A Brother's Price (8 page)

‘‘I—I—’’ He wavered, then steeled himself to pull out of her arms. ‘‘I can’t. I want to, but I can’t do it—I can’t betray my family. We’ve come so far from being thieves, but only because twenty of my grandmothers died in war, because Grandmother Tea lucked into finding Grandfather, because my mothers worked until they dropped to make this farm bountiful. I hate being the coin of their future, but—but—’’

And he knew, suddenly, that any look, or word, or gesture from her, and his will would go. He fled her, fled his own desire.

Jerin was not sure if he was relieved or disappointed that Odelia came to breakfast the next morning. She looked pale, weak, and battered, but pronounced herself up to riding. She spent the meal watching Jerin’s every move until Ren teased her for being a bird dog at point. Jerin had to admit there was an uncanny resemblance between the princess and a hunting dog locked on to a pigeon: the unwavering gaze, the orientation of the body toward the target, and the trembling desire kept carefully in check. As he feared, Ren announced that with Odelia fit to ride, they would be leaving. By setting out immediately, they would have a good chance of making the four-day journey downriver to Mayfair in time for the opening of Summer Court, where the princesses would preside as judges. Eldest offered the use of the Whistler dogcart to Heron Landing, where the royal steamboat was tied off. Odelia agreed that the small buggy would be safer than trying to take the ten miles on horseback to town. Breakfast finished, the women went out to hitch up the dogcart and saddle the horses. It happened so quickly, it wasn’t until Jerin set the last dirty plate next the kitchen sink that he realized the princesses were going, going for good, and that he’d never see Ren again. Suddenly it seemed something amazingly precious had slipped away, something he couldn’t grasp, no more than he could hold air.

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The paddock seethed with horses and women and children. Jerin stood at the edge, watching Ren give commands. Somehow she detached herself and came to him without seeming to seek him out. They stood in silence as Jerin tried to think of something he could say. Certainly not ‘‘Don’t go,’’ or ‘‘I think I love you,’’ or even

‘‘Don’t leave me here to marry the Brindles.’’ With his sisters near at hand, even ‘‘I’ll miss you’’ was dangerous.

‘‘Come back and visit’’ was impossible; he’d be married and gone within a few months.

Finally, he found something acceptable. ‘‘Keep yourself safe.’’

She looked away, a hint of tears in her eyes, but then looked quickly back, as if she didn’t want to waste one moment of their time together. ‘‘I will. I would feel better if your mothers were here too, in case there was an attack.’’

‘‘They’ll be back in a week.’’ Eldest joined them, Raven on her heels.

Jerin bit down on his disappointment, only nodding to Eldest’s comment. ‘‘They’re in Annaboro.’’ Ironically, the princesses would pass Annaboro halfway downriver to Mayfair.

‘‘What takes them down there?’’ Raven asked.

‘‘They took our two-year-old fillies down for market,’’

Eldest said.

‘‘They go the extra distance to visit their sisters and brothers,’’ Jerin added.

‘‘Sisters and brothers?’’ Ren asked, clearly startled by their rare proliferation.

‘‘Our grandmothers had twenty-four daughters and three sons,’’ Eldest explained. ‘‘They split the family in half. The elder twelve sisters stayed here at the farm, and swapped the oldest brother for a husband. The youngest twelve swapped the middle brother, and got the brother’s price from selling their youngest brother. They started a trading house in Annaboro with the money.’’

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A call took Eldest away. Jerin continued since the subject seemed safe.

‘‘Our mothers take our bloodstock down every summer to sell. Sometimes they take us along, so we stay close to our cousins. In the winter, when trading is slow, our aunts, uncles, and cousins come to visit us.’’

‘‘I see,’’ Ren murmured. ‘‘What do your sisters plan with their wealth of brothers?’’

The question made his stomach drop. ‘‘We might split the family again: eleven older sisters, seventeen younger. With the four of us boys, my sisters could swap two brothers for husbands, and sell the other two. Eldest is already twenty-eight; she and the others want a husband soon. I’ll—I’ll probably be swapped for a husband.’’ He closed his eyes to force himself to say in a neutral voice,

‘‘Maybe with the neighbors. Doric will be of age in six years, but none of the youngest sisters will be quite old enough then, so they might sell him. Liam and Kai—sell one, swap the other.’’

‘‘It sounds so cold.’’

‘‘Actually it isn’t that bad. With four boys, there is no pressure to accept the first offer.’’

Ren reached out to clasp his hands. ‘‘Keep safe.’’

