Lois Bujold - The Sharing Knife - Beguilement

“Well,” said Fawn, determined to be fair, “it’s too bad they weren’t lucky enough to find ladies, too. They’re too nice to be lonely.” She added after a suspicious glance upward, “Dag, why are you biting your wrist?”

He cleared his throat. “Sometime when I am either a lot more sober or a lot more drunk, Spark, I shall attempt to explain the exceedingly complicated story of how those two came to both be married to the same accommodating woman back at Hickory Lake Camp. Let’s just say, they look out for each other.”

“Lakewalker ladies can marry more than one fellow? At a time? You’re gulling me!”

“Not normally, and no, I’m not. I said it was complicated.”

They fetched up before his door. He gave her a slightly strained smile.

“Well, I think Dirla is greedy,” Fawn decided. “Or else those fellows are awfully pushy.” “Ah, no. Among Lakewalkers of the civil sort, which you know we all are, the woman invites. The man accepts, or not, and let me tell you, saying no gracefully without giving offense is a burden. I guarantee, whatever is going on back there was her idea.”

“Among farmers, that would be thought too forward. Only bad girls, or, or”

stupid “foolish ones would, well. Good girls wait to be asked.” And even then they’re supposed to say no unless he comes with land in hand.

He stretched his right arm out, supporting himself on the wall, half sheltering her. He stared down at her. After a long, long, thoughtful pause, he breathed,

“Do they, now?” He scraped his teeth over his lower lip, the chip catching briefly. His eyes were lakes of darkness to fall into, going down for fathoms.

“So, um, Spark… how many nights would you say we have wasted, here?”

She turned her face upward, swallowed, and said tremulously, “Way too many?”

They did not exactly fall into each other’s arms. It was more of a mutual lunge.

He kicked his door open and kicked it closed again after them, because his arms were too full of her. Her feet did not touch the floor, but that was not the only reason she felt as though she was flying. Half his kisses missed her mouth, but that was all right, almost any part of his skin sliding beneath her lips was joy. He set her down, reached for the door bar, and stopped himself, wheezing slightly. No, don’t stop now…

His voice recaptured seriousness. “If you mean this, Spark, bar the door.”

Not taking her eyes from his dear, bony, faintly frenzied face, she did so.

The oak board fell into place in its brackets with a solid, satisfying clunk. It seemed a sufficient compromise of customs.

His hand, reluctantly, slid from her shoulder and let her go just long enough for him to stride over and turn up the oil lamp on the table beside his bed.

Dull orange glow became yellow flare within the glass chimney, filling the room with light and shadow. He sat rather abruptly on the edge of his bed, as if his knees had given way, and stared at her, holding out his hand. It was shaking.

She climbed up into the circle of his arm, then folded her knees under her to raise her face to his again. His kisses slowed, as if tasting her lips, then, startlingly, tasting in truth, his tongue slipping inside her mouth. Odd, but nice, she decided, and earnestly tried to do it back. His hand wound in her hair, undid her ribbon, and let her curls fall down to her shoulders.

How did people get rid of their clothes, at times like these? Sunny had merely lifted her skirts and shoved down her drawers; so had the malice, come to think.

“Sh, now, what dark thought went past just now?” Dag chided. “Be here. With me.”

“How did you know what I thought?” she said, trying not to be unnerved.

“I don’t. I read grounds, not minds, Spark. Sometimes, all groundsense does is give you more to be confused about.” His hand hesitated on the top button of her dress. “May I?”

“Please,” she said, relieved of a procedural worry. Of course Dag would know how to do this. She had only to watch and copy.

He undid a few more fastenings, gently pulled down one sleeve, and kissed her bared shoulder. She gathered her courage and went after the buttons of his shirt. Mutual confidence established, things went faster after that, cloth tumbling to the floor over the side of the bed. The last thing he undid, after a hesitation and a glance at her from under his lashes, was his arm harness, unbuckling the straps around his lower arm and above his elbow, and setting it on the table. His hand rubbed the red marks left by the leather. For him, she realized dimly, it was a greater gesture of vulnerability and trust than removing his trousers had just been.

“Light,” Dag muttered, hesitating. “Light? Farmers are supposed to like it dark, I’ve heard.”

“Leave it on,” Fawn whispered, and he smiled and lay back. When all that height was laid out flat, it stretched a long way. His bed was not as narrow as hers in the next room, but still he filled it from corner to corner. She felt like an explorer facing a mountain range that crossed her whole horizon. “I want to look at you.”

“I’m no rose, Spark.”

“Maybe not. But you make my eyes happy.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled up enchantingly at that, and she had to stretch up and kiss them. Skin slid on skin for the length of her body. His muscles were long and tapering, and the skin of his torso was unevenly tanned where his shirts had been on or off, paler still below his waist along his lean flank.

A

faint dusting of dark hair across his chest narrowed and thickened, going down in a vee below his belly. Her fingers twined in it, brushing with and against the grain. So, with his odd Lakewalker senses, what more of her did he touch?

She swallowed, and dared to say, “You said you could tell.”

“Hm?” His hand spiraled around her breast, and how could such a soft caress make it suddenly ache so sweetly?

“The time of the month a woman can get a child, you said you could tell.” Or wait, no, was that only Lakewalker ladies? “A beautiful pattern in her ground, you said.” Yes, and she’d believed Sunny, hadn’t she, on a piece of bed lore that, if not a mean lie, had turned out to be a costly untruth, and Sunny’s tale had seemed a lot less unlikely than this. A shiver of unease, Am I being stupid again… ? was interrupted when Dag propped himself up on his left elbow and looked at her with a serious smile.

His hand traced her belly, crossing the malice marks there that had turned to thin black scabs. “You’re not at risk tonight, Spark. But I should be right terrified to try to make love to you that way so soon after your injuries.

You’re so dainty, and I’m, um, well, there are other things I’d very much like to show you.”

She risked a peek down, but her eye caught on the parallel black lines beneath his beautiful hand, and a flash of sorrow and guilt shook her. Would she ever be able to lie down with anyone without these cascades of unwelcome memory washing through her? And then she wondered if Dag—with, it seemed, so many more accumulated memories—had a similar problem.

“Sh,” he soothed, and his thumb crossed her lips, though she had not spoken.

“Reach for lightness, bright Spark. You do not betray your sorrow to set it aside for an hour. It’ll be waiting patiently for you to pick it up again on the other side.”

“How long?”

“Time wears grief smooth like a river stone. The weight will always be there, but it’ll stop scraping you raw at the slightest touch. But you have to let the time flow by; you can’t rush it. We wear our hair knotted for a year for our losses, and it is not too long a while.”

She reached up and ran her hand through his dark tousle, petting and winding it through her fingers. Gratified fingers. She gave a lock a little tug. “So what was this supposed to mean?”