In Which Severin Escapes Twice

March 14, 1162

As little as a year ago, Severin would not have been able to imagine any situation in which he would have willingly journeyed throughout far-off Dovia all alone for weeks on end, but news of a princess's upcoming wedding was not of the sort to be delivered by a messenger, or so Roderick had felt. At first, Roderick had asked Octavius, but this was rather out of the question seeing as it was Octavius's wedding as well. He had then asked Dalston, but he had refused on account of some stupid excuse that Severin was sure was only a cover for not wanting to leave Celina's side.

Roderick hadn't asked Severin, however; Severin had volunteered.

While they still got along just as they always had during the day, there had definitely been a marked change in the nighttime aspects of his relationship with Alina. Many nights, he would go to their bedchamber to find her already in her nightgown, curled up under the covers, sound asleep--or, perhaps on some nights, pretending to be fast asleep. He didn't quite understand; was this whole coitus interruptus business really so unbearable? It took some getting used to, but it was better than nothing, was it not?

Regardless, the lack of sex was taking its toll and he had found himself growing more and more irritable of late, and after one particularly nasty episode with Roderick's steward, Severin had felt that it was time to take drastic measures. While he was reluctant to leave his princess and their children, perhaps he was giving her the space she needed--and perhaps he would return to find her fires rekindled.

God, how long had it been? A few months, at least--whatever the count, he hadn't experienced so long a drought since before he had ever experienced fornication itself.

Frustrated, he hastily shifted his mind to other matters. He was now at his father's castle, though his father and older brother had both been out all day. He had arrived in the late evening and passed the news of Holladrin's approaching marriage to Viridis, then proceeded to have a pleasant, yet mildly awkward visit with her and his twin siblings--his four-year-old twin siblings. He had a son who was four years old--hell, he had a son who was five years old, and a daughter who was six. While they seemed to be fine children, he had difficulty believing that he--he who would be turning thirty near the end of the year, for God's sake--shared a parent with a pair who were scarcely more than babies. Likewise, he harbored such feelings also toward his mother's daughter... but in the end, he could not bring himself to mention this to anyone. It wasn't as if it could be the children's faults.

Speaking of children, he had been disappointed with Viridis's unwillingness to divulge any information about the wedding of her niece Riona and young Lord Felonis back in February. Their betrothal, of course, had been common knowledge among the nobility for years, but even with Primus's passing, no one had expected the pair to be wed so soon, nor so hastily and privately. It also seemed that Riona's twin brother Searle was to be knighted and married as soon as May--at all of fifteen. After Lileina's marriage at thirteen, Haldred had established himself as a man who was hasty to marry off his children, but after that wedding, Severin--and likely everyone else--had braced himself for similar affairs to that particular event, none of this sneaking about at the chapels with only the immediate family present. The whole ordeal, Severin found, seemed somewhat suspicious.

"What are you doing here?"

He pulled himself upwards and cast a sidelong glance over his shoulder to see his brother, Rudolphus, standing in the doorway, a small girl in his arms.

"Is Father with you?" Severin inquired in undertone, straining slightly to peer around his brother and down the corridor.

"Hasn't been all day," answered Rudolphus blandly, stepping further into the room. "I was out hunting with Ovrean and Tarien; Father claimed he was riding out to the tithe barns, but I'm sure he found a brothel on the way and another on the way back. But you didn't answer my question, brat--why are you here?"

Severin closed his eyes. "I came to deliver a message."

"Then deliver it," his brother urged him.

"I already told your mother."

"So? She's in bed already, so she wouldn't be able to tell me until morning--and now you've piqued my curiosity."

"Fair enough," Severin relented, rising from the couch. "Holladrin is getting married next month."

His brother frowned--Severin suspected that Rudolphus himself would have rather married Holladrin than Eudocia, and in the end, he didn't particularly blame him. "To whom?"

"Octavius."

Rudolphus snorted. "The eighth son of a lord? For a princess?"

"He's a baron in Naroni," muttered Severin, rolling his eyes.

"A baron in Naroni," repeated Rudolphus snidely. "Sounds to be the equivalent of a gentleman here... mind, he does outrank you, your lordship."

"God, you sound just like my sister-in-law," groaned Severin, shuddering at the thought of Laralita. "Anyway... I thought your daughter was three; this little girl looks quite a bit younger."

As he lowered the child to the ground, Rudolphus chuckled slightly. "My daughter is three--and unlike this little one, she actually sleeps through the night. No... this is the next you."

Severin raised an eyebrow. "You mean...?"

"Indeed. Duke Lonriad of Luperia--always taking in a bastard for his wife to coddle even more than she does her true children. I'd thought that perhaps Sidwein and Taimyra would have been spared my fate, but I suppose that was too much to hope for."

Rocking slightly in his discomfort, Severin was quick to change the subject. "Does the fact that Father is still turning them out inspire you to maybe start working on a few more of your own? The steward has been telling people that you're having some... difficulties."

Rudolphus chuckled as he returned to eye level. "Difficulties my ass--he's just jealous because half his children look like me."

"Well, I hate to sound like some stuck-up old status-seeker, but you're going to need to produce an heir, at the very least," Severin reminded him.

