In Which Nata Has Nothing Better to Do

January 7, 1201

"You don't have to rise at the crack of dawn every morning, you know," Nata teased as Falidor finished dressing. "No one dares attend to this room before they know for sure that I'm awake. Besides--half the staff probably has some idea of what we're doing in our spare time anyway."

Falidor frowned. She'd been half-joking, but he'd of course gone for the nugget of truth. She'd have to work on that. "I don't want anyone saying things about you."

"Eh. I don't much care." Nata shrugged. She didn't care, really; the staff could think what they liked, but none of them were fool enough to say anything to her face, or even behind her back on the off-chance it got back to her. "I'd rather you feel like you didn't have to run off so soon."

"But I have to make my room look at least somewhat lived-in."

"Why? Maybe you spent the night with a chambermaid."

"No. I only want to spend nights with you."

"Then spend the morning with me as well, you silly boy."

"No. You may not care what people say about you, but I do. I can't be seen here--for your sake. I mean... we're not married."

Nata snorted. Falidor did, on occasion, like to state the obvious--just like she liked to snark if off. "I suppose we could always get married."

"We could."

Dear Lord. Nata slipped off the bed and landed a playful slug on his shoulder. "I was joking."

"I wasn't." Said without blinking, said without smiling. "I think I want more. I think you do too."

"I think we already have more than you think we do." Or did he? They never said much. But she'd never been one to say things like that, and he wasn't one to say much at all. "Marriage would just be a way of letting other people know it."

"Good. I want everyone to know it."

And he'd been concerned about people thinking her merely promiscuous. The widowed sister of a baron marrying a low-born steward seven years her junior was a much juicier piece of gossip.

But... well, she didn't care. "All right, then."

"Good." She hadn't quite noticed how rarely and subtly he smiled until this odd and obvious grin had appeared. "Get dressed. Father Septimus should be stumbling home by about now."

Nata cocked her head to the side. Of all the things she hadn't expected to start her day with. "Today? Seriously?"

"Why not? Do you have something better to do?"

"No, nothing comes to mind." And if she was truly as sincere as she felt about that, than it must have been the right decision. "I had no idea you were so spontaneous, Falidor Diarn."

NEXT CHAPTER:

In Which Falidor Is Employed by a Chivalrous Pervert

March 8, 1198

"Wait, what?" Young Marsden's face scrunched in confusion. Falidor, clearly, had not done well in formulating a child-friendly version of the events--not that he had expected that he would. He didn't know much about children, apart from the fact that Ivy had wanted several.

But, he worked his posts on weekends in preparation for his full hours post-graduation, and when the master of the castle was young, the steward had to take on a few uncomfortable duties. The snickering guard who had put the tanner away had been only too eager to remind him of that.

"Uh... it's complicated. But the tanner... wasn't treating his horses all that well."

"Well, duh! Tanners make leather out of old horses. That's their job."

"Yes, but..."

"Did he whip them? Because everybody whips their horses. It's mean, but not jail mean."

Falidor cringed. What the tanner had been doing was, almost by precise adult definition of such a stilted spontaneous child's term, 'jail mean'. Too bad he wasn't talking to an adult. "Well..."

"The tanner matter?"

Thank God! Falidor sighed to himself as Lady Nata stepped into the study. Well-bred lady or not... well, living in her castle over the weekends had allowed him to overhear more than enough evidence of her being far from an innocent. But, she was also a mother, with her son's best interests at heart.

"Yes. That."

Frowning, Nata shut the door and joined Falidor at the foot of her son's chair. "Marsden, do you remember how I told you that there are certain situations in which other people may or may not want to be touched? And that in these situations, you should always ask before you touch them?"

In spite of the generalities, Marsden nodded. This previous conversation must have been somewhat more specific, or at least as specific as the boy's age would allow. "Uh-huh."

"Well, the same thing goes for horses and other animals. Stroking a horse's mane is all right, as is sitting on one, but there are certain ways in which a person shouldn't touch a horse without the horse's permission--and as horses and other animals can't tell us whether or not they'd like those touches, we have to refrain from touching them in those ways."

"Like pulling their tails?"

Lady Nata's eye twitched. The tanner's activities had, indeed, included pulling on something. "...Something like that, yes."

