Page 131 of Fortunes of War

“The prince. Like I’m…”

“Like you’re what?”

“Like I’m – I don’t know – swooning over him or something!” Amelia threw up her hands – and too late remembered the wine. She watched red liquid flare like rubies in the firelight, and then slop to the floorboards with a splat. “Damn,” she murmured, and went to fetch something with which to mop it. There was a torn tunic on the sideboard, one she’d thought to mend. And a stack of old, mouse-chewed sheet music they’d found in the attic, and which they’d been using to start fires. She threw down a few sheets, trod over them to soak up the spill, and flopped back in her chair.

“That was dramatic.”

Amelia tried to take another sip, found her cup empty, and sent Leda a dark look.

“Butareyou swooning over him?”

Amelia started to protest – but lacked the energy to be properly indignant. She laughed instead, and sank down deep in her chair, legs stretched out before her, arms folded. It pulled pleasantly at her back, tense from standing bent over maps for most of the day. “You never give up, do you? More dogged than any battlefield general when it comes to so much as a hint of romance.”

Leda let her grin break loose and unrestrained, finally, chuckling under her breath. “Can you blame me? We’re stuck in the middle of his ugly bloody war, I’ve got to findsomethingscintillating to chat about. And it doesn’t get much more scintillating than him. Gods. What a specimen.” She took a long sip, as though thought of Leif made her thirsty.

Truth told, he left Amelia’s throat a little dry as well.

She got up, and refilled her cup. When she returned to her chair, Leda had crossed her legs the other way, expression serious, all her focus bent to the topic at hand. “Honestly, Amelia. I’m not teasing, now. Do you fancy him?”

“He’s been asleep for three of the five days I’ve known him, and we’ve only spoken a handful of times.”

Leda cocked her head, lips pursed. “You go up to his room several times a day.”

“And several isn’t many. I can’t have fallen in love with a man that quickly, I’m not that sort of girl.”

“Did I say ‘fall in love’? No. I said fancy. You canfancya man after a single glance.” When Amelia made a face, she said, gently, “It’sall rightto fancy a man, you know.”

Again and again over the past five days, Amelia’s thoughts had strayed toward Malcolm. Each time she found herself appreciating the straight line of Leif’s nose, or the curve of his biceps, the sheer animal size of him, taller and broader than all the men here, she felt obliged to remember her dead lover, to compare them, to seek shelter from her new, confusing thoughts in the well-loved and familiar. But when she thought of Mal, it didn’t hurt the way it should have; her memories, though beloved, were hazy and dull-edged, and didn’t fill her with the flashfire grief she’d known at first – which was somehow worse. The guilt of having let her ardor fade; the betrayal of softening anguish. And so she shied away from those memories, and shut herself down, and tried to think of troop movements, and wagon procurement, and anything else at all.

Lover of gossip though she was, Leda possessed tact, and she didn’t push further with regard to Mal. Tone lightening once more, she said, “If I were a free woman, I’d be tripping over myself to capture his notice.”

Amelia snorted, and smoothed her ruffled feathers with another swallow of wine. It was warming her, settling her, easing a pit of tension she hadn’t been aware was settled low in her stomach. “He’s very good-looking,” she agreed.

Leda nodded. “That’s an understatement, but I’m glad you can see reason.”

Amelia snorted again.

“I’ve only ever seen a Northman up close once before, and that was years ago. An envoy came to a ball my father was throwing, one of those interminable matchmaking balls when I was still just a girl. There were all these coiffed and oiled little lordlings showing off their best pirouettes and leading steps on the dance floor, and there was this moment – like something out of a novel – when the crowd parted, and I saw an unfamiliar man standing and talking with Father. He wasn’t as big nor as handsome as Prince Leif, mind you, but he looked so different from every other man in the ballroom that I was transfixed. He had dark hair, and he wore all of it in braids that fell down his back, full of beads that chimed together when he walked. His clothes were velvet, but his collar and the tops of his boots were fur. One of those great, wide leather belts, and a sword on his hip.” She sighed dreamily. “I thought he must be the Aeretollean king or something. Later, I found out he was only a glorified messenger, but you couldsmellthe hostility coming off the other men in the room. They sensed a threat.”

Amelia sipped her wine. “Perhaps that’s why we’re losing the war: too many pirouettes and too much coiffed hair, not enough threat.”

Leda laughed, loud and easy, and Amelia found herself smiling.

“Gods, that’s the truth, isn’t it? But now that we’ve some Northmen for our lads to challenge themselves against, maybe the tide will turn.”

They both burst into laughter, then, until they were dabbing at their eyes and gasping for breath.

“We’re all doomed, aren’t we?” Amelia asked, when she could, flicking the last tear from her lashes.

“Most definitely,” Leda said, sobering. She cleared her throat and drained off her cup, totally composed afterward, save the color in her face. “Which is why–”

“Oh no.”

“No, listen. Which is why an opportunity for pleasure should be neither shunned nor squandered. We could all die tomorrow, Amelia. Why not have a good tumble if the opportunity presents itself?”

“Leda.”

“I’m genuinely asking.”

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