Chap. 17
Sunlight filtered through the windows, dancing teasingly in the fencing room at Clynester. Blooming pink, white, and red roses filled the room with their exquisite fragrance and soothing colors, watching as two equally matched men skillfully circled each other and engaged in an exchange of lightning blows with their fine, gleaming swords, panting heavily. One made a pass at the other with a sequence of savage blows intended to drive back his opponent into a defensive stance, but he refused to be provoked. With a flash of silver, the other man lazily executed a crescent arc drill, sending his opponent's weapon skidding across the smooth floor out of his reach.
The defeated man pulled off his fencing helmet and grinned dashingly. "I forget how damned fast you are," he said to his companion, laughing. With gilt hair, already made sweaty with work, he was another dashing heartthrob among the ladies of the ton…and one of the few nobles that Eriol had ever respected as an equal and as a friend.
Eriol smiled back at him. "You didn't do so badly either," he said, amused, taking off his own sweat-soaked helmet. "It was luck, Jon."
Jonathon, the Earl of Clarence, eyed him with sardonic amusement. "You want to know the one thing I despise above all else, Clynester?" he joked. "I hate people who are overwhelmingly modest."
"I suppose you favor people who are overwhelmingly arrogant and self-conscious?" he countered sarcastically, his brow lifting. "I noticed-"
Applause interrupted them, and they both turned too see Tomoyo in a bright, yellow, muslin morning gown, looking as pretty as a blooming buttercup. Eriol smiled with grim amusement as he noticed the stunned look on his friend's face. "Who is this?" he asked Eriol with an awed expression on his face.
Eriol introduced them with an irritated expression revealed on his face for the first time in his life. On the other hand, his life had been full of "first times" ever since she had come into his life. "Jon," he said, annoyed, "this is my fiancée, Tomoyo, the Countess of Landsfield, and this," he said in turn to Tomoyo, "is one of my equals, Jonathon, the Earl of Clarence." He watched Clarence's gaze shift from her to him with a knowing look and a wicked gleam in his eyes that hinted that he was in his teasing mood.
"Enchanté, mademoiselle," Jon said gallantly, bending over her soft, white hand, clearly trying to incite jealousy in Eriol. "Still, you would be the death of me; I told Eriol once that if there was ever a time when he would give up his bachelorhood willingly for marriage, the ground would split open and swallow me whole," he teased, flicking his gaze in Eriol's direction. "That was how unlikely marriage was. But of course, you are a charming, beautiful-"
"Clarence," Eriol said flatly. "Back off!"
"Off what, Clynester?" Jon countered lightly with deliberate obtuseness. "Could it be that his grace feels the first stirrings of uneasiness?" he said with mock horror. "Ah me!"
"Jon, stop acting like a fool," he snapped, shooting an apologetic look at Tomoyo who was trying her utmost to contain her hilarity, then looking at his friend in complete exasperation.
The earl held up his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay, I'll stop," he said finally. "The look on your face has me shaking in my shoes. It implies that there's nothing else you would like to do more at the moment than to throw me out on my elegantly-clothed posterior." Contrary to his words, however, he shot Tomoyo a bold, admiring gaze that twinkled with laughter.
"You have correctly assessed the situation," the duke told the earl in a warning tone. "It would help tremendously if you could execute the actions that you claimed you will do. Shall I reiterate your words for you? 'Stop'."
Tomoyo and the earl's eyes locked, both filled with helpless amusement. "By the way, Tomoyo," the duke called her, flagrantly disregarding protocol in front of his fellow peer, "Was there any particular reason you wanted to see me? Something you need?"
"Oh," she said. "It's nothing, really. I came just for the sake of seeing you, but now that you mention it, there is something that I have grown to want now, yet I am loath to ask…but if you insist-"
"I insist," the duke said smilingly. "Ask and it will be yours."
"I wondered if I might try my hand at swordplay with one of you?"
"Anything but that," the duke coolly interjected. "You would get hurt-"
Tomoyo's lips curved into a hint of a smile. "Try me."
Eriol was shocked; Jon merely looked amused. "If you don't accept her 'challenge'," Jon said, doubting the suitability of Tomoyo's request, but unable to resist baiting Eriol, "I'll completely understand. Really."
"I'll take you on," Eriol snapped. "Well?" he asked, turning to look at Tomoyo. "Are you going to fight in that?" he asked, indicating her gown.
"Be right back!" she told him gaily and ran to her room to change.
The Earl of Clarence and the Duke of Clynester eyed each other doubtfully. "Do you think this is a good idea?" Eriol finally asked him.
"I think that the idea is to go gentle on her," Jon said hesitantly. "I didn't think she was serious, though."
*******
Hell. It was pure hell. Eriol found his concentration slipping, as he looked at her figure so delightfully displayed by tight men's breeches she had on. Jon intercepted his gaze and smiled knowingly, and the Duke of Clynester suffered the humiliation of blushing like an errant schoolboy. "That outfit," the duke bluntly pointed out to his fiancée, "is indecent. I didn't expect you to look like…like…that."
"Like what?" Tomoyo asked oh-so-innocently.
The duke restrained himself from blushing again. He was disgusted by his unprecedented behavior and lack of control around her. "Like…that."
