“Who?” Gromph said with a snicker, and walked away.
“I was teasing you, and I should not have,” Penelope Harpell said to Catti-brie later that night, the two alone sitting on the edge of the bed in Catti-brie’s tent, with Penelope brushing Catti-brie’s thick auburn hair. “Your emotions were honest, and in sharing them, you trusted me with something beyond such childish-”
“I gave you reason,” Catti-brie interrupted. “I should not have judged you. I simply do not understand.”
“Perhaps you place a higher value on such acts than I,” said Penelope.
Catti-brie grabbed the brush so she wouldn’t get scratched by it as she turned to stare earnestly at the woman. “You diminish yourself?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” Penelope clarified. “It is not a contest. I place no value on placing such a value, if you get my meaning.”
“So you mock me my morals?”
“Of course not!”
“You claim that I place great value upon it, and then dismiss that value as useless.”
“I do not!” Penelope declared in no uncertain terms. “It is your way, and I respect that.”
“How can you, if to you the act of lovemaking is so trite?”
“I never said that.”
“It is surely implied!”
Penelope sat back and nodded, staring openly at Catti-brie all the while as if she was honestly trying to understand, or perhaps to explain herself better. “Is it the act itself on which you place the value?”
“I value it.”
“If you were not with Drizzt, would you be celibate?”
Catti-brie started to respond, but cut herself short and sat back, her expression perplexed. Penelope had caught her off guard.
“If I were not in love …” she said tentatively.
“But you could be in love with another?”
“I cannot imagine that.”
“Did you not once love Wulfgar?”
Catti-brie sucked in her breath-Penelope had hit a nerve. Once she had thought herself in love with Wulfgar indeed, and he was the only other man she had ever lain with in both her lives.
“I thought I was …” she started to say, but Penelope held up her hand to stop her from elaborating.
“Wulfgar was in love with you,” Penelope said. “Of that I have no doubt. Do you regret …?”
“Yes!” Catti-brie blurted, then “No!” followed by a helpless shrug.
“It is not the act itself for you, I think,” Penelope said. “Nor for many, I am sure. It is, rather, the honesty and the integrity. There is no deeper secret a person might hold than those moments, and so perhaps it should only be given, by man or by woman, in great trust.”
“And how many do you trust?” Catti-brie asked, rather sharply.
“If I place less value on the act of love than you do, it is not out of a lack of self-respect, my friend,” Penelope answered, trying hard, and mostly successfully, to keep her own budding anger out of the response. “Nay, value is the wrong word, I fear. I should not have brought that word into this conversation.”
She could see that she had Catti-brie’s attention then, the woman’s guard still up, obviously. But in Catti-brie’s eyes, Penelope saw curiosity-and Penelope got the feeling that this entire conversation was striking at Catti-brie’s sensibilities more than it should. Something, the Harpell woman thought, was not quite as it should be.
“Not value,” Penelope said. “Perhaps you tie the physical act more tightly to your ethical being than do I.”
“Spiritual being,” Catti-brie offered in correction, but Penelope would hear none of that.
“Not so,” she said. “No, I do not divorce the physical from the spiritual. There is a not-subtle difference between being adventurous and being wanton.”
“Or is the difference merely a matter of how you wish others to perceive you?”
Catti-brie hadn’t spoken the words sharply, but she might as well have followed her question with a slap across Penelope’s face, as far as Penelope was concerned.
“Are you trying to save me?” Penelope shot back. “I told you once that my attitude on this subject was in no way a reflection of my own self-worth. I need no saving.”
Catti-brie started to reply, but Penelope cut her short.
“And I’ll hear none,” she said. “We are friends, and I wish to keep it that way.”
Catti-brie looked away. Penelope noted moisture rimming the bottom of her large eyes.
“I do not judge you,” Penelope said softly. “As with whatever god we might choose, this is a personal choice, and if you’re not harming anyone, then there is no right or wrong …”
“No!” Catti-brie said, spinning back. “I cannot accept that. Not with Drizzt …” She sucked in her breath and turned away again.
“Not with Drizzt?” Penelope said, and a thought hit her hard then. “Not with Drizzt going off to rescue Dahlia?”
“She was his lover,” Catti-brie mumbled.
“After you had been dead for more than half a century!” Penelope retorted before she took a moment to consider her response. Was Catti-brie jealous? It made no sense to her. She had known Catti-brie as a sister those days in the Ivy Mansion-there was no basis for this, nor was it in any way in character for the strong, self-reliant, and purposeful woman.
“I do not need you to remind me of my history,” Catti-brie said, seeming totally flustered and out of sorts.
Penelope couldn’t begin to sort it out.
But then, Penelope was not in the mind of Catti-brie, where once more images of lovemaking with Gromph Baenre teased her and tempted her, and that in turn assaulted her every denial, and chewed at the edges of her understanding of the very essence of her relationship with Drizzt.
“You look troubled, my dear,” old Kipper Harpell said to Penelope when she returned to the main tent in the Harpell complex, which had been set up just over the bridge on Closeguard Isle.
The woman walked over and slumped into the chair next to her uncle, and Kipper moved a hand across to massage her shoulder.
“Something is not quite right, and I cannot yet distill it,” Penelope admitted. “Catti-brie is quite in distress, I fear.”
“About the Hosttower?” Kipper asked. “I believe the construction is going splendidly! We are far ahead of where I thought-”
“No,” Penelope said. “This is on a more personal level. Perhaps she fears for Drizzt.”
“He is going to Menzoberranzan, so say the whispers,” said Kipper. “I fear for Drizzt!”
Penelope looked over at him with all seriousness. “Or perhaps she fears because of the elf woman Drizzt is going to rescue.”
Kipper looked at her curiously for just a moment, before putting on a perfectly perplexed expression. “Drizzt?” he asked incredulously. “Is there a truer heart in all Faerun?”
“As I said, something is not quite right.” Now it was her turn to put an honest and sober look over Kipper. “And I fear it has more than a little to do with our host here in Luskan.”
“Jarlaxle? Beniago?”
“Our real host.”
“Oh, that one,” Kipper said, assuming the exasperated expression that he always wore when Gromph Baenre was in the room or in the conversation. “Well then, I fear that your concern is well placed.”
She awakened drenched in sweat, her breath coming is short gasps. She didn’t know whether to be terrified or wonderfully contented, and the wild disparity of the two offered no resolution.
And she saw them still, the pale yellow eyes, just a hint of pink around the amber iris, like a simmering demonic presence hidden beneath the startling beauty of the mighty dark elf.
Catti-brie tried to calm herself, whispered reassurances, and even placed a hand over her fast-beating heart.
A dream?
Was she alone?
Had she been alone?
She forced herself to take a deep breath. It was too dark in her tent on this moonless night-she couldn’t tell dreams from present reality.
She reached her hand out tentatively across the bed, fearful that she might find someone sleeping there. When that dark thought proved unfounded, she moved her hand out to the small night table, thinking to reach the small lamp.