Lord of Raven's Peak - Catherine Coulter [21]
“Why did you stare at me at the slave market?”
5
HE DIDN’T LOOK at her, rather at the huge sail that was flapping wildly overhead. He held his hand up to dry and to feel the exact direction of the wind. He said with complete indifference, “Why do you think I would stare at you?”
“You did. I remember feeling that someone was staring at me and that’s why I looked up. There you were, standing there as if you’d been frozen and you were looking hard at me.”
He shrugged. “It’s true, no need to quibble about it. I don’t know why. I simply saw you and I couldn’t look away. Then you looked at me and I thought you defeated, utterly, then just as suddenly, your eyes held such anger, such bitterness, that still I couldn’t look away from you. I didn’t understand you. You intrigued me.”
She said nothing.
“Then there was Taby. That is truly odd. I have no particular liking for children. But these feelings for him went deeply within me the moment I saw him. I did not understand them then nor do I now, but I will keep Taby safe.”
“That is why you came to save me, then, isn’t it? This feeling you have for Taby, you wanted only him but you had to save me, too, in order to make him happy.”
“Aye, that’s more the way of it than not, though you did interest me as well.”
“You will get over these odd feelings for my little brother. You’re a man; men don’t love children, not as women do. They are proud of them if they show prowess in something a man admires, but to have love for them, to give them attention, it’s more a thing of words for men, not of action, as it is for women.”
“You appear to be knowledgeable beyond your years,” he said, sarcasm thick as he looked toward the shoreline and not at her. “Your words are perhaps true for the men in your country but I doubt it. Men are men. My father loves me and my brothers. His affection for us isn’t to be questioned. He also cuffed us and praised us in equal amounts, and taught us endlessly when we were boys. As to my feelings for Taby, you have no idea what kind of man I am or what I will or will not feel for him in a year or in five years.”
“He is no kin to you. He doesn’t carry your blood. I know this is important to men. You will easily forget Taby once you are home again. What will your wife think of a child you bring back to her?”
“I have no wife.”
“Men must have wives to have heirs. You will have a wife soon enough. You are still young, but not that young. Men must breed when they are young else their seed loses its potency. Aye, you will have a wife and then will you expect her to care for Taby? What if she were cruel to him? It isn’t fair, Merrik. This is why you must let me buy him back from you, before you come to care nothing more for him, before your wife hurts him, before you come to sell him.”
“You spin better tales than a skald, and none of it has a footing in truth. Also, you will stop asking that question. You have no silver, you have nothing to buy anything, much less three people.”
“I can get silver, a lot of it, more than a man like you could possibly trade for or ever steal.”
“Do I scent a ransom in your insult? Do you have rich parents, relatives? Is that the silver you speak of?”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps is a word for weasels. Truth slithers about on your agile tongue like a toad through swamp grass. If there is someone who would ransom you, tell me. I will consider it. At least I can send a man to this person and ask him if he still wants you back, if he still even remembers you or the child. Since he is a man, perhaps he will