Page 57 of Heart of Winter
He fought not to look away, but he did grimace. “I hope I didn’t – that is, I certainly never meant–”
Her grin widened, and she winked. “Don’t worry. They wereverywell-received by their intended.”
His face was on fire. He finally let his gaze skip away from hers – blue and too much like a merry version of her brother’s – and stared instead at the lumps his feet made beneath the covers. The light-headed sensation returned, but this time it had nothing to do with illness. “I’ve already apologized to his majesty, but I want to apologize to you as well. It was never my intention to – to reveal such things about myself. I hope that you won’t hold anything I’ve said against Tessa. I am, after all, only a bastard, and not well thought of by the inhabitants of Drakewell, and so if I have given offense–”
“Oliver,” she said, firmly. After a moment, he dragged his gaze back to her, and found that she’d set her sewing in her lap, and stared at him with an unlooked-for sympathy. “You’ve got to stop apologizing, lamb. You’re safe here. You’re among friends. We’ve all become quite fond of you and Tessa.”
Friends. The only people he’d ever been able to call friends in his life had been his cousins, and he’d always known they loved him, but they were his blood, no matter how illegitimate his own was on his mother’s side. They’d been brought up together, they’d known one another. To think that he could come here to this wild place, full of strangers, that they would see him, andgrow fondof him…it wasn’t only unexpected, but impossible.
“I don’t know if you believe me, but I wish you would,” she said, sadly, and stood, mending gathered together in her arms. “And I wish you would believe me on this, too – when I tell you that my brother doesn’t bestow his affections lightly or easily, or very often at all.”
He sucked in a breath. She could not – could notpossibly– be intimating what it sounded like. Because that was too…that couldn’tbe…
“I am a bastard,” he said with difficulty. “And not a pretty highborn maid.”
“I beg to differ on pretty,” she said with a smirk, and then grew serious. “And since you’re not a maid, what bloody difference does being a bastard make?” She turned, while he struggled to draw breath, his head spinning, and paused at the door, one hand on the knob. Looked back over her shoulder. “Be patient with him, Oliver.” Then she slipped out.
Oliver stared at the closed door for a long time after she was gone, pulse pounding so hard it hurt.
~*~
Despite his lingering fatigue and weakness, he was too jittery after Revna’s visit to sleep anymore. Evening came on quickly, and Thyra – who he finally got to meet properly – brought him a tray of broth and bread and explained that Tessa was still asleep, and would probably sleep straight through dinner if not awakened.
“I think it’s best to let her sleep,” he said.
“My thoughts exactly, my lord,” Thrya agreed.
“Just Mr. Meacham,” he said, biting back a sigh. He ate a little, and, after, set his tray aside and reached for the small pile of books that had accumulated on his bedside table during his illness, reading the titles by the light of the candles Thyra had lit.
Right away, he knew these to be Tessa’s library selections. Novels; Aquitainian love stories about knights, and fair maids, and feats of strength and daring. Stories about fairies, and evil queens, and even dragons.The Merry Maid of Kimberwickcaught his eye, one he’d read years ago, as a boy, and before he knew it, he’d read the first page, and then the second, and was nearly-half done when a knock sounded at the door. He lifted his head to find that the candles had burned half-down, dripping wax down the black iron of their sticks, and that the fire needed another log. Relaxed and in good spirits, still mostly stuck in the story, he called, “Come in.”
Only to have his nerves come roaring back to the forefront when the door opened to reveal Erik.
The king was dressed in deep midnight blue, a silver-studded velvet tunic half-laced over a white shirt, his belt of brown leather hand-tooled and silver-etched. His hair had been washed and rebraided: two large braids at his temples that hugged his skull and curved behind each ear, lying down his chest in a series of intricate knots spaced with sapphires and silver beads. His rings winked in the candlelight as he held onto the half-open door and said, “May I come in?”
Yes, Oliver thought.Always. You can climb into bed with me, if you want. But there were guards in the hall, doubtless, and so he swallowed that down and, a bit unsteadily, said, “I already said you could.”
Erik smiled, and shut the door. “You’re feeling more like yourself, I see,” he said, crossing the room at a slow, deliberate pace, and coming to stand in front of the chair that Revna had used earlier.
“Yes. Sorry about that.” His pulse had gone from still and quiet to irregular, thumping loudly in his ears. He made an effort to hold very still, when what he wanted was to crawl beneath the covers and hide.
“Don’t be. If I ever get you into a bath again, I’d prefer you conscious.”
Oliver’s mind blanked with shock. Erik was teasing him. No, Erik wasflirtingwith him. A simple line, one that conjured dozens of images involving shed clothes, and steaming water, and hands whose texture were already familiar to him, and hecould notthink about that. Not without blushing and stammering like a fool.
“I…what?”
Erik chuckled, and sat down. “How are you, though? You look brighter than this morning.”
Health. He could talk about his health – much safer than bathing. Oliver latched onto the topic desperately. “I feel much improved,” he said, stiffly, but unable to help it. Propriety was his only defense against a king’s flirtation – it was far easier when Erik glowered at him, when Oliver couldn’t even pretend that anything might happen. “Far past ready to get out of bed.”
Erik cocked a single brow. “I recall Olaf saying that it would be weeks before you returned to normal activity.”
“A week at most. I tend to bounce back quickly.”
“Mmhm.”
“This is my illness,” Oliver said primly, lifting his chin in what he knew to be perfect imitation of the loftier nobles at Drakewell’s court. “I should think after more than twenty years living with it, I should understand its courses.”
