at Jace. “I have invited him to stay with us.”

  “No.” Camellia D’Hawthorn was definite, but her eyes were kind. “He has to stay with Glyssa and the Licorices.” A smile hovered around her mouth. “They are a little . . . intense, but good people. You just have to get to know them.” She blinked. “They always treated me well, no matter how tough times were for me.”

  The pressure in Jace’s chest didn’t ease much at that, but hair on the back of his neck that had risen at the thought of spending time with Glyssa’s Family lowered a bit.

  “All right,” he said, lying. Naturally he didn’t have much of a choice in this unless he dug up a place to stay himself, a hostel or something. His words came out more sourly than he’d wanted. He stood, took his wallet from his trous and set out the amount of the bill and a good tip.

  Camellia stood, took Jace’s gilt and held it out to him. “My place, my treat. I’m taking care of this.”

  When he moved to take the papyrus notes, she plucked the wallet out of his other hand, studied it, and nodded. “Very nice. You have talent.”

  “Let me see.” T’Hawthorn stood, too.

  But because his wallet was an early, uninspired piece of leatherwork, Jace stuck it and the gilt back into his pocket fast. “Thank you.” He gave her a half bow.

  She glanced at her timer. “I’m behind schedule.” She kissed her husband. “Later.” She looked at Jace. “We’ll expect you and Glyssa midmorning tomorrow to talk about the novel. Of course there will be food.” Then she aimed her gaze at her husband. “Where do you go now?”

  “Nuada’s Sword,” T’Hawthorn said.

  The starship!

  Twenty-six

  When Laev took Jace and Zem to Nuada’s Sword, Zem remained outside in Landing Park.

  The one sentient starship wanted to hear every last detail that Jace could remember of its fellow ship, an older ship, Lugh’s Spear—the size of the corridors, the amount of dust in the air, the smell. What components comprised the smell that it could correlate to atmosphere.

  Jace spilled everything he knew about inside the ship, commented on the blueprints and the vizes from the expedition, the pics, and the maps drawn up by Del Elecampane. He had an attentive audience in the Ship and Captain Ruis and Dani Eve Elder.

  Finally T’Hawthorn put an end to the interrogation, and they walked out into the evening air. Air that wasn’t like Nuada’s Sword, or Lugh’s Spear, and nothing like the camp. Druida City was next to the Great Platte Ocean, and the sea air, with a touch of salt, dried on his lips.

  “Jace!” Glyssa called and ran across Landing Park toward him. She looked good, better than anything he’d seen since they’d walked back from the lake. Outrageous the need he felt for her, how his heart thumped when her body met his and his lips took hers and they tasted each other, cradled each other.

  Everything else faded until a continued fake coughing brought him back. Yeah, his mind had been totally gone while he was in a strange place, unaware of his surroundings. Not good.

  But he couldn’t bear to release his hold on her, even if he only cherished her fingers in his own.

  “Can I stop coughing now?” asked Captain Ruis Elder.

  “Of course,” Glyssa said.

  “Laev T’Hawthorn is taking you home by glider.” The man gestured and Jace peeled his gaze from Glyssa to see another glider, also purple, also streamlined, but able to carry four.

  The GreatLord leaned against it, grinning.

  Envy and something more like fear moved inside Jace. That man could crush him, make him disappear, do all sorts of things to him and no one would say a thing. No one might ever know. How did people live in the shadow of such power?

  Glyssa sighed. “EveningBell has rung. My Family will be awaiting us.”

  D’Licorice Residence wasn’t how Jace had imagined. For one thing, it wasn’t in Noble Country where all the oldest Residences were, wasn’t even in any other noble neighborhood, but in a small parklike estate near CityCenter. In fact, the Licorices’ land connected to the grounds of the PublicLibrary. Within walking and scaling-walls-and-spellshields distance, just beyond a thick bank of pines and other trees.

  Though he understood it was an intelligent house, a real Residence, it wasn’t large. Not nearly as large as the PublicLibrary itself. Barely three stories, an interesting-looking place, but not palatial or castlelike, like so many nobles preferred.

  When he went through the thick wooden door, he found himself in a small entryway, no grandhall, and the furnishings weren’t something his own mother would have thought of as good. No doubt they were sturdy antiques, and well enough cared for, but they had chips and dings, scratches and the occasional tattered area, worn spots in the rugs.

  “So you are Jace Bayrum,” said a woman’s light voice, and he stiffened and immediately stopped scanning his surroundings to focus on Glyssa’s mother.

  She wasn’t as tall as he, or quite as tall as either of her daughters, but she held herself with pride. Her face was thinner than Glyssa’s, with worn lines around her mouth and across her forehead, her hair a dark auburn, her hazel eyes intent.

