Driftwood was piled haphazardly in this nook in the bay. An overhang of the cliffs had kept a small patch of sand and shale almost dry, but did not block the reaching sunbeams. The sun shone now with surprising warmth. Molly took the food and blanket from me, and commanded that I assemble firewood. She was the one who finally got the damp wood to burn, however. The salt made it burn with greens and blues, and it gave enough heat that we both set aside our cloaks and hoods. It was so good to sit with her and look at her out under the open sky, with the bright sun bringing out glints in her hair and the wind rosying her cheeks. It was so good to laugh aloud, to mingle our voices with the cries of the gulls without fear of awakening anyone. We drank the wine from the bottle, and ate with our fingers, and then walked down to the waves’ edge to wash the stickiness from our hands.
For a brief time we scrambled about on the rocks and driftwood, looking for treasures tossed up by the storm. I felt more like myself than I had since I had returned from the mountains, and Molly looked very much the wild hoyden of my childhood. Her hair came unbraided and blew about her face. She slipped when I chased her, and stumbled into a tide pool. We went back to the blanket, where she took off her shoes and hose to let them dry by the fire. She leaned back on the blanket and stretched.
Taking things off suddenly seemed a very good idea.
Molly was not as sure of that as I. ‘There’s fully as much stone as sand under this blanket. I’ve no wish to go back with bruises up my back!’
I leaned over her to kiss her. ‘Am not I worth it?’ I asked persuasively.
‘You? Of course not!’ She gave me a sudden push that sent me sprawling on my back. Then she flung herself boldly upon me. ‘But I am.’
The wild sparkle in her eyes as she looked down on me took my breath away. After she had claimed me ruthlessly, I discovered she had been right, both about the rocks, and her being well worth the bruises. I had never seen anything so spectacular as the blue sky glimpsed through the cascade of her hair over my face.
Afterward she lay more than half on top of me and we dozed in the chill sweet air. Eventually she sat up, shivering, to pull her clothing back around herself. Reluctantly I watched her lace up her blouse again. Darkness and candle-light had always hidden too much from me. She looked down at my bemused look, stuck her tongue out at me, then paused. My hair had come loose from its tail. She pulled it forward to frame my face, then set a fold of her red cloak across my forehead. She shook her head. ‘You would have been a singularly homely girl.’
I snorted. ‘I am not so much better as a man, either.’
She looked offended. ‘You are not ill-favoured.’ She traced a finger down the musculature of my chest speculatively. ‘The other day, in the washer-courts, some were saying you were the best thing to come out of the stables since Burrich. I think it is your hair. It is not near as coarse as most Buck men.’ She twined strands of it through her fingers.
‘Burrich!’ I said with a snort. ‘You cannot tell me he is favoured among the women!’
She quirked a brow at me. ‘And why not? He is a very well-made man, and clean and mannered besides. He has good teeth, and such eyes! His dark humours are daunting, but not a few would like to try their hands at lightening those. The washing maids agreed that day that, were he to turn up in their sheets, they would not hurry to shake him out.’
‘But that is not likely to happen,’ I pointed out.
‘No,’ she agreed pensively. ‘That was another thing they agreed on. Only one claimed to have ever had him, and she admitted he was very drunk at the time. At a Springfest, I believe she said.’ Molly glanced at me, then laughed aloud at the incredulous look on my face. ‘She said,’ Molly went on teasingly, ‘“he has used his time well amongst the stallions to learn their ways. I carried the mark of his teeth on my shoulders for a week.”’
‘That cannot be,’ I declared. My ears burned for Burrich’s sake. ‘He would not mistreat a woman, no matter how drunk he was.’
‘Silly boy!’ Molly shook her head over me as her nimble fingers set to braiding her hair up again. ‘No one said she was mistreated.’ She glanced at me coyly, ‘Or displeased.’
‘I still do not believe it,’ I declared. Burrich? And the woman had liked it?
‘Has he really a small scar, here, shaped like a crescent moon?’ She put her hand high on my hip and looked at me from under her lashes.
I opened my mouth, shut it again. ‘I cannot believe that women chatter of such things,’ I said at last.
‘In the washer-courts, they talk of little else,’ Molly divulged calmly.
I bit my tongue until curiosity overwhelmed me. ‘What do they say of Hands?’ When we had worked in the stables together, his tales of women had always astonished me.
‘That he has pretty eyes and lashes, but that all the rest of him needs to be washed. Several times.’
I laughed joyously, and saved the words for when next he bragged to me. ‘And Regal?’ I encouraged her.
‘Regal. Uummm.’ She smiled dreamily at me, then laughed at the scowl on my face. ‘We do not speak of the princes, my dear. Some propriety is kept.’
I pulled her back down beside me and kissed her. She fit her body to mine and we lay still under the arching blue sky. Peace that had eluded me for so long now filled me. I knew that nothing could ever part us, not the plans of kings nor the vagaries of fate. It seemed, finally, to be the right time to tell her of my problems with Shrewd and Celerity. She rested warm against me and listened silently as I spilled out to her the foolishness of the King’s plan and my bitterness at the awkward position it brought me. It did not occur to me that I was an idiot until I felt a warm tear spill and then slide down the side of my neck.
‘Molly?’ I asked in surprise as I sat up to look at her. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘What’s wrong?’ her voice went high on the words. She took a shuddering breath. ‘You lie beside me and tell me you are promised to another. And then you ask me what’s wrong?’
‘The only one I am promised to is you,’ I said firmly.
‘It’s not that simple, FitzChivalry.’ Her eyes were very wide and serious. ‘What will you do when the King tells you that you must court her?’
‘Stop bathing?’ I asked.
I had hoped she would laugh. Instead she pulled away from me. She looked at me with a world of sorrow in her eyes. ‘We haven’t got a chance. Not a hope.’
As if to prove her words, the sky darkened suddenly above us and the squall winds rose. Molly leaped to her feet, snatching up her cloak and shaking sand from it. ‘I’m going to get soaked. I should have been back to Buckkeep hours ago.’ She spoke flatly, as if those two things were the only concerns that she had.
‘Molly, they would have to kill me to keep me from you,’ I said angrily.
She gathered up her market purchases. ‘Fitz, you sound like a child,’ she said quietly. ‘A foolish, stubborn child.’ With a pattering like flung pebbles, the first rain drops began to hit. They made dimples in the sand and swept across the sea in sheets. Her words had left me speechless. I could not think of a worse thing for her to have said to me.
I gathered up the red blanket, shook sand from it. She pulled her cloak tight against the wind that whipped at it. ‘Best we don’t go back together,’ she observed. She came close to me, stood on tiptoe to kiss the angle of my jaw. I could not decide who I was angriest at: King Shrewd for creating this mess, or Molly for believing in it. I did not turn to her kiss. She said nothing of that, but only hurried away, to scrabble lightly up the rock chimney and vanish from sight.
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