"For a dress that covers you up so thoroughly," Jonas said, eyeing her floor length gown, "it certainly exposes a lot of acreage below your neck."
Sam blushed and the blush bloomed all the way down the expanse of exposed creamy white skin. Cam looked at Jonas warningly. He didn't always think before he spoke. "That looks exactly like the sort of thing Elspetha wears. Sam'll fit right in."
Teal'c cleared his throat and said, "ColonelMitchell, perhaps ColonelCarter does not want to look like the Lady Elspetha."
It was Cam's turn to flush just a bit. He felt, and justifiably so, that Teal'c seemed to have decided to make a personal crusade out of ragging him every way he could about Elspetha.
The lady in question appeared at that moment, almost as if she had been summoned by the mere invocation of her name. She looked them over approvingly, particularly Sam and Mitchell.
"His Grace Danyal will be most pleased at my selection for you Colonel Carter," she said. "You should always wear blue." She slipped a hand through Cam's arm and purred to him softly and privately, "You look as handsome as His Grace but we won't tell him that."
She conducted them to the top floor, past three different sets of guards, and into an intimate dining room. Daniel awaited them alone. He sat relaxed in a large chair with arms. A glass of wine dangled loosely in his fingers.
"Greetings," he said and his voice conveyed real pleasure to see them although he did not stand. Elspetha crossed the room to his side. He took her hand and pulled her toward him slightly so they could kiss each other's checks. He murmured something to her in Linteri and smiled brilliantly up into his eyes. She poured wine from the decanter in front of Daniel into heavy glasses identical to the one Daniel toyed with but still had not drunk from. After she served them, he poured a glass for her. They had absorbed enough Linteri culture to realize that he did her great honor and that he was telling them that, although he allowed her to serve them, she was not inferior.
He saw them hesitating, standing in the middle of the room, and said, "Do not stand on ceremony. Unless the servants are in the room, act as you would back on Earth. Elspetha is the one person on this planet other than my son that I trust completely, even though she keeps trying to tell me that I should not." He smiled at her with great fondness and she reached over and fleetingly squeezed his hand.
Daniel was not at the round marble dining table, but rather seated in a small conversational area in a large alcove to one side and they joined him there. A low table holding a tray of various finger foods sat in the middle of the chairs. Jonas immediately helped himself to a morsel, tasted it experimentally, looked pleasantly surprised, and helped himself to more. Daniel laughed a little. "The food last night was of the quality one can afford to serve to 500 people. You will eat much better tonight."
Cam dared say, "So your pockets are not bottomless."
Daniel said, "They are—in essence everything on this planet belongs to me--but if I reach deep, there is nothing at all left in someone else's pocket."
Daniel slid one finger around the lip of his glass, but still he did not drink. Cam asked, "Have you thought about the Tauri proposal?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"I have thought about it." He leaned forward and lightly touched Cam's arm, Cam having taken a seat opposite him. "Who I was and who I am are all mixed together in your mind. It would be best if you acted as if you had never met me before. I cannot be Daniel Jackson and what you knew of him will not help you understand me. I am the Regent. I make decisions at my convenience and not that of my petitioners." He shrugged. "We are a very rude people, but exquisitely so."
Teal'c was watching him with great interest. "It interests me the ways in which you are like a Goa'uld system lord and the ways in which you are different, DanielJackson."
"So you find ways that I am different?" Daniel said, helping himself to a bite from the tray in front of him.
"A few."
"Don't let that lull you into relaxing," Daniel said, his voice turning sharp. "You are in danger here, constant danger. I have tried to arrange that your food is safe and that no one will have a chance to get to you, but all is still chance."
"Then wouldn't it make sense to make your decision quickly so we can leave?" Cam asked.
"Don't presume to pressure me," Daniel said and his voice turned cold. There was a silence and then the half-smile returned. From then on, he was consummately charming through the entire meal.
He asked after the people of the SGC, but never Jack. At last, Teal'c said, in deliberate provocation Cam thought, "Jack is well. He has retired."
"When are the two of you going to get married, Sam?" Daniel asked. There was no hint that the answer mattered to him at all.
"That's a strange question to ask about two people who are not together in any way," Sam said. There was the briefest of awkward silences and then Elspetha said something amusing and the moment passed.
Twice, they almost thought they saw their Daniel when he became enthused about some projects he had going to improve things and began to talk very rapidly and explain things in great detail. His blue eyes lit up and he seemed younger and almost carefree. Mitchell saw the yearning look, barely disguised on Sam's face, as she sat watching him, listening. Both times, in the middle of his monologue, Daniel looked over at Elspetha, caught some sort of warning, and moderated his enthusiasm.
