The Sword (10 page)

Kelly rolled her eyes. She just wasn't having much luck with strings, today. She knew how to make them, but she didn't have any of the materials she'd need. Sighing, she checked the remaining garments for size.

It was the same with the blouses. The skirts were better; one fit, though it bared her ankles halfway up her calves. Somehow, she guessed that would be “scandalous” to Katani sensibilities. Not that it would stop her, of course. The blouses were too small, save for maybe one that was spotted with mildew, which she refused to even try.

Sighing, Kelly stripped off everything and tried the floor-length chemises next. One fit, but was a little too short in sleeves and hem, the latter of which only came to her knees, shorter even than the skirt she'd tried. The rest were baggy and threatened to trail. As for the oldest-looking garments, the overgowns, those were simply too long, even if that was supposed to be the proper style for whatever era that had been. She had no clue, however. They were all cut
sort of
like the medieval clothes she was used to re-creating in the society, but there were enough differences to make it difficult to say exactly what era and culture these things resembled most closely.

Using just her teeth and her fingernails, which took a lot of time, Kelly managed to work free the thread at the armholes on the short chemise, stripping the sleeves. Paired with the shortish skirt and the corset-bra underneath, the garment would make do as a sleeveless blouse for light summerwear; unlike the camisole, this chemise wasn't sheer. Hopefully it would be decent; it certainly was by her own standards. If it wasn't suitable by Katani ones…well, it would just have to do while she reworked the other clothes with the promised thread and needles. Hopefully, her two hosts would remember to fetch scissors for her as well.

She had the now-sleeveless chemise bunched up on her arms and her back to the door, when she heard its hinges squeak. Gasping, she struggled the chemise over her head, yanked it down past her thighs, and whirled to face the intruders. Saber stood in the doorway, a smallish chest gripped in his arms. His gray eyes wide and sort of stunned-looking, were fastened on her figure.

“Haven't you ever heard of
knocking
?” she demanded, blushing as he continued to stare at her.

The dark blond man blinked, then managed to move the rest of the way into the room, his brother entering behind him. The one named Evanor blushed at finding her in a chemise, even if it did cover her from shoulders to knees. Quickly setting down the bolts of fabric he carried, he thumped his brother in the arm to get him to set down the chest, and dragged both of them back out again without a single word.

Kelly blinked when the door slammed shut behind them. Actually, it was kind of flattering, since she had glimpsed the reason why Saber had been lost in that stare…as revealed in the slight but distinct bulge that had thrust against the otherwise smooth fall of his thigh-length tunic. Normally the fabric would have concealed that part of his anatomy.

Normally.

Hold on, Kelly Doyle—aren't you forgetting the fact that this is a realm of magic, and that, if he falls for you, some unspecified disaster will befall? Unspecified or not, do you want that on your conscience? You have enough troubles right now without having to worry about something like that!

Yes, but…he's a hunk! And he was ogling me!
the most feminine corner of her brain retorted.
You're not dead yet, you know!

It had been undeniably flattering. With her back to the door, without underwear of any kind on, and bent over a little in the act of putting on the chemise, which she had tossed on the bed while changing into the various clothes…she must have given him an intriguing view. Very intriguing. Just thinking about him thinking about her in
that
kind of way made her warm and a little breathless, and damp.

She might not have ever been physically touched, but Kelly had grown up around the end of the twentieth century in her own universe, and she knew lots of things about men and women. Things she had unfortunately been too busy making a living to experiment with, other than in her imagination. She bit her lip and sported a little feminine smile as she finished dressing and began exploring the sewing materials the two had brought up to her, thinking about the mindless stare Saber had given her just minutes ago.

Very flattering, indeed…

S
trawberry carrot. A deeper red gold than her hair, with freckles all the way down to
there,
by Jinga…

Saber bit his lip, trying not to think. Trying not to groan. At least Evanor had left him alone, free to retreat to his bedchamber in the northern spur of the west wing. But he kept seeing it in his mind: shapely legs, despite her unseemly thinness, pale and flecked everywhere with a scattering of tiny spots, if thinly scattered on the back of her knees, buttocks, and thighs. Those thighs had shifted just far enough apart in her struggle to stay balanced and dress, that he had seen that the
cinnin
brown spots were scattered even on that white, soft, inner flesh of her legs. That they dusted the ultra-feminine curves of her hips, a fascinating, speckled contrast below the age-yellowed edge of the corset she had worn from the waist up.

There was such a lush contrast between her underfed but flared hips and her naturally nipped waist, with those almost full breasts jiggling just barely in view beyond her corset-covered ribs and bunching arms, Saber could still feel the urgent demand that had gripped him at that first, lascivious sight. To clasp her waist and bend her over even farther. To grip her hips and pull her close. To thrust home into the heart of those golden carrot curls, again and again, with his impatient manhood.

Groaning, Saber covered his eyes with his arm, fruitlessly trying to block out the image in his mind. Unfortunately, it only made it seem more real, when he closed his eyes. His other hand, resting on his belly, slipped down to the ache that was his groin. He caught himself with his first stroke through the fabric of tunic and breeches, and fisted his hand. He shouldn't do that. He'd done it a few times since their arrival, but mostly only shortly after their arrival, before his body had grown used to the idea of being completely alone, without female companionship.

