Wedding (13 page)

“Our loss,” Dominic murmured politely through
gritted teeth, as his wayward thought,
I hope it’s still
standing
, entered my mind. If the son were as loud as the
father, the reverberations from within might bring down the
seminary’s walls that had been designed only to withstand assault
from without.

When everyone was assembled Dominic rose to
give a toast: “To the destruction of our enemies.” The entire
company, men and women alike, stood up and drained their tankards
and glasses, banging them on the table with a great thump when they
were emptied, then giving a loud, boisterous cheer that almost
matched Sir Nicholas’s speaking voice.

Dominic continued to stand, signaling there
was more to come, and waited patiently for all the glasses to be
refilled. When it was quiet enough for him to be heard, he turned
to me, lifted his glass and said, “To Amalie Herzog, my betrothed.”
There was an even louder cheer, much shouting and laughing at this
announcement.

While I swayed in shock with the way all my
brooding fears on this subject had been slapped aside by a
proclamation to the entire Realm of Aranyi, someone yelled from the
far end of the hall, “And a son in nine months’ time!”

Dominic laughed and shouted back in his
officer’s roar that could penetrate the sound of battle, “A
daughter! And sooner than that!”

The room resounded with jokes and good
wishes, laughter and blessings. “I don’t have to wish you luck,”
Sir Nicholas bellowed across the table. “A bride with a loaf in the
oven will give her husband a warmer wedding night than a virgin who
hasn’t yet put wood in the stove.” He smiled at Lady Galloway, who
laughed as if she had been complimented and shook her head. My face
went as hot as on a summer day on Terra and I felt the hair lift
from my scalp. Somehow I managed to control my fury, looking down
at the table and pretending to blush with modesty.

Eleonora had warned me, I thought. This was a
side of Dominic I hadn’t known existed. After all my worries, my
dead-of-night, heart-stopping wondering what was to become of me
and Dominic, to have him shout out our impending marriage and my
pregnancy as if we had had weeks to discuss them – I took a deep
breath when the toast was finished, and sat down. What Dominic had
done in the travelers’ shelter hadn’t accomplished what this
announcement had. I wanted to kill him.

T
he festival meal was
raucous and noisy from the beginning; Midwinter at La Sapienza had
been decorous by comparison. The musicians didn’t wait for the
dancing but played some loud, nasal instrument, a leather bag
connected to wooden pipes, throughout the meal. The sound was
grating, more appropriate for outdoors, for marching in parade, but
the laughter and shouts of the diners almost drowned it out.

Conversation with anyone except Dominic was
difficult, and I could not trust myself to say anything to him in
this public setting that wouldn’t start another war. Stefan ate
with a boy’s ravenous speed, not talking unless addressed, intent
on his plate. Josh and Eleonora, off to one side, were so engrossed
in each other they didn’t speak out loud, just shared their
thoughts like breathing as they spooned up their food and drank
from the same cup.

Lady Ladakh and her son, the Ormondes and the
Galloways kept up an easy, running discourse. They had all
participated in the
crypta
cell that had fought the Eris
weapon, and they were old acquaintances from living at the edges of
Aranyi, seeing each other at festivals and weddings, naming days
and funerals. Most were about my age, a few years older or younger,
yet they had a settled, middle-aged outlook, married for years,
parents of broods ranging from adults and teenagers down to
toddlers. Even Myron, the young Lord Ladakh, at twenty the father
of an infant, seemed more of an adult than me. I felt like a
schoolgirl allowed to sit with the teachers on a field trip,
wishing I was back with my friends, giggling and cracking silly
jokes.

After making a few courteous inquiries, about
my seminary training and my family and background, the answers to
which I kept as vague as possible without being deliberately rude,
they went on with their own talk. It was obvious to them that
Margrave Aranyi was making a love match, marrying a nonentity,
illegitimate and landless. I sensed it in their minds, by the very
lack of specific thoughts. Knowing I was gifted, but with no other
clue to my origins, they shrugged mentally, suppressing any
impolite conjectures, deciding it was none of their concern and
hoping for the best for their overlord’s sake.

