"Good afternoon, Mother," Leeana said with a slight smile. "Ah, I don't suppose I could convince you to go back to your book until I finish sneaking into my room and change, could I?"
"No," Baroness Hanatha said thoughtfully. "I don't believe you could."
"I was afraid of that," Leeana sighed. She turned and walked back towards her mother, still carrying her dripping poncho over one arm.
"Did you enjoy your ride?" Hanatha asked politely as she stepped back through the doorway to her private sitting room and let her daughter past her.
"Yes, I did." Leeana crossed to the wrought iron fire screen in front of her mother's hearth and hung the wet poncho across it to dry. Then she turned back to face Hanatha, who gave her head a small, smiling shake and sank into a pleasantly overstuffed chair under the comfortable chamber's rain-streaming skylight.
"Where did you go?" she asked. The fire's soft noises and the patter of rain on the skylight formed a soothing backdrop for her voice, and Leeana rubbed her hands, holding them out to the fire's warmth.
"Down to the river and up the bank to Highwayman's Height."
"I remember," Hanatha said. She leaned back in the chair, eyes dreamy with memories. "Down that hollow by Jargham's Farm. Are the crocuses still blooming along the bank above the farm?"
"Yes." Leeana paused and stopped herself before she cleared her throat. "Yes, they are. Purple and yellow. Although," she smiled, "it looks as if the rain is trying to wash them away."
"I imagine so. And I imagine the river's running quite high, as well. Do tell me you weren't foolish enough to attempt the ford below the Height."
"Of course I wasn't!" Leeana gave her mother a slightly indignant look. "Nobody would be crazy enough to try that with the river a good twenty yards out of its banks on either side!"
"No?" Hanatha gazed at her daughter for several seconds, then cocked her head and smiled. "Your father and I were, the year before we were married. Although, now that I think about it, it was only about fifteen yards out of its banks when we did it."
Leeana stared at her mother in disbelief, and Hanatha looked back calmly.
"I can't believe you two would have done something like that!" Leeana said finally. "Not after the way both of you go on at me about the risk to the succession if anything should happen to me. Father was the heir to Balthar, not just the heir conveyant, you know!"
"Yes," Hanatha said thoughtfully. "I believe I was aware of that, now that you mention it. Although, to be fair, there was your Uncle Garlayn, at that point, so he wasn't precisely the only heir. And he did have several sturdy, healthy male cousins who might have succeeded him. But, yes, despite that, it was incredibly foolish of both of us. And, by the way, Leeana, it was my idea."
Leeana sank onto a footstool, facing her mother's chair, and stared at her. She'd heard stories all of her life about her mother's youthful, headstrong defiance of stifling convention. Given the way both her parents fussed over any minor infractions on her own part, she'd always secretly assumed most of those stories were exaggerated. After all, they'd all come to her second- or third-hand, through servants' gossip, and she was only too well aware of how the family retainers tended to embroider the family's adventures. More than that, Hanatha was deeply beloved by all of the Duke Tellian's household. That gave all of them, and particularly the older ones, who remembered the laughing young noblewoman Tellian Bowmaster had brought home, a tendency to emphasize what an outrageous, perpetually racing about handful she'd been. Especially since she would never go racing about again.
But if her mother-the same mother who was constantly suggesting that perhaps Leeana might want to moderate her own lifestyle just a bit-had been crazy enough to talk her father into swimming their horses across a river in full springtime flood-!
"Yes," Hanatha said wryly, "I was that foolish, dear. And I was three years older than you are now. Which, I suppose, probably does make it seem just a little unfair for me to complain about your own high jinks, doesn't it?"
"I wouldn't say that," Leeana began, and her mother laughed.
"Oh, I should certainly hope not!" Her dark green eyes danced, and she leaned back in her chair. "You're much too good a daughter to throw my own youthful misdeeds into my teeth. But we both know you're thinking it, don't we?"
"Well . . . yes, I suppose I am," Leeana admitted, unable not to smile back at her.
"Of course you are. And I often thought your grandmother was dreadfully unfair when she took me to task for some dreadful lapse on my part. And to some extent, I imagine she was-just as I realize that I'm applying something of a double standard when I upbraid you. Unfortunately," she continued to smile, but her voice became more serious, "this business of being a parent sometimes does require us to be a bit unfair."
"I never thought you were really unfair," Leeana told her. "Not like Aunt Gayarla, for example."
"There's a difference between unfair and capricious, dear," Hanatha said. "And worthy as your father's sister-in-law is in many ways, I'm afraid she's always alternated between tyranny and overindulgence where your cousins are concerned. And it's gotten worse since Garlayn died. Indeed, I'm often surprised Trianal managed to turn out so well, although Staphos and- Well. Never mind."
She shook her head and returned to her original thread.
"No, Leeana. What I meant is that sometimes-more often than I would prefer, really-I find myself telling you not to do things since I know just how . . . unwise they are because, when I was your age, I did those very same things. I'm afraid it truly is a matter of experience and the burned hand teaching best. The way parents discover the things their children shouldn't do all too often turns out to be that they did the same things, made the same mistakes, they're trying to prevent their children from repeating. It's messy, and not a very organized way to go about things. Unfortunately, it seems to be the way that human beings' minds are arranged."
"Maybe it is, Mother," Leeana said slowly, after several seconds of careful consideration, "and I know I may be prejudiced, but I happen to think you turned out pretty well." Her mother snorted softly in obvious amusement, and Leeana smiled. But she also continued in the same serious tone of voice. "You and Father, more than anyone else I've ever met, seem to know exactly who you are and exactly what you mean to one another. And you don't just love each other-you laugh with each other. Sometimes just with your eyes, but I always know, and I love it so whenever you do. If making the same 'mistakes' makes me turn out just like you, I can't think of anything I'd rather have happen."
Hanatha's eyes softened, and she inhaled deeply. She studied her daughter's face, seeing the subtle merging of her own features and her husband's in the graceful bone structure and the strong, yet feminine nose, and she shook her head again, gently.
"Knowing you think that makes me a very proud woman, Leeana. But you aren't me. And who you are is a very wonderful person, someone your Father and I love almost more than life itself. I don't want you to be another me, like something turned out by one of Cook's cookie cutters. I want you to be you, and to live your own life. But even if you and I both wanted you to turn out exactly like me, it wouldn't happen. It can't, because you're your father's daughter . . . and because we can't have any more children."
Leeana bit the inside of her lip, hearing the echo of her own conversation with Dame Kaeritha, and unshed tears burned behind her eyes.
Her mother was still young, despite the silver strands pain and suffering had put into her hair, no more than a few years older than Kaeritha. She'd been only eighteen when she wed her husband, and Leeana had been born before her twenty-second birthday. If there'd been any true justice in the world, Leeana thought bitterly, her mother would have had at least two or three more children by now. For that matter, she would still have had time to have two or three more now. If only-