Dark Moon Defender (Twelve Houses) (50 page)

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Authors: Sharon Shinn

BOOK: Dark Moon Defender (Twelve Houses)
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“Well, we never thought she’d be willing to marry
anyone
,” Will interposed. He was laughing.
 
 
He received a quelling look, too. “And we have long recognized that, whatever our plans for Senneth, she would do whatever she desired, so our opinions have never mattered much to her.”
 
 
“Your opinions matter to me,” Tayse said.
 
 
Kiernan nodded. “You are the king’s man, and Brassenthwaite serves the king. It would be an honor to welcome you into our family as my sister’s husband.” He stood up, his wine goblet in his hand, and saluted the Rider. “You have the blessing of the House.”
 
 
 
 
SO there was, after all, entertainment for the evening, despite the fact that the host and hostess had not thought to provide music or dancing. Everyone ignored Nate’s black looks and joined in a celebration. Chelley called for more wine, and even let the children raise a toast to Aunt Senneth and her unconventional suitor. Will came around the table and lifted Senneth off her feet in a rib-cracking hug, while Cammon ran up to Tayse and pounded him on the back. Kiernan stepped up to shake Tayse’s hand, but no one else had the nerve to get too close to the Rider, even when he was clearly in a benevolent mood.
 
 
Senneth herself did not want to come near enough to touch him; she was afraid she would combust.
 
 
Sabina made her way around the table and took Senneth’s hands in her small, cold ones. She was smiling wistfully. “I feel like I should be very shocked,” she said. “A serramarra and a King’s Rider! And I am, a little bit. And yet I think—is this a chance at happiness? I did not have such a chance myself. I would very much like someone else to be able to. If you love him, Senneth, marry him.”
 
 
“I love him,” Senneth said in a choked voice.
 
 
Sabina pushed herself to her tiptoes and kissed Senneth on the cheek. “Oh, then I am so happy for you. And I envy you from the bottom of my heart.”
 
 
Chelley pulled Senneth aside next. “Shall you be married from Brassenthwaite? Kiernan would like that, I think. We could invite all the Twelve Houses.”
 
 
Senneth could imagine few things more horrible. “Oh— Chelley—I don’t think so. A quiet ceremony, probably in Ghosenhall. I haven’t—trust me, this is something of a shock to me, I haven’t thought it through. But I would not be planning on some event at Brassen Court.”
 
 
“Well, if you change your mind, let me know. I would be happy to help you plan.”
 
 
Cammon came up behind her and put his arms around her waist. “You should have seen your expression,” he said. “You would have thought Tayse was asking permission to cut off your head.”
 
 
She turned to face him and he dropped his arms. He was grinning widely. “You could have warned me he was planning this.”
 
 
“I didn’t realize it till he stood up. Anyway, I wouldn’t have told. It was more fun this way.” He laughed. “I’ve never seen Tayse nervous before. I didn’t know he could
get
nervous. Justin won’t believe it.”
 
 
“Someday I hope to see you endure great public humiliation,” she said, her tone heartfelt.
 
 
He laughed again. “Probably won’t happen. I almost never get embarrassed. I mean, I don’t even know when I’m
supposed
to be embarrassed.”
 
 
“Well, then, I hope you fall in love with the wrong person and everybody stares and whispers about you.”
 
 
“Now
that
might happen someday. Seems like the sort of thing I’d do.”
 
 
At last, everyone had had enough opportunities to exclaim and congratulate and offer good wishes. It was almost winter; the sun had long since gone down. Sabina yawned and said she was exhausted, and the others all expressed the intention of seeking their beds. Senneth did not look at Tayse as she kissed the children goodnight and promised to talk more with Chelley in the morning. By the time she was heading toward the stairs, Tayse had collected Cammon and the two of them climbed up behind her, Cammon talking with great animation.
 
 
Tayse, like Senneth, was mostly silent.
 
 
She stepped inside their bedroom first, while he paused a moment in the hall to exchange a final word with Cammon. The cool air warmed merely from her presence; she bent at the grate to kindle a fire with her fingertips. Pacing across the room, she lit candles on the armoire, before the window, beside the bed.
 
 
Tayse stepped inside and set the lock, then stood unmoving before the door. She was halfway across the room, and both of them were in partial shadow.
 
 
He was the first to speak. “It hardly does me any good to abase myself before the marlord if the woman I love will refuse to have me.”
 
 
“Oh, that’s a risk, it is,” she said in a soft voice, staying where she was. “Serramarra are notoriously fickle. They toy with men’s affections because they only play at love.”
 
 
“Although they play very well,” he said judiciously.
 
 
She was surprised into a laugh. She reached up and began slowly unbuttoning the front of her dress. She had changed from her travel trousers into more ladylike attire for the meal, so at least she looked properly soft and womanly for this momentous occasion. Still, the dress must have twenty-five buttons; what had she been thinking? She undid the ones down to her waist, and then shrugged out of the sleeves.
 
 
“I am not entirely clear,” she said, “on the king’s policy toward his Riders. I know some of them are married, but very few. Is there any prohibition in place?” She pushed the dress down to her ankles and stepped out of it, leaving her shoes behind as she did so. Now she was wearing a chemise and an underslip borrowed from Chelley. She took a few steps closer to Tayse and began pulling at the lace holding the chemise together.
 
 
He stayed where he was, but she could see him smiling in the candlelight. “The formal policy is that Riders are not
encouraged
to marry,” he said. “Thus, the tradition is that all Riders elope, theoretically to avoid risking the ire of their king by asking permission to wed. In reality, Baryn has always been quite delighted when his Riders have found themselves husbands and wives. He has always been most extravagant with wedding gifts.”
 
