The Low Lovers of Anastelle Yrai

They heard the outer door in the hallway crash open and an heavy series of noises echo about as if someone were staggering into the old wooden furniture and knocking it about. Jamies and Lallia had jumped to look round, they twisted their heads back to see the notes of hand had disappeared from the table. Hanya sat apparently at ease with his ankle on his knee.

"Where 's he, where 's el V'lair!" Captain-Sir Jamies Yrai staggered into the kitchen, glowering round at them all.

Considering he had only had the morning in which to recover from drinking himself insensible on el V'lair's brandy, Hanya was impressed that he had managed to get himself back so quickly although he reflected that the family probably relied on his horse rather than himself to make its way home. Hanya thought that Yrai was probably still drunk. He might even have had a quick bowl of something to keep him floating on the surface of the spectacular hangover which would eventually lay him low.

Anata and the twins, attracted by the noise, appeared behind their unworthy sire and made faces at Jamies who rose and attempted to calm the Captain down and get him to go up the stairs to his bed but the Captain was having none of it and kept shouting for el V'lair.

Hanya stood suddenly up, his height imposing itself over them all, and put on the table the green and red notes of hand he had forced out of el V'lair. "Commander-Lord el V'lair will not return to trouble your family," he said assertively. "I took these from him and they are mine now."

"He got me drunk to take 'em!" Yrai howled in protest. "Dishonourable scum trick! They are not rightly his."

"No they are mine," Hanya said in a crisp tone. "But I will give you the chance to play me for them again."

The rest of the family gasped in horror. Yrai stared at him and then gave a cunning smile. "Do you think I am too drunk still to play?" he asked.

"Ar't usually at the least of it this drunk, I should say," Hanya answered dispassionately. "Ar't willing to play?"

"Yeah," he said, coming across the kitchen to sit at the table.

"Dadi, stop! you have nothing to put on the table," Jamies' youth had never been so apparent as in the tearful plea that came out in his normally assertive man's voice.

"Captain-Sir Yrai may play me the right to seek his daughter's hand," Hanya answered, sitting back down.

Anata started forward at this. Jamies said furiously: "Do you think we are as low as el V'lair? that we put people on the table?" The twins suddenly burst into tears and ran to their father, shouting: "Dadi, dadi! do not play Anata away!"

"Angels' sake!" Captain-Sir Yrai shouted, pushing the boys to the side. "The stupid wench has had them all jumping to her whistle, let her dance to someone-else's tune for once."

"Shut it!" Hanya's voice cut through the hubbub. "I am only asking for the right to seek her hand," he said. "Unless it would make her consider me sufficiently low if I did actually ask for her to be put on the table," his blue eye came up with the glimmer of his laugh in it but she was so cross, she only glowered back at him. "You'll lose it all for a whim!" she said indignantly. "Just because you once beat Tashka in an hand, do you think you can take someone who plays all day all night? My father will take you!"

"Oh well, it is done now," Hanya answered. His face was inexpressive but Anata read the glinting laugh in his blue eye.

Captain-Sir Yrai had already taken a pack of cards from his pocket which he was offering to Hanya, anxiously saying he had not got a fresh pack sealed in paper. Hanya was not quite that much of a novice at cards. He said coolly that he would prefer the pack which the family played with out of the dresser and the twins ran to fetch this one and bring it round to him. As they brushed past Anata they whispered: "Oh do marry him! We will give you any thing." As they had very little other than the clothes they stood in, this was not quite such a generous offer as it sounded.

The winter sunshine was glinting off the snow outside through the kitchen window by the old blue range. The family sat tensely at the further end of the table, Captain-Sir Yrai having said he was not going to be distracted by a lot of women and children. He pulled out a fresh note of hand and solemnly wrote that he was giving the right to ask for the hand of his daughter Anastelle Yrai as if this was a great privilege. Then Hanya said carelessly, "oh and throw in that you will be willing to go and live in the pensioners' barracks in Erjeine, not here in my fort."

Captain-Sir Yrai paused with the quill pen poised over the ink well beside the green and red slip of paper.

