Retribution (36 page)

Sir Nicholas reddened at his wife’s scolding.
There was real affection there, in both of them, obvious despite
the rebuke. “My love,” he said, still bellowing but contrite, “it’s
only that I don’t like to see our son taken from us. You said it
yourself, it’s one thing in barracks—”

“Nicholas!” Clara’s roar was almost as loud
as her husband’s. “Not at dinner!” She stood up to emphasize her
words. Lines of pain and weariness deepened in her forehead and at
the corners of her mouth.

Sir Nicholas was on his feet immediately,
galloping around the high table to be at her side. “Clara, you
mustn’t tire yourself.” He took her arm and led her from the table
and upstairs. Dominic had already offered his arm but was brushed
aside by husband and father as if he were a meddlesome boy.

Dominic and I looked at each other across the
table, the shadow of a smile holding the silver in Dominic’s eyes
that had been turning glassy with anger. Our host was behaving
recklessly indeed. My husband had restrained himself from
challenging Sir Nicholas over such brazen provocation, and Clara’s
intervention had been prompted by the same anxiety. Dominic and I
were guests. No matter what the rights and wrongs of the original
situation, here at Galloway we were almost gods. Our hosts must put
up with just about any behavior from us, no matter how improper or
crude; we need tolerate nothing that displeased us.

My husband’s good humor intensified as we sat
in the blessed silence. Sir Nicholas was helping Dominic
unwittingly, pressuring his son into marriage and fatherhood,
obligations that Niall had rejected during his almost four years of
adult life. Escape with Dominic might be a far more attractive
proposition for Niall now than it would have been when there was
only the memory of Dominic’s abuse to put up against the comforts
of home.
It is our turn to rescue Niall
, Dominic was
thinking, the gleam in his eyes and the smile on his thin lips
accentuating his saturnine look.
He’ll fall into my arms,
grateful to be swept away to Aranyi and freedom.

Yet for all Dominic’s confidence I wasn’t so
sure any more. Like Reynaldo’s ambush, my talk with Sir Nicholas
had left me shaken, my host’s surprising qualities having caught me
unprepared. Dominic too had a rattled look. I had not been able to
follow his conversation with Clara, too engrossed in self-defense
as I was with Sir Nicholas. But I had been aware that Dominic was
pouring on all his considerable charm, the courteous, attentive
manner that usually reduces women to fluttering imbeciles in
minutes, and that on Clara it had had no visible effect. She
remained distantly polite with an icy core of pure rage
occasionally detectable below the tepid surface. We were in enemy
territory, no doubt about it.

W
e finished the heavy meal
in the relative quiet of thirty or more people chatting at high
volume, while Sir Nicholas sat upstairs with his wife. As the last
course was removed our host returned and spoke to Dominic as if
nothing had happened, inviting him to visit the stables. Dominic
also acted as if he had heard, and overheard, nothing out of line.
He too was perfectly capable of mounting a sneak attack, and was
too smart to be goaded into a duel that would gain him nothing and
risk losing all. He accepted his host’s invitation with real
pleasure, always enjoying a look at horseflesh under any
circumstances.

The rest of us moved into a front room while
the tables in the hall were disassembled. I was left to my own
devices in my hostess’s absence and dropped thankfully, after the
benches of the hall, into a chair with a straight back. One of the
middle daughters approached. “How many children do you have?” she
asked.

My answer surprised her. “But you’re older
than my mama! And she has six!”

Soon to be seven, I thought, sympathy for
Clara preventing me from attempting to match wits with another
sharp-tongued Galloway. My mind was too dulled from my last
encounter to think of a reply.

Naomi paced restlessly, unused to idleness.
Nichola, pride in her recent betrothal giving her a smug
confidence, watched from her seat by the window, making use of the
remaining hours of natural light to work at sewing her trousseau.
“Are you married?” she asked her unusual guest. Naomi merely shook
her head. “Or betrothed?”

“I shall never marry,” Naomi said, making it
a grand declaration, as if she had announced that her father was a
‘Graven lord. “No one in my family, not my mother or my
grandmother, or her mother before her, has ever shackled herself to
any man.” She held up her left arm in its one-piece sleeve with no
cutout to reveal a ‘Graven marriage scar, and flashed her green
eyes at the shocked expression on Nichola’s face.

