Her gaze was steady on him and gave nothing away, but he still held her hand, and her fingers twitched in his grasp with her question. “As in wife and children? No. Most swordmasters don’t.”
And you? He wanted to ask but couldn’t bring himself to do so. King’s chroniclers weren’t nuns. Most remained unmarried, though many took lovers, and a few had husbands with whom they lived near the Archives. He didn’t care if Jahna had taken a man into her bed; he just didn’t want to hear the devastating news she’d taken one into her heart.
He avoided it all together and steered the conversation to safer ground. “Any more trouble from…”
Jahna laughed. “Evaline? No, none. In fact, she hasn’t attended Delyalda since she married. Word has it she’s the mother of three now, with a fourth on the way.”
“And her lickspittles?”
“They lost interest in me after our scuffle in the corridor.”
Radimar smirked. “Imagine that.”
Jahna laughed. “Don’t hold it against me for admitting it, but you were right. The balance of power shifted.”
He doubted he’d ever hold anything against her. She on the other hand had something to hold against him. She hadn’t mentioned it yet, nor had he, and it hovered between them like a shadow.
“Come,” he said and drew her toward him as the musicians struck up another tune, this one popular with couples because of its slowness and steps that brought bodies closer. “A last dance and then I’ll escort you back to wherever your destination lies.”
If he could have everything his way, that destination would be straight back to the tiny chamber Sodrin had managed to secure for him in the palace. Just big enough to hold a narrow bed and small table with barely any room to make a full turn, it would seem the grandest of all spaces were Jahna sharing it with him.
She went easily into his arms, slender as a willow and just as supple. The scent and feel of her recalled a similar moment when she arched into him, her sweet mouth under his, the hesitant caress of her lips driving him mad.
He had liked her from the moment he met her, the shy, lonely sister of his newest student. He had fallen in love with her gradually, by small increments spread across weeks, months, then years. Jahna was beyond his reach. He’d always known it and explained away his growing feelings for her as those of a protective older brother like Sodrin. Even as he inwardly recoiled at the idea and his heart insisted otherwise, Radimar had clung to its questionable veracity. Until he held her while she cried and then kissed her in the darkness.
Unlike the previous songs, they danced to this one in silence. Her hair fell down her back to tickle his hands where they rested against her spine. He bent a little more, lured by the scent of evergreen on her skin She fit within the circle of his arms as naturally now as she had eight years earlier, maybe more so. Her face and her touch had haunted him for so long, it seemed almost chimerical that she was here now, pressed against his body.
Radimar would have held her even longer once the song ended, but she stepped away from him, taking with her a warmth that went beyond body heat. She wore the stoic face that always signaled she was troubled.
“You left without a farewell to me and Sodrin. I understand why with Sodrin, but not me.”
There it was, the unspoken question, until now. Jahna had beaten him to it in bringing it up, and part of him was grateful for the chance to clear the air between them.
“I’m sorry, Jahna,” he said, abandoning formal address for her given name. “I’m a coward. I didn’t just leave; I fled.”
Her mask cracked, revealing a misery that made Radimar’s heart contract. “Why?” she whispered. “There was nothing to fear. It was just a kiss.”
The last part of her statement punched him in the gut. “Was it?”
She skirted around him to retrieve her cloak, her armor against both cold and pain. It shrouded her in folds of wool. The hood hid her hair now and of course the blemished side of her face. “Surely, you didn’t think I’d press you for a union between us or try to trap you into one just because you kissed me?”
He almost wished she had. “Such a thing never crossed my mind,” he said. “Try to understand. I was in your father’s employ. A well-paid servant but still a servant despite my title. In the eyes of Beladine aristocracy, including your father, you are my better and above my touch.”
She gasped, outraged. “I never thought such a stupid thing!”
“I know you didn’t.” This wasn’t going well at all. “It wasn’t just our difference in status. There was a trust between your father and me, and I broke it when I kissed his daughter.” He looked away for a moment before turning back to meet her confused, anguished gaze. “If I had returned to tell you goodbye, either I wouldn’t have returned to Ilinfan alone, or your enraged father would have seen to it I returned in pieces.” Jahna’s mouth fell open, shock in every line of her body.
“Even with your acceptance and his blessing, taking you with me then would have been unfair,” he continued. “You were about to start your apprenticeship with the Dames, become a king’s chronicler in the Archives. I would have robbed you of that chance had I plied for your hand then.”
Jahna blinked, the dark shadows in her eyes slowly clearing as they stared at each other in silence. She touched her birthmark with one finger. “I thought it was this that made you regret.”
The effects of a persecuted childhood still lingered, despite her obvious strength. Radimar caught her hand and brought it to her lips. “No, Jahna. You might always see your birthmark when you look in a mirror. After the first time, I never saw it again.” He tugged her into his arms and tipped her face up to his with one finger under her chin. “I shouldn’t have left the way I did. For that, I have no ready excuse or even a good reason. It was wrong and craven. I hurt the one person I would have battled the heavens to protect. Can you forgive me?”
She eyed him for a moment, the long gaze measuring as if she weighed the benefits and drawbacks of welcoming him back into her confidences and maybe her arms. The slow smile that spread across her face made his breath hitch. She stepped closer into the space of his body, and his arms automatically closed around her. Her fingers threaded through his hair to stroke his scalp.
“Kiss me again,” she said, “And I’ll consider it.”
9
The Maiden contemplative
“Are you cupshot?” Sodrin stared at his sister as if she’d suddenly grown a third eye in the middle of her forehead.
Jahna blinked, pulled abruptly from the pleasant memory of a snow-sugared garden and the heated embrace of a man whose touch she had craved for almost a decade. If one could be drunk on desire and affection, then she was about as cupshot as any one person could be.
She went back to writing. At Sodrin’s request, she had come to his chamber to act as personal scribe and list those tasks he still had to complete before his wedding the following evening.