Lady of Weeds, page 17
part #2 of Lady Series
When she shifted her weight to pull away, Eurion’s fingers gripped her elbows.
“Lady, wait!” he murmured. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to see what they’re doing. There are three of them, and they’re already at the cottage.”
“I’ll go.”
“No,” said Carys, twisting her arm away. “Stay here. It’s dangerous.”
She would have left then, but Eurion’s arms wrapped around her, wiry and strong, his weight pushing her back against one of the tree trunks that bounded the alcove.
“If it’s dangerous, you should stay, too.”
Carys fought back grimly and silently, twisting her wrists and applying pressure to a tensile strength that bent but didn’t break; a warmth that followed every push and pull.
She rested for a moment, with Eurion’s wet hair dripping trails of salt water down her cheek and neck; and Eurion, panting a little, said in her ear, “Please, Lady. If you struggle too much, you might hurt yourself. I won’t let go; please understand.”
Carys understood. He wanted her to know that he hadn’t fought back in the sea, not because he couldn’t overpower her, but because he had trusted her not to kill him. And he wanted her to understand that she should trust him now, too.
She could have freed herself—just. If she had been fighting in earnest, she was certain she could have escaped. Instead, she submitted: unless she wanted to draw attention to Eurion as well as herself, there was no way of freeing herself.
From the front of the cottage, Steele’s voice asked, “The door?”
“Unlocked,” said another voice, and someone laughed.
“I know,” sighed Steele. “But it really is our best chance at the moment.”
Something brushed the leaves very close by, and Eurion pressed closer, a ridiculously thin human shield that rested its cheek against hers. Carys, very still, watched a shadow cross the thin covering of foliage. That made a fourth man, approaching from the village road.
Steele certainly knew she should be away at market by now, and her cart wasn’t beside the cottage, so why would he bring so many men? To search for something or someone? But then why were they armed?
Carys heard the sound of steady footsteps along the path after the fourth man, and her head came up. Aled. Why had Aled come?
She felt the first real stirring of fear. She had been late arriving at market. For the first time in years, Carys had been late arriving at market, and Aled had come to see why, only to walk into a group of four men with swords.
Eurion’s head tilted as though he was listening for what she had heard.
Outside, Aled’s voice asked, “Who are you?” and Eurion stiffened.
“I’m here to see Carys,” said Steele pleasantly.
“Are you,” Aled said, his voice distinctly unconvinced. “She’s not at home, as you can see.”
“Yes, I do see,” Steele replied.
His voice was still pleasant, but Carys wondered if he was loosening that sword of his in its scabbard, and if the next sound she would hear would be the noise of a sword being drawn.
Eurion must have been wondering the same thing, because she felt his body tense and his head withdraw from her shoulder.
Then Steele said, “We’ll come back another time. We’re not ones to cause trouble. Off to the village, lads; we’ll get ourselves a drink.”
Outside the alcove there was the sound of stirring sand and shuffling footsteps as they left. No sound of the kind of conversation that might have been expected from a group of men who were out for a personal call, just a cold kind of silence that proclaimed louder than words the business-like purpose of their visit.
Carys didn’t hear Aled leave, either. She wasn’t listening for it—she had other thoughts in her mind.
“They’re gone,” Eurion said softly, a few minutes later. “The old man was useful, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Carys, still deep in thought and unmoving. Whatever it was Steele thought she had, he was no longer content to wait for her to hand it over to him. She would have to find some time when Eurion wasn’t around to hide the belt more thoroughly.
It didn’t occur to her that she should return to the safety of light and fresh air until Eurion shuffled her a little closer, his arms warm and damp around her waist, and settled his head against her shoulder, nudging his face into the crook of her neck.
“If I kiss you now, will you shut me out of the cottage again?” he murmured.
“Yes,” said Carys, plucking him away by the ear.
He obeyed that tug, pouting, and rubbed at the ear she’d pinched, but he said, “You’re so warm these days, Lady. I forgot myself.”
