Twenty-Four

The aftermath of congress had usually been awkward for Erik. Always he felt he should speak; never had he known what to say; and with his urges satisfied, the women he’d been with had all seemed increasingly young. In time, he’d found it less trouble to satisfy lust himself or, in extremis, to confine his attentions to whores.

Had he tried to predict the moments after with Toinette, he’d have hoped, at best, for the same briskness he’d been used to. After their coupling in the forest, that had seemed most likely.

Then, not long after he came back to himself, Erik felt her stretch beneath him and laugh, quiet of necessity but unmistakably content. “First pine needles and now sand,” she said, shaking her head so that more of her hair fell around her neck. “I think I’ll be frightened to seduce you again, lest we end up on hot coals. Get up, will you?”

The request, which wasn’t really a request, made her sound very much like the girl he’d grown up with. One could see that at times: bits of the past blending into the present, ripples in metal showing the hammer strokes. It was rare to find it in one of his own race, rarer in one so close to his own age.

Pulling reluctantly out of Toinette’s body and away, Erik ran a hand down her back. “Next time,” he said, “I’ll make sure to have at least a blanket.”

“Extravagant promises like that will turn a girl’s head.”

“Only the best,” he said. They repositioned themselves to sit facing each other, though not before Erik had re-donned his hose and Toinette her gown. There were good reasons for that, but it was still a disappointment to see her smooth body disappear beneath the cloth. “And would you really say you seduced me?”

“Well, it can’t be the other way around. You were only sitting there,” she retorted.

Erik grinned. “I sit very appealingly.”

“I’m sure I’m not the first woman to think so.”

“You’d not believe me if I said you were. Here…” She was trying to comb out her hair. “Let me.”

“What do you know about women’s hair?” Still, Toinette sat in front of him and obligingly bent her head.

Erik ran his fingers through the strands, gently separating tangles. Without a comb, he could only do so much, but at least he could keep it from plaguing her too badly, and keep touching her in the bargain. “It’s not so different from brushing dogs, is it?” he joked, and got a rude noise in response. “And you just said you thought me quite adept with women.”

“I didn’t say ‘adept.’ I just think I have good taste.”

“And I thank you.” Erik had done rather well when he wanted to—though he didn’t doubt that was as much due to rank and wealth as to his looks or manners. Most lords his apparent age had left a trail of bastards behind them, after all.

The thought made him pause. He studied Toinette’s hair, slipped a lock back into place, and then asked, “You couldn’t be with child, could you? I—”

“No,” she replied, not laughing but not sounding distressed either. Her voice was quite matter-of-fact. “It doesn’t take the rites with two of us, but it’s still a matter of will.”

“Oh.” He sighed with relief. “How do you know?”

“Agnes told me. I was fourteen, or a little younger.”

“Agnes?” He remembered Artair’s elder daughter: studious and refined, the first and totally unreachable object of his infatuation. He couldn’t imagine talking with her about childbearing, and particularly not how to prevent it.

Toinette chuckled, a dry undertone to her voice. “She was being helpful. And she wanted me to know that she knew that I knew.”

He was too tired to follow. “Hmm?”

“If I’d had it in mind to trap one of you into marriage by ‘accident.’ She wanted me to know that I wouldn’t fool anyone. Or, I wouldn’t fool her—or probably Artair, though I hate to think about that conversation—and she’d open any of the boys’ eyes that needed it.”

“God’s bones.”

“In her place, I might have done the same. And it was helpful information, wasn’t it? It means neither of us have to worry—not about that, at any rate.”

“No.” Erik withdrew his hands, having done everything he could with her hair. He was no courtier, to know any real tricks, and just then he felt ashamed to be touching her, imposing on her in the guise of help.

“Which is just as well, as the list was getting long.” Toinette got to her feet again. “And speaking of worries, I suppose I’d best go get some sleep, if we’re to face the rest of ours.”

“Aye,” said Erik. He looked up at her, wanting to say more and unable to think of what. “Thank you for waking me” was what he finally settled on, and it didn’t feel like nearly enough.

* * *

“Ugh,” said Toinette, slashing brambles away to either side of her. “Nature is awful even when it’s not haunted.”

“You’ve known that as long as I’ve known you,” said Marcus.

“I didn’t say I was surprised, did I?”

The sea and sky had their own dangers, but she liked them well enough. Hunting at Loch Arach had been similar, but plodding along on a ground full of insects and clinging plants had Toinette swearing almost every step of the way, if only in her mind. She’d not spent much time wandering the wilderness since her journey to Loch Arach more than a century before, and then she’d mostly been walking on roads.

While they searched, they couldn’t even stay completely on what few game paths there were, or follow the more level and less overgrown ground beside the stream. Beasts were born and died, even ground shifted with the years, and so they went over the unexplored ground with slowness that made Toinette want to tear her hair out.

Marcus, never much fonder of the wild than she, surveyed the undergrowth with narrowed eyes. “These aren’t drinking our blood,” he said, his voice immediately undermining any attempt to look on the bright side. So did his next word: “Yet.”

“I’d almost rather they tried,” said Toinette. “A fight’s at least exciting. Do you see anything to the east, Sence?”

“A large tree. Larger than most around here.”

“And that’s saying a fair bit,” said Toinette, although in justice most of the trees on the island were a bit stunted by wind: not runts by any means, but not the towering sort she remembered from Scotland.

“I could climb it,” Sence said, turning to look back at them. He made the suggestion without any of the enthusiasm Raoul would have shown, nor Samuel’s curiosity, but also without John’s reluctance. The tree was there. He could climb it. That was a thing that could happen. “It might give us a better view, but still further under the other trees than you could manage flying.”

“Not a bad notion at all,” Marcus replied, then looked at Toinette and added, “Unless you want to do it. I’m too old.”

Falling might not be as much of a danger for her, but on the other hand… “I can’t climb trees,” she said. “Never learned. I could try to learn now.”

“It’d take too long,” said Sence. “Just help get us over there. I’ll do the rest.”

The plants were hell on the edge of her sword. The search parties spent time every evening with whetstones, and that night would be no different. None of them had come prepared to hack through forests. Toinette did hack, and swear, until she and the others arrived, sweaty and scratched, at the base of a tall pine. Its scent distracted Toinette from the worst of her bad mood, and she took Sence’s weapons with good cheer.

He grabbed the tree and quickly started up, so adeptly that Toinette raised her eyebrows. “And where did you come from?”

“The sea,” he said. “I’d imagine any of us could manage this—it’s better than the mast.”

“Ah,” said Toinette, making a rueful face. “Hadn’t thought of that.” She’d never learned that skill either. Coming on as the captain’s wife, then becoming captain herself, had meant skipping much of what common sailors learned. She knew the theory, but had scant practice. Nor had she ever been tempted. If she’d wanted heights, there was always the sky.

“You were always a city wench,” said Marcus. He picked up a spray of needles and began picking it apart.

“And you weren’t? Leaving aside ‘wench,’ which I’d be inclined to hold against you otherwise.”

“My family’s from the country. I know it well enough not to like it. But I can climb a tree, if I need to.”

“Why would you need to?”

“Apples. Birds’ nests. Bears.” At Toinette’s skeptical look, he admitted, “Not actually bears. But I liked the notion that I could get away from one, if I ever had to. It lent my life a note of adventure, until I ran off to sea.”

Toinette snorted. “That’d cure a man, sure enough.”

“Not entirely, or we’d none of us be here.” Marcus glanced upward to where Sence had paused to sit on a branch and rest his arms. “I’m surprised you never learned at your uncle’s.”

“I was too old. And he wasn’t my uncle. He’s Erik’s. No relation.”

“Ah, yes,” said Marcus. “It’d be rather awkward if he were, wouldn’t it?”

“How do you mean?” Toinette asked quietly, wondering just how much of the last night’s activities might have been overheard.

Marcus shook his head. “I know you, Captain. And it doesn’t take a soldier to spot a battlefield. You’d give all the treasure on this island for an hour with him between your legs.”

“I—” She felt the blood rush to her face, not at the phrasing but from horror of being discovered. “We haven’t found any treasure yet.”

“True.”

“And it’d… Do the men think so too?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Nor, I’d guess, do they—or not enough of them that we’d have any trouble reminding them what’s their business and what isn’t.”

Toinette stared at him, not daring to shift her weight lest the ground suddenly tilt under her. “But I brought them here,” she said finally, staring at Marcus, “and it was because of Erik.”

“Yes,” he said, “but neither of you knew this would happen. We all knew that it was uncharted waters, and that the world is strange. And besides that, you weren’t bedding him when you signed on. I can swear to that. Why would it matter if you did now?”

“My judgment—”

“Doesn’t get any worse for doing the deed rather than pining over it. I knew you when Jehan was living, remember?” He paused and frowned. “Did he know?”

Toinette sighed. “Not entirely. I told him I aged slowly, and that I couldn’t have children. He…had two brothers, both with large broods, or so he said.” The memory of that conversation, of Jehan’s hands closed around hers and his gentle smile, brought a smile to her own lips even ten years later. “He just wanted me.”

“But you loved him.” It wasn’t a question, and didn’t need to be. “And yet I remember you arguing with him time and time again, when you thought you knew what would be best.”

“Saint Paul never would have approved of me.”

“No indeed,” Marcus said. “But we all knew that from the start. Love doesn’t cloud your judgment, Captain, not when it matters that you have a clear head. I’ll tell as much to any man who questions your thinking, and then I’ll break his jaw if I must.”

Toinette’s throat closed. The effort to clear it would have revealed too much of her heart, and so she could only smile her thanks.

“That said,” Marcus went on, “best if you not plan on any merriment tonight. We’re badly in need of more to take watch.”

“And you want us to join? You must be desperate,” Toinette managed to joke, though in truth the request touched her nearly as much as Marcus’s declaration.

While he laughed, it ended soon, and he studied her for a long moment while Sence made his way down the tree above them. “You don’t think much of people, do you?”

“You know that. It’s kept me alive.”

“Maybe. But love isn’t the only sentiment that can twist a mind.”