Chapter 19
Two days later, Kai and I left for Avingion. We took a small retinue of guards, but I left Miriam at home. I wanted as few people from the hall as possible. If Kai was to come back to himself, he needed a complete change of scene.
He didn’t say a word to me for the entire journey, and we slept in separate rooms at inns along the way.
Jarrod had sent a rider ahead with a message to my uncle and aunt, informing them of our pending arrival, and in spite of Kai’s anger, I couldn’t help looking forward to the visit. My mother’s cousin, Andre Calais, and his wife, Margaret, had been an important part of my childhood. They weren’t really my parents’ type of people, and my mother sometimes showed reticence in claiming Uncle Andre as kin. But Andre and Margaret had often invited Helena and me to visit during the months when my parents preferred to travel alone, and so they took advantage of the opportunity. Also, my uncle was well off financially and had been known to loan my father money without ever asking to be paid back.
None of this mattered to me. I’d loved spending time in the summers with them, sailing with Uncle Andre, running on the beaches, mending fishing nets, and looking for starfish. Helena spent much of her time in the kitchen with Aunt Margaret, enjoying the close companionship of a mother figure. The Calais family dynamics could not have been more different from our own.
As Kai and I and our guards rode up to their home, near dusk, a familiar sense of peace washed over me. The family lived in a large, six-bedroom stone cottage on the beach. It was whitewashed with weatherworn shutters, but to me, as a child, it had been the most welcoming place in the world.
Waves broke against the shore, and six long docks stretched out into the water. My uncle and aunt owned a small fleet of fishing vessels. Uncle Andre rented out most of the boats to other fishermen, but his favorite was a two-masted vessel called the Iris, and he was her captain.
Beside me, Kai looked all around, at the docks and back to the large cottage, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
The front door burst open, and a middle-aged woman came hurrying toward us. She was thin and small-boned, with a long braid of dark hair hanging down her back.
“Megan!”
I nearly jumped off my horse. “Aunt Margaret.”
She clasped me in her arms. “I’m so sorry about Helena’s death. We’ve only just learned of it and of your marriage. Your mother was remiss in writing to us. But we were glad to get your new father’s message and hear that you were coming.”
Looking up expectantly at Kai, she said, “You are most welcome here.”
He nodded stiffly.
She didn’t appear to notice his cold reply. “Come inside both of you. Our men will see to your guards and your horses.”
Just then, a man came out of the house. “Megan, my girl.”
I couldn’t help it. I ran to him, and he lifted me off the ground.
Uncle Andre had always struck me as larger-than-life. He had broad shoulders, weathered skin, and thick silver hair. He possessed a kind soul, but when he gave an order, people listened.
Kai was off his horse now, and he came toward us on his step-drag-step-drag-step stride. His expression was challenging, as if daring Uncle Andre to mention it.
Instead, Andre assessed him from his feet to his head.
“So, this is your young man,” he said. “I hope he’s good to you.”
“He is,” I assured. “Always.”
Kai made no response, and Aunt Margaret ushered us inside the house. Within moments, we were surrounded. Andre and Margaret had three children who I’d always called my cousins. All three were grown now, with children of their own, and two of these cousins lived farther down the coast. However, my cousin, Emily, and her husband, Kieran, and their two children all lived with my aunt and uncle.
“Emily!” I cried, embracing her.
Everyone seemed to be babbling at once—all except for Kai. I knew he was probably overwhelmed in the moment but would grow accustomed to the bustle and noise.
“I’ve steamed a pile of crabs for our supper,” Aunt Margaret said, “and made buttermilk biscuits. Megan, would you like a cup of wine? Kai, do you prefer tea or ale?”
My husband stood watching all of this without comment. By way of answer, he asked, “Is my room ready?”
Margaret blinked. “Yes . . . come this way. We only have one guest room at present, but it’s on the ground floor, so you shouldn’t have trouble.”
I wondered how much Jarrod had told them in his letter. She seemed comfortable speaking to Kai about his limitations.
“Can you just direct me?” he asked.
“Of course, down this passage, second door on the right.”
“Thank you. I won’t take any dinner. Good night.”
With that, he left the room, with me staring after him. I knew he was angry, but I’d expected him to at least eat dinner.
My uncle patted me on the shoulder. “Not to worry. He’s proud. That’s a good thing. I’ll have him up early tomorrow, and we’ll see how he does.”
I had no idea what this last part meant, but I was ready to accept Andre’s help. So far, I hadn’t done well helping Kai on my own.
* * * *
After a quick supper, I went to join Kai in our room.
