Hybel 8th, 1513 – Merchant District, River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion

Tawny twisted her hands around each other, her teeth cruelly locked around her bottom lip. She didn’t know why she was so nervous. All she was doing was meeting a friend of Annette’s who taught piano lessons. That was all. Maybe it was the fact that Miguel was not particularly enthusiastic about the idea of her taking the lessons in the first place. But for Wright’s sake, she was a sim. She needed something to do other than think of new and different ways to seduce her drunken husband!

That was more or less all she’d done for the past six weeks and they were so sick of seeing each other naked that she was about to take a blindfold to his bedchamber. Tawney released her hold on her lip to quirk them up into a something that was almost a smile, remembering what Annette had said when she’d told her that.

“If you don’t like Curran, you can find another tutor.” Speaking of the Grim, Annette appeared out of the nowhere as she frequently did.

“I know.”

“So what is it?” The redhaired woman asked, green eyes fixing her in place. Though they weren’t cat-like in color or shape there was something somewhat sharp in them that reminded Tawny of a cat. Not even a housecat, once–when they were riding in the carriage to visit a family friend–they’d seen a mountain lion basking on a rock. The look in it’s eyes when it raised it’s head and looked at them sleepily was a lot like the look in Annette’s eyes. Wary confidence. The more she got to know Annette the more she was reminded of something that one of her tutors had liked to say “You can stick a hawk in a songbird’s cage, but that doesn’t make it a songbird.”

Annette played the role of the songbird grudgingly, but she wasn’t one.

“And I already know that Miguel probably doesn’t like it, but despite what he’s thought previously, having a wife who is completely dedicated to getting knocked up seems to require a lot of him. He doesn’t like that either. I’m not sure he likes anything.”

“Himself, maybe.” Tawny said before clamping a hand over her mouth and looking horrified, she hadn’t meant to say that outloud.

“Nah, I doubt he even likes himself, look at how much he drinks.” Annette said cheerfully. “And I don’t blame him, if I were him, I wouldn’t like me either.” Tawny giggled behind the hand still clamped over her mouth.

Letting her guard down around Annette was one of the smartest things that Tawny had done in a long time. It was hard pretending to be the kind of girl that her mother had wanted her to be. And while that seemed to be held up as some sort of ideal, people didn’t really like you if you’re shallow and self-interested. And trying to pretend you only had your husband’s interests worked about as well as square carriage wheels when your husband had no interests. Besides himself–and wine–and bad clothing.

A knock came at the door and Annette shot her a smile before heading to the door. Tawny folded her skirt in one hand and stared at the blue floral paper on the walls. It had been beyond kind of Annette to volunteer her house as a neutral meeting ground for this. She’d have to think of some way to help Annette later. She was a lot better friend than Tawny knew how to be back.

There were two men following Annette when she returned, both tan, one with light brown hair in a very similar shade to her own, though he didn’t look mousey with it, the other dark haired with a very shy smile and candid gray eyes.

“Tawny, this is Kevin Finnegan,” She gestured to the brown-haired man. “He’s the artist who painted that portrait I sent to my mother.”

“Pleased to meet you, you’re very talented, Mr. Finnegan.” Tawny said. Mr. Finnegan had an infectious smile, as she felt the corners of her lips being tugged up almost unconsciously in response.

“Of course, I’m the best painter in River Sulis, just ask anyone.” He winked a blue eye at her.

“Hey, hey, space in here is limited, I’m not sure we’ve got room for you and your ego, Finn.” Annette told him.

Apparently ignoring that, he turned back to Tawny. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Cox. And you’re welcome to call me Kevin or Finn rather than Mr. Finnegan if you wish. I try not to stand on formality.”

“Because your ego’d knock you off it if you did.” Annette wrinkled her nose at him when he turned a mock glare at her. Something about the way that Annette almost smiled, the way her shoulders seemed a little less set decided for Tawny that he’d be Kevin to her, anyone who could get Annette to unwind, even just a little was obviously worth knowing.

“Annette’s told me a lot about you.” Kevin continued.

“I hope it wasn’t all bad.”

“She was uncertain about you at first, but it’s gotten a lot better recently. Besides I’d take all her bad-mouthing with a grain of salt anyway. You’re married to the illustrious Captain Cox of the River Sulis guard–and you haven’t smothered him in his sleep yet, that tells me you’re probably a saint in disguise.” Tawny covered her smile with her hand.

“And if Finn would quit running his mouth, I’d introduce you to the person who you actually expected to meet today.” Annette said shaking her head. “Anyway, this is Curran Hamilton. Piano tutor extraordinaire. Curran, this is Tawny Cox, my–cousin-in-law, I guess. And a friend.”

“A pleasure to make you acquaintance, Mrs. Cox.” The hither-to silent young man said with a formal bow.

“And yours, Mr. Hamilton.” Tawny said. “Though–I don’t suppose we have to stand on ceremony either.”

“I wouldn’t presume. Some people like ceremony, my mother for one. There’s not a ceremony or formality she’s met that she hasn’t liked.” Curran ducked his head, not entirely hiding the shy grin quirking his lips.

“He’s right, Mrs. Hamilton’s written the book on formality for the sake of formality.” Kevin said solemnly. “I’m pretty sure that Curran’s father called his wife Mrs. Hamilton from their wedding to his death by henpecking thirty-four years later.” Annette snorted and Curran shook his head.

“Well, unless you’re fond of formality for the sake of it, you’re welcome to call me Tawny.” She said, extending a hand to him. He took and bowed over it, causing a faint bit of color to rise in her cheeks.

“And please, call me Curran.” Curran told her when he looked up, their eyes locking for a moment.

“Well, there’s the piano if you want to dive right in.” Annette said sitting down in her chair, a cat with a bowl of cream smile on her face. “It’s even tuned.”

“Thank you, Annette.” Tawny said. Curran pulled the bench out for her and she sat on it, smoothing her skirt in a nervous gesture.

“Sit up just a little,” Curran suggested, “But keep your shoulders relaxed, it’s a piano, not a firing squad.” She did as he suggested, he pulled a sheaf of music out of his bag and set it on the wooden music rest.

“This is the C major scale.” He quickly and easily tapped out the keys, managing somehow to lean over her shoulder without it feeling like he was hovering over her, which was kinda amazing, considering Miguel could hover over her from clear across the room.

—

“So what did you think?” Annette asked after Curran and Kevin had left.

“He was–very nice–and I think he’ll be a good teacher.” She added the second part in a rush as if saying that Curran was nice was somehow leaving something hanging that she really ought not to leave. “I liked Kevin too.”

Annette smiled and nodded.

“He’s–more than your friend isn’t he? Kevin, I mean.”

“Not–exactly. We are friends, he is someone I can talk to and he’ll listen and understand as best he can. And he knows that being friends like we are is all I can offer.” She sighed and sat down in her arm chair.

“I meant you’re sleeping with him.” Tawny covered her eyes. “I’m sorry, that was out of line.”

“I think, considering the first few conversations we had and how you reacted to them, you’ve spent too much time around me.” Annette looked up at her, eyes shadowed. “Yes, I am.”

“I like him. Not that that has anything to do with anything.” She stubbed her toe at the carpet.

“No, but it’s nice to hear. No one ever says it about Masen. Then again, I’m not sleeping with Masen, so…” She trailed off with a shrug.

“You–,” Tawny sat down on the settee and looked at her for a long moment. The sunlight coming in the window set off the paleness of Annette’s skin, making the copper of her hair shimmer like metal. And just like that it was back, the marble-and-metal armor that Annette always kept around her.

And just like that–Tawny’s whole life seemed to spread out in front of her–if she did succeed in having a child with Miguel in a decade she’d be where Annette was–even her closest friends at arm’s length, wrapped up in armor and and respectability.

“How do people do this?” Tawny whispered, as reality crashed down.

Annette didn’t seem puzzled by the non-sequitur. “The same way they do anything unpleasant, all the other choices are worse. C’mon, it’s not all bad. And it’s better when you can remember the good stuff, too.”

“Aye.” Tawny agreed. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Seryl 10th, 1513 – Carico Estate, Lothianshire, Albion

“If you don’t mind my saying… you are an idiot, brother dear. I love you. But you’re an idiot.” A voice whispered in Josh’s ear, causing him to jump and almost slam the library door.

Being a year older certainly hadn’t softened his sister any. Well, with Bet, he supposed that was only to be expected. He was a thin cover of fragile marble laid over a marshmallow center, Elizabet was diamond from the core out, only her physical appearance usually granted her any softness at all.

Tonight, however, even the usual softness granted to her by her hair and the clothing she wore had been traded for something else. Her costume, that of Lady Morgan le Fay, added an extra physical hardness to her. She certainly was shades of a legend in it, but if there was something that the Lady Morgan of legend and Elizabet shared, it was a distinct lack of the appellation “soft”.

“How,” his voice cracked slightly. He coughed into his hand and tried again. “How do you mean?”

“This is just like you, Josh. Just go in and talk to him.” Elizabet shoved at his shoulder. “I promise nothing’s changed.”

“That’s what you think.” Josh muttered. Elizabet rolled her eyes.

“Okay, let me rephrase that, except what’s going on in here.” She paused to tap the side of Josh’s head with a long finger. “Nothing has changed with him. You’re a better host than that.” Josh was starting to feel like Benoit, that was to say lost, in what should be a simple conversation to follow. He’d been doing okay until that sharp left turn at the end there. “Darin came to my party because you asked, in fact I’m pretty sure, given how much he protested whenever the party came up in conversation, that you insisted that he come.”

She sighed. “So he came and his date is in the ballroom chatting up other people and he’s hiding in the library with Ri, only she at least is pretending that she is interested in that book of poetry she’s holding, and he’s staring at the Orkney crest on the wall.” Elizabet shook her head one of the flowers woven into the dark strands of her hair threatening to slide out. “It is your duty as host of this event–and as the person who invited him–to make sure that Darin has a good time. So.” She poked him hard through the sleeve of his doublet. “Oww.” She complained. “What do you keep under that thing, Josh? Rocks?” She wandered off still muttering about how nothing good could come from a birthday where she hurt her finger on her brother’s bicep.

“You have better manners than that, Joshua Piers!” She called from the dining room door, waggling a finger in his direction. She was right, of course, damn her. He did have better manners than that. But she didn’t understand.

It had all started in the reception line. He’d caught sight of Darin in his costume as Florian Carey, the later years steward of Earl Pellinore, a rather ironic choice, as Florian was said to have a very peculiar sense of humor and a distinct sense of whimsy. Darin, so far as Josh had ever seen, had no sense of humor and wouldn’t know whimsy if it bit him in the arse. He could never imagine Darin holding a record for being kicked out of the most taverns in his time in Albion, managing to even beat Captain Jessiah Andavri for the record!

The blonde wig didn’t suit him. Josh had decided as he nodded in response to whatever Lord Henry had just muttered to him, briefly losing sight of Darin to the huge puffed shoulders of Lady Henry’s costume. It made his face look sallow and drawn, contrasting badly with the dusky tone of his skin and reinforcing the hollow hopelessness that was almost always lurking in Darin’s blue eyes.

He needed–he needed… His mind was pulled back onto what he was supposed to be paying attention to, which was the receiving line, by the sound of Lady Henry simpering to his mother.

“Oh, Lady Marisol, I was so grieved to hear that Lord Jayson would be missing this. I know that Henry wouldn’t have missed our girls debuts for anything. I would half expect him to crawl out of the grave to be at Julia’s. Such a shame that he couldn’t make it back from Camelot in time.”

Josh’s mother was obviously trying to wrangle whatever sharp thing that had been building behind her teeth into something appropriate to say at a party when the tension was defused by an unlady-like snort from the woman behind Lady Henry in the receiving line.

“What?” Lady Henry turned, affronted.

“Oh, nothing, I am sure you are terribly grieved,” Madame Cox smiled as she gave Elizabet a hug. “I, unfortunately, have mixed feelings on the whole thing. It certainly is a shame that the baron will miss this.” She winked at Elizabet. “But it does mean that Masen is still in Camelot too, which kind of dries any tears I might have over the whole thing.” Elizabet covered her mouth with her hand, probably covering a giggle as well. Josh’s mother was too well schooled to smirk, but he thought he detected a hint of a smile at the corners of her lips too.

“Surely you wouldn’t stand for Master Masen missing your own daughter’s debut!” Lady Henry asked, planting her hands on her hips. Lord Henry was looking like he was praying for the ground to open up and swallow him whole.

