Stranger At The Wedding (42 page)

The child refused to be deterred. “Are you going to turn him into a toad 'cause he kissed you?”

Spens looked around at the girl with a grin; Kyra said, “Good heavens, what good would that do me? I'm trying to come up with spells to make him handsomer than he is.” She drew back her head and looked into his smiling eyes. “Not that it would be necessary,” she added, and frowned. “Two years? You've obviously never visited Lastower. It's the most deadly place imaginable.”

“Well,” Spenson said, “with luck I'll get out to the Citadel now and then. And there are worse fates.”

“Such as?”

“Well,” he said quietly, “not seeing you again was one of them. And after a day's drive thinking of you—and of Father and my duties—the still worse fate, as I said, was waiting for me in the courtyard of my house.”

“For heaven's sake, what?” Kyra asked.

Spens shuddered and drew her more closely into the circle of his arm, as if for protection. “Lady Earthwygg and her daughter Esmin,” he said. “So you see, there was nothing for it but flight.”

“Spenson,” Kyra sighed in exasperation, dropping her head once more to the broad tweed shoulder, “one of these days I really will turn you into a toad.”

The little girl asked, with glowing eyes, “Will you teach me how?”