Whether he liked it or not, we’d have to share a room—and a bed—here. Upon slipping inside the door, I found him already in bed with his face to the wall. As I’d brought only dresses that laced up the front, I struggled out of my traveling gown and laid it over a chair. Instead of seeking a nightgown, I decided to sleep in my shift.
Then I crawled in beside him.
When I touched his back, he didn’t respond.
“I’m sorry you’re unhappy,” I whispered.
I didn’t expect him to answer, but he said, “I’ve been sent from my home, by my father, at your bidding. What did you expect?”
Sighing softly, I had no answer.
* * * *
The next morning, a loud knocking sounded on our door.
Without invitation, the door opened.
“Breakfast!” Uncle Andre called in. “We need to be on the Iris by dawn.”
Kai sat up. “What?”
“Get dressed or we’ll be late,” Andre ordered him.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yes, you are. No one lives here for free. We all work. Megan will help tend the nets, and you’ll help haul in the catch. Now, on your feet.”
“No.”
Andre didn’t move. “You’ll be on that boat with the rest of us, or I’ll throw you out, write to your father, and tell him you were too lazy to pull your own weight.”
He closed the door.
Kai was breathing hard. I hurried out of bed and grabbed a gown from a travel chest—my old blue wool. Within moments, I was dressed and out the door, leaving Kai to think a moment on his own.
As I hurried to the kitchen, I called, “Emily, can you braid my hair while I eat?”
Not long after, I heard a drag-step-drag-step coming toward us, and Kai entered the kitchen wearing his canvas pants and wool shirt.
“Good morning,” my aunt said brightly, handing him a plate of scrambled eggs and toasted bread. “Eat up.”
As Kai had had almost nothing the day before, I knew him well enough to know he’d be starving—and he liked scrambled eggs and toasted bread. I got him a mug of tea.
He ate.
After that, Uncle Andre, Kieran, Emily, Kai, and I headed down for the docks. Aunt Margaret stayed home with the children.
A saltwater breeze blew off the ocean, and I took in the air with pleasure. As we reached the Iris, I scrambled up the short plank from the dock leading to the deck. Kai came more slowly behind me, but he had no trouble.
“You ever been on a ship, lad?” Uncle Andre asked him.
“No,” Kai answered. “I’ve only been to the coast when we visited Partheney so I could enter in the tournaments.”
“You’ve fought in the Partheney tournaments?”
Kai nodded.
I found this line of conversation sad, but it was the most Kai had said in days, so I didn’t discourage it.
Two sailors had been prepping the Iris, and we were ready to sail. Uncle Andre called it a boat, but it was really more of a small ship. As the vessel drifted from the dock, I wondered if Kai would become seasick. I was never troubled, and I liked being out on the water.
Emily’s husband, Kieran, motioned to Kai. “Up here.”
I’d only met him a few times. He was a slender, quiet man, but I knew enough to know that he made Emily happy. Kai joined him at the bow as the Iris picked up speed, and in spite of everything, I could see Kai’s interest, his fascination with the sight of the prow cutting through the rushing waves.
Then Uncle Andre called to them, “You two, come grab this net.”
A long, thick net had been laid out on the starboard side. Sections of it were attached to the rail.
Another pile of nets waited near the aftcastle, where one of the sailors was steering. Emily and I would spend our day going through those, checking for any breaks and mending them for when they would be needed.
Looking somewhat puzzled but not reticent, Kai came back to join Andre.
“What do I do?”
“This is a drift net. Grab that end. We’re going heave it over, let it run along the side of the ship for a while and then haul it back in.”
Kai was openly interested now, and the sight made my heart race. Turning away, I focused on my own task.
The day began to slip past.
When Kai, Kieran, and Andre hauled in the net, the deck came alive with wriggling fish, and the men set to sorting them, throwing back what couldn’t be sold or used. From the corner of my eye, I watched. Kai caught on quickly.
“Good,” Uncle Andre said, nodding.
For lunch, Emily broke out a large basket Margaret had sent. We ate sliced apples and some delicious fried cakes made from cornmeal and cheese. Kai ate four of them, all the while asking Kieran and my uncle questions about the fishing process.
No one noticed his limp, and so neither did he.
Hope rose inside me.
In the afternoon, we headed back toward shore and made dock. Uncle Andre held back a large halibut, but turned the rest of our haul over to his sailors to sell to the fishmongers in Avingion.
As we started up the beach, Uncle Andre turned to Kai. “Try sinking your whole weight onto that leg in the sand. I had a first mate who’d taken a cut like yours, and he used the sand to heal himself.”
I felt myself tense. This was the first time anyone had mentioned Kai’s injury quite that bluntly. But Andre sounded a good deal like Captain Marcel, and Kai was not offended.
