Breaking the News
Rating: PG
Summary: Under her mother's Inquisition, Kel lets slip her lover's name.
Kel couldn't help but fidget under her mother's pointed look. Somehow, Ilane of Mindelan always had the ability to make her feel like a little naughty girl, even when she was almost ten years a knight of Tortall.
"Your silence is not reassuring, daughter," Ilane noted dryly as she sipped her tea.
"It's complicated," acknowledged Kel as her fingers traced the rim of her tea and her eyes flitted restlessly at various objects in the warm sitting room.
Her mother snorted delicately, lady-like, and Kel wished that she could somehow do the same without coming off as a great snuffling wild boar. "Men always are, yet they call us the complicated ones."
Kel sighed heavily. "It's really complicated." When she had answered the summons for tea - "Do I need a reason to see my daughter?" her mother had said - Kel had hardly expected the first question to be about her love life.
When Ilane sighed, it sounded more like a cat's purr than Kel's porcine grunt. Kel was more than slightly envious. "Keladry, I understand."
She blinked, a pit of queasy fear building up in her stomach. "You do?"
Her mother nodded. "Your father and I won't put up a fuss if you're so attached to him." She took another sip of tea as Kel sat flabbergasted, then continued, "Goddess knows that Adalia and Oranie have advanced the Mindelans enough."
"Wait, what?" That had certainly not been the response Kel had expected.
Ilane frowned. "I was assuming your hesitation had to do with our reaction at a commoner in the family. That is the only plausible explanation." She held up one hand, and Kel snapped her mouth shut. "While it is not my first choice, all that matters is that you find a nice young man and be happy."
Kel couldn't help herself. She barely managed to set down her teacup before she dropped it as she laughed, long, loud, and heartily.
Jon was certainly not young, after all. Nor was he what her parents would consider 'nice,' for everything Kel had ever said to them either referenced her confusion or dismay with the monarch, though he was more than kind now.
At least he's a man, Kel thought with grim hysteria. One out of three isn't that bad.
Even as Kel clutched her sides and futilely attempted to stop laughing, Ilane of Mindelan merely continued to perch in her chair, one thin eyebrow raised in an elegant, wordless question.
"I fail to see what is so humorous about this, Keladry," she said with a hint of frost. A perfect ambassador's wife, she displayed no hint of her growing confusion and irritation.
Unfortunately, this set Kel off again, and another bubble of laughter erupted, edged with more than a hint of hysteria.
Wisely, her mother said nothing until Kel slowly regained control of herself. She handed Kel an embroidered handkerchief, which she used to scrub away her tears and wipe at her nose. Kel winced at the wet cloth, but gingerly offered it back.
Kel took a deep breath to calm her racing pulse and shattered nerves. "I apologize, mother," she said carefully. "I was merely surprised. Jon isn't a commoner." She froze.
Damn, damn, damn, damn my loose tongue and my wandering wits!
"Jon, is he?" Finally, a name." Ilane nodded with satisfaction. "I knew you've been mooning over someone from your letters."
Kel winced. She thought she had been rather discreet, but mothers always knew, apparently.
Her mother continued to sip her tea as she thought. Then she said, slowly, "I don't recognize any nobles with that name. Is he a foreigner?"
Kel desperately wished at that moment she could tell her mother 'yes,' and not get caught lying, but she was a terrible, horrible liar when it came to her parents.
Ilane paused at the stricken, guilty look on her youngest's face. "Keladry," she warned.
Kel slouched in her chair and covered her face with her hands. She sent up a silent apology to Jon; they hadn't planned on publicizing their relationship for several months, at least. With the public scrutiny sure to come, they wanted to make sure that they would last together before subjecting themselves to the ravenous horde of rumor-mongers.
"Mother," Kel said, muffled through the fingers that covered her face, "It's not that I was avoiding telling you." Yes it was, she amended silently. "No one knows about Jon and I. No one."
"Then you should startby telling your only mother," Ilane said coolly. "Who is this Jon of yours? There are no unmarried nobles by that name in Tortall, and thankfully, you didn't bother to lie and claim he's from elsewhere."
"There's one," Kel muttered dully.
"No there isn't-" Ilane's face froze. "Keladry," she breathed, "Tell me that it's not, no, it can't be who I'm thinking of."
Kel sighed. "It probably is, mother," she admitted. She removed her hands from her face, but couldn't stop herself from childishly closing her eyes. "Jon's the king."
Ilane's intake of breath caused Kel to peek through her eyelashes. She had the irrational thought that, even when white from shock, her mother appeared every inch a lady. Her daughter's illicit affair with the King of Tortall was apparently not enough to unsettle her composure altogether too much.
Well, the cat was certainly out of the bag now. There was nothing to do other than controlling the damage that could arise from her mother's premature knowledge.
Kel noted her mother's white knuckles that clenched the simply-patterned teacup. She decided that the grip on them was either a reflex from shock or preparation for launching it at a wall. Since Kel was not about to take the chance that shemight be a target, she began to explain.
"Jon and I, well, I can't really explain how it happened," Kel said, then winced as she realized that, so far, her explanation was worse than silence. Goddess, her mother probably thought she'd been seduced at this point, or at least pregnant. She hurriedly continued, "We began talking during Roald's wedding. He asked me about Roald as a page from a page's point of view, and then we went on to Scanra and the war, and killing machines, and strategies, supplies."
"Prince Roald's wedding was ten years ago, Keladry. Are you saying that you and he, the king, for ten years?"
Kel gaped for a second, then her brain caught up and she flushed. "No, of course not! We just talked," she shrugged uncomfortably. "I didn't expect it, neither did he, that in the span of a few hours, we became friends."
Kel took a deep breath to calm her racing nerves. Speaking of Jon to her mother was more frightening than the Kraken.
"Jon and I, we became good friends over the next few years. I was stationed in Corus a lot, as you know, and we happened to meet up every once in a while discuss strategy and tactics, gossip, everything. We even trained a bit together." Kel glanced at her mother, who stared at her with thin, white lips. "It was completely innocuous."
"But Queen Thayet was alive then." Ilane did not sound pleased, not that Kel expected her to be overjoyed at finding out about her youngest daughter's relationship with a man her own age.
"Queen Thayet was still alive," Kel said agreeably. "Then when she died of that horrible accident, I was one of Jon's closest friends, certainly his closest female friends. He turned to me for comfort-"
"Keladry!"
Kel nearly choked on air. "Not like that!" she yelped, and then her voice turned hard. "I can't believe you'd think that of me; he was simply a friend who had his love torn away in a tragedy. You have to stop thinking the worst of him. And of me," she added. "I love Jon. That's all that really matters."
Ilane of Mindelan noted with wonder and slight dismay at the look of mulish rebellion on Kel's face, yet also the way her voice softened just a bit when she said that she loved the man. The king. "I apologize, Keladry." She forced her voice to sound neutral; someone had to take the rational position here. "You are correct. The only thing that matters is if you love him, and he you." Not even your parents matter.
The sitting room was nearly silent; the only sounds came from the two women as they sat in opposing chairs. Their tea abandoned, Kel fidgeted with her fingernails while her mother sat, attempting to process the incredible news that her daughter was involved with the king of Tortall.
"I assume your, relationship, is serious?" Ilane asked delicately.
Kel's face hardened at the implication, but couldn't keep it from softening as she spoke lovingly. "Very much so. Jon and I wanted to be discreet for a while longer. We're both trying to avoid the rumors and the gossip for as long as possible."
"How long, exactly, have you and he been together?" Ilane tried not to make it sound like an accusation. she really did.
"A year and three months last week," Kel rattled off, smiling at the remembrance of the impromptu flowers that had appeared in her rooms.
The older woman's eyes widened. "That long?" She shoved away the hurt that apparently she was not trusted. That could come later; now she needed to ensure that her daughter was in a happy, healthy relationship, and keep their own that way.
Kel nodded, one hand slipping up to trace at her lips as they curved in a soft smile. "That long."
Watching Keladry at the happiest moment she'd ever witnessed - even at her knighting ceremony, Kel had been distracted, anxious - Ilane suddenly had the urge to find the king, to find Jon, and to thank him for putting that blissful smile on her daughter's face.