Only, surprisingly, from Lady Ladakh, mother
of the hated Drusilla who had tormented me in my early days at La
Sapienza, did I detect some sympathy. A follower of the Christian
faith and naturally reserved, she too had been an outsider, and had
adapted to the demands of marriage into the insular northern gentry
and the rigors of life in the mountains.
If there is communion
between husband and wife
, she thought to me, the sadness of her
widowhood still apparent after ten years,
everything else will
sort itself out in time
.

Dominic ate and drank with his right hand,
his left, still gloved, lying palm up in his lap. He managed well,
weeks of practice making him proficient. When he needed help, for
cutting meat or buttering bread, Stefan anticipated his needs
perfectly, doing it all so unobtrusively that people saw it merely
as the respectful, devoted regard of a well-brought-up young man
for a revered older lover, and smiled and nodded their approbation.
The Ormondes, proud of their son’s promotion from undistinguished
cadet to the
companion
of Margrave Aranyi, said nothing
overt, but took every opportunity to call attention, by questions
about procedure in the ’Graven Military Academy or observations on
the difficulties of arranging suitable matches for younger sons, to
Stefan’s position.

The household, distracted by Dominic’s
interesting announcements, noticed nothing amiss with the master.
People continued to call out to Dominic during the meal, and he
replied happily and graciously, the fact that he was eating with
the wrong hand lost in the general air of celebration. Everyone
living at Aranyi had been aware of my situation, but Dominic’s
toast and subsequent declaration of my pregnancy and early due date
validated their assumptions, made them real. The families and
troops from the surrounding landholdings, for whom Dominic’s
approaching marriage and fatherhood were news, were grateful not to
have been left out of the secret.

There were, thankfully, few opportunities for
Dominic and me to exchange more than pleasantries, although I was
not pleasant. Dominic tried once or twice, asking me how I had
spent my time while he was away, and was I comfortable in my room,
to which I replied, “Very nicely, thank you,” and, “Yes.” As I
blocked our communion, and as the constant interruptions intruded,
Dominic shrugged and gave up.
Later, tonight
, he promised,
I will explain
.

“Tonight,” I said, “is one meal too late.” I
rose the moment I had finished dessert.

Dominic put his right hand on my arm. “Wait,
Amalie,” he said. “It’s inconsiderate to end the household’s
festival dinner so soon.”

I curled my lip with indignation. “I’m not—”
I said, but I saw that as soon as I had risen and thrown my napkin
down, everyone in the whole damn hall had stood up, some people
hastily cramming in a last mouthful of pie or tossing back a quick
swig of wine before regretfully moving away from the table. “Oh,
shit.” I sat down again. “That never happened before.”

“No,” Dominic said. “You did not sit at the
high table while I was away, did you?” He saw my answering shake of
my head. “And you were not proclaimed my betrothed then.”

“Everyone thought I was.”

“Yes. But the announcement changes it from a
guess to a fact.” Dominic studied my frowning face in the ensuing
cacophony of benches scraping on the stone floors, laughter and
calls for refills of empty cups as people, seeing me now seated,
took their own seats again and resumed the meal. “And if everyone
thought you were my betrothed, why are you so angry that I said
so?”

“Because you’re supposed to ask me first!” I
shouted. Stefan looked up, distracted from dribbling sweetened
heavy cream over his second dish of cloudberries; his parents, the
Ladakhs and the Galloways became suddenly animated in their
previously languid argument over the relative merits of farming and
grazing on mountain soil. Several people at the nearer tables
glanced our way, smiled at the ’Graven already having their first
lovers’ quarrel and dutifully returned to their own desserts.

Dominic’s face looked as murderous as I felt.
“And just when, exactly,” he asked, “was I supposed to do that? Out
in the courtyard, in front of everybody? Or would you rather I’d
called you into the bathroom? ‘Oh, by the way, Amalie, will you
marry me, and while you’re here would you wash my back?’ ”

He was going to make me laugh, and I refused
to let him break down my wall of righteous anger. “You could have
held off on the announcement, and asked me after dinner, right
after that explanation you promised.”

“And go through the entire meal with people
wondering if you were just my mistress, or if I’d changed my mind
while I was away?” Dominic’s eyebrows rose in his most supercilious
expression. “I doubt very much that’s what you wanted.”

