Her eyes closed, and she bit her lip. “I was hoping you would suggest that. But is it safe?”
“Not only is it safe, you can get away with showering him with affection and no one will think twice about it,” he promised her with relief. “He’s a handsome little lad, if I do say so myself, and most ladies of rank are inclined to spoil their pretty little pages. You’ll be no different.”
She sniffed, signaling that she was holding back tears, which was not unexpected; he moved over in his chair, which was quite big enough for two, and patted the seat beside him.
She joined him, resting her head on his shoulder, with his arm around her. For a while, they just sat together; quiet on the surface, but mentally he was trying to pick up every detail that might signal her state of mind. Did she just want comfort? Or was she amorous? If the latter, he could certainly throw off his fatigue, but if lovemaking wasn’t what she wanted—
Their relationship was a trifle complicated. Oh, not in the fact that they were husband and wife, nor that it was an arranged marriage. That was normal enough. No, it was due to his own upbringing, which was decidedly not normal, at least insofar as his own experience deeper in Imperial territory went. His father and his grandfather had both been adamant that sex was not a husband’s “right,” no matter what other people in the Empire said. Nor was it his right to order women about as if they were pet dogs. This, of course, was in direct contradiction to all the examples he’d had at the Emperor’s Court. But—
She sighed, and he felt her tears on his chest. Ah, well, all right, then. No midnight romping tonight. Good. I need the sleep, he caught himself thinking.
Instead, he moved his free hand to dry her tears with the sleeve of his robe, and continued the conversation about their son. “As soon as he’s old enough that we know he can keep secrets, we’ll tell him, I promise. And in the meantime, you can act like any of those silly cows in the Court and dote on your pretty page-boy. He’s an affectionate little chap, and he’ll thrive on all the love you give him.”
“It would be so much worse if the Emperor had demanded him,” she agreed, though her voice trembled a little with emotion. “And I know I am ridiculously lucky. I have my boys within my household, and I can see them whenever I like. I didn’t get married off to someone three times my age who I didn’t even know. I didn’t get the treatment that Delia did when Father died.”
“But this is still hard,” Kordas replied. He did understand. She liked him, and he liked her; they were ridiculously compatible. But this was much, much different. This was mother-love; she adored her children with all the passion of a warm-natured woman, and to be denied so much of their lives . . .
Well, it went against instinct, which did not answer to logic and reason.
She never complained about it, that was the remarkable thing. For the last nine years, she had not complained about it. At most, she had given way to a few tears, like now. She’s braver than I am, he thought soberly.
“Well, I’ll tell Hakkon tomorrow to put Restil in the page corps and assign him to us. No—to you. There’s no reason you can’t have a personal page.” She gave a shuddering sigh, and patted his hand.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to go to bed early,” she said, as thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance. And since she did not add “and why don’t you come with me?” he just nodded.
“I’m going to finish off this excellent toddy that you put together. It’s far too good to waste a single drop,” he told her, and gave her a hand up out of the chair. “Better be prepared for Delia to gush about her new prize all during breakfast.”
“Sometimes I think Father should have married you to Delia rather than me, the way you both worship horses,” she teased, pausing and looking back over her shoulder at him.
“Thank you, but despite the example of our noble Emperor, I am not inclined to go robbing cradles for a wife,” he retorted. “Besides, I like the one I have. She’s got me broken in pretty well.”
She managed a hint of a laugh, and headed up the stairs to their bedchamber. He admired the view until the ceiling cut it off. Well, maybe there was some love there after all; nobody ever said love had to only be romantic. It could be based upon admiration, too.
The conversation tonight had cast his mind back to the five years he had been at the Emperor’s Court, and he mulled over his past as he brooded into the fire.
He had not been the youngest hostage there; indeed, the youngest had been barely able to toddle. The more important you were—a Prince, say, or one of the Emperor’s subject Kings—the more likely it was that the Emperor would snatch one or more of your children away as soon as they were weaned. The Duke of Valdemar was not important politically or militarily, and certainly was not monetarily important; Kordas had gotten the feeling when he’d arrived on the other side of the last of the Portals that summoning him had been something of an afterthought, and probably not even the Emperor’s afterthought.
It was far more likely that some flunky on inventorying the thousand or so children at the Imperial Court had noticed that the Duke of Valdemar had not yet sent a hostage, checked the rolls to make sure there were children, and sent for him.
He had been lucky that his father must have anticipated that—and realized he was going to need an advocate and advisor. That was where Hakkon had come in—masquerading as the body-servant he was allowed to bring with him. Hakkon was ten years older than he, a bastard cousin on his mother’s side, and one that the then-Duke had been happy to add to the household when Kordas’s mother had requested the favor. By the time Kordas was thirteen, Hakkon was tall, strong, as muscled as a muleteer, intelligent, and completely devoted to the family. He’d also spent a great deal of time at the Duke’s side as the Duke made his annual tribute visits to the Imperial Capital, so Hakkon knew exactly what a nest of serpents the place was. The perfect protector to send with Kordas.
As he and Hakkon had stood just off the Imperial Portal platform, staring at the dozens of people scrambling to and fro, none of whom were paying any attention to them, it became clear that no one in the entire Portal room was prepared to step up to find out who they were, much less help them.
Hakkon, however, was not prepared to take that sort of treatment. Not after a full day of transiting Portal to Portal, at none of which had anyone offered them so much as a drink of water.
Hakkon had marched out into the room, grabbed the first unburdened person in Imperial livery that he saw, and growled something at the man. Kordas had been too far away to hear what Hakkon said, but it, and Hakkon’s size, evidently made an impression on the servant. The man scuttled away with the speed of a terrified mouse, and by the time Hakkon had returned to Kordas’s side, another harried-looking servant in Imperial livery appeared in a doorway, looking for them.