“It would honestly depend on why he was missing it.” Madame Cox said, ignoring Lady Henry’s stance to lean in and kiss Marisol’s cheek. “After all, the universe is the Lord Wright’s to control and not ours. And certainly should it be fire, flood, or act of Wright that was preventing him from being there, he’d be excused in my eyes!” She fluttered her lashes in Lady Henry’s direction.

Lady Henry stormed off to where Lord Henry stood waiting looking like he still wanted to be swallowed by the paving stones, forgetting to say anything to Josh at all. “What?” She hissed at him.

“I told you not to get into that with Lady Marisol, Katherine. It’s not like she’d miss that it was a jab at her.” Lord Henry muttered before heading off toward the house, their murmured conversation fading as they went. Madame Cox, then the Captain and Mrs. Cox followed through without further incident when Josh caught sight of Darin and his date as well.

“You might as well come up, Darin, we’ve already spotted you.” Elizabet called to the pair at the bottom of the stairs. “And you’ll have to forgive me for asking who this lovely young lady you’re escorting is.”

“This is Eve Rose.” Darin said. Marisol’s eyebrow shot up as she looked over her shoulder at Josh who shrugged. Actually he had known that Darin was planning on inviting Eve, but there was no way to gently break that bit of information to his mother, so he would just pretend that he hadn’t known. Whether it worked was anyone’s guess.

“Rose–any relation to Reginald? Or to Guardsman Colby?” Elizabet asked curiously.

“Aye.” Eve said with a smile. It was Elizabet’s turn to look at Josh, only her expression was puzzled. He shrugged again. “They’re my brothers.”

“Oh–I didn’t know that Colby was related to Reginald.” Elizabet said faintly.

“We don’t make much of a deal of it. There are people,” Eve looked at the back of Miguel’s gaudy tunic as it was disappearing into the distance. “who would make it into something it isn’t. Call Colby’s loyalty to the guard into question when there’s no need for it. He wouldn’t do that.” Elizabet nodded in seeming understanding, probably actual understanding, if Josh could follow it, then Elizabet could more than likely follow it that much easier. Not for the first time he thought that River Sulis would have a much brighter future if there were some way that he could step aside and let his sister take the barony when their father died. The last thing this town needed was an idiot like him in a position of rank.

As Eve, Josh’s mother, and sister fell into easy discussion of the various costumes, Josh was pinned in place by Darin’s blue eyes. A wave of something that he had been trying–for months–to ignore or mislabel swept over him. And like a sharp slap to the face it was impossible to mistake it for anything else, that wave of lust, woven tight with softer things; hope, comfort, security, (love?) all wrapped up in a pulse of “want, want, want”. When that one single, perfect moment passed, between one heartbeat and the next, a second wave of much more familiar emotion rolled in: hopelessness, cowardice, panic on the verge of physical pain. Still, he had been trained from the cradle to keep up appearances, and so he murmured out some mechanical formula to Darin and then to Eve. They too turned down the path toward the house. All Josh wanted to do was run. But he couldn’t. It was Elizabet’s debut party and he, despite what he wanted, had a job to do. He was the host.

Still, that was what had lead to him standing out in the hallway lurking outside the library. Knowing that Darin was miserable and that it was his duty, his responsibility to make him happier or at least more comfortable–but–being a coward and as Bet so gently reminded him, an idiot. Oh, he didn’t want to mess up everything he’d built with Darin with him being stupid. Darin had forgiven him a lot, including everything that had happened that night, but he’d never forgive him for this. And Josh would never forgive himself if he ever let on.

But Darin saw right to the quick on so many things, how could he hide this from him?

He had hated himself lots and lots of times, but never more than in the stasis he found himself in standing outside the door to the library. The question “why” pounding in his head in time to the pounding of his heart. Why me? Why him? Why now? Why this? Why-why-why?

He took a step back as a group of his father’s contemporaries headed for the library–or maybe the balcony outside of it where they could smoke their pipes and talk about things that sometime in the next ten years society dictated would become the very most important things.

A moment later, the door to the library opened and Josh caught sight of a green sleeve, hurriedly he turned toward an arrangement of roses on a side table and began fiddling with the positioning.

Darin hesitated for a moment, but apparently the ruse worked, for he turned and wandered off in the direction of the bulk of the party. Still caught up in self-loathing, still hating himself for doing it, Josh followed along silent as a shadow and just as insignificant.

Darin seated himself on one of the gold settes in the corner of the room. Josh’s mother had been threatening for years to recover them, firmly of the opinion that the gold didn’t go–but she hadn’t found a fabric that she liked in their place, so there they stayed.

“There’s a seat open, Darin.” Dell said jerking his chin at the empty seat at one of the card tables. “Oww. What was that for?” He reached down to rub his right shin.

“For being stupid.” Severus said. Josh sighed to himself. Being stupid indeed.

“Are you sure?” Jules asked, looking over his shoulder.

“Nah, I’m not much of a poker player.” Liar, Josh thought, Darin was a helluva card sharp, Josh knew he played a lot with his own friends. He just didn’t play with Josh’s friends. It was just a lot of tutoring sessions to put into stakes. They thought nothing of tossing in a few silvers to a “friendly” game. Darin had to think of it, he didn’t have the luxury of thinking that money was unimportant.

“Besides, I’m more fascinated by the schoolteacher hustling the nun at billiards.” Darin joked, jerking his head toward where the Mrs. Coxes were playing an absolutely cutthroat game. Madame Cox laughed before turning toward Josh, who was still lurking in the doorway, eyebrow arched. Josh hurried into the room, trying not to look like he was hurrying. Somehow he didn’t think it worked to fool her. He dropped, hopefully casually, into the seat next to Darin.

“I meant to ask, Madame Cox, who are you supposed to be?” Charlie asked, turning in his chair to look over his shoulder.

“See, that’s the trouble with attempting to be clever,” she said to the room at large. “You never know if you’re succeeding in being clever or if you’re missing the mark. Heloise.”

“Pardon?”

“Heloise–the elder daughter of the first branch of Wesleyans in Albion. She’s a distant ancestor of mine or so the family legend goes.”

“The one who published all those scandalous treatises?”

“Aye.” Madame Cox said. “We both share a talent for saying things that are–mildly–scandalous.” Mrs. Cox choked. “Oh, c’mon, those books weren’t so bad.” She nudged the woman dressed in the nun’s habit with her elbow.

“Yes, Annette, they were!”

“They’re educational at the very least.” Madame Cox said blandly.

“I could have gone my whole life without that kind of education.” Mrs. Cox said primly. “It’s your turn.”

“So,” Josh said almost freezing again when Darin turned those heart-of-the-ocean blue eyes on him. “How you are doing?” Darin’s brow rose sharply, though it was half obscured by the blonde strands falling in his face.

“Words fail me.” Darin said. Aye, I was afraid of that. Josh thought.

“Hmmm. Well would you say it’s on par with the historical epic–or is it more like that Reman poetry recital?” Josh asked.

“More like that one time I walked into the hall by the salle and saw Brother Loki with his tongue in Brother Dustin’s mouth.” Darin told him blandly.

“Yeesh.” Josh said.

“Wait, you saw Loki kissing Dustin–and you didn’t tell us?” Edouard asked, slurring just slightly. His head was going to kill him in the morning. It was a good thing that they had the week off of courses. Of course it was no real surprise that he’d hit the bottle at any occasion. Josh didn’t know what he was drinking to forget, but he’d lay a month’s pocket money that whatever it was… it was something serious.

“…Aye.” Darin said after a long moment.

“Why?”

“I guess cause they–um–like each other? Why do most people kiss?” Josh couldn’t see Darin’s expression, but could hear his eyes rolling in his voice.

“No, I mean why didn’t you tell us?”

“Because I know what you’d likely do with the knowledge.” Darin asked. “C’mon, I’m the orphaned street rat, you’re the gentlemen. If I have the manners not to gossip and make fun of them, you should know better yourselves, but that’s never stopped you before. What business is it of any of ours if Loki and Dustin are–um–fond of each other?”

“Father Remi says that it’s a mortal sin.” Jules said rubbing the back of his neck.

Josh heard Darin’s sharp intake of breath and nudged him slightly. “Well, if  Father Remi said that the sky was blue, I would probably go stick my head outside and check that it hadn’t turned green with violet spots before I believed it.” Darin said folding his arms over his chest and slumping back into the settee.

Josh leaned toward him and murmured “Nicely said.” by his ear. Darin glanced and him and shrugged again. Josh nodded and stared at his boots for a long moment, trying to pull his heart back out of his throat and into his chest where it belonged, feeling the hammering of his pulse to the soles of his feet. What am I going to do?

Tyves 4th, 1513 – Edge of Merchant District, River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion

“Finn?” Kevin peered around his easel, eyes narrowed almost to slits before tipping his paintbrush ninety degrees to the side then righting it again. He made a vague noise in the back of his throat before putting his brush back to the canvas. Considering how simple the painting was, well comparatively, it was not wanting to pour out like usual. Or maybe it was just that normally when he was doing a portrait seating, he wanted to get the subject in and out of his studio as quickly as possible.

He wouldn’t care if this one took all week.

“Finn, I know you can hear me. I’m starting to lose feeling in my legs.”

“Just hold it for a little longer,” He scrubbed along an edge, trying to capture the loose waves of burnished copper hair that were just escaping him, the bright color refusing to flow with half the light and life on the canvas.

“You know, I have enough sadistic men in my life.” He tipped to the side and peered around the edge of the canvas. He met the ever-shifting green eyes set under brows with a permanent cynical tilt to them.

“Pardon?”

“The baron, the Captain of the guard… my husband–all sadistic bastards when they set their minds to it, even they don’t tell me I have to sit exactly so and can’t move for hours.” Annette said, though there was definitely a teasing tone in her voice. “If I can’t feel my extremities after two hours, the root is usually boredom.”

“Well, it’s just so infrequently that I get beautiful half-dressed women in my bed.” He grinned at her.

“Right.” She drew the word out comically.

“Just a couple more minutes, please, Annette?” He pleaded.

“And my legs?”

“Are really nice.” Kevin said distractedly, bringing the brush back to the canvas to rough in the lay of the hand, he hesitated for a moment on her wedding ring. I can always add it in later. He told himself.

“If I had a shoe, I’d throw it at you right now.” She sighed. He echoed it, looking at the scribbles on his canvas. She probably would throw something at him if he didn’t let her get up soon. But he probably had enough done to work on it when she wasn’t there.

“All right, you can get up.” He continued to work on some of the lines as he heard her clamber over the trunk at the foot of the bed. She stretched, the long line of her back popping softly as she did so. Her feet were nearly silent as they padded across the tile floor and over to one of the chairs he kept for portrait work where she kicked her feet out stretching the back of her legs.

“You are really are cruel.” Annette told him.

“It’s just the subject matter, it–captures me.” Annette snorted cynically. Inwardly Kevin cringed, even if she looked like a young girl with her hair loose and soft like that, like an angel in her floaty petticoats, the black pattern on her corset like slashes of shadow only serving as accent to the pale perfection of her face, all she had to do was say something and it was readily apparent that she was not. “Just how often do you think I have pretty girls in my bedroom dressed only in their unmentionables?”

“Often enough.” She said blandly, though there was something in her face when she said it, something he couldn’t read.

“Not really, no, honestly!” He told her before she could be derisive again. “It really doesn’t happen that often.”

“Maybe it’s your bedroom then.” She smirked at him. He stuck his tongue out at her. “Really, I would think twice about coming to a place like this and stripping down to my shift if I had any virtue to protect.”

“This place might not be in the best neighborhood, it might be a little rundown, it might even have a few disreputable people living in the lower floor, but has the best light in the entire city. As you would know if you ever spent the night with me and could see it at sunrise.”

“And you know why I can’t do that.” Annette told him sighing and looking toward the window that if it had bigger than a copper sized panes of glass in it, would look toward her house.

“Right, the husband, the kid.” Kevin didn’t sigh, but he wanted to. He knew how much Annette loved her daughter and how, often, it was probably having Lyssandra in her life that got her out of bed and going in the morning. But that husband of hers was a–he lacked the proper words for what Masen Cox was because–as the old saw went–it was insulting to whatever he might try to compare it to. In fact they should be calling old rancid bags of shit Masen Coxes as an insult to such bags.

