“Is it true?” Jules demanded, her flush betraying an undignified excitement.
As the eldest daughter in her family and of marriageable age, she merited a pair of guards. The two males who accompanied her this morning were not the House of Feng’s shining best. This was probably due to Jules being the eldest daughter of a junior branch of that illustrious family. Though tall and muscular, the guard to Jules’s right had eyes in slightly different shades of silver. The one to her left was marred by a strawberry birthmark stretched along one cheekbone. Presumably, the imperfections had no bearing on their competence. Certainly, they were too professional to react to Kat’s quick perusal of their persons.
Rather, they almost didn’t react. The one with the birthmark, whose face was as smoothly sculpted as a statue, shifted the merest bit in his parade stance. Kat pulled her gaze from his otherwise handsome features with a small effort.
“Is what true?” she responded to her cousin.
“Did Prince Avel’s eyes turn black for you at his dinner? Did Aunt Miry exile you because she was hoping Cousin Mara would snag him?” Both claims were accurate. Prince Avel had displayed the involuntary ocular reaction that signified sexual and genetic compatibility, without which no blue blood’s marriage could be sanctioned. Other classes might find spouses where they liked, but royal genes - and royal libidos - were demanding. Producing heirs required close matches. It was also true that Kat’s stepmother had hoped to catch the prince for her daughter. Neither of these facts, however, were politic to acknowledge.
“What did your mother tell you of the matter?” Kat evaded.
“She said it must have been a trick of the light, but I don’t believe it. When that other prince’s eyes turned black for you last year, Aunt Miry sent you away then too. I think she’s annoyed your mother passed better genes to you than she did to her own daughter. People still remember Miry ‘discovering’ her royal blood.”
Kat remembered this herself, for it had caused quite a stir. Mara’s birth nine months after Miry’s marriage should have put the whispers to rest for good. A prince couldn’t get a child on a nonroyal. Sadly for Miry, her daughter’s inability to attract a mate resurrected the wagging tongues. Now people claimed her line wasn’t royal
enough
.
“Aunt Miry says you’re coarse,” Jules’s middle sister, Jade, piped up - in what she must have thought was a superior tone. “She says your pheromones call to so many princes because you don’t have a perfect mate.” Not as confident as her older sister, or as respected as Katsu, Jade was prone to envy. Because Kat knew this and remembered what it was to be seventeen, she answered the girl gently. “I imagine that could be true. Not every princess has one ideal husband.”
“Aunt Miry says I will,” Jade declared.
Her little sister, Joy, was young enough make a rude noise. She was also smart enough that, when Jade spun to face her, she’d retrained her countenance to proper Yamish stillness. Kat had to tip her chin down to hide her smile. Once her amusement was under control, she looked up. To her surprise, the handsome guard with the strawberry birthmark was gazing directly into her eyes.
Perhaps he was as shocked to be caught staring as Kat was to be stared at. The circumference of his pupils jumped wider. Kat blinked, then he did, and then both of them looked away. Kat thought the other guard might have glanced sharply at his partner, but managed to control herself enough not to check. Her thighs were dangerously warm, and her face threatened to become so. It simply wasn’t done to connect with servants in a personal way. She wished she hadn’t noticed how good looking the guard was, in spite of his facial flaw. His shoulders were positively monstrous in his gray fighting robes. He’d been bred to be strong, of course, but it was too, too trite for unattached Yamish females to develop yens for their protectors.
Kat had her quirks, but she trusted being trite wasn’t one of them.
“We’ve planned a boat ride on the lake,” Joy said, thankfully oblivious to Kat’s struggle. The girl was bouncing just a little on the balls of her jeweled slippers. “We’re hoping you’ll join us.”
“Do say you will,” Jules seconded more moderately.
Kat rose from the bench she’d intended as her sanctuary. The lake was an easy walk outside the garden’s wall.
“It would be my honor,” she said. Maybe she’d have been more peaceful without the girls’ company, but she was fond of them, and her youngest cousin was a very likable wild thing. Joy didn’t have much longer to be irrepressible: two years, at the outside, after which she’d settle into being a well behaved young lady. Today, that inevitability made Kat reluctant to miss a minute of her effervescence. In truth, it made her a little sad.
