Fool's Errand (19 page)

“It's lovely,” said Persephone in a wondering voice.

“You're lovely,” murmured Azriel, catching her about the waist with his strong hands.

At his touch, Persephone inhaled sharply, but instead of pulling her close and kissing her again as she'd expected him to, he hoisted her so high into the air that she shrieked and dropped her goblet, drenching several children with wine. As the Gypsies roared with laughter, Azriel flashed them his wickedest pirate smile. Then, setting his scowling bride down upon the dais with exaggerated care, he jumped up after her and called for more wine.

The feast that followed was nothing like the feasts at the imperial palace had been, with their rare delicacies, cunning pastries and innumerable platters of artfully presented fish and fowl. But the bread was hearty, the butter creamy, the cheeses well aged, the meat succulent and the wine plentiful. Moreover, unlike palace feasts where Persephone had ever felt on edge—never knowing from which direction danger might spring next, always feeling many pairs of cold, speculative eyes upon her—she could not help but enjoy the Gypsy feast. The good food was followed by music, dancing and more drinking. As the night deepened, the air grew brisker, the stars brighter, the laughter louder and the merrymaking more boisterous. Children with big eyes, sticky fingers and mouths crammed with pilfered sweetmeats darted about in pursuit of Cur and the other barking dogs; beautiful girls with bare feet and bells at their ankles lifted their skirts and danced until the young men watching them broke into spontaneous—and often comical—displays of drunken virility. Near the spot where Fleet stood with his horsey head eyeball-deep in a giant tub of cut turnips, Tiny sat gazing at Fayla with mute, bleary-eyed adoration while she chatted with Rachel and pretended not to notice.

Indeed, Persephone was enjoying herself so much that she'd quite forgot about her earlier conversation with Rachel about “you know.”

At length, Cairn—who looked as though she'd been celebrating quite as hard as anyone else—stepped up to the dais and raised her hands high in the air. As soon as the Gypsies noticed her standing there, they began snickering good-naturedly, elbowing one another in the ribs and grinning up at Persephone in a way that caused her to feel a tiny prickle of alarm.

Turning to Azriel—who was wearing an expression of such angelic innocence that the tiny prickle instantly turned into a full-fledged stab of alarm—Persephone was about to ask him what was going on when Cairn's voice rang out across the clearing.

“My good people!” she cried. “The time has come for us to put the newlyweds to bed!”

This announcement was followed by several cymbal crashes and a chorus of drunken cheers.

“What?”
gasped Persephone, leaping to her feet so fast that she lost her balance and would have toppled backward off the dais if Azriel hadn't reached out to steady her.

Cairn took a deep breath. “I said,
THE TIME HAS COME FOR—”

“I heard what you
said,”
blurted Persephone, flapping her hands in agitation. “I just … I think there's been some kind of
mistake—”

“There's no mistake, Princess,” interrupted Cairn, hiccupping into her fist. “As Azriel is well aware, it is not enough for you to be wedded. You must be wedded
and
bedded.”

Whipping around, Persephone reached out to give her ne'er-do-well groom a fearsome pinch only to find that he was being carted off on the shoulders of his stumbling, still-cheering comrades.

“Where are they taking him?” she demanded, trying to sound fierce in spite of her badly knocking knees.

“To change out of his wedding clothes and into his consummation robe,” explained Cairn with another hiccup.

“His
consummation robe?”
wailed Persephone, forgetting to sound fierce.

Cairn grinned and nodded as Fayla and the other Gypsy women tugged Persephone off the dais and laughingly propelled her across the clearing to a small hut set well apart from the others. “So you needn't be concerned about keeping the rest of us awake all night with your lovemaking noises,” confided the grandmotherly woman with the cheek-pinching compulsion.

“Remind him you're doing this for the sake of others,” advised a suspiciously solemn-faced Rachel.

Before Persephone could say anything to this
useless
piece of advice, the door of the hut was thrown open to reveal a bed so enormous that it took up most of the hut's candlelit interior.

“But … but there's no table!” she spluttered. “There's not even a
chair!”

Fayla chuckled as she pushed Persephone into the hut and swiftly unlaced her gown. “You don't need help getting into your consummation shift, do you?” she asked, gesturing to a simple white shift at the foot of the bed.

“What? No!” blurted Persephone, clutching her loosened gown to her bosom to keep it from slipping down to her ankles. “But—”

She broke off at the sound of drunken singing and lewd male laughter approaching fast.

“Here he comes!” cried Fayla, clapping her hands together in apparent delight.

And then she was gone.

For half a heartbeat, Persephone just stood in the narrow gap between the bed and the wall, staring at the closed hut door and trying to decide if it would be worse to greet Azriel wearing her “consummation shift” or to greet him half-dressed. Deciding that the latter would be worse, she hastily slipped out of her mother's liquid sunlight gown and tugged the shift down over her head. Seconds later, the door of the hut burst open to reveal Azriel upon its threshold. Besides a robe that gaped to reveal his powerful chest and hard, flat stomach, the only other thing he appeared to be wearing was an expression that told Persephone that he was aflame with pent-up desire and in no mood to be denied.

Desperately, she tried to summon feelings of outrage, tried to make herself reach for the dagger that was yet strapped to her thigh. All she could seem to do, though, was to watch helplessly as Tiny and the other men whispered a few last (probably lewd) suggestions into Azriel's ear before guffawing loudly at their own cleverness and shoving him forward into the hut.

As the door slammed behind him, Azriel stumbled toward Persephone in a display of clumsiness that didn't fool her for an instant. Nevertheless, she was forced to scurry backward to avoid his ridiculously windmilling arms. After half a dozen steps, she felt her back bump up against the wall, and the next minute Azriel was so close that she couldn't even
breathe
without some part of her touching some part of him. Without taking his eyes off hers, Azriel eased one forearm against the wall above her head and leaned even closer.

“Persephone?” he whispered as he slowly traced the length of her bottom lip with the index finger of his free hand.

“Yes?” she replied breathlessly.

“I just want to say that you mustn't think you can have me just because we're married,” he murmured in a voice so seductive that it took Persephone a moment to process what he'd said.

“W-what?” she asked confusedly.

“We married for the sake of others, remember?” continued Azriel in the same seductive voice as he slowly planted a light kiss near her right ear. “This marriage has a higher purpose, remember?” He planted another kiss near her left ear and did not pull away. “I think that if I asked, you would claim that the vows we spoke and the kisses we shared meant nothing at all.”

“O-ohh,” stammered Persephone, who could not help closing her eyes. “Well, uh—”

“I have my pride, you know,” interrupted Azriel, his warm breath tickling her neck, “and my honour, as well. I cannot allow you to take advantage of me just because you now call me husband. Though it is true that I once professed my love for you and swore that I could not live without you, we've agreed that our marriage will be a platonic one. And even though the sight of you standing in the candlelight tousled, barefoot and completely naked beneath your shift is enough to make a man weep tears of blood, I cannot allow you to entice me into compromising myself.” Azriel sighed deeply and brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Does that make sense to you?” he murmured. “Or. do you think that perhaps this marriage of ours might be something more than a transaction of necessity?”

For a fleeting moment, nothing in the world made sense to Persephone but the lingering feel of Azriel's fingers brushing against her skin, and she could think of no reason why their marriage
shouldn't
be something more than a transaction of necessity—something
much
more. Then she remembered Finn and the evil Regent and the jar of white beans and the quest for the healing pool. She thought of the Gypsies who, for all their jolly laughter and good-natured ribbing, would have thwarted her plans to seek the pool if this marriage to Azriel had not fit into their own plans. She recalled how she'd ever been at the mercy of someone else's whims and how she had ever hungered for the freedom to be her own master, that she might shape a destiny that belonged to none but her. And it occurred to her that if it was true that this hunger for freedom did not seem to gnaw at her in quite the same way as it used to, it was also true that it had been a part of her for so long that she did not know if she'd ever be able to entirely cast it aside.

As she pondered all of these things, the mad fever that had consumed her since she'd first stepped into the dream earlier that evening slowly began to recede.

When it had receded completely, Persephone reluctantly looked up at Azriel and saw at once that there was no need to explain any of this to him. The ice in his very blue eyes told her that he already knew the spell had been broken and that he'd already begun to retreat to that faraway place where she could never hope to follow.

“A transaction of necessity it is, then,” he said easily, nodding as he stepped away from her.

For some reason, Persephone felt a flutter of panic. “Azriel—”

“You understand, of course, that tomorrow we shall have to act as though I bedded you well and often this night,” he interrupted in conversational tones.

“O-oh,” she stammered, flushing. “Yes, of … of course—”

“Good,” nodded Azriel. “Now that we've settled that, shall we try to get some sleep?”

“All right,” mumbled Persephone. Casting a darting glance at the enormous bed, she hesitantly asked Azriel where he was going to sleep.

“What do you mean where am I going to sleep?” he asked in a puzzled voice. “I am going to sleep in the bed. Where else would I sleep?”

“I don't know,” said Persephone lamely. “On the floor, perhaps?”

“I am not your eunuch slave anymore, Your Highness.”

Though Azriel sounded almost like his old self when he said this, Persephone did not rise to the bait. She could not spar with him—not here, not now. For though it was she who'd closed the door on making their marriage something more than a transaction for the sake of others and she who'd put the ice back into his eyes, it grieved her nonetheless.

And so, in response to his teasing comment, she merely nodded stiffly, picked up a pillow and tried to edge past him so that she could lie down on the floor by the door.

“Wait,” said Azriel, moving to block her way. Sounding almost exasperated, he said, “There is room enough in the bed for both of us, Persephone.”

Clutching the pillow to her breast, she shrugged and bit her trembling lower lip.

“We will be expected to bed down together from now on,” pointed out Azriel, who seemed visibly moved by the sight of her trembling lip. “Do you intend to spend the rest of your life sleeping on the floor?”

Persephone shrugged again and looked away.

Azriel slid his finger under her chin and tilted her head up so that she could not help but look at him. “You are far and away the most maddening woman I've ever met in my life,” he said gently. “I'm sorry for teasing you—I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. How could I have? I've vowed to devote myself entirely to your happiness and contentment, remember? This, on top of everything else I've vowed on your behalf!” Smiling down at her with a warmth that made Persephone want to burst into tears or fling her arms around him or both, he said, “Blow out the candles, wife. Remove your dagger and lie down on your side of the bed. I promise I'll behave myself until the very day you beg me to do otherwise.”

Persephone was so relieved that Azriel had come back to her from his faraway place that she willingly did as he bade. For what seemed like an eternity, she lay in the darkness unable to sleep for the nearness of him in bed beside her.

“Azriel?” she whispered at length.

“Yes?” he said, sounding quite as wide awake as she.

“I … I'm sorry, too.”

“I know.”

And later still:

“Azriel?”

“Yes?”

“You are very kind to me.”

“You are worth it.”

EIGHTEEN