Hello again. Many thanks to my most excellent reviewers, who kept me inspired as I began the scary process of finding a publisher for my original manuscript. This chapter picks up a few days after the last and includes material from chapter 25 of Training Master Mindelan as well as characters from the works of Tamora Pierce.
Penelope did not wake Dalton early—not that they had ever managed to wake truly early, they had been late to the practice courts all week—on the last morning of the midwinter holiday, their last together for the foreseeable future. Instead, she settled against his chest and they lingered together, pretending to sleep and letting their eyelids flutter open every so often to watch one another.
Eventually they peeked at the same time. Dalton chuckled and rolled over, dislodging Penelope and then pinning her to the pillows for a kiss. She smiled sleepily at him as they propped themselves onto opposite elbows.
"I can't believe it's over," she murmured.
"Nothing's over, Pen."
"I know—but I just—I like waking up this way." She glanced down at his foot resting across her calf.
"We will again." He took her hand, skimming his thumb over her knuckles. "Everyday, if we marry."
His words startled both of them. Dalton swallowed and Penelope dropped her gaze to the sheet, tightening her grip on his fingers to keep her hand from shaking. It seemed impossible that she should be so close to having knighthood and Dalton. Surely she would be forced to give up one of them.
"I—when I started, I assumed I was forfeiting marriage.
"I wasn't expecting to sleep with a fellow squire when I started," Dalton muttered, releasing her hand so he could trace a scar on her arm.
"I didn't—you aren't here because—"she swallowed, nearly choking on her dry tongue—"I'm not trying to blackmail you into marriage."
"I know," he whispered. "What if I'm trying to blackmail you into it?" He wrapped an arm around her and pressed his lips to her temple.
She was too busy trying to hide her tremble to answer. Her lips were too unsteady to form the words 'yes' or 'maybe' or 'please'.
He sighed and stood to dress. She stood when he had finished and took a hesitant step toward him, feeling that she ought to somehow meet him halfway and afraid that she was failing miserably at it.
He reached out and smoothed back a bit of her hair. "Hey. I don't know what…I shouldn't…"
Penelope's heart lurched.
"Anyway, I hope we'll see each other soon. And we'll be"—he traced his fingers across her cheek and she caught his palm and kissed it, trying to show him what she could not find the words to tell him—"as we were."
She nodded dismally at him as he left.
PDPD
Alanna watched Dalton as he saddled his horse, moving very slowly.
"You proposed, didn't you?" she asked quietly.
Dalton nodded glumly. "Words popped out of my mouth."
Alanna blinked at George and stepped towards Dalton. "Did she slap you?"
Dalton shook his head.
"Scream? Kick? Cry? Or glare?"
"She wouldn't look at me."
Alanna wrapped her fingers around his shoulder, unsure which of the two squires she was sorry for. "Probably terrified," she said.
Penelope burst into the stables then, red-cheeked from running and sloppily dressed.
She'd been crying, he realized, but her eyes were dry now. She took his hand and drew him a few paces away from Alanna and George, who nonchalantly occupied themselves with saddling Dalton's horse.
"I can't yet," she whispered. "But I couldn't just watch you leave like that. I—"
Dalton felt himself nod slightly—his heart seizing her 'yet'—and she practically leapt forwards to kiss him.
They both seemed calmer when they finally drew apart, which Dalton absently attributed to shortness of breath.
"Later," he managed to say. "Love you."
She nodded. "Love you." And she went on tiptoe to kiss his cheek on her way out.
"Really," George said, clapping Dalton on the shoulder. "You don't have much to complain of."
"Nor does she," Alanna murmured.
PDPD
A few weeks later, following a series of threats, Penelope and Neal were called to join a troop of soldiers—including Alanna and Dalton—under the command of Cleon of Kennan at the River Drell met at the camp along the River Drell.
"Your pointed foot-tapping will not make me pack any faster," Neal informed her as they prepared to leave.
"But it might make you let me pack for you and I can do it faster."
"You fold shirts the wrong way," Neal informed her.
"I fold them the fast way," she corrected, watching as he lined up two sleeves. "And you'll only unfold them again anyway. Why bother?"
"You've just surpassed your philosophical questions quota for the week." Neal gave up on folding and simply crammed his last shirt into his pack.
"That was a rhetorical." Penelope released a withering sigh.
"We'll leave tomorrow and get there in a few days, regardless," Neal muttered, narrowing his eyes at her. "Why so impatient?"
She attempted a nonchalant shrug.
