by Grace Draven, Thea Harrison, Elizabeth Hunter, Jeffe Kennedy
“I’m sorry, Jahna,” he said, abandoning formal address for her given name. “I’m a coward. I didn’t just leave; I fled.”
Her mask cracked, revealing a misery that made Radimar’s heart contract. “Why?” she whispered. “There was nothing to fear. It was just a kiss.”
The last part of her statement punched him in the gut. “Was it?”
She skirted around him to retrieve her cloak, her armor against both cold and pain. It shrouded her in folds of wool. The hood hid her hair now and of course the blemished side of her face. “Surely, you didn’t think I’d press you for a union between us or try to trap you into one just because you kissed me?”
He almost wished she had. “Such a thing never crossed my mind,” he said. “Try to understand. I was in your father’s employ. A well-paid servant but still a servant despite my title. In the eyes of Beladine aristocracy, including your father, you are my better and above my touch.”
She gasped, outraged. “I never thought such a stupid thing!”
“I know you didn’t.” This wasn’t going well at all. “It wasn’t just our difference in status. There was a trust between your father and me, and I broke it when I kissed his daughter.” He looked away for a moment before turning back to meet her confused, anguished gaze. “If I had returned to tell you goodbye, either I wouldn’t have returned to Ilinfan alone, or your enraged father would have seen to it I returned in pieces.” Jahna’s mouth fell open, shock in every line of her body.
“Even with your acceptance and his blessing, taking you with me then would have been unfair,” he continued. “You were about to start your apprenticeship with the Dames, become a king’s chronicler in the Archives. I would have robbed you of that chance had I plied for your hand then.”
Jahna blinked, the dark shadows in her eyes slowly clearing as they stared at each other in silence. She touched her birthmark with one finger. “I thought it was this that made you regret.”
The effects of a persecuted childhood still lingered, despite her obvious strength. Radimar caught her hand and brought it to her lips. “No, Jahna. You might always see your birthmark when you look in a mirror. After the first time, I never saw it again.” He tugged her into his arms and tipped her face up to his with one finger under her chin. “I shouldn’t have left the way I did. For that, I have no ready excuse or even a good reason. It was wrong and craven. I hurt the one person I would have battled the heavens to protect. Can you forgive me?”
She eyed him for a moment, the long gaze measuring as if she weighed the benefits and drawbacks of welcoming him back into her confidences and maybe her arms. The slow smile that spread across her face made his breath hitch. She stepped closer into the space of his body, and his arms automatically closed around her. Her fingers threaded through his hair to stroke his scalp.
“Kiss me again,” she said, “And I’ll consider it.”
~ 9 ~
The Maiden contemplative
“Are you cupshot?” Sodrin stared at his sister as if she’d suddenly grown a third eye in the middle of her forehead.
Jahna blinked, pulled abruptly from the pleasant memory of a snow-sugared garden and the heated embrace of a man whose touch she had craved for almost a decade. If one could be drunk on desire and affection, then she was about as cupshot as any one person could be.
She went back to writing. At Sodrin’s request, she had come to his chamber to act as personal scribe and list those tasks he still had to complete before his wedding the following evening.
“No, I’m not cupshot,” she replied. “I’m bored. You couldn’t write this list down yourself?”
He paced in front of her. “No. I can’t remember half the items. If it weren’t for you asking me if I’ve done this thing or that thing yet, there would be two entries on that list.” He leaned forward for a peek at her parchment and groaned. “I really wish there were only two entries there.”
Jahna glanced down and counted. “You’re going to be a busy man between now and the wedding. I thought you took care of much of this already.”
Sodrin ran his fingers through his hair. “So did I, but Manarys keeps adding to the list!” He glared at Jahna as she laughed. “It isn’t funny. You wouldn’t be laughing if you were in my place.”
She stopped laughing. “Maybe I would.”
He continued pacing, unaware of her new solemnity. “Would what?”
“Laugh if I were in your place. If I were the one marrying tomorrow.”
Sodrin halted, an impatient glint in his eyes. “Obviously that won’t ever happen.”
His casual conviction in that fact stung. Jahna laid her quill down and folded her hands in her lap. “Are you sure?”
That caught his attention. Sodrin’s eyes widened so much, he looked owlish. “What are you saying? Has someone offered for your hand?”
She shook her head. “No, but what if someone did? What would you say?” Radimar’s earlier admittance that he would have offered for her had circumstances been different gave her hope. Circumstances were now different.
Sodrin dragged another stool over to the other side of Jahna’s table and sat. “Depending on the man, I’d either tell you you’d gone mad or I’d congratulate you on finding the one person in all of the Beladine kingdom with enough brains to recognize a jewel of a woman when he saw one.”
Jahna’s vision blurred, and she blinked hard to chase tears. “When did you become so charming?”
He blushed and gave an uncomfortable shrug. “Just speaking the truth.” He drummed the table with his fingertips. “We aren’t children anymore, mushroom,” he said, using his old nickname for her. “You’ve always had a better head on your shoulders than I have, even if you’re younger than me. Whatever man you might choose to marry in the future, I’ll support your choice.”
“What if he were a man of lower status?” She asked the one question that would reveal everything. Sodrin wasn’t stupid. He’d figure it out in short order.
He tilted his head to one side as if to consider the question and froze. “Radimar,” he breathed. “Radimar has offered for your hand.”
She only wished. “No, he hasn’t.”
Sodrin waved away her denial as if it were an irritating cobweb. “He will.” He stared at her. “And you want him to.”
“I’m in love with him, Sodrin. I have been since he lived with us at Hollowfell. If he does offer for me, I’ll accept.”
Her brother stared at her for a long time before a wide grin lit his features. “He didn’t come to the capital for my wedding. He came for you.”
It was Jahna’s turn to blush. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“I know it’s true.” Sodrin banged his fist on the table, sending ink sloshing out of her inkpot. “Ha! This is brilliant! I’ll have an Ilinfan swordmaster for my brother-in-law!”
Jahna laughed at his excitement. She had hoped he wouldn’t become angry at the idea; she hadn’t expected this reaction. “He hasn’t offered, Sodrin. For either of us,” she teased.
More of the unconcerned hand-waving. “Eh, I give him three days at most.” He frowned as another thought occurred to him. “How will this affect you as a chronicler? Radimar is a swordmaster, and for all practical purposes, a nomad. You aren’t just going to abandon your work to accompany him on the road, are you?”
It was a valid question and one she’d pondered the previous night after she told Radimar goodbye a half dozen times between kisses. “I won’t have to abandon it; I can take it with me. In fact, if I travel, I can see things firsthand and chronicle them instead of relying on another person’s recollections and hoping they aren’t inflating or suppressing the truth. I can send those documents back to the Archives just as I did when I was at Hollowfell.”
His frown eased. “That could work.”
She had always envied Sodrin’s confidence, even now. “Do we have your blessing if he does?”
Sodrin reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “I can’t t
hink of a better man to be your husband, Jahna. Nor a better woman to be his wife. You have my blessing…if you help me with this list.”
Jahna circled the table to hug her brother. This early celebration might all come to naught, and it might well be that, in the near future, Sodrin would be hugging her in comfort. She hoped not. She prayed not.
Good as her word, she helped him with the numerous tasks his future wife had set for him. Between them, they managed to complete all save a few. Sodrin looked frazzled as they met again in his chambers. “I have to accompany Manarys to the Exhibition and supper before that.”
He handed her a silk sash intricately embroidered with the Uhlfrida crest and the crest of the Ilinfan Brotherhood below it. He grinned at Jahna’s gasp. “I commissioned it right after you told me you thought you’d seen Radimar in the market. Can you take it to him? If he wears it tomorrow, he’ll be able to sit with you at the wedding.”
Jahna slid the sash through her hands, admiring the smooth feel of the silk and the painstaking stitchery. It was more than just a visual pass to a better seat at an event. The sash signaled to all that Lord Sodrin Uhlfrida considered Radimar Velus a part of the House of Uhlfrida. “I think he’ll be pleased when he sees this, Sodrin.”
Sodrin motioned for a waiting servant to help him change into more formal garb. “Just be sure to tell him not to forget it tomorrow.”
She reassured him she’d take care of it and made her way through the palace, descending the stairs to the floor below the one Sodrin’s rooms occupied and came to a narrow door tucked into the rounded wall of an equally narrow turret.
She hadn’t seen Radimar since the previous night, and her lips still throbbed with the force of his kisses. The door opened on her second knock and Radimar greeted her at the room’s threshold wearing trousers and a tunic with its sleeves rolled to the elbow and the lacings undone to reveal a muscled chest. He was a breathtaking sight.
It took her a moment to drag her gaze up to his face, and she blushed at the humor in his eyes. She thrust the wrapped package containing the sash at him. “For you to wear tomorrow at the wedding. From Sodrin.” She winced. Could she sound any more idiotic?
Radimar took the package before stepping to the side and gesturing to the room’s interior. “You’re welcome to come in if you wish.”
A thousand thoughts raced through her mind, not the least being the question of whether or not they would continue where they left off in the garden the previous night. Jahna nodded and walked past him into a room the size of a broom closet, and she’d seen bigger broom closets.
This was no way to treat an honored guest. She spun around, a heartfelt apology on her lips along with the promise to string her brother up by his feet for cramming his friend and former teacher into a space a mole would reject as too small.
The lack of room and Radimar’s size put her nose to chest with him, and she gasped before tilting her head to stare up at the swordmaster’s smiling features.
~ 10 ~
The Maiden claimed
She stood so close her breath tickled his skin where his tunic lay open. The temptation to drop the package and gather her into his arms nearly overwhelmed Radimar. Instead, he satisfied the urge with a brief caress of the hair bound at her nape. She wore her cloak, but the hood lay back on her shoulders, the outrage on her lovely face plain to see.
“Sodrin assured me you’d have a fine chamber for you to stay in if his luck held and you came for the wedding. There’s hardly any room in here to breathe much less move.” Her eyes were wide, her words breathy as if her criticism of the chamber’s size wasn’t an exaggeration.
“Peace, Jahna, I’ve slept in far less comfortable places.” He turned her gently to face the opposite wall. “See? I have a warm bed and a table to put a candle or a plate of food if I choose to eat here.” He pointed to a spot under the bed. “My things are stashed there, and best of all I don’t have to share it with a dozen other people, something unheard of for this palace during Delyalda as you well know.” He gave her a gentle nudge. “Have a seat while I open this.”
She perched on the edge of the bed, her gaze avid. “Sodrin bid me tell you not to forget it tomorrow night.”
The “it” was a silk sash of deepest winter green, with the stag rampant stitched in gold thread on the weave—the heraldry of House Uhlfrida. Below it, more of the gold embroidery, only this time it depicted the crossed swords of the Ilinfan Brotherhood. Radimar traced one of the swords with a fingertip, his heart in his throat.
It was a simple sash of fine weaving and lush color, but its message was more valuable than a cart full of gold and meant so much more. You are one of us. You are of House Uhlfrida.
He looked up from the sash to Jahna who watched him, candlelight making her eyes almost glow. “Sodrin does me a great honor.”
Her smile was gentle, heartfelt. “You honor us by wearing it for the wedding.”
Radimar folded the sash carefully and rewrapped it in its linen cover before tucking it under the bed behind Jahna’s feet.
The candle on the table shared space with a slender carafe of wine and a goblet. Radimar poured a dram. “I have only one goblet. We’ll have to share it if you’d like wine.”
She placed a hand over her heart in mock solemnity. “I promise not to spit in it.”
He chuckled before sitting down beside her, and they passed the wine between them.
Radimar sensed her nervousness. It didn’t spring from fear. He could smell fear at a hundred paces. This was anticipation. Had she daydreamed about last night as he had? He wanted far more than a few passionate kisses from her, but he didn’t need her verbal confirmation to know she remained untouched. The knowledge sent a frisson down his spine at the thought he might be the fortunate one to introduce her to the pleasures to be had between man and woman. It also reminded him that the responsibility of making it pleasurable rested entirely with him.
“I hope Sodrin will be happy,” she said, worry lines creasing her brow.
He stroked her knee. “They’ll be a good match, Jahna.”
“I know.” She drained the wine and passed the empty goblet to him. He refilled it from the pitcher that shared space with the candle on the small table. “I’m happy for them both. A little jealous too.” She stared down at her feet.
Her unexpected confession surprised him. “Jealous of what, the wedding or the marriage?”
She snatched the goblet from him and took another drink. She didn’t hand it back. “Oh gods, that wedding. Tomorrow night can’t be over soon enough. We’re drowning in the pomp of it all. I don’t know how Sodrin has kept his mind intact these past weeks.”
Radimar didn’t either. “Testament to your brother’s good character.” He captured the goblet, placed his lips where Jahna’s had been, and drank. This time he kept hold of the vessel. “Then your jealousy is for the marriage? I thought your dream was to become a Dame of Archives.”
She sighed. “It’s my goal, not my dream. There’s a difference.”
He couldn’t argue that. “Then what is your dream?”
Jahna studied her hands where they rested in her lap, slender fingers pale and ink-splattered. “You’ll think it silly.”
“I doubt it.”
She turned to face him more fully, knee pressed to his. “I want to chronicle. It’s in my blood. But not here, waiting for someone interesting to arrive so I can write down the life they experienced. I want to write down my own life, see and experience those things scribes like me put down on parchment. I want to see them firsthand. Like you. You’ve lived an interesting life.”
Her words set his heart to racing. Did he truly hear what she was saying or only what he so desperately wanted to hear? That the idea of a nomadic life appealed to her? That it would in no way hinder her passion for written history?
He kept his voice even and questioned more. “But why do you envy Sodrin and his bride? They won’t be travelers after they marry. In all likelihood, they’
ll confine their times on the road to short trips to familiar places: Hollowfell, Timsiora, the villages closest to those places.”
Her unmarked cheek went red while the blemished one turned a darker purple. “Because as foolish as it sounds, I too want to marry, have children, be a wife.”
His heart stopped.
Then took up a beat to outrace a horse’s gallop. “Ah, Jahna,” he breathed, and her name on his lips was the prayer of a supplicant.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I told you it was silly.”
Her startled gasp echoed in the room when he reached over and lifted her onto his lap, her legs straddling him as her skirts tangled around her hips and his. “It isn’t silly at all,” he said once she settled.
She was warmth and softness and fine skin. The curve and slope of her waist and hips under his hands sent all the blood in his body straight to the erection swelling between his legs. Her eyes rounded even more when he shifted his hips and the proof of his desire for her pressed firmly against the juncture of her thighs.
“What if I told you that my dream was to take a chronicler as my wife? To have her travel with me so I might show her those things ancient and fantastic that dot this kingdom and others? To buy her more ink and parchment than she can ever use? To be the father of her children?”
Jahna inhaled a harsh breath, the action settling her hips even harder on him. Radimar bit back a groan. “What are you saying?”
He was not a bard blessed with the ability to fashion words into gems that sparkled, but he was honest, he was forthright, and he loved this woman with every thread of his being. “Be my wife,” he implored. “Allow me to be your husband. All that I have and all that I am are yours, and I will love you beyond the end of my days.”
Tears made her eyes glossy. One spilled off her bottom lashes to slide down her cheek. She held his face in her hands. “Yes,” she said. “Oh yes.”