Page 35 of The Tempest
Astria shrugged. “I hardly knew him,” she said. “I was the youngest of nine children. My father was focused on his heir, or my mother, or his mistresses, or his bastards. He did not have time for a young girl who was studious and would rather write poetry or paint pictures of flowers than tell witty stories for the nobles or sing most beautifully. Moreover, my mother died in childbirth with me. I do not think my father could bear to look at me. A worthless girl, he once called me. He loved my mother and clearly blamed me for her death.”
Payne was listening seriously. “I am sorry,” he said quietly. “It’s not right that he should do that.”
“Right or wrong, that is the way I grew up,” she said. “I did not have a sister nor a brother who treated me with any regard except Afonso. He did, a little, more than anyone else, but that stopped once he became king.”
It sounded like a lonely childhood to Payne. “What about friends or cousins?” he asked. “Surely ye had family and friends around ye.”
She shook her head. “Not really,” she said. “As a princess, I lived a rather isolated life. I was barely fourteen years of age when I was betrothed to Armand and sixteen years when I married him. I told you that he was more of a father figure. He already had a son, but he wanted more. I never bore a child and he told everyone I was barren, but the truth is that he only touched me once, on our wedding night, and never again after that.”
“Yet ye accepted the blame of a childless marriage,” Payne said. “That was courageous of ye.”
She averted her gaze. “There was nothing else I could do,” she said. “I cannot honestly say I’ve ever had a close friend or relative, or anyone else who cared about my welfare.”
“That is a difficult way tae live.”
“It is simply the way of things.”
“And then a pirate queen abducted ye and ye found yerself in England.”
She smiled weakly. “That is true,” she said. “And having a conversation with a man I do not know, but one who has shown me more regard in the few hours we’ve been acquainted than almost anyone in my life. That is why I could not run. That would show ingratitude for what you’ve done, and I do not wish to be ungrateful.”
He matched her smile. “Thank ye for not destroying my trust in ye,” he said. “I suspected that ye’re a woman of honor, and I see that I was right.”
Her smile vanished. “Is that what you think?” she said. “That I am honorable?”
“Ye just proved it by not running away when ye had the chance.”
Astria stared at him. Really stared at him. For the first time in her life, she was building some sort of a relationship with someone she didn’t even know.Reallybuilding one. That was the strangest thing about it, because she’d known plenty of people in her life. But, as she had told him, she’d never really, truly had a friend or someone she could count on. The fact that he had called her honorable made her feel sick to her stomach because she wasn’t honorable. She knew that.
She couldn’t let the man think she was something other than what she was.
“May I ask you something?” she finally said.
He nodded. “Go ahead.”
She took a deep breath. “If I asked you to swear upon your oath as a knight not to tell your mother something, would you do it?”
He grew serious. He didn’t reply right away, but he sat forward, elbows resting on his knees, rubbing his hands together in thought. He seemed pensive. Finally, his head came up and his eyes met hers.
“If I’m not betraying my family by swearing, I would,” he said quietly. “If I’m not betraying my Blackchurch brethren or anything I believe in, I would. Keep that in mind before ye ask me tae swear, but know I willna swear anything unless ye tell me first. Only then can I make that determination.”
For the first time, she saw the steely knight in him. The intensity of his gaze, the tightness of his jaw, and his bodylanguage told her everything she needed to know. He was so unlike anyone she’d ever met before, and that both intrigued and intimidated her. She’d come this far, however, with her question to him and couldn’t back out. If she did, he would know she had a big secret she’d been hiding. And even if she told him and he decided to tell his mother, she couldn’t imagine that things would get worse.
But she knew the situationwouldchange.
“Very well,” she said, trying to be brave. “I will tell you. If you choose to tell your mother, so be it. But if you choose to keep it to yourself, know that you will have my undying trust and loyalty.”
“Is it that important tae ye?”
“It is.”
“Then speak.”
Astria took a deep breath. “I’ll start with another question,” she said. “What do you know of the different pirate factions who sail the known seas?”
He shook his head faintly. “A little, I suppose,” he said. “I know Medusa’s Disciples are mostly Scotland and Northern Ireland and Wales, but my mother told me that she captured ye off the coast of Valencia, so apparently now she’s over in the Great Sea.”
“What else do you know?”
