Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [72]
“Good for you,” she said, still smiling. “I always knew you had spirit.”
Carra felt herself goggling openmouthed like some village half-wit.
“Carra, listen,” Jill went on. “Things will be different once you and Dar get out on the grasslands with his people, very, very different. Your life will have a much wider horizon there than any Deverry woman ever has here at home. Your life’s likely to become more than passing strange, mind, but restricted it will not be. Now, until then, you need to behave like a Deverry woman. Can you understand that? I have naught but sympathy for you, lass, but there’s no help for it. While you remain here in Deverry, you’ve got to be the lady and the dutiful wife. Can you do that?”
“Of course. Haven’t I been trained for it, all my life?”
“Good.” Jill smiled again. “But remember my promise. I don’t know when you and Dar can return safely to his people. It might not even be till after the child is born. That depends on things that—well, on things, and some of them are matters of war. These are not the best of times, Carra.” She stood up. “Don’t worry about Labanna and the other women. I’ll tell them that you’ve been properly scolded.”
Jill left the chamber without another word, leaving Carra utterly confused. Yet, despite Jill’s talk of war, she felt strangely cheered, thinking that some new and exciting life lay ahead of her. She rested for a while, then had a wash and changed her clothes. Although she had to summon all her courage to go to the women’s hall, the other women made a great fuss over her, as if compensating for the terrible things Jill had said. Carra managed a few proper snivels for the look of the thing, but all in all, the matter was closed.
There remained her husband, of course. She was dreading his homecoming, but much to her surprise his reaction was similar to Jill’s—a laugh and a certain sympathy. Once they were alone, he kissed her repeatedly, then sat her down in the single chair in their chamber while he paced back and forth. By then it was night, and in the glow of the candle-lanterns his chiseled face seemed leaner than ever, picked out as it was by deep shadows.
“Forgive me, my love,” he said. “I thought that you’d want me to leave you be, here with the other women. Isn’t that what Deverry women expect from their lords?”
“Well, most of them do, I suppose. Dar, your people must be very different from mine.”
“Worlds and worlds different, my love, and I wish to every god of both our tribes that I could take you there straightaway. Life is cleaner out on the grasslands, clean and free and honest, not like here, all shut up in stone tents like animals in pens with the smell of filth hanging round everything. And everyone’s always scheming and plotting and trying to get the gwerbret to like them best of all the lords and suchlike. Sometimes I want to heave, just sitting at that table with Matyc and Gwinardd and watching the fencing for favor going on between them. Truly I do.”
His vehemence shocked her so much that she found nothing to say. He knelt beside her and caught her hand in both of his.
“Forgive me, I don’t mean to insult your people.”
“I’m not insulted, just surprised. I didn’t realize how much you hated it.”
“That’s why I hunt so much. To get away, out to the wild country.”
“I wish you’d told me! I thought you didn’t love me anymore.”
He laughed, then kissed her hand, first the back, then the palm.
“The gwerbret’s a decent man,” he said. “But he thinks of me as some kind of savage. He’s been telling me how to treat you, you see, since you’re a civilized woman with civilized expectations and all that. And of course I’ve been following his advice. Like a dolt. I thought you’d want me to.”
Carra laughed and threw her arms round