"As soon as we have enough wine in the cellar to make me consider sleeping with my wife, I will get straight to that. God, if only she looked more like her sister--she was here, you know, for quite some time, and I made sure to get my helping, even if Father took the lion's share."

Well, that was certainly shocking.

"Geneva?" Severin demanded in outrage; Celina had told him that she was still alive, but he would have hoped she'd had the sense to stay away from Roderick's relatives. "When was this?"

"Sporadically throughout last year, and a little while before," replied his brother, nodding toward the little girl on the floor. "Where do you think she came from?"

"Well, I've come to expect that sort of thing from him," he sneered, "but you? You and Roderick were always so close--how could you do that to him?"

Rudolphus shrugged. "As far as Roderick is concerned, Laralita is the only wife he has presently."

"Yes, but you know otherwise."

"Well, a man's got to have his fun, doesn't he?" demanded Rudolphus, placing his hands firmly on his hips. "Perhaps if you hadn't stolen my intended and left me for the most unsightly bitch in the kingdom, I wouldn't be looking for love outside my own bed."

"Don't try to blame your behavior on me!" Severin hissed, reducing to gnawing on the lining of his cheek to keep himself from shouting and waking the household.

"Why not? It isn't as if you're any better!"

He had certainly not expected to hear that.

"Excuse me?" he choked, caught completely off-guard.

"Oh, don't think for a second that anyone believes you went to your wedding bed a virgin," chided Rudolphus. "Frankly, I'm shocked to find that you thought I wasn't aware of your... youthful misadventures, shall we say? We older brothers have our ways, you know. You were long gone before they even sent you off to that monastery--and even there, I know you got to know some of the female servants in the biblical sense, correct? I wager you were the only man there who knew their sins before they confessed."

Severin sighed. "That was a long time ago. I was young, and--"

Rudolphus let out a soft laugh. "Oh, relax, Severin--I'm not judging you. I'm just saying that if you weren't married to the love of your life, you wouldn't have any right to berate me for not staying faithful to my own wife."

"Rudolphus..."

"I just don't want you thinking you're any different," his brother continued despite his protest. "It's in our blood, brother. Deep down, I know you're just like me; just like Fa--"

"I am not like you!" he snapped at last; this was the one thing he would not tolerate hearing. "I'm not like you, and I'm certainly not like him!"

Rudolphus sniffed impatiently. "Severin..."

"I'm not, and don't forget it for a moment!" he pressed once more.

"You're in denial," his brother declared.

"Shut up! There's nothing to deny!"

Rudolphus snorted. "Oh, I'm so sure about--"

"What the hell's going on in here?"

Startled, Severin turned around to see his father standing in the doorway, looking rather worse for the wear.

"Severin?" the older man addressed him. "This certainly is a surprise."

"Apparently Holladrin's marrying Octavius," muttered Rudolphus under his breath--Lonriad, however, paid him no heed.

"Everything all right back in Naroni, son?" he asked, concerned. "Anything I should know?"

Trying to calm himself somewhat, Severin strode away from Rudolphus and his new sister, toward his father. "Actually... I was just leaving."

Almost immediately, his father's face fell. "Oh, but you'll at least stay the night? It's rather chilly out there, you realize."

Severin shrugged. "I'll survive."

"But it's well past midnight," Lonriad protested. "Surely--"

As he crossed paths with his father, Severin looked him in the eye and nodded. "I know--surely I'll have to make up for a few lost hours."

And with that, he brushed past Lonriad and made his escape from the room.

NEXT CHAPTER:

In Which Viridis Discovers a Cruel Irony

November 14, 1161

It had been three months, Viridis found as she counted off the days in her head. Three whole months. She hadn't been stressed, nor had she been ill, nor had she slept with her husband within that period of time.

Three months. At this point, it was unlikely that it would ever return--not at her age. She was forty-nine years old, and she knew for a fact that there was no way she could be pregnant; now, she knew she never would be again.

Perhaps her son would see fit to give her another grandchild soon, she mused as gently bounced Camaline up and down. She loved the little girl like she would have loved a thousand of Rudolphus's children, of course, but she did hope that her son would, at the very least, stop abstaining from his wife at some point; she did not want Rudolphus to imitate his mother's mistake.

In the mean time, however, the twins were only four, only a year older than her granddaughter. It wasn't as if she no longer had the privilege of being a mother, she knew full well having believed for twenty-five years that Rudolphus would be her only child--she simply no longer had the chance of ever becoming a new mother again.

The twins, she assured herself, would be enough for her--and if they proved otherwise, then there was always Lonriad's year-old daughter. Viridis was already her mother in practice, as the girl's own had fled shortly after recovering from the birth, and she had to admit, she had become quite attached to the little girl. She had already raised and come to love one of Lonriad's bastards; why not do the same for another?

But in spite of it all, she did have her regrets. Maybe she should have eased up on the man, for her own sake; she had been young at the time, and had not known exactly what it was she wanted. It was cruelly ironic that now that she did, she was too old to aspire to it.

Ah, but such was life, Viridis supposed--just a collection of cruel ironies.

NEXT CHAPTER: