A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 17

Arianna suddenly burst into a warm golden peal of laughter. She said, "my dear, Hanya has earned so much money in our dealings with the merchants that he and I have been able to secure the regional debts for Iarve. Prianne does not presume to tell Hanya what he should do."

Clair wondered how much she had earned in those dealings with the merchants but this was not the time for such a vulgar question. He said: "You must be careful, Anna. We know not what this work of yours will bring on our heads."

"If it brings whatever on our heads, we must do what we can!" she exclaimed. "How cans't stand by seeing people starving in Sietter, unable to work in Port Paviat, the cloth workers of Arventa going hungry, trying to decide this winter: should they keep their houses warm for their elders or feed their children?"

He glared back at her. "Do not accuse me that I do not care for the poor of Sietter," he growled. "Can you not imagine what I feel for it, to stand idly by while they starve, powerless to intervene except to send a few stupid quilts to be mended to Arventa instead of to court? I am not asking you not to do this work with the merchants. I will do everything I can to help you with it. I only ask you to beware of van Sietter, you are too fine a mind to know how evil a pale Angel he can be. I do what I can to protect you and your work, can you not see that?"

She tossed her fine head. "Protection!" she scoffed. "All 'your' women need protection is it? Tashka from the soldiers then he has problems when he is betrothed to his senior officer. I have to have protection to hamper me in my work with merchants!"

He sighed and lay back on the bank of dried leaves, putting his arms under his head and looking up at the yellow and brown leaves hanging on the trees above him. "I knew you would not take it well," he said. "You must do whatsoever pleases you, my Lady. I had to warn you and it is done. You and Tashka are not my 'women' like a brace of el V'lair bitches. You are my Lady wife and Tashka is ... my brother and I will do what I can - because you are mine in my heart. There, give me peace about it now."

He lay looking at the leaves hanging above his head and the bare twigs of the trees showing and the pale autumn sky he could see through the twigs while she sat turned aside from him, looking grumpily off into the woods.

Then without turning her head she said: "Was it because ... because of your mother that, during the war, if I wanted to ride in the hills they would always make me take a two-three guards, however short a ride it was? They would never send just the one."

Amusement made his thin mouth curl up at the corners. "Is it so?" he said through his smile. "How very ... thoughtful of Captain Lariat."

She turned her head back then, her clear blue eyes gazing at him through her little eye-veil with that warm intelligent sympathy that opened his heart. He was still nervous about opening his heart, especially to her. She had a piercing intelligence and was quick with her clever sharp words, it was worth considering how she might take a matter before you laid it all bare before her. "Your mother was a famous heartbreaking beauty," she said. "Surely she could have had an affair with any of the high nobility or a Knight or any officer she put out her hand for. I never heard that she had any other affair. If she chose her personal guard, crossing so high a boundary of decency to have his favours, she cannot have meant to sully her honour. Must it not have been because she truly loved his heart with a passion?"

Clair's grey eyes clouded with sadness, he gave a sigh. "She was very beautiful," he murmured, "and she loved Tashka and me with all of her heart. Hers was an hot loving heart to be bestowed on a cold snake like van Sietter." After a while he added: "Mam let me call Fiotr dadi."

His face was unusually blank of expression, Arianna understood that because of the scandalous nature of his mother's affair, Clair was never normally able to talk about the affection with which her lover must have treated him in his early childhood.

"I am so grateful," he murmured, "to his memory. It is plain to see that he threw his life to them to save Tashka, whether for her sake or for Tashka's own because ... he was Tashka's - and my own - father in duty bound." He looked away above him at the leaves and the pale sky, his mouth twisting in shame, his eyes creasing against his tears, that he was ashamed of acknowledging someone who had cared for Tashka and himself like a true parent but who came from such a low class of person.

"People are envious if they see beauty and high happiness in others," Arianna said. "I think people talk stupid gossip about her and about you because they are envious." He turned his eyes down and raised his eyebrow at her. "Perhaps she was like you," she said. "Has't such beauty of life in you. People long to take it to light their dull lives with. If they cannot, they will try to put it out. No, I know does't not understand," she said softly. "It is a part of your beauty that some days walks't with life all shining about you and that knowest it not. Therefore does't not understand how cruelly envious you may be making those of small minds."