Without feminine temptation.

It wasn't going away on its own, though. Memories kept turning over in his mind. The feel of her breasts against his body as he had rushed her down the stairs, rescuing her from the mekhadadak attack, and the way her legs had wrapped around his waist, her whole body clinging to him intimately. The feel of her squirming in his grip to get free at their first meeting, the resiliency of her rump when he had smacked it…and that backside, bared at last to his view, about forty pounds shy of being properly lush and ripe, but still soft and beckoning with its smooth, freckled skin…those seductive, enticingly textured nethercurls.

Swearing, unable to resist any longer, Saber dropped his arm, shoved his tunic hem out of the way, unfastened his breeches, and covered his face with his left forearm once more, shutting out the daylight. He lay there on his bed, torturing himself by imagining her hands, small, pale, freckled, and deft, doing with her fingers what his own hand had to do as a pallid substitute. Imagining without that much effort what it would be like to do as he longed to, to grab her and take her, again and again, until she hollered at him from ecstasy, not from anger—from the pleasure he alone would give her. To spit in the eye of the Curse and its ominous Prophecy, and sheathe his sword in his strawberry-haired maid, over and over and over…

It was a hollow pleasure, when he found his completion. He couldn't, daren't do any of the things he longed to, and shouldn't even have done this much. Because, while it had scratched the first itch, it just ignited several more. Not all of them were physical itches, either. Lust might be just lust…but sometimes lust led to the dangers of love.

 

W
hen he came again to her room, it was evening; both moons were up, casting odd, double-silvered shadows through the windows. He smacked the new tray on the desk, checked the old ones to make certain all the food was gone, and took them out with him again, all without a word. Kelly looked up briefly from her hand-stitched re-tailoring—tedious, but necessary—and watched him stomp around the room, glare for barely a quarter of a second in her direction, presumably to make sure she wasn't doing anything strenuous, then stomp out again.

Five seconds later, the door banged open again, and he stalked back inside, glaring at the floor underfoot as if she had committed the highest offense in his land. “You
scrubbed
it!”

“I don't like leaving jobs half done,” she returned pointedly, managing to stay calm in face of his fury. “I finished scrubbing the floor,
and
ate a ridiculously large amount of food, compared to what I've been used to. Since then, I have been sitting here, sewing.
Just
working on the sewing I need to do.”

He planted his hands on his hips, narrowing his gray eyes. “Where are they?”

She picked up the tiny embroidery scissors that had come with the remarkably well-stocked sewing chest he had brought, and snipped a thread. Sewing and embroidery calmed her, were familiar to her in her new, unfamiliar surroundings, even if she didn't have a sewing machine and plenty of electricity to power it at hand. “Where are what?”

“The bucket and the brush. If I take them away, you cannot use them!”

“They're under the sink. But do not snarl at me because your housekeeping abilities leave so many things to be desired,” she added piously, knotting the thread remaining on her needle and shifting to the next seam to be taken in. As soon as she had a little more to wear in the way of decency than a chemise and skirt, she would start on a pair of harem-style pants, full enough to pass for a skirt but much more comfortable in the way that trousers were. Not to mention some underwear. The two Nightfall brothers had certainly brought her enough thread and fabric to make herself a decent number of clothes on their embarrassing visit. No matter that the cloth was aged a bit in both durability and coloring. “I cannot help it if my realm holds higher standards of hygiene and cleanliness than your own.”

He snarled something under his breath, yet another curse to that “Jinga” person she had already heard about a couple of times before, and stalked into the bathroom. When he stalked back out, brush rattling in bucket, the curved handle of the latter clenched in his hand, she spoke again.

“I will require a bath sometime soon. That ‘refreshing room,' as you called it, doesn't exactly suit my needs. Do you have baths in this version of existence?”

Gritting his teeth—for he was growing hard just being in the same room as her, proof he should never have unleashed his long-neglected needs by releasing himself mere hours ago—Saber crossed over to one of the windows and pulled away a broad section of jointed, carved wood covering a stone box she had mistaken for a platform, or maybe an odd-looking table of some kind, though it had steps on one side leading up to the carved surface.

Rising from where she had curled up on the bed, pillows piled behind her against the headboard for back support, Kelly padded over in curiosity as he swiped the cobwebs out of a large, stone-lined bathing tub. Yanking on the chained cork jammed into a dry waterfall-spout like the one in the bathroom, he swatted the rest of the cobwebs out of the way as water began spilling forth.

Saber leaned over as she approached and pulled out another cork, one down at the bottom of the basin. “It won't do to fill the tub before it has been rinsed, at the very least,” he said. “To stop the water, you simply cork it, like this. To make it cold or hot, you turn this.” A wiggle of the lever, a splash of his hand under the flow to gauge the temperature, and Saber frowned. “Great. The spell's worn out.”