“Out,” Carys said, pushing him before her. “Out and change your clothes. You’re still damp.”
They emerged into the afternoon sunlight, and a scattering of sand announced Aled’s hasty rising. He had been, Carys realised belatedly, sitting beside the cottage where he could watch the men all the way up the road.
“Carys?” he said in surprise. “What were you doing in there?”
“I was just about to kiss her,” said Eurion, smiling dreamily at Aled. “What are you doing here, old man?”
Aled opened his mouth, frowning, but before he could speak, Carys said, “I didn’t think it wise to be seen by that man. Back in the cottage, Eurion. Stay inside while I’m gone.”
“I thought I was going to market with you, Lady!” he protested.
“Aled will walk with me today,” she said. She wasn’t sure exactly why she said it, because it was obvious that if she was going to market, Aled would be going back to the village as well. Nor did his walking with her have anything to do with the necessity of Eurion staying at home—that had everything to do with Steele.
There could have been a lingering feeling within her that Eurion needed to be reminded of certain things, and that it was good for him to wear the expression of hurt he currently wore.
Carys felt a twinge of regret, and ruthlessly squashed it. The sooner Eurion learned that she wasn’t interested in his boyish advances, the better it would be for both of them. He had been inclined to be more standoffish over the last week, and it was good that that state of affairs continue.
Aled was too old to display the kind of childish triumph that Eurion was still sometimes capable of, but he had a slight smile as they walked to her cart.
He said, “I was worried when you didn’t come on time. When I saw your cart in the side path, I was more worried.”
“There was something I needed to attend to,” Carys said, taking up the handles of her cart before he could offer to take it for her. “I don’t need assistance, Aled.”
They walked in silence while the sunshine grew warm around them, until Aled said, “Your dress is damp.”
“I had occasion to go into the sea earlier,” Carys said. Her trews were damper still, and her skirts were actually wet from the thigh down. “The skirts will dry out as I walk.”
“Not there,” said Aled. “Your sleeves and bodice are damp, too.”
“Eurion didn’t want me to go out to meet Steele,” Carys told him. She could feel a band of dampness around her back, too, where Eurion’s arms had been twined. Thankfully, that was likely to be hidden by the front of the cart.
“Are you going to allow him to keep living with you?”
“Until I get what I need from him,” she said. Perhaps she was a little harsher with Aled than usual, but today it seemed good to her to say, “Let it be, Aled! I won’t discuss it with you again.”
That was the end of conversation between them for the rest of the climb. Carys wished, rather wearily, that it would be enough to stop Aled coming to meet her again next week. She knew better, but she couldn’t help wishing it.
It was enough to prevent him coming to see her during the markets—or perhaps she had been so late, and he had been with her for so much longer than usual on the walk, that he didn’t feel it necessary to meet her again.
Whatever the reason, Carys was grateful for it. She was also spared the bother of Enfys’ company, though she saw Steele and his three companions twice during the markets, passing along the lines of out-of-town marketers. They saw her, too, and nodded in her direction as they talked. That made her uneasy, and she sold the last four bundles of seaweed at a ridiculous price just to get rid of it early, packing her cart as soon as it was sold.
Uneasily aware of more than one set of eyes on her movements, Carys forced herself to walk at her usual long, deliberate stride, catching sight of another watcher as she left the main market track. A man stood in the awning of the barber shop, steeped in shadow that was a little too obscuring for the time of day.
Ma Yong Hwa, thought Carys, discerning the faint outline of a top hat. Had he been waiting for her? Waiting as though he knew she wanted to speak with him, and had been giving her the chance to do so?
It should have been nonsense, but Carys couldn’t help feeling that he had really been waiting. When she drew even, she asked, in her most direct way, “Do you wish to speak with me?”
“I thought you wished to speak with me,” he said, stepping forward from the shadows with a glow of amusement to his brown eyes. “Was I wrong?”
