A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 31

A comment was asking how Clair and Arianna would manage the new responsibilities of the region. Well... that's another story - literally. There are two novels which follow this one, and which have their own story arcs. Arianna's work with the wider politics she is interested in is further developed as background in those stories.

I can't believe this is the penultimate chapter. I am going to be so emotional when I go to post the last one!

*****

Clair came into the sitting-room, walked to the fireplace and pulled a series of horrible faces, writhing his thin mouth about and screwing up his slanted eyes. He jumped up and down on the hearthrug a few times. Arianna, who had come straight through after dinner, rolled around in her armchair with laughter.

"What is it now?" she asked.

"Those bloody First Sietter officers," he complained, going to sit in his chair. He put a hand down to caress his old hunting hound's ears then he looked sad. She had gone during the winter, poor old thing. Not before her time but he missed her.

Now that he was Lord van Sietter he was obliged to have the ceremonial troop trailing about with him. He refused to move into Palladia Arventa, instead he sold it to his brother by marriage el Jien van Iarve, to use for merchants' conferences. This annoyed the King and the Privy Council very much since it was better situated than the court for meetings with those involved in trade. In their pique they offered much more to Arianna, Hanya and the merchants than they had intended. Clair tried hard to give Hanya the Palladia but Arianna insisted he accept a price that reflected its full monetary worth and made him send all the money to Lord Pava's young widow in Vilandia, in addition to the jewels and monies as laid out in her marriage papers.

Clair refurbished the old troop barracks at Castle Sietter for First Sietter. They were a great nuisance. It was their duty to follow Clair and Arianna and ensure their safety at all times but Clair felt it was ridiculous for them to insist on accompanying him to inspect the pigs and cows on the farm or the airing of the bedding in the kitchen gardens and to stand in a massed rank about him while he collected the boys from school.

Besides her philosophical objections to them as a pacifist, Arianna complained that the officers gossiped and giggled outside the library and that their weapons were hung in a way that made them jingle at the slightest movement, making it difficult for her and her students to concentrate.

The officers were always wanting to come and sit at high table for dinner, too, instead of in their mess. They had fomented an absurd rivalry with the Castle Guard so that the guards tried to make Captain Jien go and sit on high table with them when all he wanted at the end of a long working day was to sit with his husband the kennelmaster in the main dining hall. Clair completely banned them from coming into the family quarters, he said they could waste their time securing them from the passages by the dining hall.

"What now?" Arianna asked Clair, the laughter still lurking in the dimple in her chin.

"Such nonsense, forget it," he grumbled. "Come and play chess."

"Yes, alright," she said. She got up and reached up to the mantelpiece, to re-arrange yet again the gold-edged pink card inviting them to witness the bestowal of Dame Anastelle Yrai on Lieutenant-Lord Hanya el Jien van Iarve, formerly of First Iarve. This time she placed it carefully to the side of the mantelpiece, leaning it on a star-engraved glass full of coloured marbles, alongside the gold-flecked pink invitation to witness the bestowal of Lady Sevianne el Jien van Iarve on Lieutenant-Lord Volka el Darien van Trattai of First Trattai and the very elegant pink invitation with an abstract gold spray across one corner inviting them to witness the bestowal of Captain Hanya Lein of Sixth H'las on Major General-Sir Dar Vaie of the offices of the strategic staff in Arventa. Beside the wedding invitation cards stood a sketch of Hanyan's father, her husband's lover, which she had suggested they should frame and put up there.

Clair crossed the room in the sunny summer evening light falling through the long windows. He fetched the chess set and began putting out the board and pieces on the table by the windows.

It was a set Arianna had bought him for his birthday, made by one of the Namoon School. All the pawns on one side were broken bits of an ordinary peasant's eating bowl. On the other side, the pawns were small pebbles of the kind poor children collect in Soomara to play a local game. Most of the other pieces were also rubbish from a trash heap (carefully cleaned) except the Kings and Queens which were angular figurines of gold and silver with three or four jewelled eyes each. It was a symbolic representation of the extremes of poverty and wealth. Arianna said that at the least of it the price she had to pay for such a pile of garbage had meant that one Namoon School artist and her family would never live in poverty again. Clair adored it.

