Doom of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [104]
“I don’t really see how we could do otherwise,” said Lady Rosamund with some spirit. At a gesture, she caused a lily to snap off its stem and glide into her hand. “I have never seen Gwen so infatuated with anyone as this Joram. As for them going around together, they’ve been nowhere else but with each other the past few days! Marie is always with them, but …” Milady shook her head. The lily slipped from her hand. She dropped down slightly in the air, nearly touching the ground. Her husband caught hold of her.
“You are tired, my dear,” said Lord Samuels solicitously, supporting his wife with his own magic. “I have kept you up too long. We will discuss this further tomorrow.”
“It has been a wearing few days, you must admit,” Lady Rosamund replied, leaning on his arm for comfort. “First Simkin, then the Emperor. Now this.”
“Indeed it has. Our little girl is growing up.”
“Baroness Gwendolyn,” Lady Rosamund said to herself, with a sigh that was part maternal pride, part motherly regret.
One evening three or four or maybe five days later, Joram entered the garden in search of the catalyst. He wasn’t certain himself how long it had been since he had asked Gwendolyn to marry him and she had agreed. Time meant nothing to Joram anymore. Nothing meant anything to him except her. Every breath he took was scented with her fragrance. His eyes saw no one but her. The only words he heard were spoken by her voice. He was jealous of anyone else who claimed her attention. He was jealous of the night that forced them to part. He was jealous of sleep itself.
But he soon discovered that sleep brought its own sweetness, though it was a sweetness mingled with aching pain. In his sleep, he could do what he dared not do during the day — give in to his dreams of passion and desire, fulfillment and possession. The dreams took their toll — Joram would wake in the morning, his blood on fire, his heart burning. Yet the first sight of Gwendolyn walking in the garden fell like a cooling rain upon his tormented soul. So pure, so innocent, so childlike! His dreams sickened him, he felt ashamed, monstrous; his passions seemed bestial and corrupt.
And yet his hunger was there. When he looked at the tender lips speaking to him of azaleas or dahlias or honeysuckle, he remembered their warm, soft touch in his dreams and his body ached. When he watched her walking beside him, her lithe, graceful body clothed in some pink cloud of a gown, he remembered clasping that body in his dreams, holding her close to his breast with no flimsy barrier of cloth between them, remembered making her his own. At such times, he would fall silent and avert his eyes from her gaze, fearful she would see the fire raging there, fearful this fair and fragile flower would wilt and die in its heat.
It was in the throes of this bittersweet torture that Joram entered the garden late one night, searching for the catalyst, who — so the servants said — often walked here when he could not sleep.
The rest of the household had gone to their beds. The Sif-Hanar had decreed that there be no wind tonight, and the garden, therefore, was hushed and quiet. Rounding a corner, Joram affected to be surprised when he found Saryon sitting alone upon a bench.
“I am sorry, Father,” Joram said, standing in the shadows of a eucalyptus. “I did not mean to interrupt you.” Half turning, he started — very slowly — to withdraw.
Saryon turned at the sound of the voice, raising his head. The moonlight shone full upon his face. It was a strange face, this facade of Father Dunstable, and Joram always found it startling and somewhat disquieting. But the eyes were those of the scholar he had known in the Sorcerers’ village — wise, mild, gentle. Only now, in addition, Joram saw a haunted expression in the eyes when the catalyst looked at him, a shadow of pain that he could not understand.
“No, Joram, don’t go,” Saryon said. “You do not disturb me. You were in my thoughts, in fact.”
“In