Nichola was not easily defeated. “I bet you’d
marry Niall if you could,” she said. She seemed bent on
embarrassing Naomi, perhaps to gain an easy victory, forcing the
recognition of her own superiority from a woman who was obviously
at a disadvantage despite her gift. Unmarried, not wealthy,
existing in a strange in-between state, neither ungifted commoner
nor pedigreed gentry, Naomi must concede Nichola’s privileged
status. “You’d shackle yourself to Niall readily enough if he
asked.”

Naomi looked the girl over, much as Dominic
had looked at her father. “No,” she said, “Niall will never
marry.”

“Not you.” The girl wouldn’t give up. “He’ll
never marry you, with no father and no family.”

Naomi’s face grew hard and sad at the same
time. She stopped her pacing, stood still and rigid, head tilted,
back arched as if an electric current had struck from the sky and
was coursing through her spine. She raised her arm and held it,
fingers spread, in the manner of the wise woman seeing a vision—or
leveling a curse. “Your brother,” she said, “will never marry any
woman. He will die young, and no wife will weep for him.” No one
doubted her gift of second sight.

The horrified silence that followed was
broken by Jana. “That’s not true!” She hurled herself at Naomi like
a Valkyrie. “Niall’s going to live to be very, very old! In our
house!”

Naomi withstood the attack easily, stroking
Jana’s hair with maternal kindness. “I’m sorry, cherie,” she said,
sounding like Dominic. “It was only a
crypta
flare. It might
not come true at all.” Her mournful expression confirmed what I saw
in her mind. Naomi was never so certain of anything as what she had
told of Niall’s fate.

Clara was soon rested, returning to the group
of women around the fire. Almost immediately she made a point of
pulling me a little apart from the others, indicating she wanted a
private talk. Between them, Sir Nicholas and Lady Galloway made an
effective tactical force. I was being hit with the elite corps
before I’d had a chance to regroup from my encounter with the shock
troops. Dominic’s ruse had boomeranged; we were being pulled ever
deeper into the convolutions of a marriage negotiation, a subject
about which I had expected to retain my blissful ignorance for at
least ten more years.

No wonder, I thought, that men rarely marry
each other in the ‘Graven Rule. It’s not a question of morality;
it’s property. When a woman marries she has a dowry, if she’s
lucky, what’s called a marriage portion, a share of the value of a
larger estate. Her brother—or cousin or nephew—inherits the whole,
while her portion goes with her to her new husband, becomes his.
Her brother’s wife—or cousin’s or nephew’s—brings her own portion.
Thus are the estates kept together, the borders preserved and the
realms’ independence maintained. A man of property can’t possibly
marry another in this way. The negotiations would never be
resolved. Their stewards would still be haggling when the two men
were rotting side by side in their tombs.

“‘Gravina Aranyi.” Clara broke in on my
thoughts. Her voice was a clear, warm alto that seemed soft after
her husband’s blasts. “I think you know most of what I am going to
say, but I will say it anyway so there can be no
misunderstanding.”

My heart sank. There could be no escape. With
our gifts of telepathy, Clara was actually treating me courteously,
taking the trouble of putting her thoughts into spoken words,
allowing me time to hear and mull over what she said and compose a
reply.

“I don’t know exactly what went wrong between
your husband and my son,” she began, “but I know Margrave Aranyi
hurt Niall very badly. Not just in body—” She looked up at my
involuntary exclamation. “Oh yes, I saw the bruises. I’ve seen
battle wounds and I’ve seen the mark of the human hand, and I know
the difference.”

“That’s why we’re really here.” I attempted
to break out of the confines of the marriage proposal to defend
ourselves with honesty. “To apologize to Niall, to explain—”

“Please.” Clara shook her head. “Margrave
Aranyi hurt Niall in other ways as well. He wounded his confidence,
he depressed his spirits and he broke his heart.” Her eyes bored
into mine with the dramatic words. For the first time in this visit
she let me feel the full extent of her great anger. She was a
mother, like me, defending her own. She would fight Dominic herself
if it came to it. Whatever effect an apology from Dominic might
have on Niall, it would be useless with Clara.

