Slowly she opened her eyes.
“Andrew?”
“I’m here with you, my love.” He saw pain move visibly across her face, like a shadow. “How are you feeling, darling?”
“Terrible,” she said with a wry grimace. “As if I had been caught in a stampede of wild oudrakhi.” Who but Callista, he wondered, could have made a joke at this moment? “Where is Damon?”
“Sleeping, love. And Ellemir went to bathe and dress.”
She sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. “And I had thought today I would be truly a bride. Evanda be praised that it was Damon and Ellemir who heard us, and not that brat Dezi with his taunts.” Andrew flinched at the thought. It had been Dezi’s jeering, indeed, which had prompted the fiasco.
He said, with emphasis, “I wish I had broken his damn neck!”
She sighed, shaking her head. “No, no, it was not his doing. We are both grown people, we know enough to make our own decisions. What he said was a rudeness. Among telepaths, you learn very quickly not to pry into such matters, and if you should learn, unwillingly, of such a private matter, there are courtesies. It was unforgivable, but he is not to blame for what happened after, my love. It was our choice.”
“My choice,” he said, lowering his eyes. She reached for his hand. Her small fingers felt cold. Again he saw the pain, moving in her face, and said, “Damon said I was to call him if you woke in pain, Callista.”
“Not yet. Let him sleep. He wearied himself for us. Andrew—”
He knelt beside her and she held out her arms. “Andrew; hold me; just for a moment. Let me lie in your arms… just let me feel you close to me…”
He moved in swift response to the words, to the appeal in them, thinking, that even after last night, she still loved him, still wanted him. Then, remembering, he drew back. He said, heartwrung, “My darling, I promised Damon I would not touch you.”
“Oh, Damon, Damon, always Damon,” she said frantically. “I’m so sick and miserable, I just want you to hold me—” She broke off and let her eyes fall shut again with a forlorn sigh. He ached with the longing to fold her in his arms, not now with desire — that had receded very far — simply to hold her close, protect her, soothe her, comfort her pain. But his promise held him motionless, and she said at last, “Oh, I suppose he’s right, damn him. He usually is.” But he saw the pain again behind her eyes; aging her, drawing her face into hollows of exhaustion. Somehow, and the thought horrified him, he could think only of Leonie’s face, worn, drawn, weary, old.
Again memory surged over him, the moment last night when for a moment they had been fully submerged in the lovemaking of Damon and Ellemir. She had wanted it, welcomed it, begun to respond to him, only after that full sharing with the other couple. Again the harsh throb of pain in his groins, the agonizing memory of failure, blurred the excitement. His love for Callista was not an atom less, but he felt an awful, indefinable sense that something had been spoiled. A breath of intrusion, as if Damon and Ellemir, dear and close as they were, had somehow come between himself and Callista.
Callista’s eyes were filled with tears. In another moment, heedless of his promise, he would have caught her into his arms, but Ellemir, fresh and rosy from her bath, dressed in something he had seen Callista wearing, came back into the room. She saw that Callista was awake and went directly to her.
“Feeling better, breda?”
Callista shook her head. “No. Worse, if anything.”
“Can you get up, love?”
“I don’t know.” Callista moved tentatively. “I suppose I must. Will you call my maid, Elli?”
“No, I won’t. No one else is to lay a finger on you, Damon said, and I won’t have those silly girls gossiping. I’ll look after you, Callie. Andrew, you had better tell Damon she’s awake.” He found Damon already up, shaving in the luxurious bath which duplicated the one in their half of the suite. He gestured to Andrew to come in. “Does Callista seem any better?”
Then he noticed Andrew’s hesitation. “Hell, I never thought… are there nudity taboos in the Empire?”
Andrew felt oddly that it was he and not Damon who ought to be embarrassed. “Some cultures, yes. Mine among them. But I’m in your world, so I guess it’s up to me to get used to your customs, not you to mine.”
It was stupid to feel embarrassed, Andrew knew, or angry, outraged at the memory of Damon last night, standing naked over Callista, looking down on her fragile bare battered body.
Damon shrugged, saying casually, “There aren’t many taboos like that here. A few among the cristoforos, or for the presence of nonhumans or across generations. I wouldn’t willingly appear naked in a group of my father’s contemporaries, or Dom Esteban’s, for instance. It’s not forbidden, though, certainly not embarrassing the way you seem to be embarrassed. I wouldn’t walk out naked among a group of the maid-servants for no reason either, but if the house was afire, or something, I wouldn’t hesitate. A man my own age, married to my wife’s sister…” He shrugged helplessly. “It never occurred to me.”
Andrew realized he should have guessed last night, when Ellemir never seemed to notice.
Damon splashed water on his face, followed it with some green, pleasant-smelling herbal lotion. The smell reminded Andrew poignantly of Callista’s little still-room. Damon laughed, shrugging his shirt over his shoulders. He said, “As for Elli, you ought to be relieved. It means she has accepted you as part of the family. Would you want her to be embarrassed about you, and carefully keep herself covered in your presence, as if you were a stranger?”
“Not unless you would.” But did that mean she did not see Andrew as a male at all, he wondered. A subtle way of unmanning him?
“Give yourself time,” Damon said, “it will all sort itself out.” He was getting unconcernedly into his clothes. “Is it still snowing?”
“Harder than ever.”
Damon went to look, but when he cracked the casement to look out, the howling wind tore through the room like a hurricane. He hastily slammed it shut. “Callie’s awake? Who’s with her? Good, I’d hoped Ellemir would have sense enough to keep the maids away. In her condition, the presence of any nontelepath would be pretty nearly unendurable. That’s why we never had human servants in the Towers, you know.” He turned to the door. “Have any of you had anything to eat?”
“Not yet,” Andrew said, realizing that it was past noon and he was very hungry.
“Go down, will you, and ask Rhodri to send something up. I think we all ought to stay near Callista,” he said, then hesitated. “I’m going to put off a messy job on you. You’ll have to go and give Dom Esteban some kind of explanation. One look at me and he’d know the whole story — he’s known me since I was nine years old. I don’t think he’ll probe you for explanations. You’re enough of a stranger that he still feels a little reserved with you. Do you really mind? I can’t face explaining to him.”
“I don’t mind,” Andrew said. He did, but he knew that some kind of explanation to the crippled Lord Alton was no more than courtesy. It was long past the hour when Ellemir should have been about the house, and Dom Esteban was accustomed to Callista’s company.
He told the hall-steward that they had all been up very late and would breakfast in their rooms. Remembering what Damon had said about the presence of nontelepaths, he stipulated that no one should go into the suite, but the food should be set outside. The man said, “Certainly, Dom Ann’dra,” without a nicker of curiosity, as if the request were commonplace.