"Well, he's lucky he didn't get kicked, then." Yes, lucky he hadn't been kicked. Or hadn't had his colon ruptured. "Can I go and play now?"

"Yes, you may."

As apparently eager to be done with the conversation as Falidor was, Marsden sprung from the chair and dashed for the door. He had a new squadron of toy soldiers that had to get back to a very important war against the cook's poor cat.

As the door swung shut behind him, his mother smirked. "Well. I'd heard the phrase 'beating a dead horse', but I never thought I'd have to deal with the aftermath of someone acting it literally."

"The horses were dead?"

"Some of them, apparently. If you ask me, those ones were the lucky ones--though he knows how he traumatized them while they lived."

"Some madman broke into the pen and had his way with one of my father's pigs once. That pig was never quite the same after that." Falidor shook his head. "I'll be sure to find some loving new homes for the surviving horses."

"Not too loving of homes, though."

"Ah. Yes, right." There really was no suitable way of discussing the matter.

"Keep one yourself, perhaps; a man whose pig once suffered so wouldn't do the same to a horse. Call it a graduation present."

Falidor shrugged. His mother had a horse--a present from her own prominent stepmother--but he'd never had one of his own growing up. "All right, but I'm not too familiar with them. I might be too big for a horse."

It wasn't until Lady Nata's eyes flickered down to his pelvic region that he quite heard himself. Yes--no suitable way at all. "For riding one, I mean."

Lady Nata raised an eyebrow.

"Er, for transportation. Not--"

"Yes, yes. Riding. Good Lord, Falidor, I don't know how you expect to work for me if you don't realize that my mind will always immediately go to the most disgusting option possible."

"Just... getting used to it, I suppose." He grimaced. Why did he find Lady Nata so perplexing? His own mother, certainly, was by no means a bashful woman. Then again, Ivy rather had been. "At least I know you take a strict stance on unwelcome touching?"

"Indeed, I do. Call me a chivalrous pervert."

"I don't know if it's wise to call one's employer a pervert--not to her face, at least."

Lady Nata snorted. "If an employer acts on it, call them what they deserve. And maybe fling the nearest blunt object their way."

"I don't think I could ever fling a blunt object at you, even if you were being a pervert."

She chuckled. Her laugh managed to be feminine despite not being ladylike. "Then it's a good thing I make a point to be chivalrous."

NEXT CHAPTER:

In Which Falidor Is Dull by Comparison

November 19, 1197

Falidor tried to keep a stone face as he mentally kicked himself. Marsden Tamrion was the technical master of this castle, having inherited it from his father, but it should have been obvious that it would be his widowed mother who ran the place. Marsden Tamrion, after all, was five.

Not that he'd thought all that much about who would be interviewing him beyond it being young Marsden's castle. He was only here because his grandmother had pulled some strings with her husband, who was Lady Renata's great-uncle. He was only here because he would be graduating in a few months and he had no other goals or prospects. He'd grown up thinking he'd inherit his father's farm, but he and Ivy had talked so much about how they'd run the place that the thought of an adult life there had died with her. He'd majored in Theology, focusing in Biblical Studies, solely to justify her death to himself and he'd failed--and he'd found little interest in any other subject the university had to offer, or much of anything at all. He doubted he'd make a good steward, and he wasn't even sure he cared. This was a pity interview.

He wasn't sure he cared about that either.

"So." Having studied him for the twenty or so seconds he'd been in the room, Lady Renata pushed back the desk chair and rose to her feet. She was plainly dressed for a noblewoman, wearing more the sort of thing his gentlewoman mother or not-quite-adjusted-to-her-rise-in-station grandmother would wear, a plain dress with a leather bodice atop it. The boyish haircut did nothing to advance her appearance, though Falidor would admit that it suited the shape of her face. "Do you speak at all? Or do you just stand around staring at the floor?"

In truth, Falidor supposed that was about all he did these days. But--if only for his mother's sake--he compromised a verbal response. "I can speak."

"Good; my inkwell's run dry, and I'd rather not have to read your answers off the dust on the mantle. Now, I'll get to the point." She interlocked her fingers and cracked her knuckles. "Why do you want to be steward here?"

From the unblinking stare, Falidor got the sense that Lady Renata was a woman who wanted the truth--and knew bullshit when she smelled it.