"Do not fret for it," Hanya said reassuringly. "If I ask it of them as a particular favour, the el T'fels will provide you with a bed there. They are the cousins of my great friend el Gaiel van H'las, I met young el T'fel, Captain-Lord el T'fel, at a party of Commander-Lord el Gaiel's only a few months back."

"I can ask it myself!" Captain-Sir Yrai exclaimed indignantly. "Mentioned several times in the despatches. Sworn Lord will always say something of it when I go to give my vow," he grumbled on in this manner for a while. Hanya inclined his head, his scarred face inexpressive.

"Forgive my presumption," he said politely.

The coloured cards went to and fro across the scrubbed pine table and the sets built up in front of the two players. Castle and King, Pair of Hounds, Family, Royal Family. The Yrai children's faces were as inexpressive as Hanya's, to watch their father being tricked into moving out of the home in which he had robbed them and relied on them for years. If it were not Hanya who was being tricked into handing back the heritage which their father could fritter away while drunk.

But in their hearts they knew it was all changed. The charming appeal, the beauty and wit of their sister as she grew into a young woman who had captured the interest even of the high nobility, had come like the spring thaw to change their lives and they would never look in the same way again at the father who had been putting their livelihood if not their persons on the tables for years.

And Hanya was winning. The coloured cards built slowly up around his hand, there were fewer in front of their father, he was scowling and cursing. Finally he threw his cards on the table and made a discourteous snorting noise.

Hanya got up and collected the notes of hand which he stowed in a pocket inside the breast of his jacket. He said politely, "I thank you." He limped round the table, buffeted Petra on the head and said to Anata: "May I entreat you for the privilege of a personal conversation? before I ride back to P'shan Palace."

She went out into the sunny courtyard with him, frowning and chewing her lip. The sun came glancing brightly off the trampled snow, making them screw up their eyes against the glare.

"So," she said slowly, "you are actually good at cards."

"Oh no," he answered, turning out of the glare of the sun to look on her with a gentleness that made her turn her eyes shyly aside. "My brother by marriage had laid a bet on that time I beat Tashka at cards; he bet my cousin Pava that I could do it. But of course to enable me to do so he was obliged to teach me to cheat."

"You ... cheated at cards in order to win the right to ask for my hand in marriage!" she cried, lifting furious dark slanted eyes to his round blue eyes.

"Um, yes," he said. He tilted his head with the laugh glinting gently out of his eyes at her. "Is that sufficiently low for you to let pass my being such a wealthy member of the high nobility? We el Jiens usually give diamonds. Will that suit your heart?"

"You are very confident that I will take your ring," she said, looking curiously at him.

"Oh yes," he said. "I am not much good at cards but when ar't always in negotiations, musts't learn to be good at judging people. Ar't an honourable slut, my dear. Woulds't never offer a kiss or a favour if knewest it would break someone's heart. Knewest it that it would break my heart to have only the one favour of you so since offereds't it to me, I knew coulds't only be leading me down a road to take my ring."

---

There were the usual arguments about petty details of the wedding. Anata wanted to be married in a modest fashion out of the Yrai family fort but Hanya said it would not be possible for him not to invite an huge set of family connections from the high nobility and that on any road the fort belonged to him. The el T'fels -- scenting the opportunity to entertain important political connections of Hanya's -- courteously put forward themselves as Anata's sworn Lords to host her wedding at their Palace and then were annoyed to discover that this meant playing host to a crowd of low merchants whom Hanya insisted to honour with pink gilt-edged invitations. Anata held out for some time in favour of the small wedding from the fort and a grand reception at the splendid palace Hanya had bought from his brother by marriage -- without even consulting her, although he promised he would buy some small house at court for her too (which turned out to be twice as expensive as the palace in Sietter).

Their friends had of course been victorious in the war, partly owing to some unexpected problems with van Sietter's supplies of armaments. Hanya and his sister Arianna el Jien were able to take their representation on behalf of the merchants to court, leading to Hanya being made Minister for Trade and Employment, and he argued that this all deserved a splendid celebration. Finally Anata agreed that Lady van P'shan (who said that since she did not have a child and Anata did not have a mother, they should combine their forces to let her spoil Anata) and Tashka (who had been promoted in the war to General on double pay and was keen to find opportunities to waste this largesse) could buy her a splendid trousseau, the wedding could be in P'shan Palace and Hanya would take her on a modest honeymoon trip to the Esten Lakes to make it up to her.