“Keeping the kid away from the husband.” Annette added softly. Kevin grimaced–but only to keep from shivering at Annette’s comment. He couldn’t imagine–doing any of the things that Annette said or implied that Cox did. Of course, he could have written if off as a bitter wife trying to get revenge on her husband for not loving her, but there was something about the way that she shut down when Cox came up in conversation–something that only borne out Kevin’s impressions from the first time that Annette had sat for a portrait–a gift for her mother–and Cox had come with her.

“But doesn’t your husband go to court with the baron? And didn’t the baron leave this morning for a whole month?” Kevin asked with a quirked eyebrow.

“I can’t leave my daughter at home by herself overnight.” She glanced over her shoulder at the big double window.

“You still have a good three quarters of an hour before Lyssa is out of lessons.” He didn’t even have to look over his shoulder–for all that he often got involved in painting, he had always had a very, very accurate judgment when it came to time.

“I still can’t stay.” She looked down at her hands. “That’s why you shouldn’t get involved with middle age married women.” She shook her hand at him like a school marm scolding a little boy who’d done wrong.

“You’re not middle aged.”

“You obviously haven’t met my father-in-law.” Annette shook her head and leaned back against the chair, eyes fixed on the embossed metal ceiling tiles.

“And I shall add that to my prayers of thanksgiving tonight.” Kevin promised earnestly. “But what does your father-in-law have to do with pointing out that you are not middle aged.”

“All he could do was remind me about how I’m not getting any younger, how old I am.” Annette sighed.

“Well, he raised your husband so if he knows his ass from his elbow, it’s probably by accident.” Kevin told her. “But I’m still not seeing the connection.”

“He wants Masen and I to have another child, a boy. Masen needs an heir.”

“To what? The throne as King of all arseholes?” Kevin shook his head as Annette snorted back laughter.

“I dunno, maybe it’s Ellan’s way of saying that he hopes that I get pregnant and die giving birth leaving his precious son open for a better, younger, more docile, sweeter little mouse of a wife who’ll make him happy.” Annette folded the fabric on her lap like a fan and stared at it.

“I don’t think that any woman who would make your husband happy technically qualifies as a woman–not if she’s old enough to marry him.” Kevin said. “Besides younger isn’t everything.”

“Younger means more you’re fertile, like you’re a bloody field, more time for bearing sons.” Annette restlessly lurched to her feet.

“Which I might worry about if I were trying to get someone pregnant. But as I’m kinda trying to do the opposite, I don’t see where that even factors in. Besides, despite what those lovely Cox boys might’ve told you, being young and a brood mare popping out a boy every year is not what every man is looking for. Some men are looking for women who keep a man on his toes and argue philosophy with them in the middle of the afternoon because they can–and threaten to throw shoes at them because they’ve been posing too long.” He had stood up as he was speaking and followed her across the floor, putting an arm around her shoulder

“I’m busting my ass trying to raise a daughter in a world where people will look down on her because of what she doesn’t have between her legs. Trying to tell her she’s just as good, as smart, as capable and then her grandfather comes for a visit and she asks me why her grandfather hates her.” Annette said. “I don’t want Lyssa to have to be hard. I don’t want Lyssa to have to explain to her daughter why her grandfather hates her–or for that matter why she can’t call her father “father”–or if…” Her voice trailed off.

“If?” He prompted.

“If she wished that she had never met her husband.” Annette looked up at him. “And I don’t, I might wish that he will fall into the river and drown while in Camelot, but I don’t wish that I had never met him. Because I can’t imagine me life without her. But I don’t want her mother to be the only one who ever thinks of her that way. I want her to have the–faerie tale.”

“I was raised to be charming, not sincere.” Kevin quoted softly.

“And not with one of those princes!” Annette said. “I want her to have that, though.”

“And she will. When she’s old enough, she’ll find a guy who loves her for her heart, admires her mind and her strength, adores her quirks, and all of that in spite of her smart mouth.”

“What makes you think my daughter has a smart mouth?” Annette narrowed her eyes at him.

“Her mother.”

“I guess I kinda walked into that one.” Annette admitted. “But you really think so? Not every girl does, I mean I…”

“Found me.” Kevin said as cockily as he could.

“I don’t know whether to hit you or hug you.” Annette shook her head.

“Hug me, the world needs more hugs.” She laughed and just briefly buried her head in his shoulder. But his conscience told him that he should tell her that it was time to head home to her daughter.

After she dressed and fixed her hair, two things that never failed to make her look like a prim schoolmarm, for all that her hair was loose around her shoulders, he lead her to the front door and down the stairs, though there was a staircase that lead directly up to his bedroom, they never used that one because it looked rather improper. And she was a moderately well known person being so closely attached to the Baron.

By the old overgrown garden, he gave her another hug, they always said their goodbyes here–again because of possible impropriety.

“I swear the man who built this place was macabre.” Annette commented as they walked out the side gate. “What’s up with the gargoyles–and why do they face in?”

“I think they’re mooning the people walking by.” Annette looked at him then up at the gargoyle arses above her head.

“So he just had a twisted sense of humor?”

“Well, he probably was macabre and had a twisted sense of humor, you did see the fresco of the churchmen and the decapitated heads in the vestibulum, right? And the one of the girl impaling herself on a sword in my bedroom?” Annette was still chuckling when she turned and walked off home. She was one of those women that as much as he loved to see her come and hated to see her go, he loved to watch her leave.

He felt restless as he tried to think of something else to do with his afternoon, so he returned to his bedroom and picked up painting where he had left off. In some ways, the fact that she wasn’t there made painting her all the easier. It meant he spent less time worried that he could never do justice to the curl of her hair or the sparkle of humor and cynicism in her eyes and more time trying to capture the fire he could see all to well in his mind and that was all the better.

And when he finally laid the brushes aside and stepped back from his painting, Kevin figured he knew exactly how Pygmalion of legend had felt. His fingers, with mind of the wet paint, hovered just over the canvas, tracing the line of her jaw before falling to his side. Then his eyes, managing to peel away from hers which had pinned him in place from the canvas as easily as they did in person, slid toward the north and he sighed. His painting wouldn’t come to life, but maybe–someday…

Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends, I found myself further and further from my home.

Tyves 1st, 1513 – Carico estate, River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion

“Bet? What are you doing out here?” Josh asked as he walked down the stairs toward the stables where the two horses he asked to be saddled were waiting for him.

“Are you going somewhere?” Elizabet asked, without answering.

“Do you need me to stay?” He’d figure out some way to do it, if Elizabet were in trouble or having one of those feelings again. He didn’t quite know how, but he would. His “plans” for the evening could go hang, especially as he didn’t want to go at all.

“Nope. Just wondering why you have two horses saddled, there’s only one of you…” She turned toward him with a grin. “It’s a bit late for a ride isn’t it? I mean unless it’s supposed to be a moonlight ride with someone pretty.” She clasped her hands together under her chin and fluttered her lashes at him.

“No, I’m going to go throw myself on Darin’s mercy.” Josh rolled his eyes, stepping forward to smooth the saddle blanket hanging on Shade. “I’ve got–something I have to go do and I don’t want to go do it alone.” He added after a moment.

“Oh, well, it’s still with someone pretty.” Elizabet gave her best romance heroine sigh. He shook his head.

“Aren’t you too young to be noticing if my friends are pretty or not?” Josh asked. Elizabet stuck her tongue out at him.

“In case you didn’t notice, dear brother, I will be turning twelve next month. That would mean it’s time for father to step up the ol’ husband hunt. So, if society says I’m almost old enough to start looking for a future husband, I’m probably old enough to notice how your friends look.” Elizabet pointed out with that razor-sharp logic that never particularly failed to skewer him. “Besides, pretty is an aesthetic thing. I don’t think you have to necessarily want to bed someone to know if they’re pretty or not.”

“You are in an amazingly good mood tonight, Bet. Should I be afraid for snakes in my bed?” Josh teased, however it was true. Usually Elizabet was nowhere near this jocular.

“Apparently you haven’t heard then. Goody! Father is going to Camelot for a full month at court. He leaves Monday and won’t be back until my birthday, I think.” Elizabet rocked up onto her toes and did a pirouette.

“You’re not sure if he leaves Monday or if he’ll be back for your birthday?” Josh asked. Though that totally explained Elizabet’s mood. The whole household from their mother straight down to the lowest servant breathed just a little easier when Jayson was–elsewhere, especially for a long period of time, but no one more than he and Elizabet.

“He leaves Monday, I imagine he’ll be back for my birthday.” Elizabet said shaking her head. “Though if the Lord Wright were listening, a freak summer blizzard in Seryl that kept father away until after whatever Wright-awful extravaganza mother is planning to celebrate my birth would be the cream.”

“I think that’s asking a bit much, even for the Lord Wright, Bet.” Josh pointed out.

“Drat.” Elizabet sighed. “Well, maybe a rainstorm. Something that washes out a bridge or something.” Josh chuckled.

“But I’m keeping you from that something you don’t really want to do, aren’t I?” Elizabet asked. Josh nodded reluctantly. “Well, who knows, maybe it’ll go better than you expect.” She shrugged and grinned before hugging him around the waist and running off toward the house.

—

Outskirts of River Sulis

A hard knock on the door almost made Darin jump. He had been reading a book that Father Valen had lent him about the first Duchess of Orkney, Lady Morgause. It had been written by a contemporary of hers, but as it had been published under a pseudonym there was some controversy as to who had actually written it. The leading candidate in current analysis was Lady Guinevere. But Father Valen had told him that he thought that if the first duchess of Avilion were going to pen all about Morgause, she’d have put her name right at the front of it.

Others believed that it might have been St. Galahad, but again that was suspect, he also would have written under his own name more than likely, considering the heretical nature of some of his treatises. Plus, most of Galahad’s writings were written in such an enthusiastic, bright tone, as if there were just this wealth of knowledge inside his head that he had to share. Even as he had grown older and perhaps more jaded, certainly more world-weary, that tone hadn’t changed.

Valen had suggested, and Darin, after a few chapters, tended to agree, that it might well have been written by Lady Dindrane. It lined up rather well with some of the lady’s other writings in tone and personality, plus there were certain references that indicated that the author had had a true and honest fear of the woman. The fear that might have come from actually having lived with the woman? That was what Father Valen had thought.

He set the book on the table, unable restrain a shiver as he did it, even though he was fairly certain that it wasn’t Lady Morgause at his door.

“Josh?” Darin’s eyebrow crept up toward his hairline. “What are you doing here?” Josh turned around and offered him a smile.

“Throwing myself on your mercy.” Josh pulled his bottom lip in between his teeth and grimaced.

“Oh, Wright, what now?” Darin asked. If this is another pubcrawl, I’m staying home.

“I have to–I’m supposed to meet someone at this–pub over in Reme and–I just don’t know that I can handle meeting this person and going there on my own.” Josh said to his knuckles, which Darin noticed, even in the faint light of the moon, were whiter than usual.

There were all sorts of questions that were running through his head–questions and jibes at Josh’s sanity–but somehow he couldn’t seem to make himself ask them. “It’s not–like Marcinak–is it?”

“You wouldn’t say so,” Josh told him, something flashing through his eyes to quick for Darin to read.

“Um, okay.” Darin shrugged.

“That blue suit you got, could you wear it?” Well, obviously, as the suit was by far the nicest thing in Darin’s wardrobe, even including his Academy uniform, this was no run of the mill sort of pub.

—

Cats – Ignisward, Santa Bella, Reme

Darin could count how many times he’d been over the border into Reme on one hand and still have a few fingers left over. If you’d asked him, going over the border in the middle of the night with a nobleman who was getting twitchier the further they went wouldn’t have been the way he’d have chosen to do it again.

Joshua had been very quiet as they rode, which, they weren’t like Severus who always had to have conversation going, but they usually weren’t this quiet. And the quiet hadn’t helped Darin any either, because it left him a good hour and a half to brood over what the hell he was doing going to a pub–in Reme–to meet with a guy that Darin wouldn’t classify as a thug, but the way Joshua said it sort of implied that he thought that whomever they were meeting probably was one–in the middle of the night.

Hopefully it they got murdered, Joshua had told someone, maybe his sister? that he was going and that he was taking Darin with him. Elizabet would probably remember to tell Sara-Beth that Darin was dead and buried in some town over the border. He hoped.

Joshua reined in his horse in front of a building that wasn’t much different than any of the other buildings on the block, light poured out from the two open archway doors on either side of an impressive wooden gate and started to dismount. Darin did the same, sliding awkwardly out of the saddle with care for the suit.

“Do you know where we are?” Joshua asked Darin, who looked back at him like he was insane.

“Reme?” Darin asked. He wasn’t so good with linking geography from a map up with physical geography and all of the towns along the border seemed to be Santa something-or-others. Josh gestured over his shoulder at the building.

“I meant what this place is.” Joshua said, crossing his arms and leaning them on his saddle.

“Nope.” Darin shook his head.

“If I told you we were at Cats would that mean anything to you?” Darin thought for a moment. It sounded familiar but he couldn’t have said where he’d heard it before or in what context, so he shook his head again. “Okay.” Joshua said before freezing like he was a mouse who’d just spotted a cat. Darin swung his head in the direction Joshua was looking in, but all he saw was a man who’d walked out of one of those archways that seemed to lead into some sort of shop.

“Isn’t that your father’s steward?” Darin asked in a low voice. Joshua nodded before dropping Shade’s reins into the hand of a young boy who skittered up. There was something odd about the boy’s face, but Darin couldn’t make out what it was in the dim light. The blonde boy obviously steeled himself with a couple deep breaths as Darin turned Reaper over to the boy as well. “Are we here to meet up with him?” Darin asked. Joshua nodded again.

“Okay.” Darin said as the stableboy lead the horses away.

“Joshua.” Masen Cox’s eyes flickered over Darin, eyebrow quirking upward.

“After you.” Joshua said, saying nothing about Darin or offering no introductions. Cox pushed open the gate into a richly appointed courtyard. There were several couches in the curved style favored by the Remans, snowy marble covered in rich red striped cushions. Seated on one of them, there were two girls, both an identical shade of blonde, but if their brows were any indications, the color wasn’t natural.

The one in red was probably ten, the other, in blue, maybe six. She turned to look up at the three men, showing that her face was as fully painted as a Gaulish belle for a fete. The red, red lips obviously not natural and the rouge on her cheeks heavy. There was fear in her eyes, he could see it, even as she coquettishly kicked her feet out.

Both girls were dressed in short dresses with what looked like ruffled breeches underneath, there was nothing wrong with the style, but there was something wrong with the whole thing, especially paired with the hair and cosmetics. He wished he could ask Joshua about it, but there was no time to for Cox was leading them toward a second gate.

In this courtyard there were more marble benches, one occupied by a woman dressed a green satin corset, chemise and petticoats. Darin shot Joshua an alarmed look as the blue haired woman stood up and greeted Cox with a kiss on each cheek. “Lord Masen.” She smiled sunnily. “Lord Joshua and–er” She stumbled to a stop when she saw Darin, to cover it she simply turned.

“Calico is waiting for you as you requested, Lord Masen, follow me, please.” Her Albionese was accented heavily and he’d have laid money that her Reman wasn’t spoken with the local accent. There was an older lady he’d done odd jobs for for pocket money who was from somewhere on the western coast of Reme that had the same sort of accent.

“Thank you, Miss Tabby.” Cox said. They passed through an arch and into a brightly lit public room that was scattered with well dressed men, drinking wine and munching exotic fruit while dicing or playing cards.

A young girl with hair the color of poppies–didn’t anyone in this place have a natural hair color?–greeted Cox the same way Miss Tabby had. She turned to lead him up the stairs in the corner of the room.

Miss Tabby turned to Joshua. “Lord Joshua, please let me know if there’s anything I can do for you–or your guest.”

“A glass of wine perhaps.” Joshua said. “But that’s all at this time, thank you.” Joshua indicated with his head the nearest table to the door and Darin sat down. Josh following suit a moment later as Tabby went off, probably in search of that wine.

“Joshua, is–is this place what I think it is?” Darin asked, watching the brightly haired employees hurrying through the public room, a young woman or young man would come to the bottom of the stairs and one of the richly dressed men around would follow them up the stairs.

It wasn’t that they were in a brothel that set the hair on the back of Darin’s neck on end. He’d been in a few brothels before, though never outside the public rooms, it was everything else about the place…

Joshua nodded and glanced away at the table top. As before, he felt about five billion questions piling up, but he couldn’t voice any of them.

Then the boy–the one that Darin had thought was just a stableboy, came running into the room–in the bright light he could see that like the girls in the atrium–the boy’s hair was bleached blonde and his face was painted. He headed up the stairs at a run and a moment later, a stick thin man dressed in the black robes of a judge stood up and headed for the stairs.

At first, Darin thought maybe the man was going to “meet” the young man who’d just come down, hair dyed a brilliant teal, but the judge walked past him and went up the stairs in the wake of boy.

Darin was going to be sick in about half a second. “I am so sorry, Darin.” Joshua said from across the table, though it was quiet enough that probably only Darin heard him.

“How–,” Joshua looked around at the other men, the ones who didn’t seem to respond at all to the idea of a graybeard and judge going upstairs with a boy that age, and Darin’s question fell off.

“I didn’t–I thought, look, we’ll–talk about it later. I–I promise, later.” Joshua’s hands shook and Darin could only nod. Then Josh started talking about a lecture that was supposed to happen the next week at school and Darin fell into the pantomime that everything was all right as if it had all been rehearsed ahead of time.

—

Shrine of St. Betsy, River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion

After they’d left the brothel, they’d ridden back to Albion in silence, but given that Cox had been just ahead of them on the road, Darin guessed there wasn’t a lot that Joshua would be willing to say. It was only after they’d parted company–if you wanted to call it that–Joshua hadn’t said more than two words to the steward the entire time–with Cox that Joshua thawed any at all.

“I couldn’t handle going there by myself again.” Joshua said after they settled onto one of the secluded benches near the back wall of the shrine.

“Do you go there often?” Darin asked.

“More often than I’d like.” Joshua admitted. “It’s one of Cox’s preferred places of recreation–they don’t offer the right sort of services here in Albion.”

“Okay, but you’re the nobleman, he’s the steward, why do you have to go with him to some place you don’t even want to go?” Darin asked. “Can you just tell him no?”

“If he were an ordinary steward, probably. If he didn’t work for my father, maybe. But he is my father’s steward and that means I’m stuck.”

“Wait, your father knows about that place? He knows that Cox takes you to it?” Darin said, his brain feeling broken at the thought.

“I wouldn’t be surprised that he knows where Cox takes me and that he knows exactly what happens there.” Joshua clenched his fists. Darin stared at him as he flexed his fingers.

“And your father, he just lets him?” Darin gaped.

“I’m keeping Cox out of trouble.” Joshua leaned back into the bench.

“…How?”

“If I’m with Cox then if we somehow get caught there, it looks like he’s there with me, not me there with him. It’d all get laughed off if I’m there fucking some whore. Cox is a grown man and married, it’d be a terrible scandal.”

“Good.” Darin crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. “And those kids–they work there? How in Wright’s name is that not illegal as hell?”

“There aren’t any laws in Reme about children working in brothels.” Joshua told him. “It’s generally assumed that everyone disapproves of making whores out of children. But as far as the constables are concerned, the boys and girls who work there aren’t whores, they’re runners and work the stables and turn the spit in the kitchen.”

“Joshua,” Darin paused. “That kid-the one with the teal hair? He couldn’t be as old as we are. How is that legal? They weren’t even pretending that that boy was a stableboy! And I’m pretty sure that the girl that Cox went upstairs with is probably the same age as Vivianne Finessa.”

“If you’re buying slaves–and most of the workers there are slaves–they’re the kids of conquered territories or people who have relatives who in some way did something treasonous, it’s not that hard to convince the slavers to put seventeen on the slave bills than thirteen or fifteen for a little extra compensation.” Joshua looked as disgusted as Darin felt with a whole bunch of added bitter.

“But seventeen is still underage.”

“Here in Albion, it’s different in Reme.” Joshua sighed. “There you only have to be seventeen to work a brothel. I know.” Joshua put a hand on Darin’s arm and sighed. “I know. If it were here in Albion, I’d go picket outside the counsel chamber until the place was closed down. I would. But things are different in Reme, I’ve heard it too many times to doubt it.”

Darin sighed.

“And worst of all my father just looks the other way. Maybe–someday–when I’m Baron of River Sulis, I can put the right kind of pressure on them, get the place closed down. It won’t make it up to those kids–but–maybe…”

Clatan 26th, 1513 – Merchant District, River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion

“That’s brothers for you.” Mama said with a chuckle over the story that Lyssa had just finished telling about Julia’s brother Edmund. Edmund was a pest a lot of the time, still in the bratty boy stage. Julia sometimes said that all boys were always brats, but if her brother Brandon was a brat, he was at least nice enough to not be a brat when Lyssa was around.

“Was Uncle Christian like that?” Lyssa wondered aloud. Mama got a somewhat far away look on her face and smiled.

“Pretty much. He wasn’t as much of a pest as he could have been just because I think that Patron kept him away from us like Aunt Selene and I were contagious or something.” She shrugged. “But he could be when he put his mind to it.”

“…Mama?” Lyssa twisted her fingers around. Mama made a vague noise for her to continue. “Why do you call your father Patron?”

“It’s his name.” Mama told her. She always looked so closed off when Lyssa asked about her grandfather. Mama didn’t really talk a lot about Patron.

“Well, it’d be confusing if every father was named Father, wouldn’t it?” Lyssa giggled. “But my father’s name is Masen and I call him father.” Mama nodded in agreement.

“Lyssa, everybody’s got a different relationship with their father. And when I was your age, I called Patron father just like you do. But sometimes–with some fathers–something changes and you just can’t call him that anymore. Sometimes your relationship with your father changes–and it’s not applicable anymore.” Mama sighed deeply and looked off into the deepening gloom in the room.

“Applicable?” Lyssa sounded out the word.

“It means appropriate or relevant.” Mama explained.

“But why wouldn’t it be app–apple–why wouldn’t it be appropriate, Mama. He was still your father.”

“He was still the man who sired me, Lyssa, but there was one point at which he stopped being my father.” Mama told her. Lyssa looked at her mother blankly.

“I don’t understand.”

“And I really hope you never do.” Mama smiled again, but there was something in it that was sad. Sometimes when they talking about the Cassidy side of her family , it felt like trying read and make sense of a book that was missing half of it’s pages. Mama obviously loved Uncle Christian and Aunt Selene very much, but when it came to her grandparents, what she seemed to feel was–varied–at best.

Lyssa tried to think of a question or story that would put a smile back on Mama’s face. Not a fake smile or a sad one, but a real one. But she didn’t get a chance because the door swung open a half-heartbeat later.

“Lyssandra, please go to your room.” Father said in that impatient, almost grouchy tone he usually used with Lyssa when she was with Mama. She looked at Mama, who was staring into what she usually called the middle distance, an expression like she’d just bitten into a lemon on her face, her fingernails drumming on the arm of her chair.

When Mama noticed that Lyssa was watching her, her lips stretched into something that was almost but not quite a real smile. “Go on, Lyssie, your parents need to have a talk.” That word always sounded like a–what did the tutor call it–portend of doom? when Mama used it in reference to Lyssa’s father.

Lyssa slid out of the chair and padded across the floor, feeling small and very out of place as she did it. She–felt like when her grandfather turned his attention to her, in dislike as best as Lyssa could tell, simply because unlike her cousin, she wasn’t a boy. Mama had all sorts of things she said about that, but almost none of them when she knew Lyssa could hear her.

Her father watched her, not choosing to step away from the spot he’d stopped at when he opened the door until she was out of the door. She could hear his heavy footsteps against the marble of the floor even through the cushion of the rug.

She went to her room and sat down on her bed with an experimental bounce, looking at the wall that separated it from her mother’s. There was this funny little niche behind the fireplace in Mama’s room and Mama’d had the wonderful idea to set Lyssa’s desk into the niche with a tall cabinet for storing linens and things. It was wonderfully warm and cozy when it was winter. A whole year of the fireplace crackling and putting the warmth through the wall into the tile. It was one of the reasons that Lyssa loved wintertime.

Father preferred summer. And summer was fun, she could play outside. Splash in the frequent mud puddles. There were fresh things to steal out of the garden and less hours were dedicated to lessons. Mama preferred fall, and Lyssa liked to go on long walks with Mama to the orchards where all the leaves would get painted. Mama would tell her stories about sprites that only came out at night to paint each leaf just the perfect shade. And she liked that too, but there was something sad about fall.

It was prettier, but sad. And Lyssa couldn’t help but think that there was something awfully sad about the fact that Mama liked fall best.