Apparently Ma Yong Hwa could be direct as well.
Carys smiled briefly and said, “You weren’t wrong. I may have found that thing you were looking for.”
His face grew alert. “Is that so? Perhaps we could visit you, my wife and I?”
“Yes,” said Carys, shifting her feet uncomfortably. Odd that she felt as though she was betraying Eurion: if this was for her own information and benefit, it was for his as well. “In two days’ time. Toward evening will be best.”
* * *
Carys half expected to find Eurion waiting for her outside when she returned. He wasn’t, nor was he waiting inside the door to greet her with that almost puppy level of enthusiasm he had been wont to show. Instead, he sat in front of the fire with the quilt piled around him.
Carys frowned a little. Was he sickening again? But he still smiled when she looked across at him, and he didn’t seem to be dispirited though he was certainly quieter.
She fetched him an extra blanket just in case, and dropped it by him on her way back to the kitchen to make tea for them both, but it occurred to her that he could be sulking because she had walked to the village with Aled and left him at home.
He didn’t pester her with questions while she made the tea, either; he simply gazed into the fire without speaking, and took the cup of tea she brought him with a bright smile of thanks.
Carys sat beside Eurion slowly and thoughtfully, stretching her salt-stiff trews as she sat. He turned his head to look at her and then settled his chin to look into the fire instead. Carys sipped her tea, watching him over her cup of tea, and decided that he wasn’t sulking.
Besides, he had been more inclined to be standoffish over the last couple of days in general. He was cheerful enough; he just wasn’t as talkative as usual.
Nor, she noticed the next day when she got back from the seashore, did he try to throw his arms around her or give her any other welcome than a bright smile.
He hadn’t done that, in fact, for nearly a week now. It was part of the cooling she had noticed over the last few days, if she didn’t take into account their time in the alcove. He didn’t try to sit too close to her by the fire that night, either, though the night was cold.
Carys wrapped her shawl more tightly around her shoulders though the fire was hot. She could hear the soft hiss of sleet against the roof, and it must have been the sound of it that made her feel cold to the bone and unwilling to move from her place by the fire. It didn’t seem to affect Eurion—he simply wrapped the extra blanket she’d left for him around his shoulders and gazed quietly into the fire, shadows and light dancing across his face.
He didn’t even open his eyes the next morning when she left for the seashore, though Carys was less sure today that he was pretending to be asleep. She cooked an omelette for his lunch, preparing for a later than usual morning on the shore, and wondered if he was beginning to grow out of that early infatuation of his.
If so, it was a good thing. Carys tied her shawl tight and grimly tucked in the ends of it. It was a bitter morning—bitterly cold, bitterly wet, the wind a bitter, sobbing thing around the eaves. Carys had seen many such mornings, but it seemed to her that this was the bitterest of them.
She smiled a little at herself. She must be getting old. Or perhaps she had gotten used to the sunshine so much that now the greyness was a shock. It would be good to remember that winter grey was here to stay, and not get too attached to the sunshine.
Carys laughed once, dry but amused, and left the cottage.
She knew before she reached the rocky shore that it would be a difficult morning; already there were lashings of seaweed all over the rocks, making them slippery and treacherous. It would be a long, dangerous morning. More so, if the selkies were inclined to come out early to play with the extra seaweed.
Carys worked as quickly as she could, threading carefully through the seaweed slicked rocks, but she took enough falls to bloody her shins and palms, and slow her down. With an anxious eye to the position of the sun behind the clouds, she concentrated on the areas closest to the water’s edge; and when the first sound of selkies splashing onto the rocks met her ear, she stuffed seaweed in her ears and continued grimly.
She saw them laughing at her and calling to her—perhaps they were teasing her about the things they had left for her, or perhaps they were calling her to play—and one of them tried to circle behind her for a sudden shove into one of the pools, but she saw the movement and darted further up the shore before he could get too close, plucking seaweed from the rocks as she ran.
She didn’t try to bundle the seaweed as she went that morning, and by the time she had finished, far too long after noon, there were uneven stacks of seaweed on the sandy side of the shore. Sore and bloody, Carys looked at it all and gave a short laugh, wondering that she should feel so cold still when she had been working so hard. How could she feel so cold when the sun had come out for the afternoon and was glittering on the waves?
Carys laughed again; a bewildered, self-mocking sort of sound, and the selkies looked curiously at her as she laughed, but when she went on with her work they lost interest and went on with their games. It was odd for her to be there so late with them, but if she provided no entertainment for them, they wouldn’t pay attention to her.
It was close to evening by the time Carys had the leisure to wrap a scrap of bandage around the worst of her two palms and pick up the handles of her cart to pull it home. Her shins were still sore, but the blood had clotted and dried, and they would be turning to scab before too much longer. Walking along the flat, sandy path gradually stretched out some of the pain, and Carys had begun to move with greater ease again when there was a scattering of sand from the sun-soaked sand dunes beside her, and Eurion called out joyfully, “Lady!”
Carys, dropping the handles of her cart, wasn’t sure whether she put out her hands to catch him or to fend him off. It didn’t matter; Eurion threw his arms around her with enough enthusiasm to send them both stumbling back against the cart in a warm, sandy tumble of limbs.
“Oh, Lady! I thought you were hurt again!”
Carys felt the world tilt and turn right; she caught at Eurion’s shoulder to balance herself, and wondered that the dazzle of the afternoon sun on water should have left her so unstable.
She heard Eurion’s chuckle, sudden and delighted. “Lady, you’re smiling!”
“Nonsense,” said Carys, and pushed him away. “Didn’t I tell you not to come to the seashore?”
“I’m not on the seashore,” he pointed out. “I’m on the sandy side of the rocks. I waited here for so long, Lady!”
“If you did, it’s your own doing,” Carys told him ruthlessly.
“But it was worth it,” Eurion said gleefully. “Because you smiled at me.”
“Nonsense,” said Carys again. “Get out of the shafts!”
“Ow! Lady, you ran over my foot!”
“Didn’t I—”
“Yes,” Eurion said, chuckling again. “You told me to get out. You aren’t hurt, Lady?”
“No. Did you eat what I left out?”
Eurion, eyes still sparkling, said, “All of it! Thank you, Lady! How did you know I love omelette?”
“How should I know that?” demanded Carys. “I dare say you didn’t know yourself. It wasn’t done on purpose to please you; I had some eggs from the market that were given to me.”
There was a small pause before Eurion said, “Lady, you’re so mean to me.”
“I’m mean to everyone,” Carys said briefly, without stopping.
“You’re nice to the old man.”
“I’m not nice to Aled.”
“Well, but you’re not mean to him. You make sure not to be mean to him.”
“Aled is—” Carys stopped, a little bewildered, and the cart stopped with her.
“He’s in love with you,” said Eurion, nodding. “But that doesn’t mean you owe him anything.”
Carys nearly retorted that in that case, Eurion should understand why she didn’t owe him anything either, but thought better of it. Instead, she picked up the shafts of the cart again, and kept walking.
Eurion wasn’t as wise. His eyes caught the unspoken reply she swallowed, and he said, eyes dancing, “I know. You don’t owe me anything, either, even if I am in love with you. But you don’t try not to hurt me like you do with him.”
“You’re different from Aled,” Carys told him. It was true; she sometimes thought Aled was more determined to love her than actually in love with her. Determined, perhaps, to make himself obdurate and miserable. Eurion, on the other hand, was young and surprisingly sensible; someone who would not make himself miserable because he could think of no other way to be.
“Am I?” asked Eurion. “Well, I suppose that’s something. But don’t you think you could smile at me every now and then, Lady?”
“You said I smiled at you earlier.”
