Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [176]
“So you have,” Loyvan said at last. “I was assuming that you’d want to put all that behind you.”
“I do, Your Grace, but I can’t—not so easily, anyway.” Jill began to feel like a horse in a bedchamber. “I mean no insult, truly I don’t.”
“Of course not, child, and none’s taken,” Lovyan said. “But true enough, chatter about lads and pretty clothes isn’t going to amuse you the way it used to amuse the three of us. This is very interesting, Jill. Have you ever thought of marrying, by the way?”
“I haven’t, Your Grace. Who would I have married without a dowry? Some tavernman?”
“True spoken, but all that’s changed now.” Lovyan gave her a good-humored smile. “Your beauty and my favor are dowry enough for any lass. There’s many a rising young merchant who’d admire a wife with your spirit, and for that matter, many a landless noble lord who needs my goodwill. You wouldn’t be the first woman to win a title with her looks.”
“I see.”
“But if you don’t want to marry,” Dannyan broke in, “no one will force you into it, either. It’s just that most lasses do.”
“My thanks, but this is all so sudden, I don’t know what to think.”
“Of course,” Lovyan said. “There’s no hurry.”
Although all of them smiled at her, Jill realized that they were looking on her as a strange kind of invalid, a victim who needed nursing back to health. She began to feel like a falcon indeed, used to soaring at the edge of the wilderness, but now caught and brought back to hunt at a lord’s command.
Since Lovyan practically ordered her to, Jill agreed to wear women’s clothes down to dinner that night. As pleased as if they had a new daughter, Medylla and Dannyan fussed over Jill. She had a bath with perfumed soap, dried herself off on thick Bardek towels, then submitted to having Medylla comb her hair before she dressed. First came the narrow white underdress with tight sleeves, then a blue overdress, hanging full from gathered shoulders. Around her waist a kirtle of Lovyan’s plaid tucked the dress in and made pockets of a sort with its folds, enough to carry a table dagger and a handkerchief. Although Medylla offered her a tiny jeweled dagger, Jill insisted on carrying her own. In spite of all the honor of being treated this way, there were limits to what she’d put up with. She took a few steps and nearly tripped. The underdress was far too narrow for her usual stride.
“Poor Jill,” Dannyan said with honest sympathy. “Well, you’ll get used to it in a bit.”
Alternately mincing and stumbling, Jill followed them down to the great hall, where Lovyan was already seated at the head of the honor table. Since they would have to await Rhys’s final judgment on the war, all of Rhodry’s noble-born allies were there, except, of course, for the wounded Sligyn. The lords rose and bowed rather absently to Her Grace’s women; then Edar laughed aloud.
“Jill! I swear I didn’t recognize you.”
“I hardly recognize myself, my lord.”
Jill took a place at the foot of the table between Medylla and Dannyan. Although everyone was waiting for Rhodry, he never came in, and eventually a somewhat annoyed Lovyan had the meal served without him. Jill had to pay strict attention to her manners and constantly remind herself that she couldn’t wipe her hands on her borrowed dress. She aped Medylla and Dannyan and ate using only her fingertips, which she could dabble clean on the handkerchief hanging from her kirtle.
The meal was nearly finished when a page hurried to the table to announce Lord Cinvan, the first of Corbyn’s allies come to sue for peace. As befitted the ritual of the thing, he came alone and completely unarmed, with not so much as a table dagger in his belt, and he knelt before Lovyan like a common rider. The entire hall fell silent as Lovyan coolly considered him. The noble-born leaned forward, Edar with a tight twist of contempt to his mouth, the rest