“How?” he asked. “Like this?”
Stepping forward, he placed his right foot firmly into the sand, shifting his weight as his foot sank slightly.
“Yes, good,” Andre said. “Now, try to step as normally as you can with the left.”
Kai tried to take a step. It was awkward, but the softness of the sand helped to ground his right leg, and I could see that the movement didn’t pain him much.
“Keep that up,” Andre said. “The leg will strengthen.”
We arrived at the cottage, and the children ran out to greet us. Aunt Margaret came on their heels, taking the halibut from her husband. She kissed him. “How did things go?”
“Well,” Andre answered. “Young Kai is a born fisherman.”
For dinner, Margaret rolled pieces of the halibut in an egg batter and fried them in a cast iron pan. We had raspberries from the garden and roasted potatoes as well. Kai ate like man who’d put in a hard day’s work, and he no longer seemed to mind the constant chatter all around him.
Later, once the dishes were done, we gathered in a sitting room for what the family called “story hour,” where they took turns entertaining each other by telling stories. Aunt Margaret was the best at this, and she told a tale of a handsome lieutenant besotted with a haughty girl who spurned him. He befriended her handmaiden, with the hopes of learning secrets to win the haughty girl’s heart . . . and ended up falling in love with the handmaiden.
As Margaret told this story, Kai leaned forward in his chair, and I remembered how much he’d liked hearing my story of the wolf hunters in the tapestries.
As Margaret finished, Kai looked about the room in a kind of wonder, and I realized he’d never known anything like this. His mother died the night he was born, and he’d grown up with a cold father and two brothers at each other’s throats. He’d never known a loving family who enjoyed eating together and gathering like this in a parlor.
Not long after dark, Andre pronounced it to be bedtime.
I headed off to the guest room I shared with Kai, and a few moments later, he came inside and closed the door.
Had we only arrived last night?
Perhaps pressing my luck, I said, “I suggested bringing you here because I thought it would help. I never meant for you to feel as if you were being sent away.”
“I know that.”
Did he? If he’d known, why had he blamed me?
Unlacing my dress, I slipped out of it and stood there in my shift. He turned away, went to the bed, sat, and pulled off his boots. Lying down fully clothed, he started to roll over with his face to the wall again.
Going to him, I took his arm and tried to gently pull him toward me.
“Kai,” I whispered, leaning in and touching my mouth to his.
Grabbing my shoulders, he held me away. “No,” he said. “I won’t have your pity.”
“Pity?”
“You don’t want me. How could you? You saved my life, so now you’re saddled with me, but I won’t ever ask anything more.”
My long weeks of patience came to an end.
“Do you plan to make us spend the rest of our lives like this?” My voice was loud enough to be heard outside the room, and I didn’t care. “To go on punishing both of us? You think I don’t want you? I ache for you! I can barely stand to be in the room without touching you.”
I took hold of his face, and he didn’t push me away. His eyes were searching mine, and I leaned down, kissing him again. “I ache for you,” I whispered.
To my wild relief, his hand was on the back of my head, and I felt the once-familiar pressure of his mouth on mine, almost hard enough to hurt but not quite.
He pushed me down beneath himself, and I reveled in the welcome feel of his weight and the careful strength in his hands.
“Kai.”
* * * *
The days flowed past, one into the next. We spent most days on the water aboard the Iris. Sometimes, the men would take smaller boats and fish with long poles.
In the late afternoons, Kai and I walked the beach, so he could put more weight on his leg in the soft but heavy sand. Emily and Kieran often came with us, and occasionally, Uncle Andre.
One day, Kieran asked how the injury had happened, and Kai told him. Both Kieran and Emily’s eyes widened at the story. Kai lived in a very different world from their own.
But after several weeks of this, I began to notice a marked improvement in his limp.
One morning, I woke up to realize we’d been living in the cottage for over a month, and autumn was setting in. When Kai arose to get dressed, he walked from our bed to his travel chest, and I barely noticed him favoring his right leg.
There was a chill in the air. Summer had ended.
After breakfast, as we all stepped outside, Uncle Andre smelled the breeze. “Everyone should bring coats today. The weather may turn.”
Emily and I ran back inside to get all the coats.
That day, I think Uncle Andre simply wanted to be out on the sea. He told us not to bother with the nets and to enjoy the coming autumn.
Then he got out the largest fishing pole I’d ever seen. It was as thick as my wrist and sported a reel. When he stood by the rail and cast out the baited line, the pole stretched well out over the water. The line was almost as thick as twine
“This cooler weather is good for Scarlet-Fish to rise,” he explained.
“Scarlet-Fish?” Kai asked.
