Michael Stackpole - Of Limited Loyalty

“I should be scared of wolves unless I had someone brave like your father around.”

“And yet, Bethany Frost, you never seem to attract a man, brave or otherwise.”

Owen turned and found his wife not six feet behind them. “Catherine, there you are. We chanced across Miss Frost by the docks.”

“Waiting for a ship full of sailors to come in, was she?” Catherine held her hand out. “Miranda, come here, this instant.”

Miranda looked up at her father. “She has her angry voice.”

“It was nothing you did, Miranda.”

“No, Miranda, nothing you did at all.” Owen’s wife glared at Bethany. “You failed to steal him once, dear. I tolerated your editing his dreadfully boring prose before, but I am not of a mind to be so tolerant this time.”

Bethany bowed her head. “Believe me, Mrs. Strake, when I tell you that the last thing I should wish to do in this world would be to cause you or your family any discomfort.”

“Then perhaps you will just find yourself your own man, Miss Frost.”

Owen reached out a hand. “Catherine, Bethany is a friend, an innocent friend.”

“A friend. Interesting use of the word, husband. You might protest your innocence, but I already know you to be a liar, Owen Strake.” She glanced hotly from Owen to Bethany and back, then snorted. “You have made it plain that you are not going to honor your word. At least now you have abandoned the pretense of hiding behind the Prince in this regard.”

“Catherine…”

“No, Owen, I do not want to hear it. Miranda and I shall use the apartment this evening, then return home tomorrow morning. I should appreciate advanced word when you will be coming to Strake House so I can make proper arrangements.” His wife spun on her heel and dragged Miranda around with her. “Come, Miranda, we are leaving.”

Owen covered his face with a hand. He said nothing as Catherine stalked away. Shame burned through him, first at how his wife treated Bethany, and second at his relief when she departed. He sighed heavily, then looked toward Bethany. He found her hand extended hesitantly toward his shoulder. “Please, Bethany, forgive, forget that. She did not mean…”

Bethany’s hand returned to her side. “Captain Strake, she meant every word of it-the words spoken and unspoken.”

“She’s angry.”

“Apparently.”

Owen glanced toward the sky. “I promised to go to Norisle. After the trip west, I can’t.”

Bethany regarded him with cool, blue eyes. “Captain Strake, if you believe that is all which prompted her words, you are far too kind and far too naive. For her, being in Mystria is being made to lay down in a bed of nettles. She has been here going on four and a half years. She has hated every second of it. Each year she has wanted to return, and each year she has been thwarted.”

“I know.” Owen shook his head. “But there is nothing I can do about it, Bethany. My home is here. My life is here. She may have left her heart in Norisle, but for me to go back would be to tear my heart out and leave it bleeding on these shores. She thinks she will die if she stays. I know I will die if I leave.”

“Have you told her that?”

Owen half-laughed, throwing his arms open and letting them flap limply to his sides. “How could I? When could I? When she is angry, even acquiescing does not make her listen. And in those times she is calm, to address this would set her off. When I take her down to the river, where we can watch the water flow and moose grazing, all I see is beauty. What she sees are all the ways in which our home is not a Norillian estate.”

He glanced down, pressing his hands together fingertip to fingertip. “Perhaps she is right. Perhaps I do have a mistress.”

“Owen…”

“She thinks it’s you, I know, and I am sorry her suspicions threaten your reputation.” He shook his head. “What she doesn’t understand is that Mystria is my mistress. Where she sees a primitive, uncivilized land, I see unspoiled majesty. As Catherine offers me less and less, Mystria offers more and more. When the Prince prepared the expedition west, and I agreed to go, he asked if I was doing it for my duty, or to get away from my wife. I guess now I know that I was doing it to spend time with my mistress.”

As Owen shaped his emotions into words, he felt as if he was uncovering a treasure which had lain buried for eons. His father had been Mystrian, born of a family cast out of Norisle ages ago. A sailor, he met and married a Norillian noble’s daughter. Owen had been born in Mystria, but when his father died at sea, he and his mother had moved back to Norisle, and she had been wedded to Lord Ventnor’s youngest son, a wastrel. Owen had grown up thinking that all Norisle hated him for the land of his birth, and in returning he recaptured the life he had been meant to have.

While it was easy to see Catherine as part of Norisle, and recognize the wellspring from which her angry bitterness arose, he could not dismiss her. He had loved her and had exchanged vows with her. Though countless men ignored those vows, Owen would not count himself among them. If he could not be true to his word, then he could never be true to himself or anyone else. The price of being honorable might be pain, but worse would be the price of faithlessness.

Bethany nodded slowly. “You, Captain Strake, are not alone in your love of the land and its people. You should realize that there are people here, many people, who love you for who you are and what you have done. The story in the Gazette may have been about Colonel Rathfield, but there was not a man who heard it who did not wish he had been there standing shoulder to shoulder with you. That your wife does not seem to appreciate you is seen by many as a great tragedy. Though no one would ever say a word to you about it, they recognize it and believe you a better man than they for how you deal with it.”

Owen nodded. “And probably not a few who think she should get the rough side of my hand.”

“Those are the idiots who get supper cold and their beds colder.” Bethany graced him with a simple smile. “I must be away, Captain. I apologize for the discomfort I caused. I assure you, I shall do my best never to put you in that situation again.”

“Bethany…”

“No, Owen, I made a decision a long time ago, and I have let my resolve erode.” She smiled as she backed away. “For the best of all concerned, I must again abide by my previous choice. To do otherwise, to see you in this situation again, would break my heart. I do not imagine it could ever be mended again.”

2 July 1767 Government House, Temperance Temperance Bay, Mystria

Prince Vlad’s mouth soured as Ezekiel Fire shuffled and clanked his way along toward the throne. Two large men, each dressed in the somber black clothes favored by a Virtuan funeral cortege, marched behind him. Fire remained bound as he had been for trial, from mask to the gauntlets and shackles that hobbled him. To the collar had been added a stout chain which one of his keepers held.

Vlad glanced at the man standing beside him. “Yes, Caleb, they do treat him as if he is an animal.”

“It is inhuman, Highness.”

At trial Fire had been dressed well, but in custody he had been given dirty, ragged clothes and deprived of stockings and shoes. He’d clearly not bathed and given the redness of his eyes, had not been allowed to sleep much, either. Dirt blackened his toenails, proving at least that he still had them. Vlad suspected the same was not true of the fingernails, hidden within the steel gauntlets.

Prince Vlad looked past Fire to the men guarding him. “Remove his mask, remove the collar, unbind his hands.”

The man holding the chain shook his head. “Bishop Bumble agreed to bring the prisoner to you, but said, under no circumstances, was he to be released.”