A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 17

Clair shut the long window behind him and came stalking over to the fire, an aggressive fling in his lazy sexy stride. He sat down in his armchair opposite Arianna's, reaching down to the dog basket beside him to scratch his old hunting hound behind the ears, while watching his friend and his wife with narrowed eyes.

Arianna's face turned up to Tarra was blandly attentive but her long fingers stroked the collar of Clair's torn shirt with a gentle unseeing motion.

Vadya came into the sitting-room with Tashka one step behind his shoulder, they had both bathed and were wearing casual felt suits, Vadya in green and Tashka in blue. Tashka's slanted blue eyes were sleepy, she was going to get Vadya a plate of food when Arianna got up and came towards him with a warm smile on her wide red mouth sweet as a bowl of cherries. Vadya turned to her with an answering smile. Tashka walked across to the fireplace and sat in Arianna's armchair. Clair's narrowed eyes noted a sharp glare she directed at his ladyhunting friend but when he looked back up at el V'lair, he was staring carelessly away at the long windows.

Arianna was offering Vadya plates of food and asking him about the merchants of Port Ithilien. His voice held a cheerful surprise as he made a considered response. Because he was an officer-aristocrat people did not normally realise he had an intelligent understanding of the mercantile networks he would one day rule over as Arianna and Clair would one day rule the Maier Pass and the weaving trade of Arventa. Clair grinned aside to see his lovely Lady wife smiling with that wide sweet appealing mouth as she drew into an apparently idle discussion the future sworn Lord of the neighbouring region with its key trading posts, a young man who could get voting powers on the King's Councils. In the casual smiling discussion Arianna was playfully engaging him in, young van H'las would without being aware of any undue persuasion come to accept the importance of managing trade not just within but across regions so as to secure the prosperity of the people. Dashing sexy el V'lair van Athagine was left way behind in Lady el Jien van Sietter's wake; the chance of him using his voting powers for the merchants and the poor was so negligible it was not even worth flirting with him for it, never mind delicately setting out the serious argument she was carefully carelessly outlining to young van H'las.

Clair looked back up at Tarra el V'lair. He was looking down at Tashka again. His saturnine face had softened, his dark eyes were unusually warm and sad, even wistful. Clair looked at Tashka and found that she had fallen asleep in his wife's armchair, her long muscular limbs lounging completely relaxed and her dark-haired head tilted into the wing of the chair, a ruby and gold earring Vadya had given her lying softly against her lean neck, her long lashes kissing her tanned cheeks, her rose-petal mouth slightly open and bunched as if only waiting for her heart's heart to press his mouth to it.