Chapter 10
Second Company left a couple of days after First returned from the Royal Forest, and the mess and stables now seemed eerily quiet. He had seen Kel not long after that, and they had discussed their feelings for each other. After a couple of stolen kisses, Kel had asked if they could just carry on as friends while she thought some more and they settled into their roles after the war.
Dom agreed, and had been thinking along the same lines himself, but he was unprepared for the disappointment and loss he felt now that it was a reality. It was as if by discovering his feelings were returned and sharing that evening in his sitting room, he had allowed his heart to get carried away against the better judgement of his head, and his head had been right all along. He still hoped, though.
Of course, it was difficult to now pretend their friendship was the same as it was before. When they were together there were looks that lingered just that moment too long, and unsaid words hung in the air between them. It was enough that Neal's curiosity finally got the better of him.
"What's going on between you and Kel?" Neal asked bluntly one rainy autumn afternoon. Neal had remained in Corus working under his father after the wedding, and Dom was keeping him company and helping him weigh herbs and prepare field packs for healers attached to the King's Own and the Queen's Riders.
"Nothing. Nothing at all," he muttered.
"Liar."
"Fine, have it your way."
Dom continued filling little muslin pouches with measures of herbs. He stopped and looked up when he realised Neal had stopped what he was doing and was watching him with interest, head resting on his hand.
"Who got out of the wrong side of bed this morning, hm?"
"Get lost, Meathead."
He had strained a muscle in his back while training that morning and the background pain was fraying his temper.
"For Mithros' sake, Domitan. There is obviously something going on! Half the time you two pretend the other doesn't exist and then when you think no one's watching you're making eyes at her."
"You know what, Neal? You should just mind your own business," Dom snapped back. He really didn't want to talk about this right now.
Neal ignored him.
"And when she thinks you're not looking, she's sneaking glances at you!"
Neal was pacing now and he had forgotten his inside voice.
"Neal, keep it down!" Dom hissed crossly.
"You tell me what's going on and I'll keep it down!" Neal exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air.
The door to Duke Baird's study opened and his uncle poked his head out into the room. He frowned over his wire-rimmed reading spectacles at his son.
"Is everything all right?" he enquired mildly, glancing between Neal and Dom.
They both nodded.
"I thought so," he agreed and retreated back into his office.
Neal scowled and sat back down at the long worktable, glaring at him until the door to Baird's study had closed again. When he spoke again he remembered to keep his voice down.
"Well? Are you going to tell me what's going on? It started just over two weeks after my wedding."
Neal's fingers drummed on the table and Dom could feel himself going red as he returned his glare. He knew that determined look on Neal's face meant that this would be revisited later if he didn't get an answer he considered satisfactory.
"I still don't see how this is any of your business," he muttered, sighing.
"Humour me, and I'll leave you alone."
Dom thought for a moment, looking for a way to tell Neal what had happened without the details.
"Kel and I... had a discussion in which we came to agree that neither of us needs distractions from our work right now."
Neal harrumphed.
"So you finally declared your long-standing mutual admiration and then decided to ignore it?" he asked, looking decidedly unimpressed.
Dom shrugged.
"For now," he agreed and went back to filling the little muslin pouches. He knew Neal, with his poetic sensibility and romantic ideals, probably wouldn't understand. When he looked up again, Neal was shaking his head and smiling.
"You may call me a meathead, but you're a bonehead. And Kel is too."
"That's Captain Bonehead to you," Dom told him as they resumed their work.
Not long after, in late October, Third Company arrived back in Corus. The courtyard was a hive of activity as the newly arrived company unpacked and gear and led horses to stables, before falling quiet again as the soldiers left in search of food and baths. He found Wolset and his old squad playing a game of cards in the mess later that afternoon.
Raoul had promoted the shorter man to the rank of sergeant when Dom took up the post of captain, though Dom hadn't been sure his old corporal was ready for the promotion. Wolset had a quick temper and a tendency to become bogged down in anxiety, but Raoul had told him to give the man a chance as he was a good warrior with smarts and the potential to lead, and everyone had to start somewhere. It seemed Raoul had been right, because Wolset appeared to have grown into his new role.
"Masbolle! Get your court pretty-boy's arse over here and tell us all the news!"
Dom grinned and made a rude gesture at the sergeant before helping himself to a mug of the new season's cider from the serving window.
"What's the news from the border?" he asked, sliding onto the bench seat at their table.
Wolset shrugged and one of his corporals answered.
"Clean up duty, mostly. The Scanran armies have all gone home, but with the roads and infrastructure in such a state after two years of fighting and sieges there are still areas vulnerable to bandits and raiding parties from the southern clans."
"That'll keep a lot of people busy for the next couple of years," Dom observed.
"Passed through New Hope on the way back, too. The Crown installed a Resident Magistrate and a Town Commissioner when Sir Merric left, but I don't know how that'll work out," another man told him.
"They're feuding with Mistress Fanche," Wolset explained. "Should've told 'em to pick a fight they could win!"
"Is Lady Kel still in Corus?" another man demanded.
Dom shook his head.
"Not at the moment, she's got two squads of my boys and some Riders hunting spidrens south of Port Caynn. She's expected back next week."
"Will my lord be at supper tonight? Is it true about him and Lady Buri having a little giantkiller?"
Dom stayed and gossiped with the men for another two bells. Lerant joined them briefly, scowling and in an irritable mood after having had his first meeting with Squire Alan. The other men ignored him, and he soon left to find a more sympathetic audience.
The rest of October and most of November passed in a predictable manner after the arrival of Third Company, who spent their time recruiting and regrouping, and then gradually easing into court duties. This freed up Dom's men for some longer excursions into the Royal Forest or down the coast, though he rarely accompanied them, sending Sir Merric or other knights instead.