Cam began to wonder if Elspetha was truly the power behind the throne. That was until she overstepped her bounds. Daniel said something that seemed innocuous to Cam about reforms he wanted to make to the marriage laws. Elspetha must have flashed him one of her looks. He very deliberately finished his sentence, then turned to her and spoke a few clipped words of Linteri. She bit her lip and looked down at her hands and said nothing else for several minutes. When she rejoined the conversation, he paid her an extravagant compliment for something and her own smile wobbled just for a minute.
His approval matters to her more than anything else, Cam thought and it galled him immensely.
About the time it became full velvet dark outside, Daniel stood. "I need to tuck my son in. All of you trooping into his bedroom might be a little overwhelming, but I would like him to get to know you. Sam, would you come with me this evening?"
Cam thought he kept his face impassive, but Daniel shot him a quick, amused look as if he had read concern there. "Do not worry, Colonel. I will see your team member safely returned to you."
Cam thought about the way she had been watching him and knew that Sam's greatest problem walking through this minefield might be her own desire to step directly on one of the mines.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Sam couldn't help but be a little irritated by the expression on her CO's face at Daniel's invitation. She didn't think Cameron Mitchell was a sexist, but there were times when it seemed to her that he treated her a little too much like some flower of Southern womanhood that needed protection instead of an officer that he barely outranked. He was a full colonel now and she was still waiting for that promotion.
Daniel slid a hand under her elbow and escorted her down a short hall past three guards to Davi's suite. The boy was sitting on the bed in the inner room, a sweet faced older woman next to him, turning the pages of a book. When he saw his father he crowed with delight and put out his arms. The woman stood, said quietly, "Good evening Your Grace," and silently left the room through a side door into the small room next to Davi's where she apparently slept.
Daniel said, absently, as she left, "Good evening, Tildi, sleep well." His attention was focused on the child. He picked him up and tossed him in the air and whirled him around and then dropped him on the bed and tickled him. Davi loved it. Daniel said, "Tildi tells me, oh so carefully and tactfully, that it is not wise to excite him at bedtime, but we are bad boys, are we not, Davi?" He was speaking in English and Davi had no idea what the subject was, but he smiled cooperatively in response to his father's questioning expression.
Daniel patted the bed on the other side of Davi, indicating that Sam should sit. "Perhaps tonight we start his English lessons." He picked up one of the picture books. "Perhaps if I read it to him in Linteri and you say the English?"
Three books were read in this manner with Daniel sometimes having to explain pictures of Linteri animals or objects before Sam had an idea of the English word to fit. Davi was vastly entertained by her antics and showed himself to be an excellent mimic. Sam thought, he's inherited Daniel's brilliance and linguistics abilities. Daniel's explanations became increasingly silly and by the end the adults were laughing, easy in each other's company. When the child's eyes began to droop, Daniel took the book away, laid him back and covered him up. Then he stroked his hair gently and sang to him in a pleasant tenor. At last his hand stilled and the song died away and there was only the sound of the child's quiet, slow breathing. Daniel stood carefully, came around the bed, and took Sam's hand to lead her from the dusky room.
There was a door to the roof garden off the outer room and Daniel took her out into the soft night. "He is my greatest treasure," Daniel said. "Yet I risk him for a stubborn, proud, selfish people who continually stray from what is in their own best interests. I could take him to Earth and he would surely grow up and be happy. If I did that, there would be bloody war here and tens of thousands, perhaps more, would die before the succession was settled. I would offer my own life for theirs, but do I love them so much that I must offer up my only child?"
Sam took a sharp breath. "Daniel, do you realize how biblical you sound?"
"If there is, in truth, a God who gave his only son to save the world, I now appreciate how much love he must have had," Daniel said ruefully. "I would think happier thoughts. Let us walk."
The garden was lit by soft lights. The Linteri had electricity, but always preferred the biological solution. The soft, eldritch light came from some sort of bioluminescence. Sam looked at Daniel's profile in the subtle light. The scar did not make him any less beautiful, she thought. Beautiful? Had she ever thought before that Daniel was a drop dead gorgeous man? She thought back to Cam's concerned face. Maybe he was less worried about Daniel than he was about her.
They were in the midst of the garden now, soft air, laden with the smells of the fragrant flowers in colorful clay pots around them, ruffling her hair. There was an electric light here, making a bright little oasis around a bench in the midst of high shrubs in planters. Daniel said, "There is something I would like you to have. Cup your hands."
He pulled out a small, velvet pouch from a pocket, loosened the draw strings, and poured a necklace out into her joined hands. Two dozen or so gems were woven into a sort of rope where they were the center of flowers cunningly wrought in gold. They coruscated in the light. She knew she was holding a fortune. "Daniel it's beautiful," she breathed, "but this would empty too many of your people's pockets."
"This was taken from them long ago and just sits in a vault with dozens of others like it. I would like to sell most of it off and use the money to improve things but the political fallout would be immense. It is not time for that yet." He picked it up and clasped it around her neck where it hung to just above the swell of her breasts.