  Jace untwined his arm from Glyssa’s. With his best manners, he stepped forward and gave as graceful a bow as he could manage to her. “I am,” he said. He didn’t drop his eyes.

  She nodded briefly, then her eyes flamed with curiosity as Zem flew from his shoulder to the newel post at the end of the wide banister edging the stairway to the upper floors. “A hawkcel, nicely colored.”

  Thank you, Zem projected at the same time Jace said the phrase.

  A quick nod. “I am Rhiza D�
��Licorice.” She gestured to the man standing just behind her right shoulder. “My HeartMate and husband, Fasic Almond T’Licorice, whom you spoke with a few days ago, and my older daughter, LicoriceHeir, Enata.”

  That daughter, too, had darker hair, greener eyes. Her gaze bored into Jace. He sensed she already disliked him for some reason of her own.

  D’Licorice’s mouth turned down. “I suppose I shall have to put you in the rooms next to Glyssa.” Her lips pressed together a moment, then she said, “Come along.” She took off at a good clip up the stairs to the second floor and down the hallway to the right. After a glance at the others, who remained expressionless, he followed the GrandLady. “The suite does not have a connecting door to Glyssa’s rooms. It is our best guest suite and the colors are blue and cream. The furnishings feature a lot of lace. I trust your fascinating Fam will not tear the lace.”

  He didn’t know whether she was being sarcastic or not.

  Zem, who rode once more on Jace’s shoulder, replied, I do not have a nest here that I would like to decorate with lace.

  For a moment the woman stopped, though she didn’t turn around, and shivered. “You nest in the wilderness.”

  Jace found himself soothing her. “There’s been a camp near Lugh’s Spear for a couple of years now. The land is cleared, and there will soon be a town.”

  “I hope not,” she murmured, then headed down the hall, threw open a doorway on the left, facing toward the back of the House, with a view of the PublicLibrary in the distance. This was more like he’d imagined. Gleaming curves of expensive and polished furniture. Delicate lace and silkeen wall coverings in a watery blue, trim of a cream tint with an edging of gold. Lace accents everywhere. “Please,” the woman said stiffly, not meeting his eyes, “be at home.” She looked at her wrist timer. “Dinner is in three-quarters of a septhour.” She paused. “The waterfall in this suite is one of the best in the Residence.”

  “Thank you for your hospitality,” he murmured, again doing the half-bow thing.

  Her glance grazed him, didn’t stay. “You are quite welcome,” she said, and he knew she lied.

  “I’ll be down in half a septhour.”

  She nodded and left, closing the door behind her. Jace set his duffle on the thick, pastel Chinju rug.

  The lace is very pretty, Zem said. It WOULD look good in a nest.

  Jace closed his eyes, went to the nearest wing chair and sank down into its soft depths, leaned his head back.

  “Welcome to D’Licorice Residence,” said a low and mellow, yet austere, voice.

  Jace was too tired to flinch. He didn’t open his eyes. “Thank you, Residence.” He wet his lips. “I’d like to sit here for ten minutes. Could you notify me when that amount of time has elapsed so I can use the waterfall room and get ready for dinner?” Not that he had any appropriate clothes.

  “Certainly,” said the House. “Glyssa is obtaining a couple of perches for Zem. One for here, and one for her sitting room.”

  “Sounds good,” Jace said. He could hear the slight whir of Zem as his Fam flew through the rooms, but still didn’t open his lashes. The whole day had twanged at his nerves, and this last bit . . . on his way to this suite, he’d passed Glyssa’s. And through the very walls of her rooms, he could see the glow of the HeartGift she’d made for him. He hadn’t brought his own. Hadn’t wanted to give it to her in an impulsive moment he couldn’t take back.

  But the radiance of the thing shook him.

  When the Residence gave him the time, he opened his eyes and saw a room his mother would be ecstatic to be in. One she’d have done anything to live in.

  Jace got up and paced to the waterfall room, stripped off his clothes and stood under the huge, rushing water, soaping himself with nice-smelling, foamy stuff.

  He came from the massive greed of his mother, a woman who’d pick, pick, pick at a person until she got what she desired. He came from a man loving a woman and working himself to death to give her what she wanted. And Jace never forgot that.

  He always kept his relationships light, always surface, never deep so they roused anything he couldn’t control.

  So he was selfish himself, wouldn’t let himself be manipulated by a woman for what she wanted that wasn’t good for him, too.

  No, he didn’t want to think about any HeartGifts, way out of his league. The whole day, far from his comfort zone . . . the Ladies’ Tearoom, for fliggering fligger’s sake.

  He snorted, tossed wet hair from his eyes, and managed to scrape up some equilibrium.

  Until dinner.