"Mays't flirt with the boatmen, my dear," Hanya said, the glint of his laugh in his eye. "They are exceptionally low."

Captain-Sir Jamies Yrai insisted to walk Anata down the aisle and bestow her, to everyone's annoyance, but Hanya bribed his friends in the pensioners' barracks to make sure he turned up reasonably sober. He managed to say the words without forgetting any and without falling over in the middle. In some parade silks which his friends made sure were decent, he looked raffishly acceptable rather than a disgrace to the P'shan army, even by the side of Hanya's Guard of Honour, his suave and infamously elegant cousin Commander-Lord Pava el Jien van Vail. Pava el Jien and Clair el Maien ensured one of them was always flirting with Hanya's mother and as they had not invited el V'lair van Athagine, it all passed off with only the necessary minimum of inappropriate behaviour.

---

Anata sat up in the big bed, resting her chin on her knees and waiting for her new married husband. By the sides of the bed two enormous gilded branches of candles cast golden light indicating the further expanse of the elegant suite which the el T'fels had put at hers and Hanya's disposal.

Tashka and Lady van P'shan had of course insisted on an elegant pink silk and lace garment of alluring design for Anata to wear on her wedding night but she knew that if he came in to find her waiting in a chair draped in something which revealed more than it concealed, Hanya would lose his nerve and make a complete pig's bed of giving her his first favour. She got into the bed after the women had gone off sniggering and telling each other rude stories about their own wedding nights.

She saw the door opening and was unable to resist lifting her head with a grin. Hanya came in in his blue velvet wedding suit edged with silver lace and flicked his eyes shyly at her before turning back and making a business out of shutting the door. Anata was still unable to repress the lustful grin on her mouth so she hid it by lying down.

After a while he came and sat on the bed. She looked at him fidgeting with his lace cuffs and sat up to reach over to him. She put her hand on his shoulder, pulling him gently towards her.

He had become reasonably confident giving her a kiss and he turned his mouth to hers with an expression of relief in his round blue eyes. She felt the pressure of his lips to hers and watched his eyes drift shut. He opened his mouth to her tongue and pressed closer to her, his own tongue seeking hers, pressing and caressing to her tongue and her lip.

She parted from the kiss and put out her hand to the buttons of his doublet. He became nervous again then although it was in a voice husky with desire that he said: "D-do you prefer the candles alight?"

She was disappointed not to get to see his body but she knew she would get the opportunity in time -- he was her married husband not an one-day-one-night to enjoy as fully as quickly as possible, storing the memory of little bits of body seen in hurried glances to roll pleasurably under her mind's eye. She knew too that however confident he was in his mind that she did not care about his scars, he was still too sad in his heart to be careless of showing her them. She licked her fingers to pinch out the candles on her side. Noticing him automatically reaching for some elegant sculpted gold snuffer to put out his candles, she reflected with a little snigger that it was she who ought to be nervous in such an aristocratic apartment, not him who was used to sleeping in rooms like this from childhood.

In the darkness, she heard him moving about to take off his clothes. She lay still, wondering about his tall lean body which she was not to see that night. She felt the sheet and quilts pulling around her and knew with an excited leap of her heart that he was climbing naked into the bed. His hand came clumsily groping across to her face. She put her hand up and slid her fingers between his. It was his left hand. She could feel that the skin on the back of it was smooth. She brought it to her mouth and kissed his fingers. She was wanting to take one of them in her mouth and suck on it but -- over-eager out of anxiety, he was coming already to hunt for her kiss.

She put her hand to the back of his head and drew him in to the kiss, lifting her soft mouth to him in the darkness, allowing him to press to her, holding her passion in to lie passive by his side and not startle him with her fierce desire for his body. He was pushing a knee hesitantly at her legs now, at the slippery silk still draped about her body. He was pressing his knee between the plump curving legs she willingly opened to his insistent anxious pressure.

He lifted himself to lie between her legs, pressing that long lean body heavily over her body, his mouth slipping from the kiss. His hand came fumbling across the silken slope of her hip, he was trying to find the ribbon that knotted the robe and kept it (barely) on her body.

She captured his hand in hers and brought it up to her mouth for a kiss then put it to her breasts and the knot of the ribbon which he started desperately tugging until she moved his hand to her breast and pulled the ribbon easily free herself.

He lay still with a round breast soft in his hand. His fingers flexed hesitantly, she gave a pleasured sigh, pressing his hand encouragingly to her breast with the nipple hardening under the palm of his left hand. He was too innocent to know that fingering the nipple would get her on the go but he began to kiss her neck while flexing his hand on her breast and she caressed his hair and murmured softly to him in the warm happiness of his caress.

Already he was moving to try to lift himself into her. She knew that she wanted him so much she would be wet and soft, ready for him without some play although she would have liked a little play. But if she suggested it, he would only become embarrassed and lose confidence, she did not want him to feel it, his ignorance and uncertainty. It was his virgin favour and his wedding night, and this was her preference: some fumbling young thing, as beautiful to her as he was fragile in confidence, shy as a woodland creature hesitating on the edge of a clearing of sweet grass. He might be all powerful in the negotiations with wealthy merchants and King's councillors but in his bed he was clumsy with nervousness and hesitant because he was both eager and anxious and she loved him like that. She would let pass his power and his wealth if he would come shy and gauche to her in their marriage bed.

"My heart's heart," she said softly. "Have you a condom?"

She felt sorry to have to remind him of it. She could almost feel him blush in the darkness. He started to lift himself away from her, although how he thought he was going to find a small paper packet in the darkness was a question. She put her arm around him to pull him back and took one out of the pocket of her bridal robe to press into his hand then she remembered that it was his virgin favour and said: "Will you allow me to put it on?"

Gently feeling down his lean body in the dark. When her hand came caressing over the scars of his right hip and thigh, she felt him go tense. His poor penis had become discouraged and was only half-risen now, soft in her hand. She put her plump little fingers around it and eased them tenderly up and down. He moaned in the darkness and his head came bumping against her shoulder as he sought to press to her. When he was hard enough, she took the condom from the packet, pinched the tip and rolled it down the length of his cock. She put her arms quickly up about his chest, her hand went to his jaw, she pulled his head to her kiss and lay slowly back in the pillows, kissing his mouth insistently, bringing him to lie back down with her.

He pulled at the silk and lace which was still layered about her body and came back to lie between her legs again. He was starting to grunt with lust and he pressed her legs apart with his, she felt his cock set against her cunt, a flicker went writhing up through her body, she gasped and laughed, he pressed and was in.

The sweet satisfaction of it, to feel the shaft of his cock slide up inside her. She put her arms about him to hold him to her as he began heaving and grunting. She pressed her cheek to his although his head was now tossing away from her. She had always known that in giving her his first favour he would be unlikely to hit her sweet spot, that would come in time, for now she just loved it, to hold him, to feel him thrusting his shaft up inside her soft sex, going uncontrollably over in her arms. His hands were gripping on her shoulders, he was moaning her name, pressing hard up into her. There was the thrill to her clitoris and the excitement of his member sliding up into her and the happiness of having her lover in her arms uncontrollably pushing to her, pressing that first ecstatic favour up into her, his hips suddenly bucking into her wide legs and a teeth-gritted call to her. He went rigid and then finally relaxed to lie spent in her arms.

She held him in the darkness, warm and soft for him, kissing his cheek, running her fingers through his hair, wishing she need not remind him to take himself from her before he did her the dishonour of spilling inside her. It was so sweet to feel him still there inside her. But finally she helped him hold the condom in place and lift himself out of her and when he had reached to discard the condom, she drew him back to her and began kissing him again in affection and pleasure. He lay in her arms, relaxed and happy and played out by the giving of that first favour, puckering his lips softly to her kiss if she pressed her mouth to his and with one arm about her silken clad plump curving body.