Kevin reached up left-handed and captured her around the waist. Strong despite his injuries, he pulled her to him. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he whispered in her hair. His hand moved, and under his practised manipulation, her light lounging robe fell open.
Mara buried her grief and strove to match his light humour. ‘My healer threatened dire consequences if I came to your bed and tempted you past restraint. He said your wounds could still open.’
‘Damn him for being a grandmother,’ Kevin said amiably. ‘My scabs do well enough, except when he chooses to pick at them.’ Sure and warm, the Midkemian stroked her breast with the back of his fingers. Then he hugged her tighter. ‘You’re my cure, all by yourself.’
Mara shivered, half from sadness, half from poignant arousal. She banished the painful wish that the marriage contract to Hokanu could be recalled, and snuggled closer. ‘Kevin,’ she began.
From her tone, he realized she was anguished. He gave her no chance to speak, but leaned across and kissed her. Her arms clasped him around the shoulders, avoiding his bandages. Kevin cradled her, instinctively offering her what his soul knew she needed; and in familiar and natural companionship, they lapsed into lovemaking. His enthusiasm seemed in no way diminished, except that he fell asleep very quickly after his passion was spent.
Mara stretched out at his side, her eyes wide open in the dark. She ran her hands over her flat belly, much aware that her tryst in the nursery had not been planned with propriety. She had taken no elixir of teriko weed, to prevent conception. Nacoya would have been shrill with reprimand over the lapse.
Nacoya would have been wise.
By the dim, filtered moonlight, Mara studied Kevin’s profile, nested arru’d a tangle of red hair. She found she did not wish to be wise. Marry Hokanu she must, if Kamatsu would allow, and he would have her; but if Kevin was to be sacrificed, she did not possess the will to relinquish his love and her happiness without any trace of a tie.
Foolish she might be, even selfish. But she wanted Kevin’s child. All she had accomplished had been for the honour of her family name and ancestry. Her heart felt battered, eaten up by rulership’s endless griefs. This one thing she had to have for herself.
‘I love you, barbarian,’ she whispered soundlessly in the dark, ‘I shall always love you.’ Her tears flowed freely, for a very long time after that.
A week passed, and another week, and the healer permitted Kevin short bouts out of bed. He found Mara seated in the east garden, the one the kitchen staff used for growing herbs. Clad in the light, loose robes she habitually used for meditation, she had set her discipline aside to sit amid dusty stems of aromatic plants and watch the front road. Messengers came and went, mostly on Jican’s errands. Whether she studied the traffic or whether she was lost in thought did not matter.
‘You’re moping again,’ Kevin accused, setting aside the cane he used to keep his weight off the leg that had taken the sword cut.
Mara twisted a mangled bit of greenery between her hands. It had once been a slender tira branch, now wilted, stripped entirely of its spicy leaves. Peeled strips of bark emitted a heady, pungent odour on the noon-heated air. The Lady who tortured the sprig did not answer.
Kevin settled with some difficulty beside her, his wrapped leg stretched out before him. He lifted the poor stem from her hands, and sighed at the sap beneath her fingernails.
‘She was a mother to me, and more,’ Mara said unexpectedly.
‘I know.’ He did not need to ask if she spoke of Nacoya. His response was gentle. ‘You need to cry more, spill your grief out and let it go.’
Mara stiffened, sharp-edged. ‘I’ve cried enough!’
Kevin tilted his head to one side and shoved his fingers through unruly hair. ‘You people never cry enough,’ he contradicted. ‘Uncried tears remain inside you, like poison.’
He did not intend to drive Mara away; but she rose abruptly and he could not regroup in time to follow, not with his leg bound in splints. By the time he reached his feet, found his cane, and pursued, she had disappeared through the hedges. He decided it would be tactless to give chase. Tonight, in bed, he would try once again to console her. But forgetting the tragedy that had upset her was not possible, with soldiers in armour standing guard almost everywhere one stepped. The assassin might not have killed Ayaki, but the event had left other damage. Troubled, withdrawn in unhappiness, Mara could find no peace within the walls of her own home.