  D’Licorice herded them all into a dining room, where food in covered dishes already awaited. Everyone took their seat at the table that would hold eight and passed around the food. Jace got the idea that D’Licorice alone chose the menu.

  Glyssa’s father introduced a general topic of conversation that rapidly escalated to something Jace didn’t understand, but was of interest to the four Family members.

  He ate steadily, and listened, and looked at the quality of the things around him. His mother would have loved them, too.

  “Eat your greens, Jace,” D’Licorice said.

  He hated bitter greens.

  “I noticed that Glyssa needed more greens when she got home. She wasn’t getting the best nutrition at that camp,” D’Licorice said.

  Jace ate the greens.

  “And you must tell me,” the woman plowed on. “Since you’re working with Glyssa on this fiction project. Are your story stylings rooted in good research and fact?”

  Jace was sure that Glyssa would have assured her Family, all of them staring at him intently with judging FirstLevel Librarian eyes, that everything they’d written was minutely researched.

  He swallowed a mouthful of nasty greens that dressing couldn’t make palatable and said, “Of course. Glyssa is a very good historian for the project, recorded everything right for the Elecampanes, and transcribed Hoku’s journal well.”

  Glyssa’s sister snorted.

  D’Licorice frowned. “How could you judge? You have no formal train—”

  “Enough, Rhiza.” Glyssa’s father smiled at Jace, then stood, went to a cabinet in the corner that turned out to be a disguised no-time, and pulled out a plate of raw spinach, placed it on the table. He served himself, Glyssa, and raised a brow at Jace.

  “Thank you.” Jace held out his plate.

  “Those aren’t nearly as nutritional as bitter—”

  “We know,” Fasic T’Licorice said. “You’re the botanist, but we all know. But it tastes better.”

  “Humph.”

  Eventually dinner ended. While the Family proceeded slowly to the sitting room for more conversation, Jace retired to his rooms on an errand. He asked and received instructions from the Residence on how to send the small gifts he’d selected to Glyssa’s friends. A cache teleporter was built into the fancy desk. He rubbed the back of his neck, wishing he’d included gifts for the Licorices, too . . . but he’d expected to stay at T’Hawthorn’s. Should have chosen gifts for the Licorices anyway.

  A knock came at his door and he opened it to Glyssa’s father.

  Fasic T’Licorice gave Jace a direct stare. “Come into my personal library, why don’t you, son?” the man asked.

  Twenty-seven

  Jace knew T’Licorice’s offer was more of an order, but kept his posture easy as he followed the man downstairs. “How many libraries are there in the Residence?”

  Laugh lines crinkled around the lord’s eyes as he smiled. “There’s the main library, the hereditary GrandLord or Lady’s . . .”

  “That would be your wife’s,” Jace said. This man had married into the Licorice Family and become the Lord that way, just as Raz Cherry had wed Del D’Elecampane to become T’Elecampane.

  “That’s right,” GrandLord T’Licorice said mildly, but his smile had vanished. He gestured to an old but expensive-looking furrabeast leather chair in gleaming deep red. “I sense you’re very wary of my wife.”

&
nbsp; “She’s a very good manager.”

  As he sat in another chair angled toward Jace’s, T’Licorice hooted, grinned again. “That she is. Some people don’t know how to handle those types.”

  Jace said nothing. If there’d been a way to handle his mother, neither his father nor he had learned it.

  Glyssa’s father studied him in silence, and the truth was, Jace didn’t feel uncomfortable with the man, or the quiet. The guy had his own strength, his own confidence, and Jace bet that people would look at the couple and see—as he had before this moment—a very opinionated woman and a man who seemed to let her set the terms of their marriage. Perhaps a woman smarter than her husband, definitely sharper in manner—as his own had been.

  Those conclusions didn’t feel right to him now.

  “My HeartMate is a strong-minded woman, a forceful woman. She’s the PublicLibrarian of Celta, and that’s an honor and a position that carries some weight here in Druida City, even all of Celta. Something that she is always aware of. Our daughter, Enata, will be the next GrandLady D’Licorice in her time, something she’s been trained for and is always aware of, too.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you? I come from a noble GraceHouse myself, one with a small but fairly loving Family.” He shrugged. “The Licorices are as you see us—me, my HeartMate, our two daughters. Rhiza is a lot less . . . formal . . . than she was when we met. I take pride in that.” He glanced around the room. “And the Residence is beautiful and healthy.”

  “Yes.” Something they could agree on.

  “It’s always interesting to know one’s in-laws’ backgrounds. For instance, Rhiza’s father died quite early in her life and her home life, and this Residence, deteriorated.” A hard note entered Fasic T’Licorice’s voice. Jace raised his brows.

  “Neglect bothers me, as it does Rhiza. HeartMates usually hold common views. She and I have worked hard to restore the Residence.”