"Did you quarrel with Dalton?"
Penelope shook her heard and Neal believed her. It was close enough to the truth; one couldn't really quarrel silently, especially when one wanted desperately to agree.
"Because Alanna and I have already agreed that I get to keep him as my squire if you two separate—he doesn't crack his knuckles during breakfast."
"By that you mean that you suggested the idea and she didn't threaten immediate dismemberment," Penelope muttered. "By the way, he snores."
"I'm not supposed to know that you know that."
"Forget I said it then." Penelope tucked his logbook into the side of his pack.
"What?"
"Can you love someone too much?"
"Don't waste your last philosophical question on that," Neal said, tying his pack shut. "I don't have an answer."
PDPD
When they arrived, Penelope scanned Dalton's face for anger and regret. She found only very patient determination and a blaze of something so intense and unnamable it made her breath catch.
He nodded at her—they could not kiss as they wanted to before their new commander and an entire troop—and they traded glances throughout the meeting.
Penelope stared curiously at Cleon of Kennan as he gave commands for night watch duty that evening. There'd been vague rumors about him and Mindelan, but Penelope hadn't had a chance—that is to say, Neal hadn't drunk enough—to investigate them thoroughly. All Penelope could determine was that he was tall and a solid, practical commander. His sense of humor—if he had one—was currently buried and she couldn't imagine him being anything more than a friend of Mindelan's, if that.
"I want a few squires watching that wooded clump on the riverbank," Cleon said. "You"—he pointed at Penelope and she stepped forward—"and you can take first shift." Penelope swallowed when she saw the other squire he'd selected. It was Gregory, an old enemy from her page days.
Penelope nodded and turned towards the riverbank. She walked past the rest of camp without bothering to see that Gregory was following her. She took up a position a few feet from the partially iced-over river and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.
"I heard about your little tussle with Marcel," Gregory muttered.
His tone suggested that the version he'd heard from Marcel wasn't strictly accurate. This didn't surprise Penelope as Marcel could hardly be expected to tell his friends that she'd had him on his back with a swordpoint to his neck a few seconds after he'd made a distasteful proposition and told her that "Dalton wouldn't mind sharing".
Penelope raised her eyebrows, lifting her hand to her belt knife. She'd grown accustomed to long silences over the years and resolved to treat Gregory to a particularly awkward one. They both stood motionless, listening to the sound of the rest of the camp settling in for the night.
"Your luck's going to run out eventually, you know," Gregory hissed when he could no longer stand the quiet.
"Good thing I get by on talent then, isn't it?" Penelope answered before she could remind herself not to encourage him.
"Your looks won't last long either," Gregory said. He glared at her when she didn't respond and stepped towards her. "You'll be covered in scars in a few years and then not even Dalton will want you," he added.
Penelope gazed calmly at the river as a patch of ice broke off and drifted downstream. It was true that she had a few sizable scars on her upper arms, but Dalton's only response had been to trace them gently with his fingers so she rather doubted Gregory's last statement.
"And when they don't want you anymore," Gregory added, taking another step towards her, "they'll stop leaping in to protect you."
Penelope tensed. She suspected he was trying to pick a fight, but she didn't know what kind of disciplinarian Cleon would be. If Gregory swung first, she wouldn't be accused of abandoning watch duty to fight him.
"Yes," Penelope muttered. "I'm sure you must be dreading the day. It will be difficult to explain why you're afraid to duel a woman half your size."
That gave Gregory the encouragement he was looking for and he seized her by the elbow. Penelope drove her knee to his groin and twisted away, stepping just short of the river. A sharp knock to the head unbalanced her and she just had time to realize that it was not Gregory's fist, but a rock thrown from across the river, before she toppled over. Her body broke through the ice instantly and she shrieked as she went under. She came up gasping, just as Gregory grunted and landed beside her with a splash that drove them both under.
Penelope tried to surface again but found that the current had drawn her under another patch of ice. She clawed at it futilely. A hand grabbed her roughly by the wrist and dragged her out. Her limbs were already so stiff and numb as to be useless, but Penelope struggled anyway to break free from Gregory.
"Truce," he hissed. And Penelope nodded automatically. In the distance she could hear knights from their camp scrambling towards the river. Their shouts must have woken someone.
"Good," Gregory muttered through chattering teeth. "We've got to get out of this. Look—I'm tall enough I can keep you from going under—but my foot's trapped—I need--"
Penelope nodded again. Neither of them had time to argue. "Grab my ankle," she ordered and dove. It took all her strength to prize the submerged log off of Gregory's boot and she nearly forgot herself and tried to gasp underwater once she'd managed it.