With the royal party departed, the farm seemed emptier than two days previous when Eldest and the others were still gone. This being a laundry day, Jerin washed out the trousers he’d rescued Odelia in, and the sheets soiled by dreams of Ren. Her perfume clung to his nightshirt and he stood smelling it, wishing now that they had finished the deed. Finally, he added it to the soapy water, saying to himself, ‘‘Silly, silly boy.’’

When Corelle appeared, wanting to make sure he wasn’t ruining his hands with the hot wash water, he threw a bucket of dirty soap water at her. Corelle leaped at him, fist upraised, and vanished under a pile of screaming, flailing girls. The youngest dragged Corelle down by sheer volume as she punched and kicked. Jerin
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cursed and started snatching the littlest ones out of the fight before they could get seriously hurt.

‘‘Stop it! Stop it!’’ he yelled, plucking Violet out of the fray. The four-year-old had a bloody nose already.

‘‘Damn it, Corelle, you’re going to hurt someone!’’

‘‘Good!’’ she roared.

Heria appeared suddenly, summoned by the fighting.

‘‘Corelle, do you want to be thrown out of the family?

Stop it now, or I’ll see it done!’’

It shocked all the girls into stillness.

‘‘Who do you think you are?’’ Corelle growled, wiping blood from a split lip.

‘‘Eldest is pissed enough for you going off and leaving the boys unguarded, Corelle. You shouldn’t be fighting with the little ones, and if you hit Jerin, I’ll tell. Eldest will throw you out for sure.’’

‘‘I’ll tell! I’ll tell!’’ Corelle whined and shoved Heria hard, knocking her to the ground. ‘‘Oh, shut up!’’

Corelle stormed away, leaving behind little girls too angry to cry. Worse, they still had to carry the heavy baskets of wet linens down to the clotheslines and hang up the sheets. In the end, they pinned up only forty of the sixty sheets, creating walls of white that rippled in the wind. Blood from dripping noses, cut hands, and bloody lips splattered the rest of the sheets and they needed to be rewashed.

At dinnertime Eldest announced Corelle’s punishment for leaving the farm unguarded: her personal items, with the exception of weapons and work clothes, would be divided out to the youngest sisters and she would be given no more pocket money for the rest of the year. Hinting at a day spent inventorying Corelle’s belongings, Eldest read the list to be parceled out: Corelle’s flashy buckskin mare, her fine-tooled saddle bought at last year’s fair, her gold money clip, her two silk shirts, her tooled leather belts with silver buckles, her silver currycomb, and even her coveted keepsake box inlaid with
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mother-of-pearl. To give the youngest sisters credit, the greed in their eyes dimmed to pity as the list continued until only guns and knives were left to Corelle.

‘‘That’s not fair!’’ Corelle yelped.

‘‘I could throw in a horsewhipping too, if you like,’’

Eldest snapped.

‘‘What about the others?’’ Corelle indicated Kira beside her, Eva and Summer across the table.

‘‘
You
were left in charge.’’ Eldest jabbed a finger at Corelle. ‘‘
You
decided to go to the Brindles’.
You
will pay for this.’’

‘‘No!’’

‘‘Yes,’’ Eldest calmly stated. ‘‘You left four brothers’

prices, our entire future, the only hope we have to buy a husband and have children to care for us when we’re old—
all of that
—unguarded when you had been specifically told not to leave the farm.’’

‘‘Fine!’’ Corelle stood up. ‘‘There’s nothing I want,’’

she said, and then paused to run her tongue over her lips in a manner that made Jerin recall Ren delighting him, ‘‘that I can’t get for free.’’

Eldest caught Corelle by the hair and muscled her down into her chair. ‘‘First, you have let your hair grow too long. I suspect Balin Brindle to be the cause, but you
will
cut it shorter. Secondly, you’re acting a little too knowledgeable for someone your age. Again, I suspect Balin Brindle to be the cause, and that better not be the case. That’s how syphilis enters a family—one sister dallying outside of wedlock.’’

‘‘He’s clean, he promised me!’’ Corelle protested, indignant.

Eldest slapped her hard. ‘‘You do not put your family’s lives on the line with a promise from an outsider. Tomorrow we will take you to a doctor and see what she says about how clean you are. I warn you: if you’ve gotten yourself infected with something, you will not be wife to our husband. If we have to, we will throw you out of the house.’’

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‘‘No!’’ Corelle cried. ‘‘I haven’t done anything wrong!’’

‘‘You’d have us be like the Treesdales? Ignore the situation so our husband gets infected? Have him pass it to all of us, and then all the youngest sisters as they come of age? Do you want the whole family to die a hard, slow death? Do you remember how the Treesdales suffered? The pain? The babies born dead, born twisted? They’re gone, Corelle! The whole family gone, because Zera Treesdale got the itch to try out a crib.’’

