A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 03

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Clair el Maien van Sietter breaks fast.
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Part 4 of the 33 part series

Updated 06/07/2023
Created 04/02/2015
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NaokoSmith
NaokoSmith
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*****

Commander-Lord Clair el Maien van Sietter opened his slanted grey eyes and stared dreamily across his floor. Dim light through his curtains glinted on a china statue of a Northern peasant girl which Tashka had brought back for him the previous spring from P'shan. Her china smile and the bright glaze of her wide-hipped trousers were softened in the dimness of the early dawn. Clair smiled to think of Tashka. Then his mouth tightened to remember that he had been obliged to let his own brother go into a situation of high risk in a H'las troop. Although Tashka was curiously glad to go, and insisted to stay even after van Sietter finally agreed he might come safely home.

Clair felt restless, his muscles tense after the hard riding of the day before. He lay unable to drift back to sleep, his eyes floating anxiously from the china peasant girl across the cushions to a neat pile of books and then a basket of candied fruit with some wrappers loose among them. His thin mouth and his eyes curved in a sudden smile of extraordinary sweetness. Arkyll must have come in to eat the sugared fruit while he was away.

After he had lain a while waiting for sleep to carry him back off, he traced a sensual pattern across his thigh with thin fingers running under his nightshirt. Dreamily he fingered his penis which was still soft and small, he fondled his own balls. He was thinking about breasts: big and soft. His cock was rising surprisingly quickly in his thin experienced fingers as he traced over thoughts of putting a hand about a breast like that. He tried to remember what the areola looked like, had he ever seen it? Stupid fool, he had never thought to put his mouth to her breast and get that nipple hard and the pleasure trickling around her body from his sucking on her breast, even a lick of the nipple might have done it. Were they large or small nipples? Had he ever seen them? There had been so many since. She had been ripe for pleasure, her cunt soft and wet to his fuck even without his teasing her nipple. (Was it large or small?) He could have given her such joy, and had fun himself, if only he had been able to think of it, and then he would be able to remember the nipples to those big soft pillowy breasts ...

With an annoyed gasp, he realised he was attempting to get himself off while thinking about fucking his own Lady wife. He rolled irritably onto his side, his penis slowly subsiding without the pleasure of orgasm. He caught sight of the pictures on his box-desk by the bed. In an excess of emotion the day before when he found out that Arianna had taken Hanyan into their parental care without his having to come up with some story as to why this child was so particularly under his eye, he had put the sketches of Arianna el Jien and Hanya Vashin up there. They stood side by side, with a sketch he had once drawn of his brother officer Pava el Jien and the four Lieutenants of whom Pava had been so proud: Tashka and Tashka's friends. Clair stared at the two sketches of little Hanya's father and Arkyllan's mother.

He loved the two children with all the passion of a hot heart. He had always hoped for a family but even so he had never realised how much happiness - and how much heartbreaking anxiety - it would mean to have children. And her, she loved them too. He had not expected this of the big blonde beauty with the sleepy veiled cow's blue eyes to whom he was forced into giving his ring. She was such a perfect Lady, of course when he heard she was with child he came home to arrange a string of nursery servants so that she might continue to spend her time as she wished. He had imagined she would start going to court - probably not when he was playing about there but he was already beginning to spend time elsewhere. But she was up to her big blue eyes in plans for the nursery, already locked into a maternal love that was often lured into indulgence and that provided Arkyll with a constant affection in which he grew so happily. (Her indulgence was a problem but with Hanyan also resident in the castle, Clair could keep a disciplined eye over Arkyll and correct it.) She never spoke of going to court or to her home in Iarve or to visit her cousin Pava el Jien in Vail. Her gaze seemed completely turned in on his baby in his castle home.

He had supposed this was all she wanted, the child to play with. He was well content to think it, to leave her cocooned up in the castle with their baby while he took what measures were necessary to keep her honour bright. He provided the one nursery-maid to support her but left her to enjoy their child as he would have liked to have done. Now he was beginning to realise there was something else on the go. She did not spend her days sewing little garments and doing school-work with Arkyll; she looked strained as if she did not have sufficient time and needed him taking off her hands. Clair leaned up on his elbow in his narrow bedding, frowning off across the floor of his room past the piles of books and bowls of sweets, sculptures and a wheeled toy horse on a string.

After a while he got up and put the two pictures away again in the box with Tashka's letters, leaving out the sketch of Pava and his clutch of handsome young laughing Lieutenants. The four young officers were so beautiful and so intelligent that they were nicknamed the Angels. They rose rapidly under Clair's loving command in the Sietter-H'las war, every one was a Commander now; except his beloved brother - the brightest and most beautiful of them all.

When Clair walked into the huge stone-flagged kitchens, still only dimly lit by the dawning light through the windows, the night cook was dozing in a chair by one of the big ranges. He left the man snoozing while he fetched eggs and sugar from one of the larders. Working with a swift and quiet efficiency, he beat up a sweet omelette for himself, heating some jam to go in it. He cleared the table and the dishes he used in concentrated dreamy pleasure as he went. By the time he sat down at the end of the long table to the side of the kitchen with some coffee perfectly brewed as he liked it, the kitchen staff were starting to come in. They smiled to him but they knew he did not like to talk while he was breaking his fast.

As he was finishing off his meal with an apple that he cut into careful segments, there was a sudden movement, the kitchen staff all starting to rise from their places, scraping their chairs. He looked up to see Arianna coming in. He said to the servants: "Sit down, I pray you. My Lady will not ask you to leave your breakfast on her account." He pulled out a chair round the corner of the table to his for her, dragging a plate of chocolate pastries over towards it.

He took in with a quick flick of his grey eyes the fetching figured white and green dress that gathered about Arianna's full bosom, the little hairs sticking out of her plait and a smudge on her cheek revealing that she had not even washed her face. Evidently she had rushed down to catch him without taking the time to dress properly. Her casual untidiness made the appeal of her big curving body seem easier of access; he was forever telling Lisette she must dress Lady el Jien in a more formal style to prevent people thinking she might welcome their flirtation. This dress was reasonably smart if informal, not like that horrible pink rag. It was just that her hair needed doing (and her face a wipe with a cloth!). She was looking at him with her sleepy untidiness softening what appeared to be an anxious expression. He wondered ruefully what bloody birds' nest she had made in the household accounts.

His eyes lingered on the bosom of her dress. The laced bodice and the cut in to the waist made the shape of her big breasts evident, ordinarily she avoided a close cut of the cloth, choosing dull garments which did not flatter her curving figure. Dimly he imagined what it would be like to give her a favour from behind, holding those big soft breasts, playing with them and squeezing them to add to his and her pleasure. He thought regretfully that he ought to have tried it while he had the opportunity. Surely he had pressed a hand to those breasts once or twice, his hands seemed to remember them if his mind could not. The callow kid that he had been! bewildered and wounded in his mind, regarding it as a duty to take that body of soft curves in his arms to fuck her as she lay submissive and even more ignorant than he was below him. What a missed set of pleasures, if he had known then what he knew now about how to get a young woman on the go.

His dreamy face suddenly flushed up and he scowled. Angels' sake! he was as bad as his own footmen, after everything else he had brought on her head, to consider insulting her with his sexual attentions.

He was going to have to see the two footmen who used wheelchairs later. He did not think Fiotr, who had been a trooper under his command, would be so mad as to cast eyes on Lady el Jien van Sietter but he had noticed a sly shyness in Petra's eye as the man offered her some dish at dinner the previous evening. His face became cold with the scowl still on it, his eyes slid up to Arianna's face and he saw that her face had become cold and he frowned. What now, what grievance was she going to choose from the many he had offered her to hurl at his head?

Arianna's heart beat quicker with fear to see Clair cold and frowning, her face veiled over with coldness to hide her fear. Why must he be so hard to them all? Petra the steward was saying Clair was going to talk to the footmen. He was always packing off the young footmen as soon as they relaxed instead of going about so formally to fetch and carry. Was it a crime, for them to enjoy some sporting fun in the hallways racing their wheelchairs? but he was so unreasonable about it. She sat down by Clair, her head lifted high and proud. Dar brought her Hyaline bowl of drinking chocolate before returning to his own place further down the table. Tashka had commissioned the bowl for her from the artist Hyaline together with a set of wine bowls. Clair had grinned teasingly when he found out the wine bowls were for young van H'las but he was careful what he said nowadays about Tashka's passionate allegiance to the commanding officer who ought to have been a sworn enemy of the family's. He had gone too far teasing Tashka once about el Gaiel van H'las and Tashka punched him so hard that Clair had a black eye for a week.