The windows were open, a soft breeze drifted in past the pink curtains with the scent of roses and lilies on it. It crossed Clair's mind that the curtains were faded and he should think about replacing them, maybe the carpet too. That would no doubt be high entertainment for the First Sietter officers, to go round the furnishing warehouse down in the town choosing matching fabrics. He went to fetch himself a bowl of brandy and Arianna a bowl of Graiel.

The sitting-room door opened and Petra the footman wheeled himself in and put two small plates piled with tiny pasties on the table. "Dar has made these snacks for the Guard who are having a card party," he said. "He thought you would like some too."

"Prithou thank him," Arianna said, resting her hand momentarily on his shoulder. He smiled a shy acknowledgement up at her before he wheeled himself out of the room. She was so elegant and charming in a blue silk dress that flattered the curves of her beautiful body and picked up the colour of her eyes.

As she went to sit down in the sunshine, round the corner of the table from Clair, Arianna tucked a curl of his beautifully cut longish hair around his ear and felt the tickle of an earring on her hand. She looked and laughed to see that he had pinched one of her sapphire betrothal set to wear in his ear. She sat down where she could lift her head and see the flowers nodding in the warm evening air outside. Clair let her take the 'white' pieces. (After some argument and a protracted correspondence with the artist who returned irritating enigmatic answers to their question, they came to an agreement that the pawns made from a broken bowl were 'white'.)

"So you will allow Hanya to be Minister for Trade and Employment?" Clair asked Arianna, watching her position a 'knight' on the board. (The broken neck of a bottle. Sithou, it suggests that the Knights waste their money on fine wines instead of succouring the poor. / Mm? oh yes my dear how interesting.) She nodded, considering the pebble he put out with thoughtful blue eyes. "You would have been the better Minister," he said, "but it would have eaten into your time on your theorem."

"Oh no," she answered, looking into his eyes and surreptitiously moving her pawn out while his attention was on her, "knowest it well, I am not a diplomat. I say whatever I want straight out. That is a disadvantage in working with the King and the Privy Council because they expect you to go roundabout in your own interest, not straight to it in everyone's. Besides, I have another important project to develop."

"Oh yes?" he said, contemplating her bit of broken bowl with a light frown of concentration. He moved out another pebble.

"Yes," she said. "I want to set up a peace corps as Tashka suggested."

"What?!" he lifted his eyes in horror from the board. "But my dear, what will a peace corps do?"

"They could guard the borders or police the internal problems of the region," Arianna argued. "That is not important, there is plenty of work a peace corps could do. What is important is that we would be saying: We are not interested in war and maintaining heavily armed troops. We want to maintain peace across the country as a whole. Our officers could be trained not in fighting but in skills of negotiation for peace."

"Oh yes!" Clair exclaimed. "I can just hear the thundering hooves of every other region's cavalry coming to over-run us if we do such a thing."

"No indeed," Arianna's face flushed with indignation. "Pava says he will set up a peace corps and Maive el Vaie says she will look into it."

Clair burst out laughing. "Tell me what they said truly," he suggested, his slanted eyes glinting sidelong at her in his good humour.

Her wide red mouth bunched up and she scowled. Finally she admitted: "Pava said if he has a peace corps it will annoy the Generals' strategic staff in Turaine who refuse to give him a position in their offices even though he worked to support Tashka in the occupation of Arventa and that he can design a new double-breasted uniform for them to wear. And Maive said if Pava is going to have a peace corps she is going to have a much better one and they will have a triple-breasted uniform!" she burst out laughing herself at that. "But Clair, it is Tashka's idea. If Tashka starts a peace corps in H'las..."

"My dear," he replied in a voice dripping with scorn, "the day that General-Lord Tashka el Maien van H'las of the offices of the strategic staff in Port H'las starts a peace corps, I will hang up my weaponry and go to the back hills of Sietter in a carriage to scrub kitchen tables. I have said it and you may hold me to my word."

"You are being unreasonable," she complained. "What of the officers we have in the region currently without employment? Think of Commander-Sir Darien, we are wasting his potential..."

"La la la, I am not listening!" he sang. "I refuse to have a peace corps in Sietter. Make your move, my dear."