“You wanted this,” I said in belated
understanding. “You wanted us to come here and make fool of
ourselves, while Niall stayed away.”
Everything comes to him who
waits
, she had said to her son. Dominic and I had pondered at
length over that phrase, whether Niall was waiting for revenge or
reconciliation. Now we knew.

“Yes,” Clara said, lowering her eyes in a
hopeless attempt to hide the resentment that radiated from her
mind.
Why should Niall have to confront Margrave Aranyi so soon
with all this between them? Hasn’t your husband caused my son
enough grief?
She waited until her emotions were under better
control. “But we decided, Nicholas and I, that this visit would
give us a chance to talk, parents to—let’s say ‘interested
parties.’ ” Her mouth curved again in her mischievous smile and
there was the suggestion of sympathy in her voice. “You’ve heard my
husband’s point of view. And I agree with everything he said, as
I’m sure you appreciate.”

I nodded warily, as I had with Sir Nicholas.
All my expectations for this visit had been shattered. Niall’s
parents had not been the obsequious dupes that their words,
reported by the musicians, had led us to hope for, if not quite
anticipate. They had played along with the pretense of a marriage
offer, but they had an accurate picture of Dominic’s relationship
with their son. We were not pretending things there, or speaking in
euphemisms.

Only the separation, the event that had led
to the breakup, puzzled them. Niall had the pride of youth; he had
not told his parents the full story. They had wondered if Niall had
displeased Dominic in some way or if Dominic had simply tired of
his companion and wanted another. The nature of their speculations
proved that, as far as they knew, Niall still cared for Dominic,
had not left him willingly. Dominic’s overture gave them a great
advantage: they learned that Dominic was as interested in Niall as
ever, that they had something we wanted. Guests or not, we must
prove our worthiness to regain what we had been foolish enough to
lose.

Clara frowned at my thoughts, intent on
returning to the main point. “This is the problem from our side, as
my husband has told you, but it bears repeating. Niall is our only
son. I have hoped with each of my pregnancies to have another, to
ease the pressure on him, but as you see I have not been
successful. I’m still trying, but there won’t be many more chances
for me. I’ll be forty next year and—”

I didn’t like to tell her the one she carried
was another girl.

“I know she is,” Clara responded to my
thought. “It takes me a few months to know, but even if I knew
earlier it goes against my nature to kill my child just because
it’s my own sex. And I love them all, my daughters.” Her face lit
up with love before she composed her features into impassivity
again for the task at hand.

“Niall is
vir
. I’ve known it for
years, since he was a child. He’ll marry eventually to do his duty
but it won’t be easy for him, not like some. And he still loves
your husband. Margrave Aranyi has only to say the right thing for
Niall to fall right back into his– arms.”
His bed
, she had
almost said, choosing the more delicate expression at the last
minute, as if I were the one who must be shielded from the
unvarnished truth.

“What do you want from me?” I asked. Such a
great concession would never be made without assurance of receiving
a gift in return.

“Give Niall his freedom,” Clara said. “Talk
to Margrave Aranyi. I think– I know– you have influence over him,
that he loves you and listens to you. Ask Margrave Aranyi to give
Niall time to marry, or at least father a son. Once he’s provided
an heir for Galloway, if he still wants to be with your husband we
won’t stand in his way.”

I opened my mouth to speak but Clara
forestalled me. “We’re not stopping him now. It’s what he wants
too. Niall loves Galloway. It’s a freehold, an ancient, respected
name. If Niall dies without an heir there are cousins in the south
who’ll get it. They’re merchants in Eclipsia City, people who’ve
never seen Galloway, have no use for border land. Niall doesn’t
like the thought of his home going to those strangers any more than
Nicholas does.”

I thought of all the things I had envisioned
that might prevent Niall from returning to Aranyi with us. That he
no longer loved Dominic. That he had found another lover. That he
was unable to forgive the physical and emotional abuse Dominic had
inflicted. But this obstacle, Niall’s obligation to produce an
heir, had been wholly unforeseen. I should have had some idea, I
told myself. I had known Niall was the only son, was well aware of
the importance of inheritance in Eclipsis’s system of land
ownership and primogeniture. Like a naive, starry-eyed adolescent,
I had come here thinking only of reuniting lovers.