But that wasn’t really why she was looking at the niche. Without the fire crackling, you could sometimes hear if people were talking in the next room. She knew she wasn’t supposed to listen, but she was curious sometimes.

“It is my house, Annette.”

“Oh, aye, as you always remind me when your father comes for a visit. Your house, your money, your wife, your daughter.” Lyssa could practically see Mama ticking off the points on her fingers.

“Do not make this about my father!” Father snarled.

“How the fuck am I not supposed to, Masen?” Lyssa blushed even if there was no one around to see her. She knew that “fuck” was a bad word, although from what she knew about what it meant, it had something to do with sex. She and Julia had pooled everything they’d ever heard about what it was, but they still didn’t know what it was. Still, she’d bet every copper of her pocket money for the whole month that sex, whatever it was, it wasn’t bad. Mama joked about it sometimes, and you just didn’t joke about something that was bad.

So maybe it was just a bad way of saying something that wasn’t bad?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Father growled.

“The fact that you become an autocratic jackass every time your father comes for a visit. We can go months staying out of each other’s way and then your father comes for a visit and suddenly you have to become a de Ganis male again. That’s not going to work with me, Masen, and you know it. You know better.” Mama told him. “I don’t come in your room and order you around, it’s only common courtesy that you reciprocate. Especially considering what I’m pretty sure you’re going to tell me.”

“Oh?” Father wasn’t nearly as good at saying Oh? as Mama was. Mama could say whole sentences with one word, Father just sounded annoyed.

“Yeah, I imagine that you’re up here to tell me that your father has noticed you’ve been sleeping in Lyssa’s room. I’m not getting any younger, et cetera, et cetera. We need to get to work on that son we haven’t got yet.” Mama told him.

Lyssa rocked herself back and forth. Almost everyone else she knew had a sibling and sometimes Lyssa wondered what it’d be like to have a sister or a brother–a little–she knew that Mama had a lot of fun with Aunt Selene. But she liked having Mama to herself too. Julia didn’t get a lot of attention from her mama and papa and she had brothers and sisters.

And given that Father barely noticed her at all, that’d only be worse with a brother, wouldn’t it?

“Is it so wrong for an old man to want to see his line carried on?” Father had asked.

“He’s got your nephew, Julio recently got remarried, and Warner hasn’t even gotten married yet. He’ll see his line carried on without you having to climb into my bed leaving us both to close our eyes and pretend that we’re with somebody else. Especially as it sure as hell better be false hope we’d be feeding him.” Mama spat.

“False hope? What are you going on about, Annie?”

“Do not call me that.” Mama’s voice had gone so icy that even through the wall, Lyssa shivered. “We are not having any more children, Masen. We talked about that and bloody agreed. It’s false hope to make him think we’re even trying for another child. We aren’t. He’s never going to get his boy out of you and you just need to get that through his fat skull.”

“Annette.” Maybe it wasn’t nice to think, but Father couldn’t be as clever as he thought he was because even Lyssa knew that you wouldn’t get anywhere with Mama by snapping at her like that.

“No, Masen, let’s be honest. I thought that was the agreement. We could leave whatever we wanted to alone, but what we said to each other would be the truth. I am not bedding you for your father to get off on.” Mama practically snarled the last part.

“My father does not get off on us sleeping together,  Annette. I overlooked the sheep-fucking jokes, because they were implied, but I will not let you slander my father by saying he–he gets off on us making–.” Father growled out.

“Truth, Masen.” Mama interrupted. “What we do is not lovemaking–that requires love. Not just barely tolerance that when it tips over the line lands on it’s face in disdain.” Mama sounded tired and Lyssa sighed. Maybe this was why you weren’t supposed to listen to other people’s conversations. Wasn’t being married supposed to be about love?

Why didn’t Mama and father love each other? Why did they have to have agreements and arrangements and stuff that sounded more like what Father talked about with Lord Jayson than what the story books said mothers and fathers were supposed to have with each other.

Lyssa slipped off her bed and went over to her dollhouse, pulling her dolls out and trying to shut out her parents now. She found that a murmur of conversation between the dolls covered most of the murmur of conversation from Mama’s room. In her world mamas and papas would never have agreements. And when she grew up and got married she didn’t want to have an agreement with her husband. She wanted to be loved by him. She wanted, when she was dead and gone and up in heaven with Lord Wright and the Llamas, when somebody told her story, for them to say “And they lived happily ever after.” Not “and they came to an agreement.”

…That wasn’t too much to ask for, was it…?

“Time to get ready for bed, Lyssandra.” Father said from the door to her room. She looked up to protest, but the dim light outside the windows told her that it wasn’t as early as she thought it was.

“Aye, father.” She climbed to her feet and walked to the dresser behind the new screen that Mama had gotten for her. That had caused an argument when it was delivered too. She really wished Grandfather would just go home, all he did was make Mama and Father fight. “You can see right through the top of it, Annette, what good does it do?” 

“She’s seven, Masen,” Mama had rolled her eyes right in Father’s face. “Just who do you think is going to be in her room watching her get dressed?”

“Then why did you buy it for her?” 

“Because she asked nicely and paid for half of it with her own pocket money.” Mama had said. “We’ll worry about getting her a full coverage screen when she’s got something that we need to worry about getting covered. And when there might possibly be someone who wants to watch her getting dressed.” Lyssa hadn’t understood the look that Mama had shot at Father and some deep shiver inside said that she didn’t want to know either.

She looked up at the mirror that hung over the dresser to see Father still standing in the doorway. She started to turn to ask if something was wrong, her nightie clutched in one hand when Father turned abruptly and left with a slammed door.

Once dressed for bed, she slipped from the room and tapped on Mama’s door. “Yes?” Mama herself was getting ready for bed, maybe it was later, even, than Lyssa had thought it was.

“It’s me, mama. Father didn’t say if I was supposed to sleep in your room tonight or in my room.” Lyssa told her.

“Oh. In here, I guess, I don’t know if he’ll be sleeping here tonight–but better not to wake you up if he decides he’s going to.” Every time they had company that stayed at the house and not in the inn, Lyssa slept in Mama’s room. The one time someone had jokingly suggested that Lyssa sleep in Father’s room, Mama had turned around eyes blazing like full summer sunlight hitting an emerald and told them that Lyssa’d sleep in her father’s room over her dead body.

“Mama, can I ask you a question?” Lyssa hovered in front of the door for a long moment.

“Anything, I just reserve the right not to answer it.” Mama joked folding her petticoats.

“Mama–why does Grandfather want you to have a son?” Mama sighed so deeply it looked like she had deflated slightly. Leaving her stay on and hair still back, she walked around the screen and slid onto the bed, patting the mattress beside her.

“Sweetie, your grandfather has this idea–it’s wrong, but it’s one that a lot of people have clung to for a long time, that boys are better than girls. You see, unless you actually put it into law, like they did up in Avilion, boys inherit everything when a father dies. So it’s important, in some places–and some houses like the one that your great-grandfather was born into…”

“The de Ganises?” Lyssa asked clamboring up onto the bed and pulling Mama’s coverlet up like a fort.

“Yep. It’s important to have a son to leave everything to for them.”

“What do you think?”

“I think if fathers cared a little more about not marrying their daughters off to jerks maybe they wouldn’t have to worry so much about what happened to their estates when they died if they didn’t have a son.” Mama shrugged.

Lyssa glanced down at the stitching on the coverlet. “Mama?”

“Hmmm?”

“Do you ever wish you hadn’t met Father?” Lyssa asked, blinking back tears.

“No.” Mama said it with no hesitation. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because maybe you’d be happier if you didn’t have to be with him.” Lyssa said.

“Nope. Cause if I hadn’t met and married your father, I wouldn’t have you.” Mama said, stroking her hair. “And all the maybes that come out of having not met Masen would never make up for not having you in my life.”

“Really?”

“You can bet on it.” Mama smiled and kissed her hair and maybe it wasn’t happily ever after, but it was pretty happy right now.

Clatan 20th, 1513 – Merchant district, River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion

Just one last check through. Tawny promised herself, she’d just double check the linens in Luis’ room one more time before she went downstairs. She had promised, as it was Sunday, that the housekeeper could go home after the meal was prepared, which meant that finishing everything was Tawny’s job. She wished she could tell if the queasy feeling in her stomach was due to nerves–this was going to be Luis’ first official visit since the wedding–or if it were due to finally, finally being blessed with a pregnancy, hopefully the boy that she needed.

The bed was spotless, not a crease or misplaced fold in sight. Even the fur throw–probably not necessary as it was summer–was laying nicely. Now to double check the towels and she’d go down. Her hand flicked at her hair, then falling to smooth her skirt. Oh, how she wished that she knew what Miguel was wearing! What if she was being too informal? It was only a family brunch, but she didn’t know if how formal her father-in-law was. But then again–what if she went and changed into a nicer dress and within ten minutes of arriving they were all down to waistcoats and shirt sleeves? There was no way to know.

So she kept to the buttercup yellow dress that she had on and just headed down the stairs toward the kitchen. Should I light the candles in the hall? It was always a little dark and chilly in the hall, the single window at the far end only sort of lighting far enough to make out the steps. But it was the middle of the day, certainly no one would give her praise for wasting wax when you could see well enough.

A check into the kitchen and a double check of her menus told Tawny that the housekeeper had made good on everything that she had promised to deliver. As Miguel had yet to make an appearance, ratcheting the queasy feeling in her stomach up to the point where she knew it was mostly nerves, she paused in the kitchen doorway and surveyed the dining room.

Perhaps it wasn’t charitable, but somehow Tawny doubted that Miguel had chosen the furnishings. They were in a tad too good of taste. Ornate, showy even, but not the undignified clash of ORNATE that the rooms that Tawny knew he had a hand in.

She bit her lip and refrained from going and one more time straightening the silver or smoothing the table linens. Everything was as straight as it could be, everything was smooth. She wasn’t too sure about the table arrangement–but what could she do? Their table only sat six with any comfort! Which was a problem when you had to seat seven.

Miguel had just shrugged and suggested that Lyssandra could just eat by herself in the kitchen. It was what his mother had done with the children when they had had guests. Tawny’s mother had done the same thing, but the table had usually been set up in the music room. And there had always been several children at the table, it wasn’t like they had ever been banished to the room in lone splendor.

What kind of hostess would she be if she stuck one of her guests in the kitchen like a servant to eat by herself? When it was apparent that Miguel didn’t care about the impression that gave, she had done what was becoming a distressing habit. She’d gone and thrown herself on Annette’s mercy. Annette had been the one to suggest that they bring in a smaller table and set it at the end of the the larger table.

Except of course that the only table that would fit in the space was a dark red wood that didn’t at all go with the white wood of the table or with the ebony accents on the chairs. Annette had been the one to suggest they cover both with table linens–the bows at the corners she swore were what many of the nobles used for garden parties.

“Wife!” Miguel called, interrupting her revery before she could run around the table and take them off again. Her mouth suddenly went so dry it, she would have expected sand to fall out of it should she open it. Of course Miguel wasn’t even waiting for her in the house, so she walked down that long, cold hallway alone and out into the warm early summer sunlight. The blue sky was spotlessly clear. It was apparent only a moment later why Miguel had called her.

Or at least had called for his wife, an identity that slowly but surely would eventually subsume her own entirely, if she was given the time.

Her father-in-law and his brother were stepping down off the carriage that they had most probably taken. Miguel grinned and Tawny just smoothed her skirt over her still girl-slim hips and tried for a serene expression.

“Father!” Miguel said with more genuine warmth than Tawny had ever heard applied to the word “wife” as the two embraced. “Uncle Ellan, welcome. I hope your trip was well.”

“Ah, well, you know that our king does as good a job taking care of the roads as he does chasing his wives around their bedchamber apparently.” Tawny tried not to cringe. That was all she needed, a reminder that between his two wives, the king had eight children for his trouble. One less wife and eight more children.

Even after going to the tailor that Annette had suggested and reading the books that were–well just short of horrifying compared to what a well-bred young woman ought to be reading–even after the bedroom romps that had happened every night that Miguel wasn’t passed out drunk, Tawny still had nothing to show for her trouble. Last month’s course had been right on schedule and this month’s was not even due for days yet.

Luis turned is eyes toward Tawny then dismissed her in the same breath as the gate opened again. It was, of course, Miguel’s cousin, his wife, and their daughter. Masen first, his cold lavender eyes flickering from his own father to Miguel’s onto Miguel and then on to Tawny before starting a circuit again.