"It is your move," she replied.

He looked blankly at the board, trying to figure out what she had moved where. After a while he tentatively sidled a priest across the board. (A tinny broken earring. You understand, my dear, the earring means the priest's doxy! is that not splendid? / Oh yes, very entertaining, my dear, I do prithou not mention it to the children.)

"Hanya makes excellent progress with his drawing," Arianna said.

He looked suspiciously at her. This change of subject could not possibly mean she was going to give her peace corps idea the go-by. She looked innocently back at him, her blue eyes limpid in her virtuous biddable face.

He knew then that she was definitely going ahead with it. She would pick a time when he was not thinking about it and slide some innocuous looking scheme in. Before he knew it he would be getting cross letters from Major General-Sir Dar Vaie to enquire what his thoughts might be on this project my Lady van Sietter was promoting. And Darien, a man of such great honour. He had courteously picked a time when Clair happened to be away with the boys - teaching them to pitch a tent and camp in the hills - to come and swear allegiance so that he could swear to Arianna's fingers without embarrassing Clair. Poor Darien would be obliged to become an officer in a peace corps! Clair sighed heavily.

"Yes," he said. "I have suggested that Vidor Hyaline should bring his own children to the castle school and give all the children art lessons."

"Mm," she said, moving another bit of broken bowl out.

As they played the late summer light became blue and crept magically around the flowers in the courtyard. They became nodding white and pale angelic shapes breathing perfume out in the soft warm air. A servant came to light the candles but they lifted their heads, the dark-haired and the blonde in the soft blue twilight, and they said there was sufficient light still.

As usual Arianna won and Clair sulked about it. He turned his head pettishly aside. She looked at his lean tanned neck with a sinew standing out in it and her own blue and gold jewel swinging gently in his ear in the dim blue light from the windows. His dark-haired head and tanned lean neck rose gracefully from the white lace collar of his blue shirt.

He was such a lovely. She stood suddenly up and came round the corner of the table and pressed her mouth softly under his ear. Clair sat quite still, staring away into the twilit courtyard, feeling the soft wet pressure of her sweet wide mouth on his neck.

She stood up away from him and began putting the chess pieces away, he reached out to help her.

They walked up the stairs by the sitting-room to her door and he turned to give her the usual quick chaste kiss. She stooped her head away from his kiss, taking hold of the lace edge to his shirt, her fingers fiddling in between the lace stars and suns and moons. He looked at her with one eyebrow raised in query.

"H-Hanyan does not have nightmares so much the more?" she asked him.

"No, it is some weeks now he has slept through the night," he answered.

"So... mights't come... and sleep in my room?" She was so shy about asking it, she could not even bear to lift her eyes to him: her husband. She looked down at her long lightly tanned fingers fiddling in the white lace edge of his shirt.

"My dear," he said in a suddenly joyous husky voice. He put his arm around her shoulders, stooping his head to look into her bowed blushing face and seek her kiss.

The touch of his thin firm mouth sent a pulse tingling all down her veins, making her knees feel weak. His arms were firm in affection around her back, she knew his strength. He could catch and hold her weight. She pressed into his kiss, her mouth joining his, her body moving closer to lean against him, her knees trembling.

Clair pushed into her mouth with his tongue. Her lips parted to him, his tongue came curling in her mouth. She caressed his tongue with hers, thrilling to the soft joining of their flesh in their mouths before he parted from her kiss.

He looked into her warm face, the blue eyes in the dim blue twilight looked into his unveiled, thawed, soft as the Summer. He pressed the latch of her door and she turned and went before him into her room.

Lisette had left the heavy curtains open because she knew Arianna loved to enjoy the summer twilight through her light muslin curtains. Clair latched the door and reached immediately for Arianna in the soft blue light, pulling her towards him and caressing her head, cuddling her close to him and whispering something in her ear, she could not hear, it was just a warm buzz that made her wide mouth curve up in a tickled smile, she leaned into his embrace.

