"Hello, the fire!" a soprano voice called, and Kaeritha closed her eyes as she heard it.
"Why me?" she asked. "Why is it always me?"
The cloudy night vouchsafed no reply, and she sighed and opened her eyes again.
"Hello, yourself, Leeana," she called back. "I suppose you might as well come on in and make yourself comfortable."
The Lady Leeana Glorana Syliveste Bowmaster, heir conveyant of Balthar, the West Riding, and at least a dozen other major and minor fiefs, had mud on her face. Her red-gold braid was a thick, sodden serpent, hanging limp down her back, and every line of her body showed her weariness as she sat cross-legged across the fire from Kaeritha and mopped up the last bit of stew in her bowl with a crust of bread. She popped it into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed contentedly.
"You must have been hungry," Kaeritha observed. Leeana looked at her questioningly, and she shrugged. "I've eaten my own cooking too often to cherish any illusions about my culinary talent, Leeana."
"I thought it was quite good, actually, Dame Kaeritha," Leeana said politely, and Kaeritha snorted.
"Flattering the cook isn't going to do you any good, girl," she replied. "Given that you look more like a half-starved, half-drowned, mud-spattered rat then the heir of one of the kingdom's most powerful nobles, I was willing to let you wrap yourself around something hot before I began the interrogation. You've done that now."
Leeana winced at Kaeritha's pointed tone. But she didn't try to evade it. She put her spoon into the empty bowl and set it neatly aside, then faced Kaeritha squarely.
"I'm running away," she said.
"That much I'd already guessed," the knight told her dryly. "So why don't we just get on to the two whys?"
"The two whys?" Leeana repeated with a puzzled expression.
"Why number one: why you ran away. Why number two: why you don't expect me to march you straight home again."
"Oh." Leeana blushed slightly, and her green eyes dropped to the fire crackling between them. She gazed at the flames for several seconds, then looked back up at Kaeritha.
"I didn't just suddenly decide overnight to run away," she said. "There were lots of reasons. You know most of them, really."
"I suppose I do." Kaeritha studied the girl's face, and it was hard to prevent the sympathy she felt from softening her own uncompromising expression. "But I also know how worried and upset your parents must be right now. I'm sure you do, too." Leeana flinched, and Kaeritha nodded. "So why did you do this to them?" she finished coldly, and Leeana's eyes fell to the fire once more.
"I love my parents," the girl replied after a long, painful pause, her soft voice low enough that Kaeritha had some difficulty hearing her over the sound of the rain. "And you're right-they are going to be worried about me. I know that. It's just -"
She paused again, then drew a deep breath and raised her eyes to Kaeritha's once more.
"Father's received a formal offer for my hand," she said.
It was Kaeritha's turn to sit back on her heels. She'd been afraid it was something like that, but that didn't make having it confirmed any better. She thought of several things she might have said, and discarded each of them just as promptly as she recalled her earlier conversation with Leeana.
"Who was it from?" she asked instead after a moment.
"Rulth Blackhill," Leeana said in a flat voice. Kaeritha obviously looked blank, because the girl grimaced and continued. "He's Lord Warden of Transhar . . . and he'll be fifty years old this fall."
"Fifty?" Despite herself, Kaeritha couldn't keep the surprise out of her voice, and she frowned when Leeana nodded glumly. "Why in the world would a man that age believe even for a moment that your father might consider accepting an offer of marriage on your behalf from him?"
"Why shouldn't he believe it?" Leeana asked simply, and Kaeritha stared at her.
"Because he's almost four times your age, that's why!"
"He's also wealthy, a favorite of the King's chief minister, a member of the King's Council in his own right, and related by both blood and marriage to Baron Cassan," Leeana replied.
"But you said he's almost fifty!"
"What difference should that make to him-or the Council?" Leeana asked. "He's a recent widower with four children, two of them boys, by his first wife, and the youngest is less than a year old. So it's obvious he can still sire sons."
She said it so reasonably that Kaeritha had to bite her own tongue hard. For just a moment, she was furious with Leeana because she did sound so reasonable. But then she made herself step back from her own anger. Leeana's tone was that of someone who knew the world in which she had been raised would find what she was saying reasonable, not of someone who agreed with it.
"Do you really think," the knight asked quietly after another brief pause, "that your father would let someone that age-anyone, regardless of who he's related to!-have you?"
"I don't think he'd do it willingly," Leeana said in a very low voice. "In fact, I think he'd probably refuse to do it at all, and I know he won't accept this offer. But in a way, knowing that only makes things worse."
She stared into Kaeritha's eyes, her own pleading for something. Sympathy, of course, but even more than that, for understanding.
"What do you mean, 'worse'?" she asked.
"Rulth Blackhill is a greedy, powerful man," Leeana replied. "He also has a reputation I'm not supposed to know anything about as someone who's abused his position as lord warden whenever his eye falls on one of his holder's attractive daughter . . . or wife," she added with a grimace. "But what matters most is that he's both ambitious and closely allied with his cousin and brother-in-law, Baron Cassan. And Baron Cassan and Father . . . don't get along. They don't like each other, they don't agree on most matters of policy, and Baron Cassan heads the Court faction most opposed to anything resembling 'appeasement' of the hradani. In fact, he almost convinced the King to deny Father's petition to strip Mathian Redhelm of his wardenship, and Blackhill supported him. The two of them-and the ones who think like them-would love to see Father's heir married off to one of Cassan's allies."
Her young face was taut with distaste and anger, and Kaeritha nodded slowly. Of course, judging by what Leeana had said about this Rulth Blackhill's reputation, the thought of bedding someone as lovely as Leeana probably figured in his thinking as well, the knight thought sardonically. Indeed, if he'd abused his authority the way Leeana was suggesting, the knowledge that she'd been forced to wed him against her will would only give the thought of forcing himself upon his political enemy's lovely only child a certain added savor for him.
"I'd think Cassan would have realized all of that would have made your father even less likely to accept Blackhill's offer," she said.
"He did," Leeana agreed. "In fact, he was probably counting on it."
"Now you have me really confused," Kaeritha admitted.
"Cassan hates Father, and he wants to discredit him in any way he can. And however I might feel about marrying someone Blackhill's age, it's a perfectly appropriate match by most standards."
"Even given what you just said about his abuse of his holders?" Kaeritha asked, cocking one eyebrow, and Leeana shrugged.
"Most of the Councilors have probably heard the reports about him and the women in his bed, Dame Kaeritha, but he's a lord warden. No one's going to want to bring something like that up, because they won't want their own reputations put under a glass and thrown up to them. So Cassan could be certain there'd be enormous pressure from several Council members for Father to accept, and very little support for him to refuse the offer. And if Father does refuse it, Cassan's supporters will urge the King to overrule him and order him to accept it. I know some people think Father's too clever to be caught out that way, but managing to avoid it may cost him dearly in terms of political support. Especially when he's already upset so many people by his 'surrender' to Prince Bahzell."