If it had been Ellemir asking this, Andrew would have felt he had scored a point, but as Callista said it there was no challenge. “Cultural prejudices aren’t rational. Ours is against sleeping with other women. Yours, against sex in pregnancy, makes no sense to me, unless a woman is really ill.”
She shrugged. “Biologically, no pregnant animal desires sex; most will not endure it. If your women have been culturally conditioned to accept it as the price of retaining a husband’s sexual interest, I can only say I am sorry for them! Would you demand it of me after I had ceased to take pleasure in it?”
Andrew suddenly found that he was laughing. “My love, of all our worries, it seems that one is the easiest to put off until it is at hand! Do you have a saying… can we cross that bridge when we come to it?”
She laughed too. “We say we will ride that colt when he has grown to bear a saddle. But truly, Andrew, do you Terran men—”
He said, “God help me, love, I don’t know what most men do. I doubt if I could ask you to do anything you didn’t want to. I’d probably… probably take the rough with the smooth. I guess some men would go elsewhere, but make damn sure their wives didn’t find it out. There’s another old saying: what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.”
“But among a family of telepaths, such deceit is simply not possible,” Callista said, “and I would rather know my husband was content in the arms of someone who gave us this out of love, a sister or a friend, than adventuring with a stranger.” But she was calmer, and Andrew sensed that removing their talk from an immediate problem to a distant one had made it less troubling to her. He said, “I’d rather die than hurt you.”
As he had done earlier, she lifted his fingertips to her lips and kissed them, very lightly. She said with a smile, “Ah, my husband, dying would hurt me worse than anything else you could possibly do.”
Chapter Thirteen
Andrew rode through melting snow, a light flurry still falling. Across the valley he could see the lights of Armida, a soft twinkle against the mountain mass. Damon said these were only foothills, but to Andrew they were mountains, and high ones, too. He heard the men talking behind him in low voices and knew that they were also looking forward to food, and fire, and home, after eight days in the far pastures, noting the damage of the great blizzard, the condition of the roads, the damage to livestock.
He had welcomed this chance to be alone with those who could not read his thoughts. He had not yet grown wholly accustomed to life within a telepathic family, and he had not, as yet, quite learned to guard himself against accidental intrusion. From the men he picked up only a small, slight background trickle of thought, surface, undisturbing, inconsequential. But he was glad to be coming home. He rode through the courtyard gates and servants came to take his horse’s bridle. He accepted this now without thought, though there were times when, stopping to think, it still disturbed him somewhat. Callista ran down the steps toward him. He bent to kiss her lightly on the cheek, then discovered, though it was too dark in the courtyard, that it was Ellemir he held. Laughing, sharing her amusement at his mistake, he hugged her hard and felt her mouth under his, warm and familiar. They went up the steps holding hands.
“How are all at home, Elli?”
“Well enough, though Father has grown short of breath and eats little. Callista is with him, but I would not let you go ungreeted,” she said, giving his fingers a slight squeeze. “I’ve missed you.”
Andrew had missed her too, and guilt surged in him.
Damn it, why did his wife have to be twins? He asked, “How is Damon?”
“Busy,” she said, laughing. “He has been buried in the old records of the Domains, of those of our family who were Keepers or technicians at Arilinn or Neskaya Tower. I do not know what he is looking for, and he has not told me. In this last tenday I have seen little more of him than of you!”
Inside the hallway Andrew shrugged off his great riding cloak and gave it to the hall-steward. Rhodri drew off his snow-clogged boots and gave him fur-lined ankle-high indoor boots to put on. Ellemir on his arm, he went into the Great Hall.
Callista was seated beside her father, but as she came through the door she broke off, laid her harp unhurriedly on a bench and came to meet him. She moved quietly, the folds of her blue dress trailing behind her, and against his will he found himself contrasting this with Ellemir’s eager greeting. Yet he watched her, spellbound. Every movement she made still filled him with fascination, desire, longing. She held out her hands and at the clasp of those delicate cool fingertips he was baffled again.
What the hell was love anyway? he asked himself. He had always felt that falling in love with one woman meant falling out of love with others. Which of them was he in love with anyway? His wife… or her sister?
He said, holding her hands gently, “I’ve missed you,” and she smiled up into his face.
Dom Esteban said, “Welcome back, son, hard trip?”
“Not so much.” Because it was expected, he bent and kissed the old man’s thin cheek, thinking that he looked paler, not well at all. He supposed it was to be expected. “How is it with you, Father?”
“Oh, nothing ever changes with me,” the old man said as Callista brought Andrew a cup. He took it, raised it to his lips. It was hot spiced cider, and tasted wonderful after the long ride. It was good to be home. At the lower end of the hall the women were laying the table for the evening meal.
“How is it out there?” Dom Esteban asked, and Andrew began his report.
“Most of the roads are open again, though there are heavy drift-falls, and pack-ice at the bend in the river. All things considered, there’s not much stock lost. We found four mares and three foals frozen in the shed beyond the ford. Ice had drifted over the fodder there and they had probably starved before they froze.”
The Alton lord looked grim. “A good brood mare is worth her weight in silver, but with such a storm, we might have expected more losses. What else?”
“On the hillside a day’s ride north of Corresanti, a few yearlings were cut off from the rest. One with a broken leg could not get to the shelter, was covered by a snow-slide. The rest were hungry and shivering, but they’ll do well enough, all fed and tended now, and a man left to look after them. Half a dozen calves were dead in the farthest pasture, in the village of Bellazi. The flesh was frozen, and the villagers asked for the carcasses, saying the meat was still good, and that you always gave it to them. I told them to do what was customary. Was that right?”
The man nodded. “It’s custom for the last hundred years. Stock dead in a blizzard is given to the nearest village, to make what use they can of meat and hides. In return they shelter and feed any livestock that makes its way down in a storm, and bring them back when they can. If in a hungry season they slaughter and eat an extra one, I don’t worry that much about it. I’m no tyrant.”
The serving women were bringing in the meal. The men and women of the household gathered around the long table in the lower hall, and Andrew pushed Dom Esteban’s rolling-chair to his place at the upper table, where the family sat with a few of the upper servants and the skilled professionals who managed the ranch and the estate. Andrew was beginning to wonder if Damon would not appear at all when he suddenly thrust open the doors at the back of the hall and, apologizing briefly to Ellemir for his lateness, came to Andrew with a welcoming smile.