Page 20 of Thief of Roses
“You have no need to ask for forgiveness.”She kept her distance and she kept her voice light.“I asked you to share my food out of selfish desire of companionship, not of duty or obligation.”She tried to think of how best to pull him from this detached, servile mode.“I did not mean to imply that you would stalk or torment me, but words are important.Sometimes things need to be spoken and confirmed aloud, right?”
He blinked at her.
“I needed to verbalize a fear,”she tried again,“and I needed you to assure me that I had nothing to fear.”
“Nay,”he said.“Nay, naught to affrayen thee.”
“Would you reconsider joining me?”
He blinked as if he did not recognize how he ended up at the doorway but he nodded.
“Yf thou art certeyn.”
“Yes,”she said.“Please.”She gathered her skirts and moved to her side of the table, sitting on the floor in front of the hearth.She did not look back at him, hoping that he would decide to join her and thereby break whatever gripped him.
“Would you like the goblet or the jar?”
“Pardonne?”He picked his way back to her.
“For your drink — the goblet or the jar?”She poured the juice into both vessels.
“Ah.”He sat on the floor as well, taking up all the space she had allotted to him.“Thy jar, yf thy wilt, pray.”
“Unexpected.”She moved the jar to his side of the table.“I thought you were more of a goblet drinker.”
“And thy afsumptionne woldeth be correct, but the jar ys thine and the goblet ys mine.Y wolde regrette to see thy mete stoppeth due to chewsyng a vessel Y was ne’er meant to use.”
So he did not exaggerate when he said that the Magic could not be used for him if he took pains to be so careful.
“Wise choice then.”She picked the goblet up to take her first sip.“Either way, they’re both large in my hands and small in yours.”
He followed her lead and drank.She stole glances at him over the rim of her goblet, curious about how he maneuvered the jar with his snout.Although he leaned his head back more than a man might, the Fir’Darl managed rather well.
She took tomato and cheese as he impaled food with a claw, never touching anything but what he intended to eat.Somewhere in his Fir’Darlish life he must have had cause to practice manners.She did not expect them to come naturally to a creature who lived such an isolated life and was ill-formed for delicacy.
“Thou art studying me.”
“Yes,”she admitted.“After I offered you the jar, I realized that you may have difficulty with it.I can see that I need not have worried.”
“Y have not oft dyned yn companie.‘Tis unsyghtlie, Y am certeyn.”
She laughed.“If you chewed with your mouth open or tried to converse with the food spraying out, then perhaps, I might take exception.You’ve been genteel in your manners compared to what I have seen.”
“Thanne Y dread to thynk,”he responded, a smile in his voice.He licked his bottom lip in the absence of a ready napkin.
She almost missed it.Almost.
“Is that what you meant when you said that you change in appearance?”
“Hath somethyng changed?”He cast a cursory glance over his anatomy.
“Your tongue.”She took a sizeable drink from the goblet.He ran his tongue over the inside of his mouth.
“Yt doth not feel changed.”
“The color,”she said.“Two days ago it was pink.Today it is black.How long do these changes last?”
“Pardonne?”