Lyssandra, adorable in her white and blue muslin dress, even after Annette had told her not to be an idiot, that of course Lyssandra was Masen’s daughter, she found herself looking for a trace of another in her. But of course, Annette was right, the girl was her father in coloring and those features that weren’t feminized versions of Masen’s were squarely Annette’s.

Lastly through the gate, with a well timed grin–for Miguel, his father, and uncle were all looking at Masen–was Annette.

“Well, now that we’re all here,” Miguel said heartily. “What say we start our meal?” He lead the way into the house, leaving Tawny to bring up the rear behind the guests.

Obviously the first test was passed as no one looked in askance at the extra table or the linens, even the bows, when Tawny made her way around the table to the kitchen to grab the first course.

“How are you, father?” Miguel started by asking.

“Oh, fine, fine. Not getting any younger of course. The old bones protest a little more every day.” Luis told him. Ellan snorted.

“Your father is exaggerating, of course. I can barely restrain him from heading down to the knight’s training facility and outdoing the young bucks on the course.” Ellan shook his head. “He’s as hale and hearty as he was when you were her age.” He gestured down the table at his granddaughter. Lyssandra glanced down at her hands folded in her lap, shooting Tawny back fifteen years to her own childhood.

She had just finished telling her brother how he had been wrong about something, she didn’t even remember what it was any more. Probably because it was so overshadowed by the looks that her mother and father had given her. The look of horror on her mother’s face, the look of distaste on her father’s. They had gotten up and left the table, meal half finished, her brothers and sisters following suit, leaving her alone at the table with her grandmother.

Grammy had looked at the still swinging door and shook her head. “Lass, I’ll tell ye somethin’ me own grammy told me when I was no older than ye. Something ye’ll do well to remember to the days when ye have a little girl lookin’ up at ye with your exact same eyes. No man is going to love a clever girl.” Tawny had protested. “What about Princess Jessica and Lady Morgan le Fay? What about the stories of the first baroness of Finessashire and her daughter, Danielle?” There were all sorts of clever girls in her stories, and they all found someone to love them!

“And how d’ye know that their husbands loved them and not their father’s gold?” Grammy had said with bluntness that bordered on brutality. “Excepting Lady Morgan, but she were married to a corpse that shoulda been years dead and in the ground, do ye wanna marry a man dead?”

“But that’s not what the stories say.” Tawny had told her grandmother.

“Aye–and thems stories, me girl.” Grammy had sighed. “Those writers say what will make good stories, that don’t mean that’s the way tis in the real world. Nope, boys want them a pretty girl–an’ if you’re not a pretty ‘un,  and you gotta admit, you’re not, Tawny me girl. You’ve got too much o’ your daddy in yer face. Then you gotta be a docile, sweet ‘un.”

Tawny had looked down at her hands the same way that Lyssandra had. But she came back to herself as Annette’s hand lightly clasped Lyssandra’s forearm. Tawny paused for just a moment to look at Annette who screwed her face up comically and stuck her tongue out at her daughter, who put her hand over her lips, probably to hide a smile.

Apparently no one had ever told Annette what Tawny’s grammy had told her, because she showed no fear of being clever, even against the pressures of her husband and her father-in-law.

“Annette, be nice.” Masen frowned at his wife.

“I’ll be nicer when your father is smarter.” Annette told him dismissively.

“A woman should know her place.” Luis interjected.

“I know my place. It’s just not what you think my place is, Sir Luis.” Annette said, her green eyes sparking.

“So, father, have you heard anything about the new silk route that’s opened up from Smina, the baron’s just signed a proposal allowing the merchant to open up a shop here in River Sulis, I’ve heard because he’s coming in through one of the northern ports in Albion it should be nearly a quarter less import tax.” Masen asked suddenly.

“No, you know us over there in Sarrashire, plain stubborn old men who like their linen and their woolens.” Ellan said, apparently going with his son’s bid to redirect the conversation rather than fighting with his daughter-in-law. “Give me a good old Sarrashire sheep any day.”

Annette’s lips tightened again, but the light in her eyes said she was amused, not angry. “What?” Apparently Masen caught the expression as well.

“Just thinking of all the things that a sheep is good for that a silk worm isn’t.” Annette offered in a dry tone. She couldn’t really be thinking of–of…

“Our tutor told us the other day that it was Earl Elyan I of Sarrashire who first brought the sheep to Sarrashire.” Lyssandra played with the handle of her fork as she stared at the table top and spoke.

“I’d heard that too, honey.” Annette said before any of the men could interject something.

“Yes, the men of the de Ganis family have always been destined for big things.” Ellan said smugly. That was probably a cue to go get something from the kitchen, because Annette had pursed her lips in a way that said either she was about to break out laughing or say something that would just turn this brunch into a brawl.

—

After brunch, Luis and Miguel had disappeared into what Annette referred to as Miguel’s cave–she said that every primitive sim needed one and as Miguel was certainly the most primitive sim she knew of course he would have a cave. Masen and his father had left to go out for an afternoon of something and Annette had taken Lyssandra out to do something completely different. Tawny had done up the dishes and retreated to the sunroom.

Of all of the rooms in the house it was the one that Tawny was most comfortable in. Up to and including her own bedroom. Who had decorated the sunroom, Tawny didn’t know, it–seemed to be a different hand than the dining room. She imagined that one of Miguel’s wives had done one room and the other had done the other. It seemed peculiar not to know who was responsible for the furnishings in your own home–but this wasn’t really Tawny’s home.

It was Miguel’s home. Still it seemed odd that he had turned the decorating over to his wives and he had never even consulted her about what she would like or prefer in a room, not even her own bedroom. Maybe he was just tired of letting women decorate a room that they would be leaving shortly.

Maybe if that knot in her stomach was a baby and not just ill-humor she would get that chance.

“Wife, I wanted to compliment you.” Miguel said from across the room, bringing Tawny’s attention flying back from the maybes and hopefully that a baby might mean for her. “The brunch was excellently done. The only rough spots were of the fact that we have to invite that woman and her smart mouth.” He almost-smiled at her.

“Thank you. I shall continue to try and do my duties.” Tawny said.

“Well, just don’t forget that you haven’t done your most important one yet.” Miguel snarled before turning and stalking away. As if the slamming of the door shook it loose, a tear coursed down her cheek before she dashed it with her hand. Somehow her eyes, through the tears that smarted in the corners of them, were drawn to the big white grand piano. She had never seen anyone play it, ever, but somehow, she wondered, if it was some other woman’s hope. What had gotten her through these days…

Clatan 18th, 1513 – Outskirts of River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion

Of all of the things that Darin had expected to be doing on St. Skip’s day, introducing the son and heir of the local baron to a crime lord was not one of them. However, as Darin watched Reggie and Joshua shake hands, that seemed to be exactly what he was doing. Of course if you’d asked him six weeks ago what he planned on doing on St. Skip’s day, he would have had to pause for a second to remember what day it even was, and told you that he expected to spend it either at home studying or at one of his friends’ with maybe a jaunt over to the Boar.

What he wouldn’t have told you was that he was going to be going out for a night on town with several of the wealthiest, most influential boys under the age of eighteen in the entire town.

When he’d seen Joshua off that morning just a month ago, confused, bewildered, and–just generally wondering if maybe someone had gone a few rounds on him, he had expected to see Joshua in class on Monday morning. Then he hadn’t, he didn’t see him again until the following Saturday. And it involved another rescue, though from nothing more serious than Darin’s friends and the catcalls that they gave the “pretty boy” who had rode down their street on a white horse. And that rescue was admittedly safe enough for Darin, all he had to do was point out that the young man on the white horse was the son and heir of the local baron and even Neal’s trap had slammed shut.

After he’d gotten Joshua away from Neal and them, Joshua had offered Darin the most peculiar not-an-explanation explanation that Darin had ever gotten for what had happened the previous weekend. From that had come an inquiry about tutoring and if Darin would be willing to take on another student for tutoring.

And as if some sort of magical portal had opened up with that conversation, Darin had gone from being an outsider on the outside looking in to being an outsider on the inside looking forlornly out. Instead of going from his tutoring sessions home to the empty cottage where he would spend his evening studying, he was now fielding invitations to go out drinking in some of the best taverns in the city, to go riding or hawking or hunting or attend entertainment.

Except, of course, that Darin didn’t have a horse or a hawk, he didn’t know how to hunt, he could barely afford a cup of the cheapest beer in those taverns and the masques and entertainment was all high brow, classical stuff. And whenever Darin offered one of those protests, Joshua just shrugged it off. Darin could ride his other horse. That one didn’t actually need a hawk to go out hawking. That they weren’t really “hunting” anything, it was the wrong season for it, mostly it was just an excuse to get out of the city and out from under the eyes of their parents. Joshua always picked up Darin’s drink at the tavern.

As for the masques–well, all Joshua would say on that subject was that it was culture and good for him. (That one rather sounded like Raven trying to coax peas into Johnny, in all honesty.)

Darin sort of wondered why Joshua was bothering, he could spend the next two years being Joshua’s shadow and what would it prove? But you couldn’t say that to Joshua, he was incredibly good at somehow not hearing any protest that Darin could offer.

“So that’s Reginald Rose?” Joshua asked after they had shaken hands and politely mouthed formulas of things they didn’t really mean at each other. “I thought he’d be–um.”

“Oh, he can be. That’s Reggie on his day off.” Darin smiled.

“And he makes my father cry himself to sleep.” Joshua said wonderingly but with a laugh. Darin shot him a look. “Joke. It’s a joke.” A strange one. But then again, Darin had never met the baron and if he had his way, he wouldn’t, ever. Maybe it was one of those jokes that made more sense if you knew the person involved.

“Are you ready to go?” Joshua asked. Darin shrugged but followed as Joshua lead the way back up the street.

—

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this is the sixth tavern we’ve been kicked out of tonight.” Darin pointed out to Josh after the disgruntled tavern keeper took his broom and turned to head back inside.

“And the night is still young.” Someone from the front of the group declared drunkenly.

“What’s wrong, Princess,” Constantin slurred. “You turn into a turnip or somethin’ at midnight?”

“You moron, it was a cabbage.” Edouard protested.

“I’m pretty sure it was a pum’kin.” Charlie countered.

“If you think it was a pum’kin, you need another drink.” Edouard told him.

“Now all we need is a tavern that lessus in.” Constantin thrust his fist into the air and pointed vaguely forward. “For-red marsh!”

“So when’s this end?” Darin asked, glancing up at the narrow sliver of moon in the sky.

“It’s a pub crawl. It ends when we pass out, run out of taverns, or the guard gets called.” Joshua told him cheerfully. What in Wright’s name have I gotten myself into.

“And it looks like it’s the third option.” A completely sober voice that caused Darin’s stomach to sink somewhere down in the vicinity of his shoes. He didn’t even have to turn to see the black and red guard uniform to know who it was walking out of the shadows behind the tavern.

Of all the bad stinkin’ luck…

“Let’s go, you two. Looks like your friends will have to catch up.” Colby told them gesturing toward the front gate of the square.

—

Joshua slumped in the wooden chair in a nicely appointed office in the guard’s station. A frozen expression of vague pleasantness was plastered on his face. He hadn’t said anything since the guardsman had opened the door to the building, any genuine good humor long since vanished.

“What’s the matter?” Darin asked.

“We know most of the guards, there are ones that you can negotiate with–there are ones you can’t. He’s firmly in the ones you can’t.” Joshua told him. “We’ll have to stay here until our parents come get us.”

“That may be a while.” Darin muttered. Joshua looked up at him. “My parents are dead. I hope Sara-Beth’ll work as substitute.”

“I wish my sister would work.” Joshua crossed his arms over his chest. “Unfortunately I don’t think they let eleven year olds come bail you out of gaol.” Darin looked at him for a moment before Joshua sighed and slumped further. “You–don’t know my father.”

Darin flashed back to what Josh had said in the alley behind the Boar. “They’ll tell my father.” memory whispered.

“Well, isn’t there anyone else you can ask? A servant, your father’s steward?” Darin asked.

“Cox would be worse.” Joshua whispered, before Darin could ask why, the door to the office opened and a man not dressed in a uniform came through and made his way around the desk. Passing close enough to Darin for him to easily smell the miasma of wine lingering around him.

“M’lord,” He bowed his head to Joshua. The captain ignored Darin entirely. “I understand the urge to get rowdy sometimes but must you boys leave a swath of destruction behind you every time you do?”

