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…