She put her hands on his hips and pulled the shirt from the waistband of the old jodhpurs he was wearing, slid her long fingers up his back, feeling the hard bones of his ribs and also the scars there, ridges of skin to her fingers ends' touch. She started to think about how he had duelled, he had duelled her friends over her honour but then Clair pinched her buttock and she sniggered and her head went back, his mouth was on her throat, kissing her throat and the hollow at the base of her neck and her breast in the open neck of her cotton dress. He was putting a finger up to pull at the buttons of her dress. She put her hands up to help him, pulling the buttons out the button-holes.

He moved away from her, went to sit in one of the armchairs and hurriedly to unbuckle his sword-belt, pull off his boots, strip off his jodhpurs and underpants, unbutton his shirt. Arianna had gone to put her dress tidily over the stool by her dressing-table. She lifted her head, shy again now that she had reached her white cotton petticoat, unsure about revealing so flagrantly the glorious plump beauty of her body.

Clair came quickly over, wrapped an arm about her and pulled her over towards her bed. He hung his weapons over the end of the bed then turned to draw her into the covers with him.

They lay in the dim blue twilight, staring across the pillows into each other's faces. Clair pulled the cover back again and started to get out of the bed. She was stricken with panic, she reached across to him with an anxious hand. Why was he leaving her? He turned his head and said in affectionate reassurance: "I'll get a condom to protect your honour. So you will not risk being with child."

Her face in the twilight suddenly became soft and golden-warm in the blue light. "Woulds't not like to have another child?" she asked. "Perhaps we might have a girl this time?" Her blue eyes lifted shyly, hopefully to him.

He stared at her soft face gleaming with hope in the dim blue light. He gave a gasp of excitement and pleasure and turned hurriedly back to her, came hunting her kiss across the pillows, thrilling to this appeal to make theirs a marital bed. She lifted her head to meet his and he sank into the white sheets in the blue twilight against her big soft body.

Arianna reached out to grip his shoulders, pressing into his kiss, into his embrace. He held himself hard against her, half-drowned in the softness of her body. Her lips came away from his and her head went back. He looked at her lightly tanned neck and kissed it down to where at the edge of her lacy petticoat, her skin became milky white. There was a blue vein running just under her skin to her right breast. He kissed along it, his fingers pulling the laces of her petticoat undone and uncovering her bodice. She herself was hastily unhooking her bodice to expose her breasts to his kiss. He kissed tenderly along the vein down her breast and at last opened his mouth around the pink areola of her breast.

Arianna's fingers tangled in his hair, crooked and shaky. She was moaning softly, tossing her head in the pillows. He licked around her nipple, feeling it harden and sit up erect under his tongue. He closed his teeth a little way on her breast, he moved his mouth down to kiss it on the soft underside.

He pulled more of her laces undone and started pushing the petticoat and bodice off her shoulders, she started pulling at his shirt. He sat up and flung the shirt off to the side of the bed with her petticoat and bodice. He looked into her face in the dim light, her eyes were passionate blue in the blue twilight, her golden hair tossed and tumbling in curls down her head.

"My beauty," he said huskily. "My storming beauty!"

She laughed, rolling her shoulders in the pillows so that her big breasts rolled too. He bent his head to her breast again, kissed it, began to kiss down her soft belly, gentle pinches of kisses that made her stomach muscles clench up and she laughed above him. His fingers trailed down to rest on her creamy thigh. Her thighs were opening to his touch, his kisses were following his fingers, his fingers were tangling in her lacy cotton knickers and pulling them away, she was gasping above him among the pillows.

He put his fine experienced fingers to the downy fair curls of her pubic hair, looking up into her eyes with a wicked grin. Arianna stared down at him, her eyes bewildered but also lost in desire. He could do what he would with her now, she was gone over to him.

Gently he brushed his fingers in between the lips of her labia, so gently but what a huge force of feeling came flooding through her from his touch. He bent his head to her sex, she thought: 'Oh! he is going to kiss me... there! How strange!' He parted her labia with those delicate certain fingers and his mouth was laid softly to her sex.

Perfect.

His tongue was perfect to caress her sensitive sex. She smiled her slow sexy smile into the slanted grey eyes which were still lifted to look into her eyes. She began to breathe sweet noises. Odd feelings came wriggling up through her hips and her belly, it was so much fun! Clair's tongue was flicking at the little bump of flesh, her clitoris. She giggled, her shoulders and arms flung about in the pillows. Delicious!