She hoped he would get it over with quickly.
She tasted wine on his breath as he kissed her. Derina lay still, not moving. His hands moved over her body. There was nowhere for them to go where her father hadn’t already been.
Burley’s hands stopped moving. There was a loud crack from the fireplace as a log threw up sparks.
“We don’t have to do this,” he said, “if you’re not in the humor.”
Faint surprise opened her eyes.
Burley rolled himself onto his stomach, propped himself on his elbows. Firelight reflected in his dark eyes. “Perhaps you had no mind to be married,” he said.
She shrugged. Wine swam in her head. “I knew it would happen.”
“But not to me.”
Another shrug. “As well as another.”
Burley gnawed a knuckle and stared at the fire. Derina propped herself up on her elbow and regarded him. Wine and relief made her giddy.
“I think my father was afraid to say no to this,” Burley said. “I think it was Lord Landry’s idea, not his.”
Derina was not surprised. People in the dales treaded warily where Landry was concerned.
“My father says that the connection will be of advantage,” Burley said. “And we need the grazing on the upland pastures.”
“I hope you’ll get it.”
Burley gave her a sharp look. “What d’you mean?”
The wine made her laugh. “Edlyn’s dowry gave the mowing on forty hectares of river pasture, but there wasn’t much hay made there, for my father’s beeves grazed the land all summer.”
Burley nodded slowly. “I see.”
“And Edlyn’s dowry never left my father’s strongboxes.” The wine made her laugh again. “It was an autumn wedding, like ours, and father always had an excuse. Bad autumn weather, then winter snows, then muddy spring roads. And by summer, Barton was dead, and his father with him, and the beeves already in the pasture.”
“And the little girl-”
“Daryl.”
“Daryl. She’s the heir to her father’s estate, and Barton the eldest son.”
“And my father has use of the estate through her minority, which will last forever. And that is why Edlyn will never be allowed to marry again, for fear that Daryl would have another protector.”
And that is why Edlyn hates me. Derina left the concluding thought unspoken.
Burley frowned for a long moment, then spoke with hesitation. “How did Barton and his father die?”
Derina’s head spun. Probably the wine.
“In battle,” she said.
“And who killed them?”
For a moment Derina was aware of her father’s looted sword, bright and powerful, hanging over the fireplace.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Burley didn’t reply. Derina watched him frowning into the fire, eyes alight with thought, until wine and main weariness dragged her into sleep.
When she woke in the morning, her father-in-law had gone, and all his folk with him.
The conventions forced Edlyn to be sisterly, which included helping Derina make the bed. “No blood on the sheets,” she observed. Her flat face regarded Derina. “Was he incapable? Or you no virgin?”
Derina felt color rise to her face. For all they never talked of it, Edlyn knew perfectly well who’d had Derina’s virginity, two years before when Edlyn married and moved out of the room they shared.
At least it hadn’t lasted long. Landry had found a girl he’d liked better-another of his fleeting favorites.
“Whatever version you like best,” Derina said. “When you talk to the old gossips in the kitchen hall, you’ll say whatever you like anyway.”
Edlyn’s expressionless face turned back to her work. Derina fluffed a pillow. “Perhaps,” said Derina, “he was merely gentle.”
Edlyn’s tone was scornful. “So much the worse for him.”
There was a lump in Derina’s throat. She put the pillow down. “Can we not be friends?” she asked.
Edlyn only gazed at her suspiciously.
“It’s not my fault,” Derina said. “I didn’t ask to marry any more than you. It’s not my fault that Barton died.”
“But you profit by it.”
“Where’s my profit?” Derina demanded.
Edlyn didn’t answer.
“Father’s favor changes with the wind,” Derina said. “He does it to divide us.”
“And what good would combining do?” Scornfully. “D’you think we could beat him?”
“Probably not. But it would ease our hearts.”
Stony, Edlyn looked at her.
Lord Landry’s voice rose in the court. “Gone?” The doors boomed inward, and Landry stalked in, rage darkening his face. He swung accusingly to Derina. “D’you know what that brother of yours has done?”
“I l-looked for you.” Norward’s voice. He came tumbling down the stair, having heard his father’s bellow from his quarters. “Y-you weren’t there.”
“You gave away the dowry, damn you!” Landry rampaged up to his son, seemed to tower over him even though Norward was taller. “Edson’s gone, with all his folk!”
“It-” Norward struggled for words through the stammer that had suddenly returned, bad as ever. “It was his. Edson’s. He asked for it.”
“You should have delayed! Sent for me!”
“I–I did. But Edson’s relatives were all there-I couldn’t refuse ’em all. But you weren’t in your room, and hadn’t slept there.”
“Who are you to tell me where to sleep?” Landry roared.
“I didn’t.”
“Liar! Liar and thief!” Landry seized his son by the neck, began wrenching him back and forth at the end of his powerful arms. Norward turned red and clutched hopelessly at his father’s thick wrists. Derina desperately searched her mind for something she could do.
“Is it a matter of the dowry, then?”
Burley’s voice cut over the sound of Landry’s shouts. He had followed Norward down the stair, was watching narrowly as father and son staggered back and forth.
Landry froze, breath coming hard through wide nostrils. Then he released his son and forced a smile. “Not at all, lad,” he said. “But Norward let your father leave without telling me of his going. I would have said my farewells.” He glared at Norward, who clutched his throat and gasped for air. “Reeve would not have so forgotten.”
“My father bade me thank your lordship for all your kindness,” Burley said. “But he and our folk wanted to get an early start lest a storm break.”
A storm, Derina thought. Apt enough analogy.
“I would have said goodbye,” Landry mumbled, and turned to slouch away.
Derina, seeing Norward and Burley exchange cautious looks, knew then that this had been carefully arranged. For a moment anxiety churned in her belly, fear that Landry would discover she had talked too freely to Burley the night before.
There was a touch on Derina’s shoulder, and she jumped. Edlyn clasped her arm, squeezed once, looked in her face, and then silently returned to her work.
Truce, Derina read in her look. If not quite peace, at least an end to war.
A real storm, snow and wind, coiled about the house the next two days, glazing windows with sleet, shrieking around the walls’ flinty corners, banking up shoals of sooty white in the courtyard. Landry’s relations and dependents, unable to leave for their own homes, ate up his provender and patience at an equal rate. The huge fire in the great hall blazed night and day and almost cooked Derina and Burley in their bed.
The storm died down the third night after the wedding. Burley and Derina, next morning, hadn’t yet risen when Norward brought in Nellda, who’d fallen in the storm the night before while trying to leave the house.
Nelly’s flesh was turquoise blue and cold, and her breath was faint. There was snow and ice in her tangled hair. Norward put her in Derina’s wedding bed, and called for a warming pan.
“I was at the north corner,” Norward said, “checking the roof for storm damage. And there she was, past the Stone Eagle, halfway to the valley and lying in a drift.”