Yalith winced slightly before the pain in his voice, but she didn't flinch, and Kaeritha wondered how many interviews like this one she had experienced over the years.
"I think you should, Milord," the mayor agreed quietly. "Would you prefer for me to leave, so that you may speak to Dame Kaeritha frankly in order to confirm what I've said, and that Leeana came to us willingly and of her own accord?"
"I would appreciate privacy when I speak to Dame Kaeritha," Tellian said. "But not," he continued, "because I doubt for a moment that this was entirely Leeana's idea. Whatever some others might accuse the war maids of, I am fully aware that she came to you and that you did nothing to 'seduce' her into doing so. I won't pretend I'm not angry-very angry-or that I do not deeply resent your refusal to allow me to so much as speak to her. But I know my daughter too well to believe anyone else could have convinced or compelled her to come here against her will."
"Thank you for that, Milord." Yalith inclined her head in a small bow of acknowledgment. "I'm a mother myself, and I've spoken with Leeana. I know why she came to us, and that it wasn't because she didn't love you and her mother or because she doubted for a moment that you love her. In many ways, that's made this one of the saddest applications ever to pass through my office. I'm grateful that, despite the anger and grief I know you must feel, you understand this was her decision. And now, I'll leave you and Dame Kaeritha. If you wish to speak to me again afterward, I will, of course, be at your service."
She bowed again, more deeply, and left Tellian and Kaeritha alone in her office.
For several seconds, the baron stood wordlessly, his hand alternately tightening and loosening its grip on his dagger while he glared at Kaeritha.
"Some would call this poor repayment of my hospitality, Dame Kaeritha," he said at length, his voice harsh.
"No doubt some would, Milord," she replied, keeping her own voice level and as nonconfrontational as possible. "If it seems that way to you, I deeply regret it."
"I'm sure you do." Each word was carefully, precisely spoken, as if bitten clean-edged from a sheet of bronze. Then he closed his eyes and gave his head a little shake.
"I could wish," he said then, his voice much softer, its angry edges blurred by grief, "that you'd returned her to me. That when my daughter-my only child, Kaeritha-came to you in the dark, on the side of a lonely road, running away from the only home she's ever known and from Hanatha's and my love, you might have recognized the madness of what she was doing and stopped her." He opened his eyes and looked into her face, his own eyes wrung with pain and bright with unshed tears. "Don't tell me you couldn't have stopped her from casting away her life-throwing away everything and everyone she's ever known. Not if you'd really tried."
"I could have," she told him unflinchingly, refusing to look away from his pain and grief. "For all her determination and courage, I could have stopped her, Milord. And I almost did."
"Then why, Kaeritha?" he implored, no longer a baron, no longer the Lord Warden of the West Riding, but only an anguished father. "Why didn't you? This will break Hanatha's heart, as it has already broken mine."
"Because it was her decision," Kaeritha said gently. "I'm not a Sothōii, Tellian. I don't pretend to understand your people, or all of your ways and customs. But when your daughter rode up to my fire out of the rain and the night, all by herself, she wasn't running away from your heart, or your love, or from Hanatha's love. She was running to them."
The unshed tears broke free, running down Tellian's fatigue-lined cheeks into his beard, and her own eyes stung.
"That's her message to you," Kaeritha continued quietly. "That she can never tell you how sorry she is for the pain she knows her actions will cause you and her mother. But that she also knows this was only the first offer for her hand. There would have been more, if this one was refused, Tellian, and you know it. Just as you know that who she is and what she offers means almost all those offers would have been made for all the wrong reasons. But you also know you couldn't refuse them all-not without paying a disastrous political price. She may be only fourteen years old, but she sees that, and she understands it. So she made the only decision she thinks she can make. Not just for her, but for everyone she loves."
"But how could she leave us this way?" Tellian demanded, his voice raw with anguish. "The law will take us from her as surely as it takes her from us, Kaeritha! Everyone she's ever known, everything she ever had, will be taken from her. How could you let her pay that price, whatever she wanted?"
"Because of who she is," Kaeritha said quietly. "Not 'what'-not because she's the daughter of a baron-but because of who she is . . . and who you raised her to be. You made her too strong if you wanted someone who would meekly submit to a life sentence as no more than a high-born broodmare to someone like this Blackhill. And you made her too loving to allow someone like him or Baron Cassan to use her as a weapon against you. Between you, you and Hanatha raised a young woman strong enough and loving enough to give up all of the rank and all of the privileges of her birth, to suffer the pain of 'running away' from you and the even worse pain of knowing how much grief her decision would cause you. Not because she was foolish, or petulant, or spoiled-and certainly not because she was stupid. She did it because of how much she loves you both."
The father's tears spilled freely now, and she stepped closer, reaching out to rest her hands on his shoulders.
"What else could I do in the face of that much love, Tellian?" she asked very softly.
"Nothing," he whispered, and he bowed his head and his own right hand left the dagger hilt and rose to cover the hand on his left shoulder.
He stood that way for long, endless moments. Then he inhaled deeply, squeezed her hand lightly, raised his head, and brushed the tears from his eyes.
"I wish, from the bottom of my heart, that she hadn't done this thing," he said, his voice less ragged but still soft. "I would never have consented to her marriage to anyone she didn't choose to marry, whatever the political cost. But I suppose she knew that, didn't she?"
"Yes, I think she did," Kaeritha agreed with a slight, sad smile.
"Yet as badly as I wish she hadn't done it, I know why she did. And you're right-whatever else it may have been, it wasn't the decision of a weakling or a coward. And so, despite all the grief and the heartache this will cause me and Hanatha-and Leeana-I'm proud of her."
He shook his head, as if he couldn't quite believe his own words. But then he stopped shaking it, and nodded slowly instead.
"I am proud of her," he said.
"And you should be," Kaeritha replied simply.
They gazed at one another for a few more seconds of silence, and then he nodded again, crisply this time, with an air of finality . . . and acceptance.
"Tell her -" He paused, as if searching for exactly the right words. Then he shrugged, as if he'd suddenly realized the search wasn't really difficult at all. "Tell her we love her. Tell her we understand why she's done this. That if she changes her mind during this 'probationary period' we will welcome her home and rejoice. But also tell her it is her decision, and that we will accept it-and continue to love her-whatever it may be in the end."
"I will," she promised, inclining her head in a half-bow.
"Thank you," he said, and then surprised her with a wry but genuine chuckle. One of her eyebrows arched, and he snorted.
"The last thing I expected for the last three days that I'd be doing when I finally caught up with you was thanking you, Dame Kaeritha. Champion of Tomanâk or not, I had something a bit more drastic in mind!"