 
There—the chemise was off. The underslip was balled up and thrown in a corner. Senneth was standing there entirely nude except for two pieces of jewelry—the glowing moonstone bracelet around her left wrist, and the golden pendant around her throat. Both of them seemed hot against her skin this night; both of them were pulling fire from her own wakened magic.
 
 
Four more steps and she was inches away from him. He had not moved or attempted to disrobe. He had not so much as lifted the embroidered sash of lions over his head. She placed her hands on his shoulders and let him feel the heat in her palms, all the way through the layers of his clothing to his taut flesh beneath.
 
 
“Yes, Tayse, I will marry you,” she whispered, and lifted her mouth to kiss him. “If you will have me, I will be entirely yours.”
 
 
That was all he had wanted to hear, apparently. He swept her up and carried her to the bed, kissing her so hard she gave up on any hope of breathing. The candles guttered and flickered; the fire hissed and leaped up; but they lay on the bed together, a conflagration of their own between them, and did not look away from each other for the whole of that long night.
 
 
CHAPTER 24
 
 
THE last two weeks had crawled by at a glacial pace, and even the gathering dark of oncoming winter could not cheer Ellynor up. She felt confused and restless and uneasy and lonely and, just the tiniest bit, at risk.
 
 
Justin had called her a mystic. She was sure it wasn’t true— and yet it could be true—he knew more about such things than she did. Ellynor had explained to him very earnestly that the goddess had conferred small magics upon her and he had replied impatiently, “Yes, of course. Magic is a gift from the gods.” Which no one in the convent had ever said, or seemed to believe, so perhaps he was wrong.
 
 
It was not like she could ask. It was not like Darris or Shavell would sit down with her and kindly delineate what constituted sorcery and what did not.
Oh, your ability to heal with a touch? That’s not magic. We don’t mind such displays. The Lestra would not be at all disturbed to learn you had such powers
.
 
 
The Lestra would be unhappy indeed.
 
 
Ellynor began to think Justin was right. She needed to leave the convent.
 
 
She began formulating letters in her head, during the days while she was cooking in the kitchen, during the nights when she could not sleep.
My dear Father: I miss the family. I miss the feast days. Please, may I come home for a visit? Rosurie does not want to leave, but please, may I come home?
That might not be strong enough. Neither her father nor her uncle would want her to leave Rosurie behind, and a little home-sickness would not seem, to them, to merit the long trip across the mountains to fetch her.
 
 
Maybe she should write Torrin instead. If he believed she was unhappy, he would sail across the world to find her. He would battle the guards at the convent gates. He would bundle her up across his horse and go pounding back out into the forest, racing away till they were free of pursuit.
My brother: Come for me. They are cruel to me here
. That would fetch him for certain. He wouldn’t even balk at leaving Rosurie behind— or, more likely, would drag her along with them, screaming and protesting that she didn’t want to leave.
 
 
Still, Ellynor didn’t believe she could actually write such a note. She had no proof that the Lestra—or Shavell or Darris— read their outgoing mail, but she had often suspected they did. Certainly letters that arrived for them had been opened.
The Pale Lady sees all; there are no secrets from her
, Shavell had told them all when Astira complained about this practice.
 
 
Well, the Black Mother kept plenty of secrets. That was what she did best.
 
 
There was a letter Ellynor could send that was guaranteed to bring both her father and her brother dashing across the border.
My family: I have fallen in love with a man of Gillengaria
. . . . That would drive them across the Lireth Mountains in record time. But that was the very last letter she would write.
 
 
If she decided to leave the convent, she would have to do so on her own, in secrecy. But she would have to have a plan in place—somewhere to go, somewhere to take refuge if the guards came after her, as she thought they might. Neft would be the first place they looked. Could she make it all the way to Coravann on her own? Would marlord Heffel take her in? Would he help her get safely back to the
sebahta
?
 
 
She was not worried about escaping the compound itself. She knew it could be done. Just a few days ago, hadn’t she aided in the escape of that poor, sad creature—marlord Halchon’s wife? There had been such an uproar when it was discovered she was missing, and Ellynor had felt a peculiar satisfaction in knowing she had been the one to send the whole convent into a frenzy. Not quite so helpless as she sometimes felt.
 
 
She hadn’t thought it through, though, before she did it. It had been a cold, sunny afternoon, and the novices were spending the day in the forest “gathering.” That was what they always called it when they streamed out in large, untidy groups and went ranging through the forest for whatever they could find. Most of the younger girls just brought back armloads of wood for the fires. The country girls, the farmers’ daughters, hunted for mushrooms and nuts, knowing what was edible and what was not. The more frivolous ones brought back bouquets of wild flowers—useless but beautiful.
 
 
And this went on all day. They poured through the open convent gates, fanned out through the woods, and returned, laughing and flushed with the exercise. Ellynor loved the “gathering” days—most of them did. They offered welcome breaks from the precise routines of everyday life.
 
 
On her second or third trip through the gates, in company with Rosurie and Astira and a half dozen of her other friends, Ellynor had noticed the marlord’s wife standing to one side, watching them. She had been here for quite some time, this visit, she and her husband and a whole troop of men. The Gisseltess soldiers, of course, stayed mostly in the barracks, and the novices only got a glimpse or two of the Lestra’s fearsome brother. But the small, pale woman had drifted around the compound, clearly at loose ends, looking fragile and lost. On this particular afternoon, she stood near the gates as the novices flitted to and fro, a wistful expression on her face. As if she did not think she would be allowed to set foot outside. As if she had forgotten what freedom felt like.

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