Forgetting everything except her misery, Andrew reached for her; Damon touched him on the arm, shook his head firmly. Distressed, Andrew stood looking at the sobbing woman, unable to tolerate her misery, unable to do anything about it, in helpless despair.
Ellemir went to her and turned her gently around. “Don’t lean on that old wall, love, when there are three of us here with shoulders to cry on.” She dried her sister’s tears with her long apron. “Tell us all about it. Was Leonie very horrible to you?”
Callista shook her head, blinking her reddened eyes hard. “Oh, no, she couldn’t have been kinder…”
Ellemir said, with a skeptical headshake, “Then why are you howling like a banshee? Here we wait, in agony lest we be told you’ll be whisked away from us and back to the Tower, and then when you come to us, saying all is well, and we are ready to rejoice with you, you start blubbering like a pregnant serving wench!”
“Don’t—” Callista cried. “Leonie… Leonie was kind, I truly think she understood. But Father—”
“Poor Callie,” said Damon gently. “I have felt the rough side of his tongue often enough!”
Andrew heard the pet name with surprise and a sudden, sharp jealousy. It had never occurred to him, and the pretty abbreviation which Damon used so naturally seemed an intimacy which simply pointed up his isolation. He reminded himself that Damon, after all, had been an intimate of the household since Callista was a small child.
Callista raised her eyes and said quietly, “Leonie freed me from my oath, Damon, and without question.” Damon sensed the anguished struggle behind her controlled calm, and thought, If Andrew makes her unhappy, I think I will kill him. Aloud he only said, “And your father, of course, was another story. Was he very terrible, then?”
For the first time, Callista smiled. “Very terrible, yes, but Leonie is even more stubborn. She said that you cannot bind a cloud in fetters. And Father turned on me. Oh, Andrew, he said dreadful things, that you had abused hospitality, that you had seduced me—”
“Damned old tyrant!” Damon said angrily. Andrew set his mouth in quiet wrath. “If he believes that—”
“He does not, now,” Callista said, and her eyes held a hint of their old gaiety. “She reminded him that I was not now thirteen years old; that when the doors of Arilinn first closed behind me, he had surrendered forever all right to give or refuse me in marriage; that even if Leonie had found me unfit and sent me from the Tower before I was of legal age and declared a woman, it would have been her right, and not his, to find me a husband. And many other home truths which he did not find pleasant hearing.”
“Evanda be praised that you are laughing again, darling,” Ellemir said, “but how did Father take these unkind truths?”
“Well, he did not like it, as you can imagine,” Callista said, “but in the end there was nothing he could do but accept it. I think he was even glad to have Leonie to quarrel with; we have all humored him too much since he was wounded! He began to act like himself, and maybe he began to feel a little more like himself too. Then when he had grumbled himself into accepting it, Leanie set herself to charm him — told him how lucky he was to have two full-grown sons-in-law to manage the estate for him so that Domenic could take his place in Council, and two daughters to live here and bear him company. At last he said Leonie had made it clear that I needed no blessing to marry, but he bade you come to take his blessing.”
Andrew was still angry. “If the old tyrant thinks I give a damn for his blessing, or his curse either—” he began, but Damon laid a hand on his wrist, interrupting him.
“Andrew, this means he will accept you as a son in his house, and for Callista’s sake I think you should accept it with such grace as you can. Callie has already lost one family when she chose, for your sake, not to return to Arilinn. Unless you hate him so much you cannot dwell in peace under his roof…”
“I don’t hate him at all,” Andrew said, “but I can care for my wife in my own world. I do not want to come to him penniless, accepting his charity.”
Damon said quietly, “The charity, Andrew, is on your side, and mine. He may live many years, but he will never again set foot to the ground. Domenic must take his place in Council. His younger son is a child of eleven. If you take Callista from him, you leave him at the mercy of such strangers as he can hire for a price, or distant kinsmen who will come through greed to see what bones they can pick. If you remain here and help him manage this estate, and give him the companionship of his daughter, you bestow far more than you accept.”
Thinking it over, Andrew realized that Damon was right. “Still, if Leonie wrung consent from him unwillingly…”
“No, or he would never have offered his blessing,” Damon said. “I have known him all my life. If he still grudged you consent, he would have said something like take her and be damned to both of you. Would he not, Callista?”
“Damon is right: he is terrible in anger, but no man to hold a grudge.”
“Less so than I,” Damon said. “With Esteban, it is one flare of anger, then all’s well, and he will take you to his heart as readily as he kicked you a moment ago. You may quarrel again — you probably will — he is harsh-tempered and irritable. But he will not serve you up old grudges like stale porridge!”
When Damon and Ellemir had gone Andrew looked at Callista and said, “Is this truly what you want, my love? I don’t dislike your father. I was only angry because he had bullied you and made you cry. If you want to stay here…”
She looked up at him, and the closeness came over them again, the old touch that had drawn them together before they met, the touch so much more real to him than the hesitant and frightened physical touch which was all she could ever permit. “If you and Father could not have agreed, I would have followed you anywhere on Darkover, or anywhere among your Empire of the stars. But only with such grief as I could never measure. This is my home, Andrew. The dearest wish of my heart is that I should never leave here again.”
He raised her fingertips gently to his lips. He said softly, “Then it shall be my home too, beloved. Forever.”
By the time Andrew and Callista followed the other couple into the main house they found Damon and Ellemir seated side by side on a bench beside Dom Esteban. As they came in Damon rose and knelt before the old man. He said something Andrew could not hear, and the Alton lord said, smiling, “You have proved yourself a son to me many times, Damon, I need no more. Take my blessing.” He laid his hand for a moment on Damon’s head. Rising, the younger man bent and kissed his cheek.
Dom Esteban looked over Damon’s head with a grim smile. “Are you too proud to kneel for my blessing, Ann’dra?”
“Not too proud, sir. If I offend against custom, in this or anything else, Lord Alton, I ask that you take it as ignorance of what is considered proper, and not as willful offense.”
Dom Esteban gestured them to a seat beside Damon and Ellemir. “Ann’dra,” he said, still giving the name the Darkhovan inflection, “I know nothing really bad of your people, but I know little of them that is good. I suppose they are like most people, some good and some bad, and most of them neither one nor the other. If you were a bad man, I do not think my daughter would be so ready to marry you, against all custom and common sense. But you cannot blame me if I am not quite happy about giving my best-loved child to an out-worlder, even one who has shown himself honorable and brave.”
Andrew, next to Ellemir on the bench, felt her hands clench tight as he spoke of Callista as his best-loved child. That was cruel, he thought, in her very presence. It had been Ellemir after all who had stayed at home, a dutiful and biddable daughter, all these years. Indignation at the old man’s tactlessness made his voice cool.