A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 11

"Ar't not frightened when the children come and wake you in the night?"

She saw his grey eyes ice over, his thin mouth go into a compressed line. His face set hard and fierce against the tears, the memory of that violent night when he was taken against his will, his brother officers out in a tavern while he stayed back because he was unwell. Alone in the tent and unwell, he had woken with a dagger to his throat and had been obliged to suffer the most degrading of cruelties.

He turned into the castle without speaking to her, taking the beloved child in his arms back to safety, attempting as he walked through the entrance hall and the corridors to shut that memory back in its box. He thought he could do it with Hanya so soft and warm and asleep in his arms. He had to do it for Hanya's sake, and for Arianna's. He went to the sitting-room and sat in his comfortable armchair with Hanya close in his arms. He pressed his cheek onto Hanya's head and remembered that the man who had done him that great wrong was gone. He was glad of it. He was glad that Tashka had left the man bubbling his life out in agony, killing him with a cut to the throat instead of cleanly through the heart. He was glad that there were those who loved him so well that they would avenge him to the uttermost extreme of cruelty, since they felt it so much not to have been there to protect him. Probably it was wrong to feel glad of something so bloody and cruel but he was glad.

Typically she had followed him. She never did know when to leave well alone, she was not one to duck her faults or attempt to excuse any harm she had brought on you, even if through the cruelty of innocence. He looked at her from creased slanted eyes, her flushed face had become pale again, she twisted her long hands together and looked pleadingly at him, her face suddenly so sorry.

"No," he said. "They make such a noise when they come. They are crying, they trip on something on the floor. By the time they are in the room I am well awake and I know I am not in a tent in the field with some scum coming for me. Did that slack-mouth Tashka tell you? I'll give it him when he gets back."

"Mights't have told me yourself," she was trying hard to keep her voice gentle, to make it a suggestion not an accusation. "I ... never understood. I am sorry. It made me harder on you than I would have been."

"Oh yes I might have told you," he answered bitterly. "If I were a decent husband in any way to you, my Lady." He saw her round blue eyes dip down and then she suddenly said, "or if I were a better Lady wife."

He stared at her fair head in the dark blue hard hat bowed over and said softly, "oh my dear, you are a paragon of a Lady wife. It is a great burden, having to try so hard to live up to your perfection." She stared back at him at that, that full el Jien mouth that at court they compared unfavourably to her mother's parted in puzzlement. "You have secrets too, do you not? Will you trade me a secret, since you have this one of mine? Give me one that tells me you are not such a perfect Lady, since you know it well that I am not the perfect brave careless officer-aristocrat." He gritted his teeth in the smile against the fear in his eyes.

She turned her head from one side to the other and said: "What secrets do I have?" He looked bleakly at her, his thin mouth twisted against the pain of that dreadful memory.

She looked at the blond child she had not borne him, sleeping softly in the safe circle of his arm: the child of his Captain whom he had loved so truly and who had died before his eyes to save his life. "Has't lived through things no one should have to experience and afterwards found the courage still to love your children and the wounded former soldiers takest on here as servants, indeed all of the servants who depend on you," she said. "I think that is a better bravery than the careless bravery of bone-headed officers," her lip curled in that fine expression of scorn so that he wished he could bite it - softly, teasingly, to make her giggle instead of showing contempt. "I was bad at embroidery as a young girl," she said with a blush. "I always preferred riding. Astride." His mouth twisted in the smile against his pain.