~ 9 ~
The Maiden contemplative
“Are you cupshot?” Sodrin stared at his sister as if she’d suddenly grown a third eye in the middle of her forehead.
Jahna blinked, pulled abruptly from the pleasant memory of a snow-sugared garden and the heated embrace of a man whose touch she had craved for almost a decade. If one could be drunk on desire and affection, then she was about as cupshot as any one person could be.
She went back to writing. At Sodrin’s request, she had come to his chamber to act as personal scribe and list those tasks he still had to complete before his wedding the following evening.
“No, I’m not cupshot,” she replied. “I’m bored. You couldn’t write this list down yourself?”
He paced in front of her. “No. I can’t remember half the items. If it weren’t for you asking me if I’ve done this thing or that thing yet, there would be two entries on that list.” He leaned forward for a peek at her parchment and groaned. “I really wish there were only two entries there.”
Jahna glanced down and counted. “You’re going to be a busy man between now and the wedding. I thought you took care of much of this already.”
Sodrin ran his fingers through his hair. “So did I, but Manarys keeps adding to the list!” He glared at Jahna as she laughed. “It isn’t funny. You wouldn’t be laughing if you were in my place.”
She stopped laughing. “Maybe I would.”
He continued pacing, unaware of her new solemnity. “Would what?”
“Laugh if I were in your place. If I were the one marrying tomorrow.”
Sodrin halted, an impatient glint in his eyes. “Obviously that won’t ever happen.”
His casual conviction in that fact stung. Jahna laid her quill down and folded her hands in her lap. “Are you sure?”
That caught his attention. Sodrin’s eyes widened so much, he looked owlish. “What are you saying? Has someone offered for your hand?”
She shook her head. “No, but what if someone did? What would you say?” Radimar’s earlier admittance that he would have offered for her had circumstances been different gave her hope. Circumstances were now different.
Sodrin dragged another stool over to the other side of Jahna’s table and sat. “Depending on the man, I’d either tell you you’d gone mad or I’d congratulate you on finding the one person in all of the Beladine kingdom with enough brains to recognize a jewel of a woman when he saw one.”
Jahna’s vision blurred, and she blinked hard to chase tears. “When did you become so charming?”
He blushed and gave an uncomfortable shrug. “Just speaking the truth.” He drummed the table with his fingertips. “We aren’t children anymore, mushroom,” he said, using his old nickname for her. “You’ve always had a better head on your shoulders than I have, even if you’re younger than me. Whatever man you might choose to marry in the future, I’ll support your choice.”
“What if he were a man of lower status?” She asked the one question that would reveal everything. Sodrin wasn’t stupid. He’d figure it out in short order.
He tilted his head to one side as if to consider the question and froze. “Radimar,” he breathed. “Radimar has offered for your hand.”
She only wished. “No, he hasn’t.”
Sodrin waved away her denial as if it were an irritating cobweb. “He will.” He stared at her. “And you want him to.”
“I’m in love with him, Sodrin. I have been since he lived with us at Hollowfell. If he does offer for me, I’ll accept.”
Her brother stared at her for a long time before a wide grin lit his features. “He didn’t come to the capital for my wedding. He came for you.”
It was Jahna’s turn to blush. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“I know it’s true.” Sodrin banged his fist on the table, sending ink sloshing out of her inkpot. “Ha! This is brilliant! I’ll have an Ilinfan swordmaster for my brother-in-law!”
Jahna laughed at his excitement. She had hoped he wouldn’t become angry at the idea; she hadn’t expected this reaction. “He hasn’t offered, Sodrin. For either of us,” she teased.
More of the unconcerned hand-waving. “Eh, I give him three days at most.” He frowned as another thought occurred to him. “How will this affect you as a chronicler? Radimar is a swordmaster, and for all practical purposes, a nomad. You aren’t just going to abandon your work to accompany him on the road, are you?”
It was a valid question and one she’d pondered the previous night after she told Radimar goodbye a half dozen times between kisses. “I won’t have to abandon it; I can take it with me. In fact, if I travel, I can see things firsthand and chronicle them instead of relying on another person’s recollections and hoping they aren’t inflating or suppressing the truth. I can send those documents back to the Archives just as I did when I was at Hollowfell.”
His frown eased. “That could work.”
She had always envied Sodrin’s confidence, even now. “Do we have your blessing if he does?”
Sodrin reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “I can’t think of a better man to be your husband, Jahna. Nor a better woman to be his wife. You have my blessing…if you help me with this list.”
Jahna circled the table to hug her brother. This early celebration might all come to naught, and it might well be that, in the near future, Sodrin would be hugging her in comfort. She hoped not. She prayed not.
Good as her word, she helped him with the numerous tasks his future wife had set for him. Between them, they managed to complete all save a few. Sodrin looked frazzled as they met again in his chambers. “I have to accompany Manarys to the Exhibition and supper before that.”
He handed her a silk sash intricately embroidered with the Uhlfrida crest and the crest of the Ilinfan Brotherhood below it. He grinned at Jahna’s gasp. “I commissioned it right after you told me you thought you’d seen Radimar in the market. Can you take it to him? If he wears it tomorrow, he’ll be able to sit with you at the wedding.”
Jahna slid the sash through her hands, admiring the smooth feel of the silk and the painstaking stitchery. It was more than just a visual pass to a better seat at an event. The sash signaled to all that Lord Sodrin Uhlfrida considered Radimar Velus a part of the House of Uhlfrida. “I think he’ll be pleased when he sees this, Sodrin.”
Sodrin motioned for a waiting servant to help him change into more formal garb. “Just be sure to tell him not to forget it tomorrow.”
She reassured him she’d take care of it and made her way through the palace, descending the stairs to the floor below the one Sodrin’s rooms occupied and came to a narrow door tucked into the rounded wall of an equally narrow turret.
She hadn’t seen Radimar since the previous night, and her lips still throbbed with the force of his kisses. The door opened on her second knock and Radimar greeted her at the room’s threshold wearing trousers and a tunic with its sleeves rolled to the elbow and the lacings undone to reveal a muscled chest. He was a breathtaking sight.
It took her a moment to drag her gaze up to his face, and she blushed at the humor in his eyes. She thrust the wrapped package containing the sash at him. “For you to wear tomorrow at the wedding. From Sodrin.” She winced. Could she sound any more idiotic?
Radimar took the package before stepping to the side and gesturing to the room’s interior. “You’re welcome to come in if you wish.”
A thousand thoughts raced through her mind, not the least being the question of whether or not they would continue where they left off in the garden the previous night. Jahna nodded and walked past him into a room the size of a broom closet, and she’d seen bigger broom closets.
This was no way to treat an honored guest. She spun around, a heartfelt apology on her lips along with the promise to string her brother up by his feet for cramming his friend and former teacher into a space a mole would reject as too small.
The lack of room and Radimar’s size put her nose to chest with him, and she gasped before tilting her head to stare up at the swordmaster’s smiling features.