“Great fish as long as a man, with red scales. I only caught one once, and he managed to pull the pole out of my hands.”
“Are they a delicacy?”
“Gods no.” Uncle Andre laughed. “Their flesh tastes like ash, but there are more than a few nobles and rich merchants willing to pay a small fortune to mount one on a wall.”
Listening to this, I tried not to show disapproval. To me, it seemed a waste to kill such a creature only to use it as a wall decoration.
“What should I do today?” Kai asked.
Clearly, Uncle Andre was feeling lazy. “Go to the prow or the aftcastle with your wife and feel the wind in your face.”
With a wry smile, Kai led me up to the aftcastle. Kieran was at the wheel. We joined him up there, and I stood in front of Kai. He wrapped his arms around me, and we both tilted our heads back to feel the sea wind in our faces as my uncle had suggested.
I’d never loved anyone as I loved Kai, and in that moment, there was no place in the world I would rather have been. The morning passed swiftly, and just before midday the sky began to darken.
Kieran looked up. “Andre?”
My uncle looked up as well. “Turn us about.”
I knew he probably feared a storm coming, and it would be wise to head back in.
Watching Kieran turned the wheel, I wasn’t paying attention to anything going on down below until I heard Uncle Andre call out, “Whoa!”
With no idea to whom he was speaking, I looked down to see him gripping his pole with all his might. A great flash of red leaped up out of the water and dove back down.
Andre was jerked against the rail, hanging onto the pole with both hands, knuckles turning white.
“Kai!” he shouted.
Without hesitation, Kai jumped off the aftcastle and landed on both feet. His right leg held him as firmly as his left when he landed, and he ran the few steps to Andre, reaching forward and grabbing the pole up above Andre’s hands.
Both men heaved backward, and the muscles in Kai’s arms strained against his wool shirt. Andre let Kai hold the brunt of the fight while he wildly cranked the wheel until he could reel no more.
The great fish in the water leaped up again. I’d never seen anything so bright red. It was worthy of its name.
Kai and Andre heaved again. Then Andre cranked the reel.
“Don’t let it go!” Kieran called from the aftcastle.
I wasn’t fully aware how long this went on, but everyone forgot about lunch. Andre and Kai alternated between heaving and reeling . . . heaving and reeling, until at last the Scarlet-Fish was directly below the rail in the water. The two sailors came running and positioned themselves one on each side of pole. They cast a net down and used it to pull the great fish over the rail.
I watched it flopping on the deck, gasping until it went still. Its crimson scales were bright in the dark day. It was a beautiful creature, longer than a man, with a ridged fin down its back. Again, I regretted that it had died only to become a trophy.
Panting, Kai dropped to his knees.
Andre dropped beside him. “If you can do that, lad, you can do anything.”
At the look that washed over Kai’s face, I forgot the fish. Kai believed Andre. So did I.
* * * *
That night in bed, Kai held me tightly and buried his face in the top of my hair. He’d been a little troubled all evening, and I wasn’t sure why.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Are you unhappy here?”
“No. You were right to bring us to this place, to these people. I’ve never known a life like this.”
I understood him well enough to guess what he was thinking. “But you miss home?”
He nodded. “This is a good life, a good home. But it’s someone else’s life and someone else’s home.”
“Should I write to your father? Ask if we can come back?”
“I think so.”
* * * *
The next day, we stayed at the cottage. Andre and Kieran had taken the Scarlet-Fish to be preserved somehow, so that it could be sold to a buyer who would mount it on a wall.
Kai and I walked the beach even though we didn’t need to. He would always have a slight limp, but it was almost unnoticeable now.
We were just heading back when I looked ahead and saw a tall, familiar form walking toward us. Almost as if summoned, Jarrod Volodane had appeared. He stopped and watched us coming.
“Father,” Kai said.
They’d not parted well, but Jarrod had come after us. Perhaps a month with no company besides Sebastian’s had taken a toll.
“You’re better,” Jarrod said.
“Yes.”
Knowing the strain needed to be broken, I hurried forward and grasp Jarrod’s hand. “It’s good to see you. We were just speaking of coming home.”
“Were you?”
He sounded almost desperate. Had he been lonely?
But Kai wasn’t ready to give in yet. He wanted to go home, but it seemed he wanted this on his own terms.
“Father, if we come with you now, you need to understand one thing. I will never, ever seek a seat on the Council of Nobles. That was Rolf, not me. I want no other life than to be your son and Megan’s husband. I want to ride our lands and raise my children and never leave home except perhaps to come here on holiday. Can you accept that?”
I expected Jarrod to sag with disappointment, but he didn’t. Maybe he’d known all along?
“Just come home,” he said. “Both of you.”