Robert Salvatore: The Spine of the World

"Can't you find a suitable wife from among the well-bred families of Luskan?" Priscilla asked. "Or in a favorable deal with a wealthy merchant? We could well use a large dowery, after all."

"Wife?" Temigast said with a chuckle. "Aren't we being a bit premature?"

"Not at all," Lord Feringal insisted evenly. "I love her. I know that I do."

"Fool!" Priscilla wailed, but Temigast patted her shoulder to calm her, chuckling all the while.

"Of course you do, my lord," the steward said, "but the marriage of a nobleman is rarely about love, I fear. It is about station and alliance and wealth," Temigast gently explained.

Feringal's eyes widened. "I love her!" the young lord insisted.

"Then take her as a mistress," Temigast suggested reasonably. "A plaything. Surely a man of your great station is deserving of at least one of those."

Hardly able to speak past the welling lump in his throat, Feringal ground his heel into the stone floor and stormed off to his private room.

*****

"Did you kiss him?" Tori, the younger of the Ganderlay sisters, asked, giggling at the thought of it. Tori was only eleven, and just beginning to realize the differences between boys and girls, an education fast accelerating since Meralda, her older sister by six years, had taken a fancy to Jaka Sculi, with his delicate features and long eyelashes and brooding blue eyes.

"No, I surely did not," Meralda replied, brushing back her long black hair from her olive-skinned face, the face of beauty, the face that had unknowingly captured the heart of the lord of Auckney.

"But you wanted to," Tori teased, bursting into laughter, and Meralda joined her, as sure an admission as she could give.

"Oh, but I did," the older sister said.

"And you wanted to touch him," her young sister teased on. "Oh, to hug him and kiss him! Dear, sweet Jaka." Tori ended by making sloppy kissing noises and wrapping her arms about her chest, hands grabbing her shoulders as she turned about so that it looked as if someone was hugging her.

"You stop that!" Meralda said, slapping her sister across the back playfully.

"But you didn't even kiss him," Tori complained. "Why not, if you wanted to? Did he not want the same?"

"To make him want it all the more," the older girl explained. "To make him think about me all the time. To make him dream about me."

"But if you're wanting it-"

"I'm wanting more than that," Meralda explained, "and if I make him wait, I can make him beg. If I make him beg, I can get all that I want from him and more."

"What more?" Tori asked, obviously confused.

"To be his wife," Meralda stated without reservation.

Tori nearly swooned. She grabbed her straw pillow and whacked her sister over the head with it. "Oh, you'll never!" she cried. Too loudly.

The curtain to their bedroom pulled back, and their father, Dohni Ganderlay, a ruddy man with strong muscles from working the peat fields and skin browned from both sun and dirt, poked his head in.

"You should be long asleep," Dohni scolded.

The girls dived down as one, scooting under the coarse, straw-lined ticking and pulling it tight to their chins, giggling all the while.

"Now, I'll be having none of that silliness!" Dohni yelled, and he came at them hard, falling over them like a great hunting beast, a wrestling tussle that ended in a hug shared between the two girls and their beloved father.

"Now, get your rest, you two," Dohni said quietly a moment later. "Your ma's a bit under the stone, and your laughter is keeping her awake." He kissed them both and left. The girls, respectful of their father and concerned about their mother, who had indeed been feeling even worse than usual, settled down to their own private thoughts.

Meralda's admission was strange and frightening to Tori. But while she was uncertain about her sister getting married and moving out of the house, she was also very excited at the prospect of growing into a young woman like her sister.

Lying next to her sister, Meralda's mind raced with anticipation. She had kissed a boy before, several boys actually, but it had always been out of curiosity or on a dare from her friends. This was the first time she really wanted to kiss someone. And how she did want to kiss Jaka Sculi! To kiss him and to run her fingers through his curly brown hair and gently down his soft, hairless cheek, and to have his hands caressing her thick hair, her face. .

Meralda fell asleep to warm dreams.

*****

In a much more comfortable bed in a room far less drafty not so many doors away, Lord Feringal nestled into his soft feather pillows. He longed to escape to dreams of holding the girl from the village, where he could throw off his suffocating station, where he could do as he pleased without interference from his sister or old Temigast.

He wanted to escape too much, perhaps, for Feringal found no rest in his huge, soft bed, and soon he had twisted and turned the feather ticking into knots about his legs. It was fortunate for him that he was hugging one of the pillows, for it was the only thing that broke his fall when he rolled right off the edge and onto the hard floor.

Feringal finally extricated himself from the bedding tangle, then paced about his room, scratching his head, his nerves more on edge than they'd ever been. What had this enchantress done to him?

"A cup of warm goat's milk," he muttered aloud, thinking that would calm him and afford him some sleep. Feringal slipped from his room and started along the narrow staircase. Halfway down he heard voices from below.

He paused, recognizing Priscilla's nasal tone, then a burst of laughter from his sister as well as from old, wheezing Temigast. Something struck Feringal as out of place, some sixth sense told him that he was the butt of that joke. He crept down more quietly, coming under the level of the first floor ceiling and ducking close in the shadows against the stone bannister.

There sat Priscilla upon the divan, knitting, with old Temigast in a straight-backed chair across from her, a decanter of whisky in hand.

"Oh, but I love her," Priscilla wailed, stopping her knitting to sweep one hand across her brow dramatically. "I cannot live without her!"

"Got along well enough for all these years," Temigast remarked, playing along.

"But I am tired, good steward," Priscilla replied, obviously mocking her brother. "What great effort is lovemaking alone!"

Temigast coughed in his drink, and Priscilla exploded with laughter.

Feringal could take no more. He swept down the stairs, full of anger. "Enough! Enough I say!" he roared. Startled, the two turned to him and bit their lips, though Priscilla could not hold back one last bubble of laughter.

Lord Feringal glowered at her, his fists clenched at his sides, as close to rage as either of them had ever seen the gentle-natured man. "How dare you?" he asked through gritted teeth and trembling lips. "To mock me so!"

"A bit of a jest, my lord," Temigast explained weakly to defuse the situation, "nothing more."

Feringal ignored the steward's explanation and turned his ire on his sister. "What do you know of love?" he screamed at Priscilla. "You have never had a lustful thought in your miserable life. You couldn't even imagine what it would be like to lay with a man, could you, dear sister?"

"You know less than you think," Priscilla shot back, tossing aside her knitting and starting to rise. Only Temigast's hand, grabbing hard at her knee, kept her in place. She calmed considerably at that, but the old man's expression was a clear reminder to watch her words carefully, to keep a certain secret between them.

"My dear Lord Feringal," the steward began quietly, "there is nothing wrong with your desires. Quite the contrary; I should consider them a healthy sign, if a bit late in coming. I don't doubt that your heart aches for this peasant girl, but I assure you there's nothing wrong with taking her as your mistress. Certainly there is precedent for such an act among the previous lords of Auckney, and of most kingdoms, I would say."