Naamah's Kiss - Jacqueline Carey [152]
When I returned from an excursion to find two of her guards posted outside my quarters, I was very, very glad.
"Her majesty… ?" I inquired.
One of the guards winked at me. The other inclined his head. "Her majesty awaits you."
I entered my quarters.
Jehanne, unclothed, reclined in my bed. "I'm perishing weary of wondering if this time, the act of love has got me with child," she said without preamble. "So not a word on the topic, all right?"
I smiled. "As my lady wishes."
It was a blessed release after weeks of celibacy, a state to which I was unaccustomed and unsuited. Jehanne more than repaid the debt of pleasure left standing between us since the Longest Night. Afterward, I lay in a happy daze, trying to guess what topic of discussion might please her.
As it happened, Jehanne had ideas of her own. "Tell me, were you close to your mother?"
I nodded. "Very."
"What's it like?" she asked. "What's she like?"
I frowned, thinking. Trying to describe my mother to Jehanne de la Courcel felt like trying to explain the earth to the moon. They were so very far apart. "My mother is… my mother. For a long time, she was all I knew. I was ten years old before I understood that we were separate and unalike."
"What else?" Jehanne asked.
"She's very stubborn," I said. "She can be infernally close-mouthed. She likes solitude and wild places." Like you.
"Oh…" I ran my hand over the graceful curve of her hip. "I'm not so very good with solitude anymore."
Jehanne smiled. "You missed me?"
"I missed you," I admitted.
"Good." She kissed me. "Tell me more."
I thought about it. "There is a ritual all the folk of the Maghuin Dhonn undergo at adulthood," I said slowly. I'd never spoken about it to Jehanne. "To determine whether or not She accepts us as Her own. Not all are chosen. And I was fearful that She would not claim me, because I was half-D'Angeline." Jehanne listened, her blue-grey eyes grave. "Before I passed through the stone doorway, my mother embraced me," I said. "She told me that whatever happened, I was her daughter and the joy of her life, now and always. She made me promise never to forget it." I shrugged. "That's my mother."
She was silent a moment. "That's lovely."
"I take it it wasn't the same for you," I said softly.
"No." Jehanne shook her head. "Not at all." I waited for her to say more, but she didn't. All she had ever said was that her parents had both been adepts of Cereus House. I knew from Court gossip that her parents were alive and well, that the King had bestowed an estate and minor titles on them as a wedding gift, and that Jehanne had essentially banned them from the Court. "I take it you passed the rite successfully?" she asked at length. "The Maghuin Dhonn accepted you?"
"Aye." I smiled. "That She did."
"Aye, aye, aye." Jehanne tickled my cheek with a lock of my hair, her mood shifting. "Moirin, do you really worship a bear?"
"Yes and no." I had to think about this, too. "We don't worship in the way D'Angelines do. But we're Hers." I touched my chest. "The spark of Her spirit lives inside us."
She scowled. "I don't want to hear about your cursed diadh-anam."
"You asked," I said mildly. "I answered with the only truth I know."
"Oh, fine." Jehanne coiled herself around me and fixed me with an intense gaze. "But for now, you're mine, too, Moirin mac Fainche. And I don't think I'm done with you today. Any objections?"
I laughed and kissed her. "None at all."
* * *
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
After those first few weeks, the situation returned to whatever normalcy it had first possessed. Jehanne came to my chambers more often. And bit by bit, she talked more candidly to me.
I learned what I had already known—that her mother nearly died in bearing her. And I learned what I hadn't known—that her mother had ever resented her for it.
"She never wanted children," she murmured. "She did it only to please my father."
"What of your father?" I asked. Fathers were much