Joshua said nothing.  “What would your lord grandfather think?”

“The same Lord-grandfather who helped burn down a tavern at Camford?” Joshua sneered coldly. The guard captain blinked slowly, apparently being saved from wringing another soggy thought from his obviously underused brain, by a tap on the door.

“Captain, sir, the boys’ sisters are here.” Colby told him.

“I asked for parents, Guardsman Rose!” He thundered, the wine smell around him seeming to billow out with the word.

“Mr. Capshaw is an orphan, sir, if you insist upon making him wait until his parents arrive, you may never use your office again. As for Lord Joshua, well, perhaps you should talk to her yourself.” The captain grumbled and got to his feet.

“Not you!” He exclaimed from the doorway.

“Why not me?” A strange female voice inquired cheerfully. “Whoa, boy, what’d you do, drink a wineshop outta business, Miguel?”

“You are not Lord Joshua’s parents.”

“Obviously.” Though Darin couldn’t see the speaker’s face, a smirk was obvious in her voice.

“Cousin Miguel, mother and father are at the Finessas for their Saint Skip’s day dinner, I thought it would be just as easy, when the boy arrived, just bring Madame Cox and come myself.” A younger female voice interjected. “And I know that father has on record his permission for my brother and I to be released into the custody of any of our upper servants.” That must be Elizabet, Joshua’s sister, Darin decided.

“But she isn’t a servant.” The captain said triumphantly.

“Please don’t lean toward me when you yell, Miguel, I’m getting tipsy off the fumes.” The woman, Madame Cox? said.

“This evening, Madame Cox is serving as my companion, that makes her technically a servant.” Elizabet told him sunnily.

“She’s got you, old boy. You couldn’t think your way outta this one sober, and it’s painfully obvious you’re not that. Just release the kid, then you can go back to drinking yourself flat.” Madame Cox told him.

“Fine! Rose! Get the Wright-be-damned papers and get these–women–out of my guard station.”

“See you on Sunday for brunch, Miguel.” Madame Cox called after him as he stormed off.

Catch your breath hit the wall, scream out loud, as you start to crawl back in your cage the only place, where they will leave you alone.

Darid 25th, 1513 – The Academy of St. Hugh, River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion

“Don’t tell me you’re done already.” A strong pale hand caught Brother Dustin by the throat. It’s twin caught him as somewhat lower as well, the lower hand shifting slightly so that broad, close cropped nails dug in the length of him. Dustin didn’t know what to tell him, not that it really mattered, he couldn’t have spoken even if he had known.

Loki stepped just a bit closer, the grip on his neck tightening to the point where his instincts were starting to kick in, adrenaline raced down his muscles, it’d hurt more if he tried to run, but his body wanted to. Perversely, it also wanted to press him back against the broad chest flush with his shoulders, to grind against Loki.

He’d prayed to the Lord so many times to clear him of these thoughts. But he came back, he always came back. Even when he had to walk, humiliatingly, into the dining hall at the abbey, the eyes of all the monks on him, his abused body clenched tight against leaking, unable to clean up because they were running late–or because Loki just hadn’t given him permission to do so. The knowing looks burned like salt sprinkled on the shallow cuts of Loki’s riding crop on his back.

But every time Loki cocked an eyebrow at him, Dustin slunk back to his metaphorical bed–in the years that they had been doing this, there had only been a couple of times that they’d had anything so mundane as a bed. Hughian monks, bar the abbot, slept in a barracks like dormitory room. Some other orders gave their monks the privilege of cells, even if they were no more than a cot, clothes chest, and place to kneel and pray.

There had been the once that Valen had sent Loki and Dustin to Port Finessa to collect some materials for him, they’d stayed one night in an inn because the weather had taken a nasty turn and the one monastery that would have put them up for the night, the brothers were suffering from a nasty flux. A couple of overnights to the capital in Reme, where Albionese monks were not always welcome.

But even had a bed been available to them, Loki probably would have chosen the floor, or a bench, or table. Beds, Dustin figured, were for lovers–not whatever the hell he and Loki were–other than on a fast track to hell.

“You’re not attentive tonight, cher.” Loki pouted in his ear. It was pretty much the only Gaulish that Loki ever used and the closest to informal they ever were. It was like they couldn’t do this if Loki was calling him by his Wrightian name. He grabbed hold of the back of Dustin’s neck with those neat, even white teeth sinking in to a point that would leave a bruise. He hoped to Wright that it was some place that his tail would cover. The last time he had to wear a high necked undergarment for like a week for the bruises to fade. It wouldn’t do for the students to see a monk running around with bite marks and bruises on his neck.

Loki was getting worse about it, it was like something inside the other monk was slipping… But like Dustin had any room to talk. He was the one who let Loki fuck him open wide right there on the desk that Loki’d be teaching at come morning. He raised his hand and touched the lock of hair right above Loki’s temple. It was one of their signals that Dustin needed to talk to the other man.

He wondered if it would work. It didn’t always. But Loki stepped away, letting Dustin take a couple of hard breaths. “I’m sorry.”

Loki stepped closer, heavy lids half closed. “Don’t be sorry, just say whatever you need to babble about so we can get back to what we were doing.” He gave Dustin’s nipple a quick pinch/twist as if to remind him. As if he could forget. “I don’t have all night, someone’s bound to notice we’re gone, and I don’t feel like dealing with Valen’s slurring tonight and Baron Jayson in the morning.”

“The baron? Why are you seeing him?” Dustin blurted out without thinking.

“Are you jealous?” Loki asked with a sneer.

“No.” Dustin didn’t know why his voice trembled on it. He wasn’t jealous, in fact it would probably be better if Loki found some other playmate. (…Plaything…) Not that he would, at least not in Jayson of Carico, the baron would never submit to Loki, and Loki needed to be the undisputed alpha.

The sneer jumped up a notch, before melting into smirk that ended in a heavy lidded salacious smile. “I need to talk with him about Joshua.” Dustin bit his lip.

“Why?” He couldn’t have been acting up in class, Joshua hadn’t been in since the previous week.

“Because he’s been skipping class.” Loki told him, rolling his eyes.

“I thought he was ill, he hasn’t been in anyone’s classes.” Dustin offered. It was hard not to notice Joshua, even in a class full of young noblemen, he hardly blended in, there was something about his glossy ash blonde hair and cat swept slate eyes that made him stand out almost always.

“I had thought that myself, but according to what I heard from a little bird, whatever this mysterious illness is hasn’t stopped him from going to the tavern in the evening.” There was something about Loki’s expression that twisted Dustin’s stomach with both fear and lust. He ignored the lust for now.

“You do know what will happen if you talk with the baron, Loki.”

“Oh, how sweet.” Loki simpered. “You’re worried for poor Joshua. If you have the time for that, cher, I guess I’ll have to take it off your hands.” The other man pulled Dustin into a crushing grip, forcing his mouth onto Dustin’s and smothering any protests with his mouth and tongue. Leaving Dustin with nothing to do but scrabble at his back and tip his head to give Loki the angle he needed to steal all of Dustin’s air entirely.

When he was breathless and shaking with reaction, Loki struck again, forcing him to the floor, pinning him in place. He felt the other man’s spit slide between his cheeks before being forced open with careless disregard for the state of Dustin’s internal organs.

—

Darid 27th, 1513 – Carico estate, River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion

Josh’s hand shook as he reached for the library door.  Dorine had had that almost expressionless, sympathetic look on her face when she had tapped on his bedroom door to tell him that his lord father wished to speak with him in the library. It told Josh all he needed to know. He’d been caught, there was nothing to do but face up to the music. But that didn’t stop him from wishing that he could do anything but go into the library and speak with his father.

But Jayson was not one to be kept waiting and so Josh pushed the door open. His father was sitting at one of the tables reading a book. He looked up when Josh entered, glanced one last time at the page and shut the book with a soft thud.

“Have a seat, Joshua.” Jayson’s voice was as clear, icy, and even as if he were giving a speech. Josh wasn’t fooled, but he walked to one of the chairs by the fireplace, unlit logs sitting on the andirons at the moment, the fire wasn’t needed and given all of the books in the room, if it wasn’t needed, it wasn’t kept lit. He slipped into the chair and stared at the carvings on the fireplace.

He heard his father put his book away, then his firm footfalls as he walked to the other chair and sank into it with an easy grace that always made Josh feel like a lumbering behemoth. Jayson smoothed his tunic and looked at Josh with what was ostensibly disinterested curiosity.

“I’ve had a most interesting conversation with Brother Loki at the Academy, Joshua.” Jayson began, pinning him in place with a glare that practically dared Josh to squirm. He didn’t and Jayson continued. “He tells me that you’ve been skipping your classes this week. Is there a reason for that?”

It sounded so reasonable, so like if Josh would just explain then this could all go away. It wouldn’t and so Josh worked up enough spit to say “Not really.” If Josh had cared to inform his father about why he was skipping class–well–he wouldn’t have been in the situation that lead him to skip class in the first place.

No, he really didn’t want to tell his father about Philipa’s drug problem or all the money that she owed some thug in a stylish suit. He didn’t want to tell him about how he had gone to talk with said thug when Philipa told him that Marcinak was pressing her to steal some trial information from her father so that he could set his lackeys to intimidating the jury in a case against one of Marcinak’s lieutenants.

Philipa would never have gotten into her father’s office to steal that information. Either Marcinak didn’t understand that–or he was trying to set her up somehow. Josh didn’t know. Although that wasn’t really the reason that Josh had been skipping class this week. Sure, walking through the halls with a face as worked over as his had been would have been more attention than Josh would have wanted, but not all of it would have been negative.

No, it had more to do with where he sat than what his face looked like. Josh felt like he owed Darin some sort of an answer for all the crap he’d put the other boy through the other night and Josh didn’t have one. And somehow, even having run over in his head what was likely to happen to him if he did cut class–Josh didn’t have any hope that he would have been able to get away with doing it–he couldn’t go sit in those classrooms right next to Darin and not be able to tell him something.

You don’t just kiss a man and go on with your life as if nothing happened. Josh had a tough enough time with the idea of kissing a girl and going on with his life like it hadn’t happened. No, Darin’s willingness to let it go or not, he deserved an explanation and Josh didn’t want to face him until he had one.

Seeing as he couldn’t come up with a reason why he kissed him and his mind just wouldn’t let go of the fact that he had, the only thing he could do was avoid Darin, which considering he sat next to him in most of their classes, wasn’t all that easy to do. At least without skipping school.

And if telling Jayson about Philipa was out of the question, telling his father that he’d randomly kissed a man for no apparent good reason was a whole other universe of something altogether.

“I see.” Jayson said, folding his hands. “Joshua, what am I going to do with you? One of these days you are going to have to think about what you’re doing. You will be a baron one day and do you think that the other noblemen are just going to shrug or throw their hands up if you continue to act without thinking.” He paused as if collecting his thoughts.

“Has it occurred to you, Joshua, that having an ineffectual lord in this town is simply asking Reme to attempt to take it back? And do you really think that you would survive it if they did? And what might happen to your mother? Your sister? if that happened?” Jayson sighed but it didn’t cover the sound of the door closing.

Josh’s spine tingled, knowing there were eyes on his back. He knew exactly who was watching him, but Josh knew enough to know you didn’t take your eyes off Jayson, the other wouldn’t make a move until Jayson loosed his reins.

“Ah, Cox, right on time.” Jayson said with a half smile. Josh heard the sound of cloth rustling and felt his throat go drier if that was even possible.

And just a moment later, at the corner of his vision, Cox appeared. As Josh had suspected, he’d shed his coat and waistcoat, Madame Cox refused to even send his clothing to the laundress if he had blood on it. Blood, she had apparently told him, was not part of his job description and cleaning it up was not at all part of her job description. If he was going to get his clothing bloody, he could make sure that it got clean too.

“I am just trying to make you think, son.” Jayson said before standing. “I’m sure you understand.” Josh said nothing, nor did Cox. The library door shut with a soft click that might as well have been the ponderous thud of a stone crypt door.

Josh said nothing, just got out of his chair, no reason to make more work for the parlor maids and walked over to the empty space next to the door. Cox followed and Josh turned, his lips turned faintly up at the corners because you didn’t show fear to a mad dog.

That was the last coherent thought that went through his mind before he doubled over the wind knocked clear out of him.

His last thought at all was how brightly the light seemed to catch Cox’s wedding band right before the fist it was wrapped around caught his chin and all he saw was black.

