He kissed her; in a very short time, he had learned that a kiss would always please her. “I’m trying to decide if what you think you want is what you really want-”
“It is!”
“And even if it is, whether it might be so harmful to you that I just can’t do it anyway.”
She was still watching him. “You didn’t say whether this is something you would want,” she said presently.
Of course that needed to be answered with a kiss as well. “I adore you,” he said simply. “You’re in my thoughts night and day. I always know where you are, and I always look for ways to be beside you. I don’t know that much about how men and women fall in love. I don’t know what would have happened by now if you were just an ordinary girl.” He smiled, imagining it. “If you were a shopkeeper’s daughter, I probably just would have showed up at your door every day, asking you silly questions or bringing you stupid presents.”
“Presents aren’t stupid,” she murmured.
“But I would have brought you shoe buckles and coins that had been smashed into funny patterns by carriage wheels, and maybe bird feathers. Not real presents,” he said. “And every time I left, your father would have said, ‘What’s that strange boy doing, hanging about here so much? What’s he after?’ And you’d have said, ‘I don’t know. He makes calf-eyes at me, but he never flirts or gives me pretty compliments.’ And your father would say, ‘Well, is he courting you or isn’t he?’ And you’d say, ‘I don’t know! I can’t even tell if he likes me!’ Because I wouldn’t know how to go about it, you know. What to say. How to tell you that I thought about you every day.”
She was giggling now. “If I were a shopkeeper’s daughter, I’d wait till the next time you came by. And I’d invite you in and say, ‘Come to the back room with me, I have something to show you.’ And my father would be shaking his head, but you’d follow me, and when we were alone I’d put my hands on my hips, and I’d say, ‘Well? Do you like what you see or don’t you? Do you want me? Because if you do, I’ll take you, young man, but if you don’t, stop cluttering up my father’s shop.’ ”
“You probably would,” he said. “And you’d probably have to! Because I’d be so clumsy and tongue-tied I wouldn’t know how to say the words myself.”
She slipped out of his hold, rearranged herself so she was kneeling in front of him, her hands on her hips. On her face was an expression that was part exasperation, part sassiness. “Well? Do you like what you see, or don’t you?” she said softly. “Do you want me? Because if you do, I’ll take you.”
“I want you,” he answered quietly. “But you’re not a shopkeeper’s daughter.”
Now she put her arms around his neck and leaned in for the kiss he could not have refused her to save his own life. “And shouldn’t a princess get what she wants at least as often as a merchant girl?”
“A princess has so much more to lose,” he said. But his own hands had come up to wrap around her back, to draw her closer.
“I don’t think so,” she whispered. “I think it’s all the same.” She kissed him hard; her hands tightened, and the two of them tumbled back onto the blanket. “Love me, Cammon,” she said. “Please show me how it goes.”
And so he showed her. Or at least he showed her the little that he knew, though they both rapidly learned new tricks and pleasures. Amalie’s skin glowed white in the darkness; her hair was radiant. The fire died down but the incandescence of her body brightened the longer that he loved her. The whole room was bathed in the soft light of her contentment. Or maybe it was just that he could see nothing but Amalie, and his eyes had been bespelled by love.
CHAPTER 28
A messenger from Halchon Gisseltess arrived in the morning, and every key member of the royal household spent the day huddled in conferences. Milo told Cammon that he would not be needed until the evening and he should find some useful way to employ his time.
“What did the messenger say?” Cammon wanted to know, but Milo, of course, would not repeat it.
So Cammon headed down to the training yards, where the Riders were engaged in mock combat. It took a while to isolate Justin, who was deep in a furious battle against Coeval, while just a few paces away, Hammond and Wen tried to cut each other down. All the Riders were strung tight with tension. More than one, Cammon could tell, wished war was upon them already. Enough of this damn waiting! Time to fight! We’re ready!
But no one was ever really ready for war, Cammon thought.
Justin was covered with sweat, despite the chill, when he finally took a break. He pushed back his sandy hair, wet and ragged, and accepted the canteen of water Cammon handed him. “What was the message from Halchon Gisseltess?” Cammon asked.
Justin downed the entire contents of the canteen in five swallows. “He offered to meet with Baryn a week from now to discuss a ‘peaceful settlement of our differences.’ ”
“Will the king do it?”
“No. Too much danger in leaving the palace and heading to a rendezvous with a man who’s already said he wants you dead. The marlord would have nothing to lose by killing the king without a parley.”
“Does that mean the Gisseltess forces will attack us at the end of the week?”
Justin gave him a sober look. “Or before. The deadline may have been set to make us believe we had that much time.” He handed back the empty canteen. “Spies in Fortunalt tell us the foreign soldiers have landed, all of them dressed in Arberharst colors. A small force could make it to Ghosenhall in a week, though it would take longer to march a full army this far.”
Cammon shuddered. “I kept thinking that war wouldn’t really come.”
“But it has,” Justin said. “When will Tayse and Senneth be back?”
“Tonight, I think. Or tomorrow morning.”
Justin grasped his sword again. “Well, war better not strike until they return.”
Cammon watched the workout a while longer, declined the opportunity to join in, and drifted back toward the palace. But Amalie was still closeted with her father. There was no hope of seeing her, even in a public setting. He sent a thought to her, just a remembrance, to let her know he was thinking about her. He caught her start of happiness when she perceived it.
Oh, she was the easiest girl in the whole world to love, because she took such delight in it; and he would never be able to love anyone else so much; and surely she would break his heart in so many tiny pieces that not the brightest display of moonlight would be able to pick them out and infuse them with remembered brilliance. But despite all that, he could not wish last night undone-despite all that, he could not stop hoping there would be other nights ahead just like it.
He was too restless and too close to miserable to linger around the palace. He left the grounds and spent part of the day helping Lynnette with chores while Jerril was away training the Carrebos mystics. He spent another hour just prowling through the city. He had some vague idea of buying Amalie a gift, but what could she possibly want from him, this girl who received fabulous presents from serramar across the kingdom? It was sheer luck that drew his attention to a glitter of metal in the street, and he stooped down to retrieve a very paltry treasure indeed-a silver coin crushed and reshaped by the wheels of a passing carriage. Smiling, he pocketed it and went whistling down the street.
DINNER was a small and grim affair, with no true outsiders at the table, but Cammon took his accustomed place among the footmen because no one had told him otherwise. Before the diners arrived, he tucked the ruined coin under the plate at Amalie’s place, and as soon as she sat down, he silently bade her to look for it. She bit her lip to keep from smiling as she slipped it into her pocket.