Shattered (16 page)

No one bothered him and his room was empty.  He would draw his own bath, and the basin he needed sat beside the tub.  It would take a few trips, but time was something he had in abundance.

On the third and final trip he ran into Jeremy.  Family seemed to be the only variable that wouldn’t move for him and Nathan drew in a breath as the impending collision walked towards him.

Jeremy planted himself squarely between Nathan and the invisible path he sought to travel
, as though he knew his younger brother’s thoughts. 

“What in the world are you doing
Nathan?”

Nathan readjusted his grip on the basin’s handles.  Water sloshed
around within, exaggerating every small movement until a wave crested against the side and spilled onto the floor.

“Hauling water for a bath.”

“Clearly.  But
why
?  You have servants for that.”

“I dismissed them all.”

Jeremy shook his head.  “Well I’m glad to see you’re getting cleaned up.  Why don’t you come out with me tonight? Marissa just got some new girls in from the west, why don’t we…”

“No,” Nathan said, too briskly.  He took another breath and softened his tone.  “Thank you, but no.”

He tried to slide past Jeremy but the halls within this part of the castle were narrow and his brother was making a sport out of blocking his path.  “Come on, it’ll do you good.  Trent must be smothering you.  I know he won’t leave well-enough alone, chasing after phantoms trying to figure out what happened with you, but you’re back now, and he should just put this whole ugly thing in the past.  Let’s go out, like we used to.”

“I’m a bit tired,” Nathan said, trying to offer up some excuse other than the truth.  “Perhaps another night.”

Jeremy shrugged and stepped aside for him.  “Probably all that time you spend in the sun.  It’ll drain you, you know.  Not to mention your skin.  You’re so dark now you’re starting to look like a southerner.”  Jeremy laughed at his own joke, calling out to Nathan as he hurried from the hall, “If you’re not careful someone will mistake you for a servant.”

Nathan didn’t want to hear any more.  And he was glad when he could finally shut the door to his quarters and be alone again.

He stripped down and slid into the bath.  The water was crisp and the effort in retrieving it made the reward sweeter.  The warm summer air disappeared as he submerged.  He sunk all the way in and stared up through the veil of water at the ceiling.  The currents of his bath made the lines of light sharp and he almost imagined the ceiling had teeth, until his lungs demanded air and he had to abandon his fantasy.

Nathan took a deeper breath and went down again.  It was so much quieter beneath the water.  If he could he’d stay there.

When he came up again he heard a small gasp behind him and the thump of something hitting the ground.  He looked back over his shoulder towards the sound.

One of the castle’s servant girls stood there, wide eyed, amidst a pile of
scattered towels.

“What happened to your back,” she blurted out, before her surprise could fade.  She clamped her mouth shut too late to halt the words.  Even her hands pressed up to her lips, to stifle her shock, failed to catch them before Nathan could hear.

It was only her voice that made her real.  “What are you doing in here?”  Nathan asked.  He stood up in the tub and turned towards her, displacing a wave of water as he did so.

“Sorry, sorry…” she whispered, frantically scrambling to pick up the mess she
’d made before the puddle expanding outward could touch it.  She kept her eyes down to the floor as she spoke.  “Master Jeremy sent me to attend to you.”

Nathan took a deep breath and looked down at the servant girl.  She didn’t deserve his anger, he told himself, and he realized then that’s just what it was.  He was angry.  At Jeremy, for sending this girl here.  At Trent, for not leaving him to his melancholy in peace. 

Robin’s vague warning came back to him then and he clenched his hand into a fist.  Above all else he was angry at her, for making him need her and then letting him go.

“Master Nathan?”  She didn’t look up, but her small voice refocused his attention.  She lifted a towel up to him in offering.

Nathan took it and wrapped it around his waist as he stepped from the bath.  He looked down at the crouching girl, at her small frame and messy hair, to the slip of a gown she wore.  It was so sheer that it may as well not be there at all.  He could see the curve of her waist and the outline of her breasts through the fabric.

Nathan lifted her chin up until he could find her face beneath her hair.  She had almond-shaped eyes, though they were blue in their depths.  Same
shade as his, and he didn’t doubt she had at least some of their northern heritage.  Her father’s side, most likely.

The corner of her lower lip was pulled in as she bit down on it.  Her eyebrows pulled in together
too.  Nathan ran his hand over her cheek to soothe her expression.  “What’s your name?”

“Adara,” she whispered, shutting her eyes as he caressed her face.

“Adara,” Nathan said sweetly, running his hand from her chin, over her neck and across her exposed collarbone.  She let out a little hum as his cold fingers traced a line against her naked skin.  “Thank you for the towel.  Now get out.”

Her eyes snapped open.  “But Master Jeremy said I should…”

“I bet he did.”  Nathan turned towards the mirror beside the tub and looked at his unfamiliar reflection staring back.  Jeremy was right, he had gotten dark.  Over his shoulder he saw Adara’s reflection too.

She was biting down on her
lip again.  “He was quite clear.”

Nathan waved his hand behind him, but he didn’t take his eyes from her, and she still didn’t move.

Adara’s hands twisted together into knots as she buried them into the sheer fabric of her dress.  She looked down at the floor, then back up, then down again.  Nathan thought she might chew right through her lip, at that rate.

“He
told me to keep you company…”

“I’m not dense, I know full well what he told you.  And I’m telling you to leave.”

She hazard one more glance up at him, though Nathan felt her eyes wandering more over his back than to his face.  In her place he’d stare too.  But she lingered too long and he lost his patience with her curiosity.