It had been too long since Kat herself had been inappropriate. In the deep dark privacy of her mind, she sometimes thought it would be fun to live as freely as the primitive Humans.
True to form, Joy ran ahead of her sisters, her expensive gown trailing damply in the flower dotted grass. To Kat’s surprise, and a little to her discomfort, the handsome guard fell into step beside her. He was very tall - at least a hand span above her own royal height.
“You don’t travel with an escort?” he commented quietly. His gaze was on Jules’s back - where indeed it belonged. As was also right, his partner guard walked by the other girl.
Kat should have had an escort. She was the eldest daughter of the Shinobi clan. Regretfully, her stepmother had resented her from the start. At first, the cause was the respect with which Kat’s father and the House retainers regarded her. Later, it was her father’s failure to leave off honoring - if only occasionally -
his first wife’s memory. When Katsu’s greater appeal in princely circles became apparent, distaste turned into hostility. Kat saw little use in complaining to her father. He wasn’t unhappy in his second marriage, nor was Miry the sort to change her behavior for anyone. She’d simply have become slyer, and Kat preferred her enemies out in the open.
“Bringing an escort would have caused my House an inconvenience,” she said aloud. “I’m sure no harm will come to me here.”
The guard said nothing, though he did glance at her again. He walked an arm’s length away, his strides shortened to match hers. She supposed his question could be professional. If she had no guard, he might be expected to protect her.
Though this was the likeliest explanation, she couldn’t deny her skin tingled on the side of her body nearest his. Annoyed by her lack of discipline, she sought to push the sensation from her as they reached the reed-fringed bank of the sparkling lake. Two light rowboats were tied to the wooden dock. Their lack of a power source increased their picturesque appearance. This boat ride, evidently, was to be an old-fashioned exercise.
“You’re in my boat,” Joy announced to Kat. “You too, Hattori. We’ll trounce Ciran and the others with no trouble.”
Hattori seemed to be the name of Kat’s walking companion. He bowed to Joy as if she hadn’t committed a breach of etiquette by not calling him Citizen.
“As you wish, Princess Joy,” he said gravely.
Joy giggled, and the back of Kat’s eyes actually stung at the merry sound. If she was this emotional, maybe her uncelebrated natal day
was
affecting her. Both guards stepped into the rowboats to steady them, their highly trained grace barely causing the hulls to slap against the water. Nimble as an elf from a Human story, Joy hiked up her gown and hopped into Hattori’s boat without help. Then Hattori held his hand politely out to Kat.
It was natural that their eyes would meet, but not that her heart would start beating faster. Hattori’s pupils were more enlarged than before, like ink shining in his molten silver irises. Kat put her hand in his and he clasped it firmly. His skin was warm, his palm callused from sword play over most of its surface. She couldn’t help imagining that roughness sliding over her breasts.
“Princess,” he said low and huskily.
She nearly stumbled at the gravelly sensual sound. He had to catch her elbows to help her sit without falling. When he released her, confident she wouldn’t capsize the boat, his narrow nostrils flared.
Kat’s hand fluttered to her throat before she could stop it. Hattori had an erection. She didn’t dare look at it directly, but the engorged shape had altered the fall of his fighting trousers. The knowledge of his arousal ran through her veins like fire, swiftly heating the soft flesh between her legs. The wetness Hattori had probably scented grew. She was more affected - more aroused, to be frank - than she’d been for Prince Avel at his dinner.
With the slightest hitch in his movements, Hattori lowered himself to the seat that faced hers. He’d be rowing backwards while she and Joy rowed ahead. From the tiny flickering grimace of his facial muscles, Kat concluded sitting down was uncomfortable. The glimpse she’d caught of his genital bulge suggested he was endowed as well as erect, perhaps approaching the size of a royal male. The men of her class were the most prodigious of all Yama: longer, thicker, and so addicted to sex when they were in heat that they literally lost all sense. The lower classes didn’t experience rut, but if Hattori’s organs of procreation were as large as a royal’s, his pain might indeed be considerable.
Kat’s desire to steal a longer look was shamefully strong.
“Grab your oar,” Joy twisted around to urge her from the front of the boat.
“We need to be ready when Jules says go.”
“We’re not racing,” Jade insisted with icy seventeen-year-old scorn.
“Oh let’s,” Jules pleaded, causing Jade to frown at her older sister’s betrayal.
“I’m not too old for a bit of fun. And if our boat wins, I’ll give you that diamond hairpin you’ve been pestering me to borrow.”
Pretty jewels were Jade’s weakness, which Joy could not fail to know.
“Race,” the youngest Feng daughter chortled, her fist pumping the air with delight. “Race, race, race!”
Both the guards nearly smiled.
“Around the rock and back,” Jules said, laying out the rules. “First one to touch the dock again claims the prize.”
The guards, Hattori and Ciran, wrapped their hands around their oar handles, each in the center position of their respective boats. Ciran’s shoulders were as broad as Hattori’s, though his overall physique was leaner. Both guards looked a good deal more purposeful than the girls, who had one oar to the men’s two.
“Ready,” Jules said, her voice vibrating with anticipation. “Set ...
go
!” They set off with a lot of splashing, but not much momentum.
“In synchrony,” Hattori instructed, as if Kat and Joy were students. “Dig your oars into the water at the same time as me.”
Joy was laughing so hard she was gasping, but their crew still coordinated itself first. Suddenly they were shooting forward at an impressive clip.
They weren’t the only ones to find this breathtaking.
“No!” Jules cried. “After them, my hearties.”
Kat suspected her cousin was mangling the Human phrase, but it hardly mattered. The empress’s ridiculous Human Fiction Channel, approved for broadcast six months ago, provided all any of them knew of pirates - or manual boats, for that matter.
“Arrhh,” she growled in same spirit. “Look sharp, or you’ll walk the plank!” The lake wasn’t very large, and they were almost to the ornamental boulder Jules had named as the turning point.
“Rock,” Hattori said, nodding to show he’d spied one to his right under the water.
“Rock!” Joy crowed, mistakenly assuming he meant to exhort her on. She dug in her oar and struck the very obstacle Hattori had been warning her about. The collision of stone and paddle unbalanced her. Quick as thought, the guard reached back and grabbed her waist sash to keep her from falling out. Unfortunately, his speedy reaction startled Joy even more. Her weight swung wildly as her arms pinwheeled. Caught unprepared, Kat found herself catapulted over the side.
The lake was little better than ice melt this time of year. The cold shock of the water closing over her was succeeded by a sharp crack against her skull -
probably the rock that had started the trouble. Kat inhaled water, which her body tried to expel before she could surface. Choking pulled more water into her, but her legs wouldn’t kick her upward because her gown had tangled around her calves. Her hair was doing the same to her face and neck, like a nest of weeds strangling her. She heard a splash, and a vise seemed to seize her ribs as her vision narrowed to one gray spot. The fear that gripped her couldn’t be described.
She was only thirty. She wasn’t prepared to die.
She returned to consciousness with her head safely above water and her throat raw from coughing up half the lake. Hattori was behind her, towing her toward the shore, his hold a warm and reassuring band beneath her shivering arms.
Kat thought she’d never felt anything so lovely.
She didn’t have long to enjoy it. Horror assailed her as she spotted the sinking nose of the overturned rowboat.
“I can swim,” she gasped, trying feebly to do it. “Please make sure Joy is all right.”
Given the circumstances, Hattori might be forgiven for snorting out a laugh.
“Your cousin is halfway to the dock already. You’re the one who passed out with her scalp bleeding.”
“Oh dear,” Kat said. They were going to be in so much trouble.
* * *
“Curl closer to me,” he said harshly.
Kat couldn’t disobey the order. She felt better as soon as she gave in and clung to him. Despite his own dunking, Hattori’s body was fever warm, already starting to dry his clothes. He made a sound as her face snuggled to his throat where his now limp undercollar left bare skin. If her closeness pained him, he wasn’t shying away from it. His nose was against her cheek, smelling her.
Jules used her thumbprint to key open the guesthouse’s faux wood door. In actuality, the entrance was solid plasteel, as secure as a diamond safe. The interior maintained the rustic pretense, though of course it had the standard amenities.