"I don't." His blunt answer brought no more damage than a raised eyebrow. "I mean... I don't much want to do anything, really. But I have to keep myself alive somehow." For all he had little reason to be alive in the first place.

"Right. Well, if you must know, I've been having a rather more difficult time finding a steward than most would, given my son's age. I want a steward who would be willing to live here at the castle, and who would be willing to impart some instruction on running the castle to Marsden once he had grasped the ropes of the job himself. And if I'm ever out of the castle for whatever reason, the steward would have to act as lord of the manor in my stead--but not without getting a swollen head and forgetting any direction I might have left him. Can you do that?"

Falidor shrugged. "I don't object to any of it, so I suppose I could at least try."

"Good. You can start as soon as you leave campus." Lady Renata flashed a grinned. Her no-nonsense hiring approach aside, it seemed that she indeed had a jovial side and enjoyed indulging it. She'd be tired of him in a matter of months, he was sure of it. "And given how many men turned this job down, don't you dare give me any reason to fire you; I'm damn sick of doing the work of two people myself, and I don't just mean in the--"

She cut herself off, but without blush or contraction. Whatever she'd been about to say, she'd left it off for his sake, not her own. She had little to no problem saying anything that popped into her head. "My apologies. I forgot that this was a professional conversation. Or perhaps you're so inherently dull that I felt compelled to liven the dialogue for the sake of my own sanity."

Huh. He ought to have been insulted.

But--for what felt like the first time in years--he smiled. "I suppose life in a castle run by a five-year-old and his firebrand mother would render much of the world dull by comparison."

"Since I want you to keep this job, I'll let you keep thinking that. Now, don't you dare get any better offers before the end of March, you hear?"

Falidor nodded. "There's not much risk of that. Thank you, Lady Renata."

"Oh, no--none of that 'lady' nonsense. Given how much time we'll be spending together, it's easier for both of us if you just call me Nata." She winked, then brushed past him on her way to the door. "Now, come along and meet Marsden; I suspect he'll have plenty to say about that nose of yours."

NEXT CHAPTER:

In Which Severin Makes a Start

September 12, 1189

"She was still pretty angry last time she said anything to me, you know."

Severin nodded. He hadn't expected Rina to be over it, and if Nata greeted him with a warning instead of her usual teasing about how Virgo House was the least virginal house on campus, that spoke volumes. "I know."

"She might not want to talk to you."

"I know. If she doesn't, I'll go."

Nata sighed. It didn't suit her, but her concern for her cousin did. "I'll tell you're here, then."

"Thank you."

She hurried up the stairs and left him to his thoughts--not a comfortable place of late. Why had he said it? What did it matter if he didn't want kids if they couldn't have them anyway? Even if he had wanted kids, he would have rather had none with Rina than a dozen with anyone else.

God. The only person he'd ever considered spending his life with and he'd fucked it all up with a thoughtless comment. His mother's advice should have been his instinct, but it hadn't been. How many other boneheaded comments would he make, instead of their reasonable, even romantic alternatives? Would he need to bounce everything he said to Rina off of his mother for the rest of his life.

Assuming she even took him back...

"Severin."

There she was, down the stairs in Nata's place. If he'd had any words chosen, they were gone. He was an idiot. He was such a fucking idiot.

"I... I didn't know what to say, and I chose my words poorly."

She just stared. With a deep breath, he stepped forward and took her hand. She didn't pull it back. Still, he didn't want to take her time for granted.

"I wanted to reassure you, but I realize now that all I was doing was sweeping your hopes and pains under the rug, as if somehow my happiness would make them go away--and I'm sorry. The truth is that all I want is to spend the rest of my life with you, spend it trying to make you as happy as you make me, if you'll let me. And I understand if you won't. I'll leave if you want me to."

"I don't want you to leave." She squeezed his hand back. Her touch was cold and warm at once. "Happiness doesn't come naturally to me."

"Then I'd like to help in any way I can."

"Thank you." She managed a small smile as he pressed his lips to her fingers. A small one--but it was a start. "You're sure you're ready for everything that's bound to come from marrying me? All the talk? Maybe nagging from you parents?"

"My mother won't be a problem, and she knows how to keep my father in line." He smirked. "And I don't give a damn about anyone else."

"And if I did... somehow have a baby?"

Then he'd come to terms with it. "It won't be problem, loving anyone who's half you."

NEXT CHAPTER: