He tucked his chilly hands tightly under his arms. “It was difficult waiting and wondering if you already knew. But I did not feel I could tell you until—” his brow contracted in a kind of inner agony “—until yesterday evening when I felt something awful was on your mind. I had hoped you would tell me…But I couldn’t say anything. You would have regretted it.”
She stared at him in hurt surprise. “I wouldn’t have regretted it!”
“Not all the time,” he shot back. “But you would have, sometimes, when you were lonely or felt out of place, or Plenilune pinched you like a shoe that is too small.” He rucked up his shoulders defensively and shifted away like a ruffled hen. “It wouldn’t have been right to ask you. You would have felt as if you had just got out of the frying pan only to be asked to jump into the fire. We—we are not so unlike, Rupert and I.”
So. He had thought about it. And here she had taken things for granted and never really thought the situation through. Of course he had always been there for her: he had been there all along the way, a hand under her arm, a smile for her sadness, a figure in the gap to come to her defence. Had she been a complete unfeeling fool to nearly throw it all away? Did he hate her for it, even though he
had
come?
But she knew that if he had asked her before, or if she had thought it through, things would have been even more confused than ever and she would not have been able to go through with her desperate bid to end things. She would never have understood so clearly how much she loved Plenilune, and Dammerung, and all the people they held in their hands and across the green fell folds of their knees. She would not have been able to see that. She would not have been willing to lay down her life for them. And she
had
laid down her life for them. It was strange to be able to look at Dammerung’s face, and at the face of the garden and the wood and the fells and tell them she had died for them. Only, she knew she could never say it; and they knew it without her saying so.
He was not really angry at her. Whatever he was angry at, formlessly and blusteringly, it seemed to slip off his shoulders and blow away from them both in a minute. A weak smile began to grow in the shade of his stubble. “I almost feel sorry for Rupert. He had no idea that when he chose a girl of wit, he got a girl of grit as well.”
“I was never very witty. I was scared, and I talked with a mouth full of daggers when I was scared, but I was never very witty.” She pulled herself deeper into the panther-skin cloak. “Skander told him I was a force to be reckoned with. I think perhaps he was the only one among us who really believed that.”
“He did not have the privilege of meeting you in the dead of night in your nightgown with your eyes red from crying and your lip red from bleeding. One forms a different view of a woman when one meets her under such circumstances.”
The distinct tone of friendly mockery was coming back into his voice and it made her pathetically comfortable. The sharp scarlet warmth of embarrassment crept up her cheeks. “Had I known who you were I would have gone away at once.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” he laughed at her, and, flinging an arm round her shoulders, switched places with her, his back against the tree, and pulled her back into his lap. “I am just too appealing.”
He mocked her—he mocked himself, with a face that was still pinched and pale and blue-veined from his scare—but the truth of the matter was that he was right. She shivered nestingly into his arms like a cat into a pile of cloth. Though comparatively small to other arms, his were hard and the muscles bunched and gathered under the fine broadcloth of his sleeve. He rubbed vigorously at her arms and put the back of his free hand to her forehead.
“Here is hoping the day warms up. This is hardly the sort of harness for a chilly morning.”
She had completely forgot until he mentioned it that she was still in the shockingly inappropriate purple gown. With an involuntary cry that made him howl she pulled the cloak tight over her chest and his arms.
“I cannot believe I have come out in this,” she gasped. Several horsemen, whom she did not recognize at that distance, were walking together by the yard and she watched them in horror as if they could see her clearly from where they were.
“In light of recent events,” Dammerung protested reasonably, “I don’t think it matters much.”
“In light of even more recent events,” she retorted, “it is becoming increasingly important!”
He set his chin on her shoulder and did not let her go. His hands, she knew, if she tried to pry them, would prove immobile. His warmth began to seep through her back; her resolve began to waver.
“At the risk of being grim again,” he said sleepily, jaw jigging on her collar-bone, “I would rather not let you go off again just yet. You—you gave me
quite
a scare.”
“I know. I am sorry.”
“Not enough to take it back?”
She hesitated. “No…not enough to take it back.”
“That is just as well.”
They were quiet for awhile, content in each other’s silence. A door slammed in the house. A bee, swimming by, blundered into a low-growing patch of clover and got lost. Somewhere a dog began to bark. Margaret shut her eyes.
“Margaret?” said Dammerung sleepily.
She did not open her eyes. “Yes?”
“Did…did he touch you?”
Her eyes opened. She was looking directly at the bumblebee’s head as it emerged, laden with pollen, from the grasses. “He kissed me.”
Dammerung breathed out heavily, a breath more full of expletives than a scorching desert wind.
She leaned her cheek into his. “What did you expect? I had to do something. By the twelve houses, the man took it almost without a backward glance. I thought he would have been far more suspicious.”
The pale eye looked up into hers, askance. “Have you looked at yourself in the mirror, and do you know the heart of man? We don’t overthink the matter when the matter is you.”
“I would be flattered,” she countered, “if I could be certain that was not man’s way with any girl he fancied.”
“Well, no, it is the way, that’s a fact. But you can be flattered all the same. Later. When once I have finished feeling sick over the whole ordeal.”
“Me too,” she admitted, and huddled back still smaller into his arms.
“Oh, hark! we have company.” With a little deft move he grasped the cloak, which was slipping, and pulled it back over her shoulder as Skander came up, boots crunching in the gravel. “This one is mine,” said Dammerung, squinting up through the sunlight at his cousin’s face. “Go get your own.”
“I already have one,” said Skander placidly. “
You
look like a fox that got into the henhouse.”
“Oh, I haven’t got into any henhouse yet.”
Skander turned to Margaret. “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” she admitted. “Still a little peaky, but better; thank you.”
“Yes,” said Capys wryly. He thrust back the hem of his tunic and put his hands in his pockets. “I imagine
dying
does that to you…Do you know, Dammerung, we found that bitch of his dead in the washroom? Had her nose broken in and her neck busted in two. It was quite a pretty piece of work.”
Margaret smiled wistfully into the clover-patch. “You know, I had forgot...”
It seemed Skander had caught her involuntary expression, for he chuffed and said blithely, “I told you she was a force to be reckoned with,” and jerked his chin indicatively at her. “Nay, that was Rupert that I told.”
“And
he
is quite dead.”
“Oh yes, dead as a doornail. He…looked really very awful once we turned him over. There was a bruise around his neck and his mouth was open—we could look right down it: it was completely burnt out. What did you give him?”
Black, unpleasant dream-pictures shifted across the warm summer landscape. “Only some sort of rat poison.”
“These are spirits of a different sort,” said Dammerung. Margaret felt him gather, pushing her forward, and get to his feet behind her. He bent back down to lift her up. “O-oh…! Is there no end to your legs?”
The ground shifted, slipped, and steadied again. Skander stepped in and put a hand under her other elbow. “Oh, we grow ourselves tall in England,” she explained. “We must, for it is so cloudy, if we want to reach the sun.”
“Well, you’re closer to the sun now,” said Dammerung, taking complete charge of her. They began walking across the gravel, and he added in a thoughtful undertone, “I forget that you are English…”
“Hullo!” said Skander, turning and putting a fist on his hip. “Isn’t something—the roses! The roses are in bloom again!”
The heavy trailing plants swarming over the yard walls were dancing in the early morning wind, and each vine was shouting out a spark of scarlet colour: a perfect Lancaster rose.
Dammerung looked askance at the shrubs. “I had not taken you for such a romantic sort, coz.”
“No, don’t you see?” Margaret protested. “No, of course you wouldn’t. Old Hobden told me ever since you died—or disappeared—the roses haven’t bloomed. And now they have blossoms again!”
The War-wolf’s eyes were dancing as he said, “I can trounce any man in astrology and split a world like a diamond with the old arts, but I am unlearned in the ways of herbology. Come along, Lady Spitcat, before you cause a real scandal.”
32 | Under a Dragon Moon
Dressed in something less glamorous and more socially acceptable, Margaret sat in the old familiar way with Dammerung and Skander in the library, eating a scratch breakfast that the blue-jay man had ousted from the kitchens below. The eggs were warm and the milk was fresh; she heard no one complain and she ate as heartily as the men. She had not realized death made one so hungry.
“Why do you suppose he said, ‘Give her something to eat’?” laughed Dammerung, passing her the bowl of twelve-hour-old biscuits. “Skander, the jam, if you will…”
Skander, his scarred face rejuvenated with a smile, passed the jar of jam across. “Does it feel good to be ordering the breakfast table about in Marenové House again?”
“You would not believe. But I can’t stay long. I have letters to write this morning—people will want to know that Rupert is dead—Margaret needs to get her feet back under her, and then we have an old friend to see.”
Skander frowned, sceptical.
“And you,” Dammerung tactfully ignored his cousin’s expression, “have a bride to recall and a wedding to plan. Better make it a double one.”
Wiping excess jam off her fingers, Margaret asked, “Where
are
we going?”
“To see your parents,” said Dammerung without looking up.
A knife clattered to a plate. Margaret was not sure if it was hers or Skander’s. Cold, blank horror swept over her. She wanted to look to Skander, to ask for his help—like a child being dragged away to bed she wanted to grab the nearest thing on Plenilune and hold on tight. But she could not take her eyes off Dammerung’s reserved, demure, down-turned face.
I would—I would rather go through the agony of last night than go back to England. I can’t go back. I won’t!
“If I remember what you said correctly,” Dammerung put down his utensils and used his napkin, at the same time pushing his chair away from the table and rising, “your parents will be expecting you back from—what was that place? No matter. They will be anticipating your return within the next few weeks.” He crossed the room, soiled napkin thrust into one pocket, and began rummaging among the dusty old articles in a secretary under one window. “There will be a great scandal and waste of money I am sure if you don’t show up again and make some account of yourself.” He dug something out of a drawer and shut it behind him. “The whole purpose of your being sent away was to get a husband. I never did ask properly. I can’t quite seem to do anything the orthodox way.”
“Oh, Dammerung—” Her words failed her.
He upended a little fabric sleeve into his hand: out tumbled three old but shining rings, two simple bands of gold, and one other a ring of gold with a clustering crown of pale green gems.
“Would you marry me?”
She swore she would not cry, but the tears came anyway before she could stop them. With a little sob she hid her face behind her hands and nodded—she seemed to have lost all her words.
Hands gently pried her fingers from her face. She watched through a beautiful heartbreak as Dammerung slid the begemmed ring onto her finger, wiggled it over the knuckle, and settled it into place.
“There. You and Mother have the same slender hands.” He looked up into her face, smiling. “So you will be Lady of the Mares, after all.”
Skander leaned on his elbows across the table. “Let’s have a look,” he prompted, and Margaret swung round, so happy she could scream, and thrust the beautiful thing out for him to see. The morning light got into the green jewels and glowed like summer. The crystal dishes paled in comparison.
“Isn’t it just the loveliest thing?” she demanded. “Oh, Dammerung! And this was your mother’s? Oh, Dammerung!”
The blue-jay man, stopping nearby to see, spoke up. “If you could see her now, you would not guess she had just saved all of Plenilune not four hours ago in the most self-sacrificial way.”
“Away with you, brute!” said Dammerung laughingly. “Let the poor girl have her hour. God knows she has had enough sorrow as is.”
“I’ll go,” she told him. “I’ll go back to England. I want to show Mother—who never believed in me anyway—just what I can do. And won’t she bite her tongue for once!”
“If the picture of her I have pieced together is anything like the original, I doubt it.”
“Before you go,” Skander waved toward the big black oak desk, “you need to check your books. There is an army to pay, and you owe me several new doors and a staircase.”
Margaret stopped turning her ring in the light. “Doors and a staircase? What?”
Dammerung dropped the rings back into their bag and replaced them in the secretary. “Oh, chances are I have
two
armies to pay…But the Mares are wealthy. We should be able to manage it. I have letters to write. Drag out the dusty thing and read it to me while I write.”