He did not believe her. He shrugged his shoulders in the leaves. "What is it to me if a guard was my father in duty bound and my lovers were my junior officer and a groom," he answered defensively, "I am still el Maien van Sietter. I care not what trashy things idle fools say of me. Except," he added with an apologetic twist to that thin firm mouth, "when it comes washing round your skirts, my dear Lady, to make your life unpleasant."

She looked candidly into his eyes and said: "I will let it pass." He could not quite meet her clear blue generous stare, his eyes screwed up against the sting of tears while his mouth quirked in a smile to her but she understood that the reason he did not say anything of it was that he felt it too deeply. She smiled warmly on him with the wide red mouth like a bowl of cherries, the mouth that was el Jien, not like her mother's mouth, which the courtiers called the Sugar Kiss.

Clair lifted his grey eyes, shining with tears, to her. "My mother was called Ana too," he said softly. "She was Anastelle like Tashka but dadi called her Ana - if we three were ever alone together I mean, on a picnic or something." Arianna's smile became if possible softer and warmer. He turned his eyes down, blinking his tears away to stare at the dried brown leaves on which he lay.

"Well, my dear," he said at last in a light brittle voice, "if there is nothing more you wish to ask about mine or my mother's scandalous loose morals perhaps we had better return to our guests and the children." He got up, brushing the dried leaves off his legs and his back.

Arianna sat still in the leaves, looking down into her lap where her long fingers lay holding her gloves. She said: "Kiss me." She lifted her head and looked away into the woodland. "I have read long poems of love," she said in a cool even voice. "I have talked into the night of their merit in terms of rhyme or image. I have even had a love poem written for me yet I know nothing of passion. I feel like a mole talking about the sunshine."

"If you take what that butterfly-wits el Parva van Selaine said about you for love," Clair said sharply, "you are ignorant indeed!" In a softer voice he added, "I prithou pardon me for it, that you came to me offering your favours at a time when I could not give you the loving pleasure you hoped for."

"Oh well," she said in that cool even voice, "I am older than you. I ought perhaps to have known more about how to please you and myself."

"You want my kiss do you," he said. His voice had softened to a husky warm sexy tone.

"Since I am your Lady wife," she said stiffly.

He laughed at that, his husky soft laugh, and said, "if I give you a kiss it will not be because you are my Lady wife but because you are a storming lovely with a mathematical mind and your politics are so seditious that we will probably all be hung for them!" He laughed again at the startled expression in the face she swung back round to him. "I like a risk, you know," he said. "I have always thought you were a milkmaid of a woman but sometimes I saw a flash in your eye that suggested there was a touch of the wild in you and so I pushed you, to see if you would offer me a more risky marriage than the dull contract that has lain in your pocket all these years."

He walked over and sat down beside her. She tilted her head his way but would not turn her face to look at him. He looked at her poised head with the tendrils of fair hair floating in the sunshine under her elegant dark blue hat. He put out his lean tanned fingers and tucked a curl back behind her ear, she turned her face at that, startled. He smiled to her.

"Come here," he said softly, huskily. She hesitated, looking nervously into his eyes. "Trust me," he said. "You know that I will die for you. I have put my life in the hazard."

She made a pout at that, still holding back from his caress, and said: "I prefer that you live for me."

That candid blue look, it went straight to his heart, piercing as those things she sometimes said when she would not go roundabout to spare your feelings but straight to it. He said softly: "May I have that honour?"

"Honour," she said slowly and with another pout. "Mays't have it as ... a favour." She was still looking clear into his eyes. Slowly she allowed herself to lean into his embrace, he took the warm golden weight of her and lay back in the crackling leaves with her in his arms. She lay still in the leaves beside him, he leaned up on one elbow and reached across to caress her pink cheek, she looked at him from blue eyes which had become anxious behind the silly nonsense of her eye-veil.

Clair stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers then his fingers slid down to caress her neck. He caught at the knot of the lace cravat at her throat, pulled it undone, slipped the top button of her habit undone and his fingers caressed the creamy white hollow in her throat. He put his mouth down to the hollow of her throat and kissed her softly. He put his mouth up and kissed her neck under her ear with the simple gold stud in the pink earlobe. He considered the erogenous nape of her neck with the soft tendrils of hair floating away from it but he decided a kiss there would raise feelings in her beyond what she would be willing to indulge so soon. He lifted his head and smiled at her.

"Kiss me again," she said in that cool even voice. "Kiss me here," she lifted one hand and pointed at the hollow in the base of her neck.

"As my Lady commands me," he said lightly and bent down and licked at her soft white neck. Her eyes widened, she felt a thrill run all through her body to her loins, in her anxiety she retreated into crossness.

"I said 'kiss'!" she said, getting to her feet and looking down at him lounging on the bank of leaves below her. He grinned back up to her, lounging there as easy as if he were on the sofa in the sitting-room, his slanted grey eyes creased teasingly, sexily at her. He got up and came and brushed down the leaves off her back, her hips and her skirts. His lean tanned experienced hands swept in broad swift strokes down her body, she stood still with her eyes half-closed and when he was done she said: "I thank you," in that cool even voice as she walked off to her horse, doing up her button and knotting her cravat as she went. He watched her with a knowing smile on his thin firm mouth.

~#~*~#~

When Arianna came down to the sitting-room after a bath she found Tarra el V'lair standing in front of the fire. He was still tousled from the hunt with a long muddy streak down one green woollen sleeve and on his cheek. He raised a warm laughing face to her as she came in, saying: "I fell and lost the others. Tashka is one to ride through Heaven and Hell!"

Arianna smiled politely and settled in her armchair to talk to him. "Was Vadya still at the front too?" she asked, reaching down beside her for her sewing basket. Tarra looked down with his wicked sardonic grin at her flaxen head stooped to the side of her armchair, her pink and gold beauty lapped in a warm blue felt pinafore dress over a plain white blouse with an open neck. From his vantage point he could see down the deep cleft between her breasts, he smiled softly.

"Ay," he answered, swaying lightly from heel to toe in the warmth of the fire. "They two will be back with a deer, unless some other ... game distract them," he grinned.

Arianna had smiled before it occurred to her that Tarra's joke was crude and then she could not be bothered to pretend she did not understand what he meant. She and Tarra looked into each other's eyes. Tarra el V'lair had a bold dashing grin but his eyes were sad and even desperate. He had managed to spoil his looks even more since his last visit, someone had broken his nose and it had set badly. He had that scar on his chin too, running towards his neck inviting your finger to trail down it, the rough knotted scar not like the smooth fine duelling scars she had seen on other men's faces and on Tashka's back and which her husband probably bore on his body. These physical marks left by wild riotous episodes which must have contributed to his bad reputation only added to his raffish desperate charm.

'He runs two, even three women at the same time,' Arianna mused vaguely. 'How much he must know of love-making.' She thought of Tashka saying men would be willing to teach her about sex. She blushed and looked aside, fishing a piece of embroidery from her sewing basket then stuffing the flimsy camisole she was making for Sevie back in favour of a torn shirt of Clair's that she was mending.

Tarra squatted on his heels on the fireside rug and looked into her face. The muscles of his thighs bulged in his jodhpurs, she could see the definition of his fit muscular legs in the tight swell of the cloth over his legs. He was the active Commander of a troop in the field, which he had brought with him. He had excused himself from the company for two days while he had been at the Castle in order to run manoeuvres which must have involved considerable physical activity. She was aware of his crude strength crouching on the hearthrug beside her like an animal which comes into your home but is not tame.

"Do you like to hunt?" he asked. "Why have you not come out with us in previous years? You are a fine rider, Lady el Jien. It is hard to jump side-saddle."

The formality of the title gave her a false sense of security and his reference to his previous visits reminded her that he was a trusted friend who was often invited to Clair's home. Arianna lifted her head and said she did love to ride but that she could not go out as often as she wished, there were the children, the work on the region to attend to. She could not quite bring herself to say the housework about the castle took up her time and did not mention her mathematical theorem either. Tarra continued idly and expertly complimenting her on her riding.

As they chatted he began to call her Anna. He squatted beside her, his big hand coming across to rest on the arm of her chair beside her arm and then resting on her arm and then gripping on her arm as if in emphasis of something he was saying. Even she could not fail to realise he was flirting with her and because he was of the same rank as herself she was more aware of the possibility than she was when the servants came softly offering their services to her. She withdrew her mind into the quiet place from which she would look at unfamiliar situations, her eyes veiled over.

She felt excited, she was not used to realising men had a sexual interest in her. Since her solemn girlhood she had always feared that she might not catch anyone's eye, might spend her life with the mathematics she loved but without the companionship and kisses she also longed for. The men she met from the aristocracy were usually men of honour who recognised that she was only interested in a serious love affair, no matter how much she thought she would like to try a kiss. They gave any chance of a casual favour from her the go-by because her husband had made it plain that he took her honour seriously.

She imagined trailing her finger down the scar on el V'lair's chin. 'The el V'lairs treat women as possessions,' she thought. Was that more sexy perhaps, to be handled like a thing? Did it mean that someone was capable of fingering you in more exciting ways if they were not constrained by respect for your humanity? She looked into his sad eyes, his greatest asset. He did not know that women fell for the vulnerable appeal of his eyes, it was the side of himself that he most tried to hide from.

Arianna's eye went casually down to the swell of el V'lair's jodhpurs at the groin, the blood ran faster around her body as she thought underneath their chatter about what it might be like to lie in his arms and feel him pressing to her body. She looked briefly up at his face again and knew she was bored by the idea of an affair with brainless sexy sad possessive el V'lair van Athagine before she had even thought it out long enough to realise that she had had the idea. As always she felt a sense of disappointment sink within her, that that mysterious side to herself that she was not always sure was there had failed to take fire from Tarra's offered warmth. She continued to chat to him, barely conscious of the play of thoughts and feelings in her mind but her eyes moved to the shirt she was mending.

Tarra was stooping closer to try and get her attention back, he was asking if he could fetch her some of the food set out on the table by the long windows. She shook her head. She lifted Clair's blue shirt in her fingers and suddenly caught a wisp of the smell of Clair's sweat. The shirt must have gone unwashed into Ladda's mending basket from which she had taken it. Arianna's eyes slid aside, she smiled dreamily and had to ask Tarra to repeat what he was saying to her.

Tarra recognised her lack of interest. He looked at her wide red mouth, imagining it wrapped around his cock. It was not as sexy a mouth as the famous Sugar Kiss but had its own beauty and he grinned as he thought how hilarious it would be to boast of having the kisses from the daughter's lips as well as the mother's - and the sister by marriage's, not that he was so stupid as to risk his life boasting of those.

Lady el Jien was a chaste and honourable maiden, her honour would be worth flaunting precisely because it would be impossible to get - except by some trick and he was enjoying his friend's hunting party, he was not sure he could be troubled to trick - or force - kisses from the el Jien mouth. He had not come off lightly from his previous tricking of favours from a van Sietter woman; he ran his finger ruefully down the scar on his chin. If he forced a kiss from Anna el Jien he would certainly have to face that young killer her sister by marriage again and he was reluctant to take the glove from Tashka el Maien. Most of the time he could pretend he did not particularly care about her but not in the bloody duel. He always flirted with women who were at all worth attention. When he flirted with the storming beauty to whom his friend was married, though, he knew that Tashka would take him for any stain he made on the future Lady van Sietter's honour.

He stood up, looked around the room and saw Clair standing in the long windows to the courtyard. Clair had a concentrated frown on his brow. Tarra smiled at his friend.

To treat women only as potential bed-fodder came to him so automatically that he barely gave it a thought that he had been attempting to seduce his best friend's wife.