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…