Beguilement (30 page)

“Perhaps,” Dag suggested gently, “we should go see to Grace and Copperhead.”

“Who?” asked Rush.

“Miss Bluefield’s horse, and mine. They’ve been waiting patiently out there.”

“What?” said Reed. “Fawn doesn’t have a horse!”

“Hey, Fawn, where’d you get a horse?”

“Can I ride your horse?”

“No.” Fawn thrust back her chair. Dag rose more quietly with her.

“Where did you get a horse, Fawn?” asked Papa Bluefield curiously, staring anew at Dag.

Fawn stood very straight. “She was my share for helping deal with the blight bogle. Which Fletch here doesn’t believe in. I must have ridden all the way from Glassforge on a wish horse, huh?”

She tossed her head and marched out. Dag cast a polite nod of farewell in the general direction of the table, thought to add a spoken, “Good evening, Aunt Nattie,” and followed. Behind him, he could hear her father’s growl, “Reed, go help your sister and that fellow with their horses.” Which in fact launched a general migration of Bluefields onto the porch to examine the new horse.

Grace was exhaustively discussed. At last Dag swapped back for his hook and led his own horse in an escape to the old barn, where spare stalls were to be found.

He lingered looking over the stall partition, keeping a light contact with his groundsense so the gelding wouldn’t snake around and attempt to savage Reed, his unfamiliar groom. Copperhead was not named for his chestnut color, despite appearances. When both horses were at last safely rubbed down, watered, and fed, Dag walked back to the house through the sunset light with Fawn, temporarily out of earshot of the rest of her relations.

“Well,” she said under her breath, “that could have gone worse.”

“Really?” said Dag.

“Really.”

“I’ll take your word. Truth to tell, I’m finding your family a bit strange.

My nearest kin don’t often like what I have to say, but they certainly hear what I have to say, and not something else altogether.”

“They’re better one at a time than in a bunch like that.”

“Hm. So… what was that about market-day night?”

“What?”

“When Rush said they’d missed you market-day night.”

“Oh. Nothing much. Except that I left market-day morning while it was still dark. Wonder where they thought I was all day?”

A number of Bluefields had collected in the front parlor, including Aunt Nattie, now plying a drop spindle, and Fawn’s mother. Dag set down his saddlebags and let Fawn unpack her gifts. Fletch, about to escort his betrothed home to her nearby farm, paused to watch as well.

Tril held the sparkling glass bowl up to the light of an oil lamp in astonishment. “You really did go to Glassforge!”

Fawn, who had wobbled all evening between trying to put on a good show and what seemed to Dag a most unfamiliar silent shrinking, said only, “That’s what I told you, Mama.”

Fawn pressed the corked scent bottle into her aunt’s hands and urged her to splash some on her wrists, which, smiling agreeably, she did. “Very pretty, lovie, but this sort of foolery is for courtin’ girls to entice their boys, not for lumpy old women like me. Better you should give it to Clover.”

“That’s Fletcher’s job,” said Fawn, with a more Spark-like edged grin at her brother. “Anyhow, all sorts of folks wear it in Glassforge—patroller men and women both, for some.”

Reed, hovering, snorted at the idea of men wearing scent, but Nattie showed willing and eased Dag’s heart by splashing a bit more on both herself and her younger sister Tril, and some on Fawn as well. “There! Sweet of you to think of me, lovie.”

It was growing dark outside. The boys dispersed to various evening chores, and Clover made farewells to her prospective in-laws. The two young women, Fawn and Clover, eyed each other a little stiffly as Clover made more congratulations on Fawn’s safe return, and Dag wondered anew at the strangeness of farmer customs.

A Lakewalker only-girlchild would have been the chief inheritor of her family’s tent, but that position here was apparently held by Fletch; and not Fawn but Clover would take Tril Bluefield’s place as female head of this household in due time. Leaving Fawn to go… where?

“I suppose,” said Papa Bluefield a trifle grudgingly, “if your friend here has a bedroll, he could lay it in the loft. Keep an eye on his horse.”

“Don’t be daft, Sorrel,” Aunt Nattie spoke up unexpectedly. “The man can’t climb the loft ladder with that broken arm.”

“He needs to be close by me, so’s I can help him,” said Fawn firmly. “Dag can lay his bedroll in Nattie’s weaving room.”

“Good idea, Fawn,” said Nattie cheerily.

Fawn slept in with her aunt; the boys shared rooms upstairs, as did their parents. Papa Bluefield looked as though he was thinking hard, suddenly, about the implications of leaving Fawn and Dag downstairs with a blind chaperone.

And then—inevitably—of the implications of how long Dag and Fawn had been on the road together. Did he know anything about his aging sister-in-law’s groundsense?

“I’ll try harder not to cut your throat with your razor tomorrow, Dag,” Fawn said.

“I’ve lost more blood for less,” he assured her.

“We should likely try to get on the road early.”

“What?” said Papa Bluefield, coming out of his frowning cogitation. “You’re not going anywhere, girl!”

She turned to him, stiffening up tight. “I told you first thing, Papa. I have an obligation to give witness.”

“Are you stupid, Fawn!”

Dag caught his breath at the hard black rip through Fawn’s ground; his eyes went to Nattie, but she gave no visible reaction, though her face was turned toward the pair.

Papa Bluefield went on, “Your obligations are here, for all you’ve run off and turned your back on them this past month! You’ve had enough gallivanting for a while, believe you me!”

Dag interposed quietly and quite truthfully, “Actually, Spark, my arm’s not doing all that well tonight. I wouldn’t mind a day or two to rest up.”

She turned anxious eyes up at him, as if not sure whether she was hearing support or betrayal. He gave her a small, reassuring nod.

Papa Bluefield gave Dag a sideways look. “You’d be welcome to go on, if you’ve a need.” “Papa!” snapped Fawn, gyrating back to something not strained show, but blazingly sincere. “The idea! Dag saved my life three times, twice at great risk to his own, once from the bandits, once from the malice—the bogle—and once again the night after the bogle… hurt me, because I would have bled to death right there in the woods if he hadn’t helped me. I will not have him turned out on the road by himself with two bad arms! For shame! Shame on this house if you dare!”

She actually stamped her foot; the parlor floor sounded like a drum.

Papa Bluefield had stepped backward. His wife was staring at Dag with eyes wide, holding the glass bowl tightly. Nattie… was amazingly hard to read, but she had a strange little smile on her lips.

“Oh.” Papa Bluefield cleared his throat. “You hadn’t exactly made that plain, Fawn.”

Fawn said wearily, “How could I? No one would let me finish a story without telling me I must be making things up.”

Her father glanced at Dag. “He’s a quiet one.”

Dag could not touch his temple; he had to settle for a short nod. “Thinking.

Sir.”

“Are you, now?”

It was not, in the Bluefield household, apparently possible to finish a debate.

But when the squabbling finally died into assorted mumblings, drifting away up stairs or down halls in the dark, Dag ended up with his bedroll set down beside Aunt Nattie’s loom, with an impressive pile of quilts and pillows arranged for his ease. He could hear the shortest two women of the family rustling around in the bedroom beyond in low-voiced preparation for bed, and then the creak of the bed frames as they settled down.

Dag disposed his throbbing arm awkwardly, grateful for the pillows. Save for the night on the Horsefords’ kitchen floor, he had never slept inside a farmer’s house, certainly not as an invited guest, though his patrols had sometimes been put up, by arrangement, in farmers’ barns. This beat a drafty hayloft with snow sifting in all hollow. Before he’d met Fawn’s family, he would scarcely have understood why she would want to leave such comforts.

He wasn’t sure if it was worse to be loved yet not valued than valued but not loved, but surely it was better to be both. For the first time, he began to think a farm’s brightest treasure need not be furtively stolen; it might be honestly won. But the hopes forming in his mind would have to wait on tomorrow for their testing.

The next morning passed quietly. To Fawn’s eye Dag looked tired, moved slowly, and said little, and she thought his arm was probably troubling him more than he let on. She found herself caught up, will or nil, in the never-ending rhythm of farm chores; cows took no holidays even for homecomings. She and Dag did take a walk around the place in the midmorning, and she pointed out the scenes and sites from her tales of childhood. But her guess about his arm was confirmed when, after lunch, he took some more of the pain powder that had helped him through yesterday’s long ride. He slipped out—wordlessly—to the front porch overlooking the river valley and sat leaning against the house wall, nursing the arm and thinking… whatever he was thinking about all this. Fawn found herself assigned to stirring apple butter in the kitchen, and while you are about it, dear, why don’t you make up some pies for supper?

She was fluting the edge of the second one and reluctantly contemplating building up the fire under the hearth oven, which would make the hot room hotter still, when Dag came in.

“Drink?” she guessed.

“Please…”

She held the water ladle to his lips; when he’d drained it, he added, “There’s a young fellow who’s tethered his horse in your front woods. I believe he imagines he’s sneaking up the hill in secret. His ground seems pretty unsettled, but I don’t think he’s a house robber.”

“Did you see him?” she asked, then halted, considering what an absurd question that sounded if you didn’t know Dag. And then how well she had come to know Dag, that it should fall so readily from her lips.

“Just a glimpse.”

“Was he bright blond?”

“Yes.”

She sighed. “Sunny Sawman. I’ll bet Clover told folks that I’m back, and he’s come to see for himself if it’s true.”

“Why not ride openly up the lane?”

She flushed a little, not that he’d likely notice in this heat, and admitted,

“He used to sneak up to steal kisses from me that way, from time to time. He was afraid of my brothers finding out, I think.”

“Well, he’s afraid of something.” He hesitated. “Do you want me to stay?”

She tilted her head, frowning. “I better talk to him alone. He won’t be truthful if he’s in front of anyone.” She glanced up uneasily at him. “Maybe… don’t go far?”

He nodded; she didn’t seem to need to explain further. He stepped into Aunt Nattie’s weaving room, flanking the kitchen, and set the door open. She heard him dragging a chair behind it, and the creak of wood and possibly of Dag as he settled into it.

A few moments later, footsteps sounded on the porch, attempted tiptoe; they paused outside the kitchen window above the drainboard. She stepped up and stared without pleasure at Sunny’s face, craning around and peering in. He jerked back as he saw her, then whispered, “Are you alone?”

“For now.”

He nodded and nipped in through the back door. She regarded him, testing her feelings. Straw-gold hair still curled around his head in soft locks, his eyes were still bright blue, his skin fair and fine and summer-flushed, his shoulders broad, his muscular arms, tanned where his sleeves were rolled up, coated with a shimmer of gold hairs that had always seemed to make him gleam in sunlight.

His physical charm was unchanged, and she wondered how it was that she was now so wholly unmoved by it, who had once trembled beneath it in a wheatfield in such wild, flattered elation.

His daughter would have been a pretty girl. The thought twisted in her like a knife, and she fought to set it aside.

“Where is everyone?” he asked cautiously, looking around again.

“Papa and the boys are up cutting hay, Mama is out giving the chickens a dusting with that antilice powder she got from your uncle, and Aunt Nattie’s bad knee hurt so she went to lie down after lunch.”

“Nattie’s blind, she won’t see me anyhow. Good.” He loomed nearer, staring hard at her. No—just at her belly. She resisted an impulse to slump and push it out.

His head cocked. “As little as you are, I’d have thought you’d be popping out by now. Clover sure would have bleated about it if she’d noticed.”

“You talk to her?”

“Saw her at noon, down in the village.” He shifted restlessly. “It’s all the talk there, you turning up again.” He turned again, scowling. “So, did you come back to fuss at me some more? It won’t do you any good. I’m betrothed to Violet now.”

“So I heard,” said Fawn, in a flat voice. “I actually hadn’t planned to see you at all. We wouldn’t have stayed on today except for Dag’s broken arm.”

“Yeah, Clover said you had some Lakewalker fellow trailing you. Tall as a flagpole, with one arm wooden and the other broke, who didn’t hardly say boo.

Sounds about useless. You been running around alone with him for three or four weeks, seemingly.” He wet his lips. “So, what’s your plan? Switching horses in the middle of the river? Going to tell him the baby is his and hope he can’t count too good?”

A cast-iron frying pan was sitting on the drainboard. Swung in an appropriate arc, it would just fit Sunny’s round face, Fawn thought through a red haze.

“No.”

“I’m not playing your little game, Fawn,” said Sunny tightly. “You won’t pin this on me. I meant what I said.” His hands were trembling slightly. But then, so were hers.