A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [118]
“Truly, it was good to see you,” Maer said.
“Was it? Why?”
“Well, uh.” Maer began fiddling with the end of the lead rope. “Well, it’s always good to see a pretty lass, truly. Especially one with spirit.”
Glaenara snorted and grabbed the rope back from him.
“My thanks for helping me haul the cheese. I’ve got to get back to my work.”
“Can I walk with you a ways?”
“You can’t. Or … wait a minute. You said you’d pay me a service?”
“I will. Just name it.”
“Then shave that beastly mustache off. It makes your face look dirty and naught more.”
Maer howled, clapping a hand over his upper lip in self-defense. Glae marched away, sure that she’d seen the last of him. Yet that very afternoon, she was taking a couple of buckets of vegetable scraps out to the hogs when she saw him leading his horse in through the gates. She stopped and stared: the mustache was gone, sure enough. Nalyn came strolling over with a hoe in his hands and gave Maer a cold looking-over.
“Good morrow, sir,” Maer said. “I was wanting to speak to Glaenara, you see.”
“Oh, were you now? And just what do you want with my sister?”
“And what’s it to you who I talk with?” Glaenara snapped.
“Now hold your tongue. I just want to get a look at a man who comes courting you with a silver dagger in his belt.”
“Now here!” Maer put in, but feebly. “I’ve got honorable intentions, I assure you.”
Nalyn and Glaenara both ignored him and turned to glare at each other.
“You’re too young to judge a man,” Nalyn snarled. “I’ve had the experience to know a rotten apple from a sound one.”
“Who are you calling rotten?”
“No one—yet. Maybe I’m only married kin, but I’m the only brother you’ve got, and cursed if I’ll let you hang about talking with silver daggers and other scum of the road.”
“Don’t you call Maer scum! I won’t stand for it.”
“Oh, won’t you now?” Nalyn said with a smug little grin. “And how do you know his name, and how come you’re so quick to defend him?”
Glaenara grabbed one of her buckets of pig slops, swung, and emptied it over Nalyn’s head.
“I’ll talk to who I want to!”
Predictably, the noise brought Lidyan running—and shrieking at the sight of her husband covered with carrot peels and radish leaves. Maer doubled over laughing.
“Flowers to the fair,” Maer choked out. “And slops to the hogs. Ye gods, you’ve got a good hand with the bucket. He should be glad you weren’t sweeping out the cow barn!”
A piece of carrot peel had flown his way and stuck to his shirt. He plucked it off and handed it to Glaenara with a courtly bow.
“A small token of my esteem. Now I’d best get out of here before your brother takes a hoe to me.”
“Brother-in-law, that’s all. And don’t you forget it.”
The next time Glaenara went to market, she sold all her cheese and eggs early in the day, then went over to the inn. As she was tying the mule up out back, Braedda, Samwna’s pretty blond daughter, came running out to catch Glaenara’s arm and lean close like a conspirator. They were exactly the same age, although Braedda looked younger, just because her hands were soft and her face had been spared the rough winds of the fields.
“Ganedd and his father got home last night,” Braedda said, giggling.
“Oh, wonderful! Is your father going to go ask about the betrothal?”
“He’s going over this evening, right after dinner. Oh, Glae, I can hardly wait! I want to many Ganno so bad.”
Out in the back of the stables was a shed, filled with sacks of milled oats and tied shooks of hay. Glaenara and Braedda went there, as they usually did, to talk out of the hearing of her parents. They’d barely started their gossip, though, when Ganedd himself appeared, opening the door without knocking. He was a tall lad, filling out to a man built more like a warrior than a merchant, with pale blue eyes and golden hair, a sign that somewhere in his clan’s history was some Deverry blood.
“I’d best go,” Glaenara said. “I’ll be in for the market next week, Brae.”
Ganedd smiled briefly, then gallantly opened the door for her. As she led the mule out of the village,