Gregory jerked her to the surface and together they fumbled their way towards the bank and dragged each other onto land. Cleon, closely followed by Alanna and Neal, reached them just as they were stumbling to their feet.
"What's happened?" Cleon demanded.
Neither of them answered. Neal pulled Penelope under his cloak and she realized that she'd lost her own sometime underwater. That was probably for the best since the weight of it might have pulled her too far under the ice. Then she'd have been stuck in the cold and the dark, unable to breath, just like Sir Kendal had…
Alanna slapped Gregory across the face and then shook roughly Penelope by the shoulders and shoved a small flask into her hands.
"I know," Alanna told them. "It's the second scariest thing in the world and quite possibly the coldest."
Penelope found herself shivering uncontrollably as she resolved never to ask the lady knight what she thought was the scariest thing in the world.
"Drink," Alanna ordered. "And then report. We need to know if we're under attack."
The flask contained brandy and Penelope coughed as she passed it to Gregory.
"I don't think so," she muttered. "Gregory and I were—" Gregory caught her eyes and blinked slowly, pleadingly, and Penelope adjusted her story—"momentarily distracted when their sentries threw rocks at our heads." Neal's fingers were already skimming her scalp, finding and healing the painful lump and the tickling sensation distracted her from speaking.
Gregory took a third swallow of brandy and picked up the story. "She was hit first, but they hit me before I could spot them. We were pretty noisy when we hit the water so I think that warned them off. My foot got trapped and she slid under a patch of ice and I fished her out. Then she freed my foot and we swam clear." Alanna stood on tiptoe to heal the bump on Gregory's head.
Penelope nodded. "That's all there is to it. Sorry for the disturbance, sir."
Cleon frowned and dismissed the squires, asking Neal and Alanna to stand in until the next set of guards arrived. Gregory bowed and trotted away after Cleon, but Neal wrapped an arm firmly about Penelope's waist to keep her from following.
"You didn't tell us everything," he muttered.
Penelope was too cold to think of a plausible lie. "No, sorry—but we probably saved each other's lives. What happened before—I don't think it will happen again."
Neal started to protest, but Alanna cut him off. " It's none of your business. You have to let her deal with these things as she sees fit." Penelope swallowed and forced her lips into what she hoped was a brief, grateful smile.
Alanna grabbed Penelope by the shoulder. "You're freezing," she muttered. "Go to my tent, get out of your wet things, crawl in Dalton's bedroll, and warm up." Penelope decided that just because she thought this order was some sort of cold-induced hallucination was no reason to disobey it and she nodded quickly before stumbling away.
PDPD
Penelope trembled with more than cold as she peeled away her wet layers and pulled on a clean shirt of Dalton's. There was nothing like almost dying to make you realize you really wanted to spend your life with someone, she reflected.
He woke and murmured her name and her heart somersaulted. He blinked at her, glanced at her discarded wet clothing, and lifted the edge of his bedroll invitingly. Penelope hesitated a moment, afraid that he had come to his senses and decided never to mention marriage again, afraid that her courage would fail her if he did.
Then she crawled in beside him, letting his warmth drive away those horrible underwater moments.
"You're freezing," Dalton hissed as one of Penelope's feet brushed his leg. His first instinct was to flinch away from her icy skin and his second was to pull her closer and hold her until she stopped shivering. She fit wonderfully in his arms after their weeks apart and he knew George was right: he had nothing to worry about—except Penelope's life, apparently. "What happened out there?"
"I went swimming—unexpectedly," she murmured, slurring her words slightly as she settled her head on his shoulder. Sudden warmth, safety, and contentment were already lulling into sleep.
"Obviously," he muttered back and pushed her wet braid off his chest. "What did Gregory do? Did he try to—"
"No—he was just looking for a fight. And he would have gotten it if we hadn't both been idiots and gotten ourselves knocked into the river." She sighed and described her fall and Gregory's change of heart as her shivers subsided.
"And I thought it was hot water that's supposed to test character," Dalton whispered. She sighed again, but contentedly this time, and he watched her eyelids flutter shut. "You're probably right about him not bothering you again though. But Marcel..."
"Marcel's different; Gregory just wanted to beat me up to prove he could—he didn't want to sleep with me," she explained bluntly without opening her eyes. "Not that Marcel still wants to after…anyway he's scared of you even if he doesn't have the sense to be scared of me."
