Two to Conquer Read Online Free PDF Page B

the guardsmen tell tales of campaigns and war. None of them had liked him much, but Geremy said he was lonely, and had gone to some trouble to try to coax him into joining their games.
    She felt, suddenly, almost sorry for the boy to whom she had been pledged. She did not want to marry him; but he had not been consulted either, and no man could be expected to refuse marriage to a king’s daughter. He had spent so much of his life in war and preparation for war: it was not his fault that he was not gallant and a courtier like Geremy. She would rather have married Geremy—although, as she had told her nurse, she would rather not many at all. Not because she had any great fondness for Geremy; simply that he was a gentler boy and she felt she understood him better. But Bard looked so unhappy.
    She said, drinking the last unwanted drops in her glass, “Shall we sit and talk a while? Or would you like to dance again?”
    “I’d rather talk,” he said. “I’m not very good at dancing, or any of those courtly arts!”
    Again she smiled at him, showing her dimples. She said, “If you are light enough on your feet to be a swordsman— and Beltran tells me you are unequalled—then you should be a fine dancer too. And
    remember, we used to dance together at lessons when we were children; would you have me believe
    you have forgotten how to dance since you were twelve years old?”
    “To tell you the truth, Carlina,” Bard said hesitantly, “I got my man’s growth so young, when the rest of you were all so little. And, big as my body was, I felt always that my feet were bigger still, and that I was a great hulking brute! When I came to ride to war, and to fight, then my size and weight gave me the advantage… but I find it hard to think of myself as a courtier.”
    Something in this confession touched her beyond endurance. She suspected he had never said anything like this to anyone before, or even thought it. She said, “You’re not clumsy, Bard, I find you a fine dancer. But if it makes you uncomfortable, you need not dance again, at least not with me. We will sit here and talk awhile.” She turned, smiling. “You will have to learn to offer me your arm, when we cross a room together. With the help of the Goddess, I may indeed civilize you one day!”
    “You have a considerable task on your hands, damisela ,” Bard said, and let the tips of her fingers rest lightly on his arm.
    They found a seat together at the edge of the room, out of the way of the dancers, near where some elderly folk were playing at cards and dice. One of the men of the king’s household came toward them, evidently intending to claim a dance with Carlina, but Bard glowered at him and he discovered some urgent business elsewhere.
    Bard reached out with the hand he thought was clumsy and touched the corner of her temple. “I
    thought, when we stood before your father, that you had been crying. Carlie, has someone ill-used you?”
    She shook her head and said, “No.” But Bard was just enough of a telepath—although when the
    household leronis had tested him, at twelve, he had been told he had not much laran —to sense that she would not speak the true reason for her tears aloud; and he managed to guess it.
    “You are not happy about this marriage,” he said, with his formidable scowl, and felt her flinch again as she had done when he squeezed her hand.
    She lowered her head. She said at last, “I have no wish to marry; and I wept because no one asks a girl if she wishes to be given in marriage.”
    Bard frowned, hardly believing what he heard. “What would a woman do, in the name of Avarra, if she was not married? Surely you do not wish to stay at home all your days till you are old?”
    “I would like to have the choice to do that, if I wished,” Carlina said. “Or perhaps to choose for myself whom I would marry. But I would rather not marry at all. I would like to go to a Tower as a leronis , perhaps to keep my virginity for the