Laurell Hamilton - Never After

When we stopped for lunch at a small-town inn, Harwin made a point of sitting next to me and trying to draw me out, but I just sat at the table and brooded. If I was going to be a successful queen, not to mention an interesting wife, I would need to widen my experiences and broaden my mind.

I wasn’t entirely sure how a person went about doing that, but I supposed that traveling around the kingdom was not a bad place to start.

Shortly after we set out again after lunch, it started to rain.

“Shouldn’t we pull over somewhere?” I asked Darius.

He squinted at the sky and shook his head. “Looks like it’ll continue on like this for a few hours, so no point in trying to wait it out.”

“We could stop at an inn somewhere,” I suggested.

“Oh, I think we can make another ten miles or so today,” he said.

“But I’m getting wet!”

“Climb in back with Dannette,” he said. “If there’s room.”

I swallowed a growl of exasperation and, when it was clear Darius was not going to stop the wagon for this maneuver, clambered over the bench with the bar est minimum of grace. The back of the wagon was a welter of boxes and bags and pillows and things —black kettles and dried plants and glass globes and loose shoes and walking sticks and what appeared to be a large collection of desiccated insects. The heavy tarp overhead, loosely stretched over curved wooden ribs, somewhat kept the rain at bay, but even as I pitched to my knees and felt around for an open space to sit, I could feel a few drops of rainwater seep through and fall into my hair.

Dannette was scrunched down toward the back of the wagon, near enough to the half-open back flap to be able to read by weak sunlight. “There’s a little space there between the table and the black trunk,” she said helpfully, pointing. “You have to put your feet up on the bag of goose feathers, though.”

I situated myself with a little difficulty, eventually deciding to sit on the goose feathers to protect myself from the jostling of the ride, even more pronounced back here than up on the bench. “It’s raining,” I said unnecessarily. “Darius doesn’t want to stop.”

“Yes,” she said absently. “That’s fairly typical.”

“I don’t think I like traveling in the rain,” I added.

She laughed. “I find it’s just not worth fussing about.”

I sighed. I usually found everything to be worth fussing about. I squirmed in my spot, found a pillow to wedge behind my head, and finally leaned back against a crate of unidentifiable items that chimed together in time with the jouncing. It wasn’t more than another ten minutes before I fell asleep.

The cessation of motion woke me and I guessed we had stopped for the night. The rain had ended, but the air had that cold, sodden feeling that reminded you how very unpleasant wet weather could be. Climbing out through the back of the wagon, I found myself standing in the cluttered yard of an inn appreciably bigger than the one we’d patronized the night before. I allowed myself to hope it would have more amenities and better food.

Once grooms had come for our horses, our whole group filtered inside. I noticed that Harwin was limping, but I turned my head away without asking him why. Dannette was the first to arrive at the proprietor’s desk, and I heard her ask for two rooms.

Two! I thought with excitement, before realizing that Harwin could easily afford his own and I still would be sharing a space with the others.

The innkeeper, a very tall, very thin man with lank gray hair and overlarge spectacles, looked down at her over the rims and shook his head. “We only have one room left,” he said. “A great number of people were caught in the rain earlier today and checked in instead of traveling on.”

Dannette glanced over her shoulder, her eyebrow raised in a silent question. Darius shrugged. “I don’t mind four to a room,” he said.

Harwin appeared shocked. “Four! You don’t mean that you plan to sleep in the same room as the princess!”

Darius shrugged again. “I did last night.”

Harwin was even more shocked, so much so all he could do was stare at Darius. Dannette touched him lightly on the arm. “I played chaperone and lay beside Olivia in the bed, while my brother curled up on the floor,” she said. “You need not worry. I take my responsibilities seriously.”

Harwin had recovered the power of speech. “Well, you will not share a room with the princess while I travel with you. You and I shall sleep in the stables in your own wagon.”

“There’s not much room in the wagon,” Dannette began, but Darius spoke over her.

“ You may sleep there if you like, but I will sleep in the bedchamber. I see no reason to camp in a barn when there’s a room available.”

“I cannot allow you to compromise Olivia’s virtue in such a fashion.”

Darius shrugged, took the key from the hand of the very curious innkeeper, and settled his bag over his shoulder. “Well, you can stand guard over me in the room, or you can bed down in the stables, whatever you choose,” he said. “I’m going to wash my face and then come down for dinner.”

Trying not to smirk, I followed him up the stairs, Dannette at my heels. I was not surprised, upon looking over my shoulder, to see Harwin reluctantly following. He was still favoring his left leg.

The room we had been assigned was more spacious than the one we’d had the night before, and featured a small settee in addition to a fairly sizable bed. Harwin was obviously too tall to fit on the settee, so Darius claimed it, but then Darius went to some trouble to gather blankets and pillows to fashion a bed for Harwin on the floor.

“No doubt you’re tired enough to fall right to sleep,” Darius said.

“No doubt,” was Harwin’s cool reply. “Let us repair to the taproom for dinner.”

He hobbled toward the door and Dannette said, “What’s wrong with your foot?”

Hand on the knob, Harwin gave her a wintry look. “I have a small cut.”

She came closer to him. “Not walking that way, you don’t. You have a deep wound, I’m guessing, and it’s gotten worse during a day of travel.”

I suddenly remembered. “Oh! You were bitten during the dog trial!” I exclaimed. “Harwin, you idiot, did you not have someone take a look at your hurts?”

He looked both embarrassed to have roused our concern and irritated at being called an idiot. “I cleaned all the bites myself before setting out,” he said. “I’m fine.”

Dannette pointed toward a stiff-backed chair that was set before a graceful table, as if inviting travelers to pause and write out correspondence. “Sit down,” she said with such authority that Harwin stopped protesting and dropped into the chair. “Take off both your boots and roll up the ends of your trousers.”

Not that I wanted to, but I was seeing in my mind the last few moments of Harwin’s competition against the dogs. “He should take off his shirt, too,” I said. “I know he got hurt on his arms and his chest as well.”

“I am not disrobing in front of all of you,” Harwin said shortly.

“Olivia will look the other way,” Dannette said and knelt on the floor in front of Harwin.

I did not, in fact, look the other way, but watched in some fascination as Harwin slowly removed everything except his trousers. I heard a low whistle from Darius as he settled on the floor beside his sister.

“That’s a nasty piece of work,” he observed, touching Harwin’s left foot. I couldn’t see too well past the screen of their bodies, but I thought it looked swollen and red. Perhaps there was a little pus oozing out along the anklebone. “It must feel like your flesh is on fire.”