"Eriol, you better learn to clarify what you mean," Jon teased, and was met with a tortured look from the duke. "Just trying to help," he said, shrugging his shoulders.
Eriol rolled his eyes and transferred his attention to Tomoyo. "Shall we get started?" When Tomoyo nodded, he did not raise his sword; he began to show her the correct, basic grip of the sword.
"My lord-" Tomoyo said, finally interrupting his overly-protective and long lecture about the proper grip. "Let us begin the duel." With that, she smoothly drew her own precious sword, which had belonged to her grandfather, out of its sheath. The light seemed to sparkle and shift within the blade; it was so highly tempered and of the purest metal without a sign of visible imperfection. Just like her, Eriol thought. "I already know the basic grips; I'm not a beginner." With that, she swung the sword in a calculated arc designed to disarm him swiftly in one move. He didn't fall for that clever scheme like most average men. Instead, he blocked her easily, using his superior strength and weight to his full advantage.
Eriol's lips quirked upwards into a sardonic smile. "You do know how to use a sword after all," he commented coolly. Eriol was intrigued; finally, here was someone who was a worthy opponent.
"Come on, Eriol," Tomoyo said with challenge gleaming in her violet eyes. "You don't have to be so gentlemanly toward me just because I'm a woman."
"I underestimated you, but that isn't going to give you the victory," he said, amused. Her response to his comment was merely a small smile and the reversal of her blade, at a lightning speed, in a vertical butterfly, toward his heart. He blocked her jarringly; a second too late, and he would have been vanquished. Tomoyo could see that there was a new respect for her growing in his beautiful, enigmatic blue eyes, and he studied her style warily as he circled, watching for an opening or a flaw.
She took the offensive, delivering a rain of blows that he easily blocked. She scrutinized him for an unprotected spot-"Attack and finish your opponent quickly," her teacher had said.-and found it. Shifting swiftly from her current position, she whipped her sword into a semi-arc that attacked his brief, but unprotected, opening. He caught her in a deadlock as the two swords clashed and held. Both refused to back down, but Tomoyo was had a slight disadvantage due to his superior strength, and was almost being forced to her knees before she was able to pull away to think up a new strategy.
"Tomoyo, I think we should stop now. You're getting tired," Eriol said, lowering his weapon. "It's enough for today."
"Never let your weapon down," she said. "And," she said, with a sly wink, "we'll go all the way. How do you think I let out all my stress?" Eriol was very impressed, annoyed, irritated, and amused. Who would have thought that his fiery, dark-haired fiancée was skilled in swordplay? On the other hand, he had never known this side of his delectable wife. He frowned as he realized that there were still so many things that he didn't know about her-things about her family, her childhood…her mother. "Tomoyo's mother…she'll destroy you both…she's waiting to hunt you down, the animal that she is!"
He was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he didn't notice that Tomoyo's sword had knocked his own out of his hands before he heard the ring of metal on metal. He was thoroughly embarrassed; Jon merely averted his eyes, trying to hide his laughter. "Now, now, Eriol, be a good sport," Jon snickered, only to feel Eriol's glare on him.
"My lady, you are quite a swordswoman," Eriol said, lifting her hands to his lips. "Though how a lady of the ton knows how to use a sword is beyond me. Do you mind enlightening me as to when you learned it?"
"I-" she hesitated, looking over at the Jon who was watching them as if they were some kind of fascinating phenomenon. The earl straightened as he watched the pleading fill her eyes. "I guess that means I should go," he said with a secretive wink. With that, he went off to change into his normal clothes.
"So," Eriol said gently. "Are you going to tell me?"
"I-," she cut herself off and started again. "Ever since I was young, my father couldn't bear to look at me. I guess I reminded him so much of my mother; I don't really know. I think, despite how he is now, he truly loved her and looking at me caused so much pain. Anyway, it eased his suffering to treat me like a boy; sometimes, I think he wanted me to be a boy," she said brokenly. "So it was natural of him to teach me everything a boy needed to know-things like swordsmanship, and so on. There were times I thought I would go mad-times when I wanted to ask him when he would ever accept me for who I was, but I kept silent for some god forsaken reason.
"As I grew older, he began to become more distant and more absent from me and my life, but it was endurable, I suppose, with the servants who were my friends. Then…he went mad one day-abusive and cold-and he has been like that ever since."
Eriol crushed her to him tightly. "It's all over now," he said fiercely. "I'm here with you, and I assure you, I prefer that you're a woman," he said, receiving a watery chuckle from her. The silence surrounded them, but both of them knew what each felt as they held each other in their arms. But there was still one thing he had to know.
"Tomoyo?"
"Hm?" she replied, looking up at him.
"Did you know your mother when you were young?"
"Oh...Not really. But I know she loved me. I remember a feminine voice crooning to me and telling me that she was my mother and she would always love me. Isn't that the sweetest memory?" she said, her eyes lighting up as if someone lit a torch inside. "My father told me she died a few months ago, though. And one of my mother's former maids told me her story…" she trailed off. "You don't suppose the maid lied, do you?"
"I'm sure she didn't," Eriol answered, sensing that this meant so much to her.
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Please be patient even if it may sound really confusing. It will make perfect sense at the end.