“So's the one in the bathroom—uh, the refreshing room,” she corrected herself, since these people apparently had a different meaning for the first term. Kelly had seen a similar handle next to the sink faucet, but had lost interest in it when it had failed to control the temperature. She peered into the grimy tub and reached into the bucket, wrinkling her nose. Cobwebs, dust, and probably a patina of soap scum, too. “I'll need that brush for just a few more minutes—”

“Jinga's Balls!”
he exploded, grabbing the brush back from her. Saber gritted his teeth, turning a little reddish in the face in his effort to control his temper. Yanking the bucket out of her reach, he pointed at the bed, carefully mastering his volume, if not the force of his words. “You. Will. Sit.
There. I
will scrub the damned tub!”

“Fine! The soap's by the sink!” Flouncing around him, she stalked back to the bed and crawled back onto it. Flopping down against the pillows, she glared at him as he stared at her. “Well? If
you
don't do it, you know that I'm going to!”

He glared at her, then threw the brush in the bucket and carried it out with him. Biting her lower lip to hide her smile, Kelly returned her attention to her sewing. A tiny part of her attention. The rest of it snuck many glances at him as he came back a few minutes later, muttered something lengthy and complicated-sounding that made the water quickly steam as it splashed along the fall, and corked the waterfall again. “I'll fetch you a new cork for the sink in the refreshing room.”

She had to bite her lower lip hard to control her smile as he walked away three steps, then quickly darted back to the edge of the tub, grabbed bucket, soap, and brush, and took them with him to make sure she couldn't do anything with them while he was gone. Choking, she averted her face as he stalked out, slamming the door shut behind him. She really shouldn't laugh at him, but it
was
funny, and Kelly bit her lip and quivered with suppressed laughter until she was sure he was out of earshot, then had to wipe tears away from her eyes as gales of laughter rang through the octagonal room.

When he came back, stripped off his boots and tunic, and crawled halfway into her tub to scrub it, she didn't feel like laughing for long. Drooling, sighing, moaning, and grabbing maybe, but not laughing. Lightly tanned muscles rippled, dusted with dark blond hairs in front, streaked with a faded white scar in back that was jagged like it had come from lightning, down past one shoulder blade. Or maybe it had been caused by the rough-slashed tip of someone's sword or dagger, given the kind of universe he lived in. As she watched, breathless from the view, his muscular arms flexed over and over, his firm backside lifting into the air as he scrubbed the near side of the rim. Those near-full, entirely kissable lips muttered as he worked.

Unfortunately, he must have been muttering a cleansing spell, because it took him less than two minutes to make the damned stone tub gleam like it probably had during its very first polishing. Judging from the amount of accumulated grime, she figured it would have taken her at least an hour to achieve the same results. Swiping at it one last time with a scrap of cloth, he thrust that cloth into the emptied bucket with the soap and the brush and headed for the door.

“I'll need the soap to wash myself,” Kelly pointed out quickly. “And a rag to wash with, and clean towels to dry myself with. And if you could use your cleaning-spell thing on…these…clothes…”

The heated, dark look he aimed her way made the words dry up in her throat.

She swallowed. “Never mind. I don't want to be a bother.”

He muttered the Katani version of “too late” under his breath and stalked out the door. Forgetting his shirt and his boots, his dark gold hair rippling halfway down the taut, flexing muscles of his back.

As soon as he was gone, she flung herself back against the pillows with a grin and a sigh, running her hand up from her thigh to her breast, needle and garment abandoned on her crossed legs. There was something exhilarating about sparring with him, now that she wasn't frightened, confused, or exhausted. And something even more exciting about being in the same room as a half-naked
him
. She just wished this world didn't have to believe in Curses, or it could have been his hand cupping her breast. Without that silly verse and the local fears against such things, she could well have been the sheath for Saber's sword. Certainly he was the first man in a long time to even tempt her…and oh, boy, was he a temptation.

She just didn't have time to do anything about it right now, not when he was due to come back soon.

Ah, well, a girl can always dream…

 

K
elly was sedately upright and working once more on her stitching, still smiling to herself with secret amusement when he came back a little while later. The wizard Saber—though he looked more like a warrior to her, especially coupled with that name—set half a dozen bottles on the edge of the tub. He added a stack of plain cotton sheets from the crook of his elbow, though they were not the terry cloth towels she was used to. He tromped into her bathroom to shut off the constant flow of water, using a large, oval cork-stopper he took from a pouch on his belt. Then he came back and started rapping on all of the lightglobes in the chamber, with the spiral-carved stick that had been hanging on a hook by the door.

The chamber needed the light, Kelly realized; the two moons didn't shine brightly enough, and the single globe she had lit was inadequate for illumination.

She had studied the scenery beyond the windows, earlier, taking in the semitropical forest that cloaked the castle, its grounds, and the line of water beyond the greenery, glistening in the distance. It was more or less the same view, she had already learned, whether one looked east or west out of the walls of the octagonal room. A couple of miles of land sloped down to both the east and the west, away from the peak that the towered outer wall, donjon, and palace wings perched on; horizonless water lay beyond that. They really were exiled on an island far from anyone else.