“You have no idea what I want!” I was
shouting again, and this time people were able to hear, as the meal
had reached its natural end. I switched to telepathic
communication.
You’re so sure of my answer you think you don’t
have to bother asking. I’ve fallen at your feet like every other
conquest, and all you have to do is declare that you’ve deigned to
raise this one up to the exalted heights of ’Gravina Aranyi.
There was no excuse for my affected manner; because of my pregnancy
I drank only water at my meals.

Dominic’s eyebrows rose higher than ever,
although now there was an amused twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Before he could find something mollifying to say another thought
struck him, one not so agreeable, and a look of fear entered his
eyes.
It’s the injury, isn’t it
, he said, so certain of the
answer to this that he made it a statement, not a question.

“What?” I was shocked out of telepathic
speech. I had almost forgotten Dominic’s wound; the lingering pain
I had grown accustomed to had surprisingly evaporated rather than
increased with Dominic’s return. “Of course it’s not that!” I
glared at him. “You really do have a low opinion of me. Why exactly
do you want to marry me anyway?”

Dominic looked somewhat appeased. “That’s
what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said in a whisper.
“
After
dinner,
alone
.” He breathed suggestively into
my ear, attempted a caress, using
crypta
, of my breasts,
covered only by the gauzy lace of my silk sheath.

“Thank you very much,” I said, “but an
after-dinner fuck isn’t my idea of a marriage proposal.” My nipples
were conspicuously hard, the aureoles puckered from his mental
fondling, and I turned away, hoping to hide the fact of my
unavoidable arousal at his touch.

“It wasn’t intended to be,” Dominic answered
the back of my neck. “It was supposed to be a healing session.”

I was surprised into turning around again. He
lifted his left hand with his right, cradled it against his chest,
his first open acknowledgement of his condition. “This is not an
ordinary wound,” he said. “If it were, it could have been healed
immediately; with so many telepaths gathered together, there were
healers enough. But this was caused by a telepathic weapon, by a
force of concentrated hate and anger. To heal it, I need
love—communion.” He stared opaquely at me, his thoughts, like his
face, unreadable. “An after-dinner fuck with my betrothed, for
example.”

“You’re joking,” I said.

“I never joke about communion,” he said. “Or
fucking. At least not at Midsummer.”

“Couldn’t Stefan—”

“Not all by himself, no,” Dominic said. A
fond smile changed his face from the hardened, pain-wracked mask of
the soldier to a lover’s mellow vacuity. “He’s very young and
inexperienced.”

“Thank you,” I said, “for making that
important distinction. And what makes you think I can do it?”

Dominic shook his head as if to expel water
from his ears. “Would it be so unpleasant, Amalie, to try?”

I had wanted that very thing, I remembered,
had attempted to force him into my bed before he went away. And
right now the touch of his hand on me, even the lightest mental
caress, had made me faint with desire. I looked into his silvery
gray eyes, saw genuine anxiety, and sighed. “No, Dominic,” I said.
“It’s not unpleasant, you know that. I just wish—”

“My lord!” An old man called from halfway
down the center line of tables. “I hear the rebels put up a real
fight. Not like last time!”

Ranulf stood up. “Be quiet, old man,” he
said. “Can’t you see Margrave Aranyi is with his lady?” Somewhere
along the trails back to Aranyi Ranulf appeared to have changed his
opinion of me.

The old man wheezed a phlegmy laugh. “Plenty
of time for that,” he said. “The master’s got all night for that. I
want to hear about the battle.”

He wasn’t the only one. While the tables were
cleared and disassembled, the tablecloths gathered up and shaken
over the midden, the floor swept and the dishes washed, Dominic was
drawn, reluctantly at first, into an account of his recent
adventures. Ranulf tried to shield him from the most probing
questions, but in the short interval of work required between the
end of dinner and the beginning of the dancing, a crowd of men
converged on Dominic, eager to hear of the action they had missed.
Old men, like the loudmouth who had called to Dominic, young boys
not yet of age, and some genuine professional
women—soldiers—surrounded Dominic like fish around a piece of
bread, nibbling away at his every modest word.