Corelle hunched down, ducked her head, and pouted.

‘‘He’s not in a crib, and we’re going to marry him anyhow.’’

‘‘No, we aren’t!’’ Eldest stated, then forestalled an argument by explaining, ‘‘They approached us. We listened. That was all. That is not an agreement for marriage. Frankly, Corelle, we can do better than them. We have land, money, and breeding. We’ve got Queens’

blood in us, and don’t you forget that. You’re acting like a cat in heat, presenting yourself to anything that might want to service you.’’

‘‘At least I’m not servicing women on the kitchen floor in the middle of the night!’’ Corelle hissed. Jerin clapped hands to his mouth to trap in a cry of protest. Corelle witnessed him and Ren? Eldest turned toward him, saw his face, and went white.

‘‘Corelle, go to your room,’’ Eldest said.

‘‘I’m not a child!’’ Corelle whined. ‘‘I have a right to hear—’’

‘‘Now!’’

Corelle flinched backward from Eldest, shot an angry glare at Jerin, and then bolted from the room. Her footsteps thundered up the stairs and her door slammed shut with a bang.

Jerin sat frozen, hands still over his mouth.

‘‘The rest of you too.’’ Eldest indicated the youngest sisters, and they filed out.

‘‘Who was it?’’ Eldest asked quietly, emotionlessly, when he was alone with his middle and oldest sisters. His voice would only come out as a whisper. ‘‘Princess
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Rennsellaer.’’ Unbearable silence followed. He had to break it. ‘‘She didn’t mount me.’’ The silence continued.

‘‘She was sitting in the dark when I came down for something to eat. I didn’t see her until she had me in her arms, and—and—I tried to resist. I asked her please not to—and she pushed me against the hearth and kissed me. She didn’t mount me—we didn’t go that far. Father told me ways to make a woman happy, and that satisfied her.’’

‘‘The bitch!’’ Eldest muttered finally. ‘‘Come to our home, eat our food, sleep in our beds, and then rape our little brother!’’

Jerin wrung his hands, feeling guilty for not confessing that he had done nothing he hadn’t wanted to, that it wasn’t truly rape. He was afraid, though, of his sisters’

fury, and the cold disapproval he would have to live with until he married well, proving he wasn’t ruined by the incident. His life would be bearable only by claiming the part of wronged innocence.

Still, it galled to leave the dangerous word floating there, uncountered. ‘‘I’m still a virgin, technically. In the end, when I said that going farther would ruin me, she let me go off to bed alone.’’

The level of anger in the room lessened slightly. He rocked slightly in his chair, chiding himself for being a coward. Should he tell them how he surrendered to the seduction, enjoyed giving pleasure to the princess, and received ecstasy beyond description? Who was the true hussy in this family?

‘‘Do you think,’’ Summer said quietly into the stunned silence, ‘‘he did enough to catch any diseases she might have?’’

‘‘She’s a princess!’’ Jerin cried.

‘‘She’s a rapist,’’ Eldest snapped.

‘‘She didn’t rape me. She didn’t try to use any crib drugs on me. I’m still a virgin.’’

‘‘She took you. Maybe not completely, but still she took you against your will.’’

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Was it rape? He didn’t know. Certainly if she had let him go when he first asked, he would have fled back to his bed, remaining chaste in his lips, his hands, and his memories. Now only parts of him were virgin. He wavered in the belief of his virginity. Maybe being a virgin was like planting a garden—you could turn the earth and rake down the soil all you wanted, but until you pushed a seed into the dirt, you hadn’t created a garden. Or was being a virgin like a frosted cake, where once someone stole a slice, you couldn’t proudly serve it to visitors?

He realized that while he debated his virginity, his sisters were discussing the issue of diseases. It would be too soon, they had decided, to tell if he had caught something. They would take him to a doctor, but one far away, so his reputation would not suffer. He remembered with sudden, sickening clarity how experienced Princess Ren had seemed, how sure her touch, how skilled her kisses. If she could have any man that she wanted, then what was to say that she hadn’t already taken them all? What was to say she wasn’t diseased? Had they been intimate enough for him to catch something from her? God, they could barely have been more intimate!

If he was diseased, who would take him as husband?

The answer was obvious. The Brindles would take him.

The thought made him cover his eyes and weep. Eldest pulled him into a hug, murmuring, ‘‘Hush, honey, hush,’’ as the rest of the family fled or were shooed away.