It had been more than a month since he had last visited Elynsynos’s lair, had been able to hold his wife and sing to his child under the approving eye of the wyrm who was caring for them both. For all that he missed her presence with the intensity of a dragon missing its treasure, he had come to believe that her decision to visit with the beast was a wise one. She was much more hale and at ease under Elynsynos’s magical care and fond ministrations.
The door of the library opened silently; had he not been aware, by the nature of his blood, of every minuscule happening within a range of five miles, he would not have heard Portia come in. He had to acknowledge, albeit grudgingly, that Tristan had been correct about her worth as well as that of the other servants he had loaned to Ashe and Rhapsody. The two other women were still awaiting their full usefulness, but Portia had quickly become an invaluable member of the household staff. She was quiet and unassuming, entering a room or delivering a message in a way that was never disruptive. Oftentimes she was gone without even leaving a trace of her vibration on the air of the room.
She gave a quiet cough now, a subtle verbal sign Ashe had learned was her way of informing him that his noon-meal repast was warm and would chill unpleasantly, then took hold of the door handle again.
Just as her hand began to turn the handle, the dragon in Ashe’s blood caught the slightest hint of a scent on the wind, a fragment of cinnamon and a drop of vanilla, mixed with the strange and intoxicating aroma of woodland flowers. It reached down into his brain, into memory so deep it did not even need consciousness to be evoked.
Rhapsody’s scent.
He shook his head infinitesimally, and the scent cleared. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a golden flash, like the movement of a fall of hair. He looked up quickly, turning in time to see Portia’s tall, dark form start through the door.
Not a sign of golden hair anywhere.
He ran a hand through his own metallic red-gold hair, then called out to her just as she was closing the door behind her.
“Portia?”
The chambermaid turned, her dark eyes wide with surprise.
“Yes, m’lord?”
Now that she was there, staring at him in confusion, anything Ashe would have asked fled from his brain, and he found himself speechless. He gestured clumsily with his hands, trying to think of a way to phrase a question that didn’t sound utterly insane, but no words would come into his mind.
He wanted her to explain how suddenly her presence, fleeting as it was, had reminded him, in a primitive sensory way, of his wife.
And realized in the same instant that she would think him unbalanced if he told her such a thing.
He smiled awkwardly, then shook his head as he rubbed the back of his neck.
“Sorry,” he said. “I—I don’t remember what I was going to ask you.”
Portia dropped a curtsy.
“Ring for me if you remember, m’lord,” she said pleasantly. “Good evening.”
Over the next few days it happened several times more.
At first Ashe suspected trickery; his upbringing and nature did not allow for an easy application of trust, and so he began to watch Portia carefully, noting her movements, keeping track of her out of the corner of his eye, and when she left the room, with his innate dragonsense.
Each time he felt a twinge of shame afterward.
The human side of his nature had granted him his father’s ability at cool, detached assessment and equanimity, so after a week or so of noting her movements, he began to look elsewhere for an explanation of what he had noticed. The new servant was discreet, modest, and kept to herself. She rose early, kept her quarters straight, worked hard, was prompt when summoned, eschewed after-hours gatherings with others who worked in the keep, and rebuffed the advances made by a young man who had come to deliver foodstuffs to the buttery from Avonderre. She was tall, broad-shouldered, and dark, with deep brown eyes and an olive complexion, a physical opposite of Rhapsody’s slight Lirin frame, rosy skin, blond hair, and green eyes. Her behavior appeared to be above reproach; since Ashe could not read minds or look into people’s hearts, he had little other choice but to assume she was not responsible for his odd inclinations.
Once Portia herself was ruled out he began to muse, almost to the point of melancholy, about why he was seeing aspects of his wife in a serving maid. Certainly he missed her, had always missed her in her absence, and had been driven to the brink of insanity when she was missing the last summer, taken by an old nemesis and hidden in a sea cave where the water, normally an element over which he had power, clashed against the rocks, hiding her from his inner sense. The kidnapping had loosed a wild ugliness in him, a desperation that felt uncomfortably close to the madness of dragon blood that he had seen in some of his other relatives.
I am distracted at best, going insane at worst, he thought glumly, blotting the ink on a new draft of the harbor code he was writing. If she knew, she would come home.
The thought kindled in his second nature an interest that took a while to extinguish. Almost as much as the man craved her company because of his love for her, the dragon sought it as well, but for different reasons. There were gemlike qualities to Rhapsody—her eyes a clear emerald, her hair like golden flax—that had been imbued in her both by nature and by her rather life-changing experience of walking through the fire at the Earth’s core. It was as if all physical flaw had been burned away, and perfection was something that appealed to the avarice in the dragon’s nature.
Blessedly, it was the existence of flaw that the man cherished, the pigheaded stubbornness, the occasional inability to see the forest for the trees, the wild anger that exhibited itself at inexplicable times, all parts of this woman that he enjoyed as well, and so the duality of his nature remained in agreement and in balance, despite taking opposite sides of the debate.
But now, if the physical cues that reminded him of his wife were beginning to manifest themselves for no reason, there could be more beneath the surface. Upon contemplating that possibility, Ashe felt cold.
Because it might be a signal that the dragon side of him was beginning to take over.
His desire to see her return grew stronger. He countered in by chanting under his breath, reminding himself that she was happier in the lair of the dragon than she was in Haguefort, and ultimately safer, but the diversion only worked for a short while. Then he would see Portia pass by, carrying linens or a tray to the kitchen; she would bow or smile slightly at him and hurry away, leaving in her wake a flicker of golden hair, a flash of rosy cheek and the scent of soap and vanilla.
He began to dream about his wife ceaselessly, fevered dreams that caused him to wake, sweating with unmet passion or the shivering chills of fear. Some nights in his dreams she came to him, pulled the covers aside, and settled down into his arms; from those dreams he awoke feeling lost and sick, his head pounding as if it were about to split.
After the worst of those nightmares Portia had come into his rooms, as she often did, delivering a clean basin and fresh, warm water for his morning shave. She bowed and disappeared, leaving such a strong image of Rhapsody in Ashe’s mind that he pulled the covers over his head and groaned loudly enough to frighten the tabby cat in the corner into a frenzy.
Finally the last blow to his peace of mind was struck on an especially cold night.
Ashe was sitting before the fire again, warming himself by its flames and in thoughts of his wife, when the serving maid entered the room, carrying a tray with his supper. She placed it down on the table before him, uncovered the plate, and turned to go; Ashe caught the scent of spice and vanilla, and the faintest hint of summer flowers in the folds of her rustling skirts. But rather than leaving, she came slowly up behind him, the heat of her body far more intense than that of the fire on his back.