He ran his finger under it and lifted it at the bottom, his knuckles very lightly brushing against the tops of her breasts. "Is this a bribe?" she asked. She hated how accusatory that sounded, not the diplomatic subtlety Cam had been trying to coach her to plan for in her dealings with him.
"A bribe?" He had decided, she thought, to be deliberately obtuse. "I am bribing you to slant the treaty my way?"
"There are rules, you know. I can't accept a gift of any value from a foreign government."
"Then I will take it before you leave and keep it for you until you come back again," he said. She thought there was a little hurt in his voice, but she steeled herself.
"We both know that isn't the type of favor I was talking about," she said.
"I know you are not for sale, Sam," he said. "I would have sold everything I had if that had been the case to raise the asking price long ago."
"Daniel, we're friends. I don't understand where this is coming from," she protested weakly.
"Do you not?" He was back in control of himself. The little window of vulnerability was gone and he was supremely confidant again. That strengthened her ability to hold out against him. He was reminding her of Jack now. It amazed her to realize that she didn't really like Jack's arrogant assumption that anything he wanted was his. She was quite sure now she would go back to her quarters on the next floor down with nothing to hide, that was until he skated one hand across her bare flesh, buried the other in her hair, and kissed her.
"Daniel," she whispered softly against his lips.
"Are you telling me to stop?" he asked. "Tell me to stop and I will." Meanwhile his hand traveled lower and his fingers dipped just a few centimeters under the neckline of her dress. He kissed her harder. Her lips had opened under his without resistance and his warm tongue plundered her mouth. His hand moved even lower and sparks shot through her. He sat down on the bench without letting go of her and pulled her into his lap. He alternated between kissing her mouth and nuzzling her neck, even gently biting her a little. He removed his hand from her bodice without ever fully transgressing to intimacy and instead pulled her skirt up part way, enough that he could put his hand under it and run it up her leg to her knee. His kisses were making her crazy. She didn't need the touching too to make her feel like she was going to lose her mind.
Then suddenly, he removed his hand and dropped her skirt and pulled his mouth away from hers. "What?" she asked bewildered.
"I have all the power here. It wouldn't be fair to allow anything more than this."
"Fair?" She was indignant. "Usually they only apply the term 'tease' to women. You though, you are a tease."
"I make you hot," he said and he sounded unaccountably sad about it.
"Do you want me to beg?" she asked, "I'm not doing that any more."
"Oh, Sam, you haven't been that wise about the men you've chosen have you? I just meant what you're feeling is lust, right? It's not really what I need. Power seems to make most women very hot and I've a whole planet of beauties just waiting for an invitation."
He set her carefully on her feet and led her, hand under her elbow, off the roof garden and through the outer room. Neither spoke. Sam didn't know why he was silent. For her part, she frankly didn't know what to say. He wasn't making any sense to her. Did he expect her to tell him that she was in love with him? She wasn't and she wasn't going to say it. Then why did she feel so bereft? Her inner turmoil was so violent that she barely took in the appearance of the two guards to whom he entrusted her. She didn't answer when he said good night.
She followed the guards back to the suite she shared with the rest of SG-1 and entered to find them all sitting in the common area, waiting for her. She felt like a naughty teenaged girl who'd gone out with the local bad boy against her parents' wishes. Suddenly she became aware that she was still wearing the necklace.
"What is that around your neck?" Jonas said. He came toward her to get a better look.
Cam was standing a lot closer to her to begin with and he asked, "What is that on your neck?" Sam put a hand up and touched the spot where she now remembered Daniel had nipped at her. Had he done that on purpose to mark her or had he just been carried away?
"We're all grown ups here," she said. "I think you both can answer those questions without help." She swept past them. "If you don't mind, I'm going to bed."
Cam said, "Let's you and I go out on the balcony and debrief first. We are on a mission."
She followed him stiffly out to the balcony. As soon as the door shut behind him, she said, "I don't believe, sir, that there is any reason why I should share what happens in my private life with my CO."
"In this situation, you don't have a private life," he said. His voice was kind but firm.
"Okay. We kissed a few times. That's all. He made it very clear that he thinks it would be an abuse of his power for anything more than that to happen. Is there anything else you want to know?"
"You know you can't keep the necklace."
"I know I can't keep it. May I be dismissed?"
Cam nodded, looking very disturbed, and she walked as slowly as she could make herself to her room, her cheeks burning with humiliation at what Teal'c and Jonas must be thinking. She shut her door firmly but didn't slam it. She was very proud of herself for that.
She looked at her neck in the mirror. Daniel had set her up for huge embarrassment with the necklace and the patch of reddened skin that would definitely bloom into a love bite. She was angry with Daniel, wasn't she? Would her Daniel have done that? When she lay down and closed her eyes, she thought apprehensively of the dream of searching for Daniel in an immense palace. Now she was living it.