He continued to see Kel every now and then, sometimes working on official business for the Own, and sometimes in the practice courts. He found her one such morning with Raoul and Squire Alan at the tilting lanes. It seemed like the two knights were taking turns to unseat the poor squire, and then when the lad had had enough, switched to tilting against each other.
Neal had also appeared to watch, along with Lady Alanna.
"Right about now you're wishing dear old Ma was your knight mistress instead," Neal drawled as Alan limped over.
The redheaded boy scowled as Alanna reached up and slung her arm around her son's shoulders.
"She's the same sort of sadist, just different methods," he retorted. Alanna agreed and cackled evilly as she dragged him off.
"Alanna's leaving with the delegation to the Cop—Kyprish Isles for the coronation," Neal explained. "She just came to say goodbye."
They watched Raoul and Kel take one more run at each other as an audience of pages waiting to use the lanes gathered with their training master Sir Padraig haMinch.
Dom noticed a couple of girls with rapt expressions on their faces in amongst the pages watching Kel, and a few scowling boys. A couple more looked positively frightened, as if they thought they might have to tilt against the Giantkiller. He had to agree that it didn't look like his idea of fun either.
At the end of their run Dom hopped over the fence and walked over to Kel, taking her lance and shield from her while being careful to stay out of range of Peachblossom's teeth. He noticed Lerant rush over and do the same for Raoul, and wondered if the standard bearer was still feuding with Squire Alan. Dom privately thought that Alan of Pirate's Swoop was the type who was quite happy to let someone else do things for him if he thought he could get away with it, and Lerant's determination to do everything for Raoul himself probably suited Squire Alan just fine. He decided not to share this observation with Lerant, though.
Kel slithered down from her saddle and gathered up Peachblossom's reins. She thanked him and tugged on the reins, leading Peachblossom out of the yard behind Raoul and Drum. Both knights nodded to the training master as they passed and Dom and Lerant followed them, while Neal had disappeared off somewhere else.
"Hurry up we haven't got all day! You can gawk at Goldenlake and Mindelan at Midwinter!" he heard the training master bellow as they left.
"What's it like?" he asked as she brushed Peachblossom. She had taken to keeping her horses in the Own's stables again since she was still working under Raoul's command.
"What's what like?"
"You know, people staring all the time because you're Lady Knight Keladry of Mindelan."
She shrugged.
"I'm used to it," she frowned and continued brushing.
"Don't you wish..." he trailed off.
"What?"
"I don't know," he said ruefully. "I'm just another pair of silver arms and legs in a blue tunic. I don't know what it feels like to stand out wherever I go."
Kel smiled at him slightly and finished brushing. She climbed out of Peachblossom's stall.
"I've always been different, I guess. I don't think about it. In the Islands we were strange and uncouth foreigners, and then when I went to the Palace I was always The Girl or the Yamani Lump."
She bent and brushed horse hair off her clothes with her hands. Lerant, who had been eavesdropping, had also finished caring for Raoul's horse Drum.
"Try having a treasonous aunt and you'll know all about what it's like to stick out like dog's balls," Lerant told him, laughing sourly as he passed them on his way to the stable door.
"Who asked you, Lerant?" Dom called after him.
"Leave him be, Dom. He's marked out through no fault of his own. I chose my lot."
Kel left to visit the baths and Dom returned to his office, making a start on a pile of requisitions for when First Company left Corus in the spring. He calculated quantities of oats and cured meat while thinking about what Kel had said.
Before now, when he'd imagined what might happen if they were to court, he never really considered how his life would change apart from the obvious. Now it occurred to him that it would probably be a much larger adjustment for him than it would be for her. She was used to the attention, whether good or bad. He wasn't.
Wolset and his squad had serenaded a less-than-amused Kel in the mess not long after her return from the spidren hunt, and had trotted the ballad out again one night at the Jugged Hare when they'd all had a bit too much to drink. Dom had hung back in the shadows and was surprised when other tavern patrons and strangers alike joined in with more songs and stories about the Protector of the Small, and begged for more when they realised that here were warriors who had fought alongside her.
He was reminded again about what set her apart that morning at the tilting lanes as he watched the expressions on the faces of the staring pages. The two girls he noticed obviously idolised her, and both looked as if they could have fainted with happiness. From the scowls of some of the other pages, perhaps from conservative families, he could see plain resentment as they watched a woman make tilting look easy while their own backs probably still ached from previous encounters with the practice dummy's sandbag. The rest of the boys gawped openly, and a couple of his nephews were probably among that number, though it had been years since he'd last seen his oldest brother's children.
If they were to begin courting openly, then he would no longer be just another pair of silver arms and legs in a blue tunic, he realised. His name would find its way into the ballads, or some sort of dreadful, torrid poem about star-crossed lovers kept apart by duty. To the girls who looked up to Kel he would become a person no less fascinating to them than Kel herself, while to her detractors he would be an object of pity and derision. They'd probably find some way to phrase it that simultaneously implied he usually preferred men while insinuating that Kel was loose or desperate enough not to mind.
Dom also realised he didn't care.
He pushed his requisitions to one side and opened the draw in his desk where he had stuffed the little velvet pouch with the peridot earbobs. He tipped them into his hand and looked at them in the light before tipping them back into the pouch and searching for a clean sheet of paper.
Kel,
I thought about what you said today. I want to be your pair of silver arms and legs in a blue tunic, if you'll have me.
These are for you. A promise, if you wish.
Dom
When the ink dried he folded the note into an envelope around the earbobs and sealed it with wax. He went to find a messenger to take it to her.
A/N:
Once again, thanks to those who have taken the time to review. :)