"Idiot," Dalton muttered.
"I can handle him," she told him sleepily. "And the rumors. It's not as if they're going to go away. People still say all sorts of things about Mindelan and the Lioness and they're—"
"Married," Dalton finished. "Something we should talk about soon."
Penelope opened her eyes and lifted her head slightly and Dalton worried that she was going to turn away as she had the first time he brought up the topic. "I think you know by now that, even though I stand to inherit a large estate eventually, my dowry, such as it is, consists of various bladed weapons and a cranky horse."
Dalton pulled her head back down onto his shoulder. "By eventually, I meant sometime when you aren't half-drowned and half-drunk."
"I'm hardly—" she began, knowing he'd been too patient already and afraid that if she did not settle this now she might never work up the courage again. But he covered her lips with one hand and kissed the top of her head to stop her protest.
"However, since you're unusually open to such discussion this evening, I ought to point out that as a fourth son I won't be inheriting any land. But I will get a sum generous enough for the two of us to live on—economically, for a few years—once I'm knighted."
She smiled and he lifted his fingers off her lips. "It sounds as though we're evenly matched then," she said, "and sharing is very economical." Then she yawned hugely and nodded off once more, leaving Dalton staring at the top of the tent with what he knew was a foolish grin plastered to his face until Alanna came to send him out for watch duty.
PDPD
The next morning, ambassadors from across the river arrived with formal apologies for the actions of the rogue soldiers who'd thrown rocks. This catalyzed the entire negotiation process and the old peace treaty was renewed by late afternoon. Tortall's troop began splitting up immediately, but most of the knights and squires traveled only as the nearest inn before nightfall.
Penelope didn't linger over supper. The previous evening's 'swim' was still wearing on her and the inn's table was so crowded that she'd found herself stuffed between Neal and another knight—far away from Dalton. She slurped down a bowl of lukewarm stew, crammed a ginger cake into her mouth, and staggered away.
Dalton was waiting for her at the top of the stairs. He kissed her lightly, his lips just brushing her temple, before speaking.
"I need to know last night really happened."
"Me too," she said as Dalton took her hand and drew her into his tiny, low-ceilinged room, "I certainly hope so." They unlaced their boots and kicked them off. "Because I wouldn't ever want to dream about Gregory or under-ice swimming, even as a prelude to far better things." She frowned. "But maybe it was a necessary evil."
Dalton raised an eyebrow and the hem of her tunic.
"It froze out all my fear of the future," she murmured, lifting her arms so Dalton could pull it off. It was true. She'd simply decided she didn't care what kind of life she was supposed to lead—she just wanted to keep her head above water and her heart happy.
Dalton tossed aside his own tunic and drew her into his arms. "So long as it doesn't come back now that you've warmed up," he added as she began unbuttoning his shirt.
"Not likely," she whispered, tilting her face up to kiss him. "So long as I'm marrying you."
PDPD
Penelope glanced out Dalton's tiny window when she woke, wondering how soon she needed to slip back to her own room beside Neal's.
"There's time," Dalton murmured. "We should talk."
Penelope nodded and kissed his cheek. "I don't want a ring—it would interfere with my grip."
Dalton grinned. "And you're keeping your land titles. I meant about the less-than-obvious."
Penelope sighed. "I suppose we should keep—"she hesitated only a moment—"our engagement secret until after we're knighted. The palace gossipers have enough fodder for the time being."
Dalton nodded. "I will have to write my family. I can't promise they'll be pleased, but I don't particularly care if they decide to disown--"
"Dalton, I can't ask you to—you don't know what you'd be giving up."
"Neither do you really," he murmured. She'd never met Dalton's stern, unyielding father and Penelope had only one relative to write: an aunt who had no choice but to pass along Penelope's property whether or not she approved of her decisions. "But I think we'll manage to show you eventually," he added, thinking of Alanna and George and Neal.
"How soon is eventually?"
"After our ordeals," he answered automatically. "Squires have never been allowed to marry."
"But they've already made so many odd exceptions for me," Penelope murmured mockingly. "Perhaps if you were to petition Wyldon—"
"I can wait," he assured her. "Or you could ask. He likes you better anyway."
"You do know what he'd think—what everyone would think if we suddenly got married this spring."
"Not ready to risk impregnation by palace gossip?"
She winced at his wording. "Is that even possible?"
"Have you noticed your proclivity for performing the impossible?"
She swallowed. "I can wait."
But not too long, since chapter 11, which should run through the wedding, should be up in a few weeks.