Clair's eyes turned back to his plate, his fingers curled around his own coffee bowl, too small, with horses and dogs painted round it; a child's bowl.

Arianna reached restlessly for the kitchen accounts, piled in a heap to the back of the table, wishful to get the wounding recriminations over with as quickly as possible. A frown rippled over Clair's face, he sighed at the interruption to his quiet morning moment. As he was about to turn and ask for his second bowl of coffee, Arianna began defending a recent extravagant use of sugar.

Clair gave Dar, who had still not finished his breakfast, a grimace.

"I was only trying to make some cakes which did not use so much flour," Dar mumbled through a mouthful of sausage.

"What did you say to Dar to make him try not to use the flour?" Clair said in a voice of cross resignation, leaning his head on one elbow and looking rapidly down the figures on the sheets of paper in front of him: so neatly set out, so badly out of balance with the totals he had agreed with Dar and Ladda when he was last home.

"I only said ..." Clair switched off his attention and let her melodious voice ripple on by his side until he thought she had finished. Then he just said, "the price of wheat is very high."

"There are rumours of an accord between van Sietter and van H'las," Arianna responded. "The price of wheat may be lower next year."

"Do you think it will come to any thing?" Clair asked idly. "What tie could van H'las make with van Sietter? We should consider giving over some of our fields to wheat."

"Our land is not suitable," Arianna reminded him. "van Sietter must come to some agreement for the sake of the weaving trade and the poor in Arventa."

Clair laughed, his head came up with the grey eyes sparkling. "You are the only person with enough generosity of spirit to imagine van Sietter cares for the weavers and the poor," he said, the smile curling up his mouth to his eyes in the early morning summer light that fell through the narrow window beside him onto the table.

"He is your father," Arianna said softly, looking sideways at their servants but they continued to eat unmoved. She knew nobody who had ever served Clair would go above his fingers to his father, who cared nothing for those less powerful than himself, not even his own region's poor.

"May I have more coffee, of your courtesy?" Clair asked one of the junior cooks who had finished eating and was moving towards the bread ovens. Dar started to get up and Clair held a hand up to stop him. "Break your fast," he said. Arianna was already pulling some more papers out of the pile, her other hand holding a pastry from which she had only taken one bite, a skin was wrinkling across the surface of the drinking chocolate she was letting go cold. Clair's eyes hooded over, his face shadowed with irritation as his breakfast was disrupted - and for what. Angels! she lived in chaos, snatching at paperwork during breakfast, trying to think about the region when she was looking at accounts with Ladda. She had all the time of the day to do whatsoever she wished yet she tried to do two or three things at once and then was surprised to feel weary.

"I have seen all that," he said. "What happened," he asked Dar, "that you wasted a barrel of seafish two weeks ago? What are you about, buying seafish this time of year in Sietter when it has to come all the way up from Port H'las in the summer heat, with duties paid on it to the full extent too?"

Dar shrugged, starting to make an excuse. Arianna interrupted. "It is my fault. We always have fish in Iarve for the feast of the Angel of Baya. I pressed Dar to make an Iarvian feast - so that Arkyll would know something of how we celebrate the day. I prithou pardon me. Every year has't refused to let Dar cook seafish for the feast of the Angel of Baya. I did not understand why until now."

How easily she apologised, for such a small error of judgement. How could it be so hard for him to apologise for the many insults and cruelties he had poured on her head. Clair inclined his head, his eyes still hooded over. Tashka would have understood the depth of feeling behind the tiny gesture. Arianna only thought what arrogance and lack of understanding he showed - as always.

"What does't care," she said in a cold venomous spurt, "what I spend on the castle food when ar't not here? I will give of my own money if does't not wish to give to Dar and Ladda what they need. In addition to the allowance I give you!"

Dar turned aside pretending to be absorbed in his breakfast.