“Out!
”

Adara jumped a little and spun on her heels.  The bath door clicked shut behind her and Nathan breathed at last.  He turned from the mirror and stared over his shoulder at the lines crisscrossing his back.  It was like he was made of glass too and one strike had shattered a spider’s web of cracks along his skin.  They were smooth now, healed, but lighter than the rest of him.  Yes, he’d have stared too.

Nathan ran his hand through his hair.  The sun had made it lighter, more golden, like it had managed to trap some of the light there in each strand.  His messy beard was flecked with spots of gold too and he scratched at it absently.

He tucked the towel around his waist and set about shaving off two weeks of neglect from his chin.  The bath went a long way towards clearing his head.  Maybe today he’d finally face the truth he had been ignoring since his return, that his abduction had roots closer to home than he would have liked to admit.  Or maybe not.  There was always tomorrow.

“You look younger without the beard.”

Nathan froze in the doorway, between the bath and the
sitting area of his quarters.  Adara had made herself quite at home on the cushioned chair near his window.  She hugged one tasseled pillow to her chest, her legs curled up beneath her, her skinny knees poking out.

“Why are you still here?”

“Well, Master Jeremy said you might be difficult…”

“I’m not being difficult.  I’m not interested.”

“Of course you are.  Unless,” Adara paused and her bright eyes sparkled.  She dropped her voice low so that the next few words came out as a whisper only, as though it were possible to be overheard here.  “Unless you prefer men?”

“Unbelievable,” Nathan muttered,
though it really wasn’t.  It was all but the spoken truth about Trent.  Nathan wasn’t even angry that she might assume the same in him.  He shook his head as he marched towards her.

Adara let out a little squeak as he pulled her up from the chair and hauled her towards the door.
  She dug in her heels and pulled back, but she was no match for him.

“
Please let me stay,” she begged.  “I’m going to be in trouble if you send me back.  Please, just for tonight.”

Nathan let her go and she snatched her arm back.  Her lower lip quivered and she sucked it into her mouth to still it.  She looked like she was on the verge of tears.

Nathan let out a sigh and ran his hand through his hair again.

“Fine…”

The word was no more than out of his mouth before she sprang to life.  She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face into his chest.  He caught a breath of the spiced perfume in her hair, it smelled of cinnamon.

“Thank you!”

“You can sleep on the couch and I expect you gone first thing in the morning.”  Nathan pried her from around him.  She came off reluctantly and nodded.  “And stop doing that,” he said, touching at her lip.  Adara complied, but he could see it was an effort.

Nathan turned towards his bedroom, intending to dress, but Adara’s warm hand came down on back.

“Did you get whipped?”

Nathan spun around again. 
“Do you always blurt out exactly what you’re thinking?”

“I try not to Master, honest, but the words just come out.  Master Jeremy hates it.”

“I bet he does.”  His brother was spoiled.  The worst out of the three of them, or so Nathan liked to think, but he knew deep down he’d been just as bad.

“He’s threatened to sell me to a brothel if I make him angry again.  That’s why I can’t go back tonight.”

Nathan ignored her.  The girl had no sense of position.  Servants didn’t speak so openly with someone of his rank, but he found he really didn’t care.  Maybe once he had, but protocol seemed cumbersome now.

Nathan went into the bedroom to dress and left Adara to the main room.  At least she had the sense not to follow him.  He thought of shutting the door and staying there until she left, but his stomach growled out its protest to the idea.  She’d outlast him.

That was odd, Nathan realized.  He brought his hand down on his stomach and felt his ribs beneath his fingers.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been hungry, not since returning home.

He shrugged to himself and got dressed
, and for the first time in weeks he felt ridiculous.  His shirt hung off one shoulder and he had to tug it up until it was uniformly too loose.  And it was only the drawstring on his pants that kept them up at all.  He pulled the cord a little tighter before knotting it.  It was the best he could do.  Maybe tomorrow he’d finally see a tailor.

Nathan went back to the main room and stood in the doorway.  Adara had returned to the chair, pillow in her lap again.  She was twisting the tasseled corners around her fingers and frowning down at it.  She contained so much life, and she was trying so hard to restrain it.

She was so animated, the opposite to everything he had become.  She was fascinating, the same way the commoners in the courtyard were, or ants were, except that she was invading the safe place he sought to watch from.  He didn’t know what to do with her.

It was only one night though.  He could survive that.
  If only she didn’t look so miserable.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Nathan said with a sigh.  “I shoul
dn’t have snapped at you.”

Adara nodded but she didn’t look up.  The frown never left her brow.

Nathan’s bare feet hardly made a sound as he moved across the woven rug that covered the floor.  That was its only purpose, to soften the hard floor of the castle.  There were so many comforts here and every one of them he had taken for granted.  The rug might not care, nor his bed or the well-stocked hearth in winter, but he had taken the people for granted too.

He
knelt before her chair and placed his hands over hers to still her fidgeting.  She froze and the strain of such stillness was evident in her breath.  She wasn’t made for stillness.

“I’m sorry.”

Her eyes came up until the two of them stared level at one another.  Her hands stirred beneath his and he let them free, and they came up to touch his face.  Her movements were slow, like she expected that he would stop her, but Nathan never moved.  Her hands were so warm, her palms soft, and his mind wandered back to Robin.  He had found comfort and shelter in her hands too.

“You look sad, Master Nathan.”  Adara scooted forward
until her knees pressed against his chest.

“Maybe I am,” he shrugged, but it felt forced.  He missed having a purpose, even if it was as twisted as the one Robin gave him.  And he missed her. 

Nathan laughed, shaking his head to banish the thoughts that crept in unwelcome, laughed again as alarm spread over Adara’s face.  She probably thought he was mad and maybe she was right.