—

The library was dark except the light of a single candle when Josh came to himself, curled up on one side, blood puddled under his cheek. The hem of a something fluttered near him, neat slippers stopped just a fingers-width from the blood.

“Bet?” He pushed the rough croak out of his desert-dry throat.

“Well,” She said, voice sounding on the edge of tears. “It’s not the queen.” He tried to chuckle–it hurt. The cold stone floor had leeched all the heat from his body and seemed to make every bruise protest that much more as he slowly pushed up into a sitting position and then even more slowly got to his feet. He could barely stay on them starting to tumble back to the floor when Elizabet caught him. How her small, almost frail body managed to keep him even a little upright amazed him.

“I got you.” She whispered in his ear. “I got you.”

Imsdyn 20th, 1513 – River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion

The only sounds for a moment was the soft call of a mocker-bird in the yard and the soft splash of water in the basin, but that would change shortly. There was someone on the other side of the whitewashed kitchen door and soon enough that she would start speaking again. Annette had already put off listening to her talk for long enough.

“Are you sure you don’t need help, Annette?” It was funny, Tawny’s speaking voice would be wonderful if it just didn’t have that petulant whine to it. If life had dealt her another hand, made her someone other than the third trophy wife of a man whose only accomplishment was avoiding drafts enough to still be alive at this point in time.

“It’s two cups and a plate with crumbs on it. I don’t need any help.” Annette said leaning her head against the shelf above the sink and scrubbing more than strictly necessary at the cup in her hand.

“Miguel hired a housekeeper for us.” Tawny bragged. And she’ll be gone by Hybel. Annette thought cynically. Like every other housekeeper that Miguel’s ever had. She’ll get worked like a saltminer, paid a pittance, and have to deal with Miguel, it’s a bad deal and she’ll figure it out within six months.

I wonder how long it’ll take Tawny to figure out she got a bad deal–or maybe she already had, she did come by when we could talk alone. Or maybe she hadn’t, Annette thought, tossing the waste water out the window and putting the tea cups back on their pegs and the plate into the dresser. She may have figured out that her new role isn’t all sunshine and roses, but she’s probably not come to the realization that somebody sold her that proverbial riverside property in the Dousa Desert yet.

“But it is nice to come take tea with you, I mean we’re practically sister in laws.” Tawny said. Oh please don’t say that. Annette packed down a tiny whimper. My family is crazy enough as it is, I don’t need to add the Coxs any further into the mix. Not that she didn’t love Christian and Selene and her mother. But see, the thing about Patron was he packed enough crazy into one old man for about six families. She shut the cupboard door with a little more force than she had to as she always did when she thought of her late, not lamented father.

“Well, I know we’re not really.” Tawny nattered on, obliviously. Thankfully, being her husband’s cousin’s wife didn’t make them all that closely related. The only thing, sometimes, that saved the Coxes was that Annette did not want to be in the same position her mother had been in–in the Tower prison for murdering the father of her children–or in Annette’s case child. “But, you are right next door.” And if she didn’t kill Masen, that would leave Lyssandra alone with him. And promises be damned, she didn’t trust him any further than she could throw the house. Annette raked fingers through her coppery hair, eyes flickering around the kitchen for something that could keep her attention for just a little longer. “A-Annette? I-uh-I need to talk with you, before um–while we’re alone.” And that was her cue to stop procrastinating.

“Let’s go to the parlor.” Annette said pushing through the door to the dining room and shooing the younger woman toward the door like a goose girl with a goose. It’ll give me another half moment to not have to think about any of the reasons you might possibly want to talk to me alone. She had a pretty good idea why Tawny wanted to talk to her and equally she didn’t want to think about why Tawny wanted to talk to her.

Tawny sat down on the settee, Annette chose the arm chair and both women took a long moment to arrange their skirts.

“Annette, I would rather bite my tongue out than be critical of my husband.” That’s okay, Tawny, Annette schooled her expression to be as serene as possible. I’ll be as critical of him as possible. “But, Miguel tells me that his father is planning a visit.”

Oh no! Because a visit from Luis almost inevitably meant a visit from Ellan and that was the LAST thing that Annette needed right now. But the brothers Cox, having emotionally and mentally battered their wives into respective early graves, were basically joined at the hip. I don’t need to deal with my father-in-law right now!

“And I,” Tawny continued on blithely “would like to inform him, when he arrives, that I’m–that I’ve fullfilled my duty, for surely the Lord Wright will reward me for patience by bearing my husband a son. But–I am not–yet–um,” she trailed off.

“You’re still getting blood on the sheets.” Annette hide a rub at her temples by sweeping her hair back.

“Well, to put it crudely, aye.” Don’t be asking me for sex advice, don’t be asking me for sex advice. Annette thought without much hope. “And I know that you aren’t–necessarily–it did take you more than two years after your marriage to become with child–and you only have the one, but I thought you might understand my plight, as you’ve surely been trying for a son.”

“No.” The answer came automatically and so firmly that Tawny looked at her bewildered.

“N-no.” Tawny asked. “Do you think that giving your husband a daughter makes you–above me? Only a mere daughter?”

“No, I understand what you’re going through. We’re just not trying for a son. Masen and I agreed we would have one child, regardless of gender, the Lord Wright blessed us with Lyssandra, and I’m happy with that.” Annette told her. The only word for Tawny’s expression was horrified.

“You would deny your husband the privilege of a son?” Tawny exploded. “But, what of providing him an heir?”

“An heir to what, Tawny?” Annette spread her hands and gestured around the parlor. “We’re not landed nobility, it’s not going to screw up the line of succession, the country will not crumble if one gentry couple, even one of cadet nobility lines, only has a daughter.” Annette pointed out.

“But every man deserves a son.” Annette slowly turned her head to fix Tawny with a sharp gaze. Do not tell me what my husband deserves. Her fingernails biting into her palm were probably what saved her from doing anything stupid. “St. Robert said so!”

“Well, there is some debate on that passage, it is wonderfully vague and could just be people wishfully thinking. I’m of the mind that the Lord Wright probably likes women as much as men.” Annette nudged the edge of the carpet with the toe of her shoe.

“How can you think that?” Tawny gasped.

“Because, if the Lord really hated women, why did he create them? Is he not capable of creating perfection? Are we to say that one of the Lord Wright’s creations is better than another? If He had really only liked men, why create women in the first place? Why not just let men produce babies the way the fae do and not even bother with us.” Annette’s tone was caustic and Tawny winced.

“But this is our duty–our privilege.” Tawny thumped her hand against the arm of the settee.

“It’s our privilege to be a walking uterus?” Annette scoffed and rolled her eyes. “The Lord Wright gave us minds and hearts to further his work, to improve the world, to love and succor our fellows, not to be an incubation chamber.” Tawny sighed and looked over her shoulder toward the glazed window.

“As much as I would love to sit and debate the subject with you, can we please get back to the reason I came to talk with you?” Tawny asked with a sigh that Annette echoed. Arguing about the purpose of woman in the scheme of things sim was interesting, probably getting more detail about her cousin-in-law’s issues in the sack was–nauseating–at best.

“I suppose.” Annette said.

“Um, he–I am not saying this to be critical of Miguel!” Tawny fixed Annette with what she probably intended to be a steely gaze, unfortunately for her, Annette had been on the receiving end of a proper steely gaze more than once and Tawny’s sharp features were about as steely as a kitten’s. “He has–um–”

“Why don’t you just be blunt. I promise I will think no worse of him for whatever you tell me.” Mostly because it’s very difficult to think worse of that horse’s ass. “And I will take your statements under the mantle of not-being-critical.”

“I–no matter what I do–I can’t–he has a hard–” Tawny paused and swallowed hard. “It doesn’t want to come up.” She finished in a whisper. Ugh. Annette steeled herself against the wince which would only put Tawny on the defensive. “I’ve tried!”

Annette bit back the Honey, better women have tried. When you’ve heard that even professionals, women of heart-stopping beauty and immense skill, couldn’t even work their magic on his inconvenient organ, it was not the fault of the just barely-not-a-teenager with her skinny body and thin face on Annette’s couch.

She also bit back the what makes you think it’s your fault? No, if there was a fault here, it was all Miguel’s.

“What do you wear to bed when you share it with him?” Annette asked instead.

“A-a shift?” Tawny stared at her.

“Well, perhaps you could try finding something a bit more–sensual. I know a tailor who sorta specialize in that sort of thing.” Annette offered. Not that it would help, but Tawny’s lack of confidence probably didn’t help either.

“Oh. Do you think that’s it?” Tawny folded her skirt and refolded it. No. Annette thought. I think he’s just got a glitch in the system.

“It couldn’t hurt.” Annette offered instead of answering, climbing to her feet to pace the room. “Also, I can recommend some literature. Uh, might give you some other things to try. I’ve heard that role-playing in the bed-chamber helps.” Yeah, I pretend you’re somebody else, you pretend I’m somebody else and let’s see if that works. The problem with these suggestions were that they all implied that it was Tawny’s problem. Tawny wasn’t doing the right thing to get Miguel to salute with his little soldier. And Annette knew, considering Miguel had been married twice before and ended the marriages when his wives didn’t fall over pregnant, that it wasn’t.

“But what if it doesn’t work?” Tawny all-but-wailed. Annette paced a moment longer, unfortunately because of where Tawny sat, there were two of her staring at Annette with mute appeal as if she were the girl’s last hope.

In a way, she probably was. Parker Conway wouldn’t have started negotiations for Tawny barely before Miguel’s second divorce decree was dry if he were a kind loving father who truly cared about his daughter. If Tawny didn’t get pregnant and Miguel divorced her, the girl would probably be forced to take the veil, her father having no use for a barren daughter.

“Can I be blunt?” Annette turned and looked at Tawny, who bit her lip but nodded. “My best, truest suggestion for you, Tawny, is find a lover who looks like your husband.” Tawny gasped, horrified, blue eyes bulging.

“You–you can’t possibly be–cuckold Miguel?” Tawny wailed. Oops, I might’ve said too much. “Did-did?” She looked at Annette as if she had ripped away a costume to reveal a Medusa instead of a sim.

“Don’t be an idiot.” Annette said shortly, sitting down next to the other woman. “I could comb Albion twice over and never come up with another blonde haired, lavender-eyed man, whether he looks like Masen or no. And Lyssa has her father’s coloring in both eyes and hair which she certainly didn’t get from me. No, Lyssa is Masen’s daughter. But the problems that Masen and I have are not the same ones that you and Miguel have.” Annette leaned back against the back of the settee and stared up at the ceiling for a moment.

“But Tawny, has it occurred to you that you are the third wife that Miguel has had trouble getting pregnant?” Annette said after a long moment.

“Well, aye, but…”

“No buts. I know that Miguel will not even consider the fact that the problem might be his own and not the fault of his wives. Even though his first and second wives both have had no problems conceiving in their other marriages. But you have to consider it.” Annette told her bluntly. “And if it’s his problem and not yours then there’s nothing that you can do that will be a guaranteed solution to this problem. Nothing. All you can do is cross your fingers and hope that maybe you have a better in with the Lord Wright than your predecessors.”

“Nothing?” Tawny asked in a small voice. Yeah, being told that there was nothing you could do probably would do that.

“Look, I’ll get you the name of that tailor and the book seller who sells the books that might help. Maybe if you are a bit more proactive, enjoy yourself, then it will come a bit more naturally and it’ll work out. Maybe.” Annette climbed to her feet and went in search of a scrap of paper leaving Tawny to sigh and stare at the rug.

“I’m sorry.” Annette said as Tawny collected herself to go.

“I–I appreciate your forthrightness.” Tawny said after a moment.

“Which has to be about the most awkward compliment ever given.” Annette offered the other woman a grin. Tawny smiled back and opened the door to the outside. Annette waved and smiled as the other woman headed off to her own house, even if Tawny didn’t look back, then closed the door and slumped against it.

“Is this really all there is to life?” She inquired of the cold marble tiled walls of the entry way. They didn’t answer, instead seeming to look like her life, day after day of cold, unyielding steps down a long narrow path that lead to an end.

A knock on the door against her back startled her out of her reverie. She smoothed her hair and skirts and turned to open the door. It revealed a familiar figure. “Oh thank the Lord,” She said. “You were just the person I needed to see.” Her hand snaked out the door and grabbed his hand, pulling him inside before slamming the door against the world that was just more than she could deal with right now.