"You know that I do not give a copper coin's curse what Dar and Ladda spend," Clair said in a low voice. "It is my father who will give us trouble for it if I have to go back to him for more money for the castle accounts. You know he will say we are not fit to control our own money and send some spy to make us live on campaign biscuits. Is it not enough that he has had the disgusting insolence to push myself and my expensive brother onto your fingers to pay for our extravagance? What will you use for your library an' you spend all you have on sugar."

"What does't care what I spend on our library?" she demanded, her eyes flashing over her chocolate pastry. "Has't the court libraries and the King's University library to use! Does't grudge me a few books?"

"A few books!" he laughed suddenly, his grey eyes dancing. "Do you think I do not know what you spend on your library?" She looked suddenly frozen with fear, her long white fingers clenched on her pastry so that the chocolate inside it spurted out and smeared over them. "Keep your money to make a library that will rival the King's University," he said carelessly, turning his head to flick over the pages of the other household accounts. "For the Angels' sake, make van Sietter at the least of it buy the bloody flour and sugar. Why have you have signed for these new quilts? And what is this; one quilt has disappeared? How can that be?"

"Ladda says there was a blue quilt with embroidered peacocks in the room next to Tashka's," Arianna answered.

"Oh that one," he said. "Um. What nonsense, such a fuss over a stupid quilt. It is summer, Ladda does not need new quilts now. Forget this rubbish. Come and play chess with me." He started to get up out of his chair.

Dar and the other cooks were making unusually loud conversation in the effort not to listen to Lord Clair and Lady Arianna quarrelling but Petra, Dar's chief assistant, could not help a groan at hearing this. He had known Clair all Clair's life. The young el Maiens were unfailingly courteous to their servants and dependents but they spoke to each other in arrogant tones of command: Do this. Do that. No. Yes, but Arianna el Jien was unlikely to say, Yes.

"Calls't it nonsense, does't!" Arianna exclaimed. "And no word yet from van Sietter as to who his guests are." She added in a spiteful outburst, "he sent some letter saying, 'I have writ to tell the Lady Anastelle be here to meet me'. This is no matter of concern to you, is it?"

As she said the name that was never spoken in the castle Clair's face became thunderous with rage, his hand snapped to his sword, which he was even wearing at breakfast in his own home. Petra jumped to his feet and moved round to offer Clair a plate of fried eggs - it was the first thing that came to his hand. Clair stared blankly at it. "My Lord," Petra said. "My Lady has not finished breaking her fast." His insistent voice reminded Clair to whom he was talking and his hand slid slowly away from his elaborately decorated sword-hilt. Clair glowered hotly at his plate. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Arianna's head turn away from Petra, towards him, and a tear glinting in her round blue eyes. His thin mouth turned down at the corners.

"Ladda presumes on your good nature," he said softly. "It is summer, our guests will not need quilts - even that cold snake van Sietter might keep warm with a blanket in summer. There is plenty of time before winter to send the quilts to the seamstresses in Arventa - or at court. So you wish a finer job, I will send them to court but the work is needed in Arventa."

Her face softened in response to his milder tone of voice and in pleasure at a plan which might lend support to unemployed workers in their region. He seized at this opportunity when she might be inclined to be more forgiving. "Um," he said, sitting down and putting one hand out towards her in appeal. "I am very sorry, my dear." She lifted her head in sudden suspicion at this. "Er, it appears that yester day while ... attempting to take it to the kitchens more quickly than they ought, Fiotr and Petra dropped your tea set from the china workshop in Soomara."

Vexed tears came to Arianna's eyes: the beautiful egg-shell fine pale red plates and bowls with elegant swirls of gold decoration! "Lady el Vaie van Soomara sent me that set!" she exclaimed. "It was so kind of her, since she is your friend much more than mine, to make me such a generous gift."

"Um, yes," Clair said. A faint blush coloured his tanned cheeks and an embarrassed frown creased his brow. "Maive is ... very generous. I mean Lady el Vaie. I am so sorry."

"Make them pay for my tea set!" Arianna demanded fiercely, dashing the tears quickly from her eyes with one long pale finger.

NaokoSmith
NaokoSmith
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