Dathor felt another wave of nausea, but he fought that down. He felt like a man lost in the wood in the middle of a storm, the wind blowing the branches into his face. He fought to move forward. “All right, then, let us go.”
Igbar had a horse, but Dathor said he could not take one from the Peak. They walked, leading the horse, until they arrived at the Chapel.
Dathor waited outside, gazing off into the distance, trying to comprehend the way his future had now turned inside out, trying to convince himself that he could make his peace with it. The problem, however, was that he simply could not comprehend it. When he tried to picture it, it seemed unreal, impossible.
Nathre came out to him, her head bowed. She said, not looking at him, “I did not ask Igbar to speak to you.”
“No, I know,” said Dathor. “He said you would not name me.”
“It was my own fault,” she said to her feet. “I wanted you. I thought you were so handsome and likely because of your stupid elvish face.”
This cut him, but he didn’t react.
“You were hesitant, and I was not.”
He laughed softly. “That is not really how I remember it.”
“You regret it.”
“You regret it as well,” he countered.
“I did not, in fact, not until…” She looked up at him, finally, and she wrapped her arms around her midsection.
“It will be as you said,” he told her, his voice gentle. “We’ll get married. There are married servant couples all the time.”
“But you don’t wish it!”
“I am not such a brute as to sentence my child to a life of illegitimacy. I have firsthand knowledge of what that’s like, and this will be a small orc child, no elf mother to protecthim, not as I had. We will get married, and if you do not wish it, you will do it for the child.”
She searched his gaze for several moments.
That was not the thing to say to a woman he was going to take to wife, obviously. Women had romantic notions, and she admitted that she had been drawn to him. He licked his lips. “I do find you comely, you know, quite appealing. With time, I am sure there will be feelings that can grow between us. You deserve to have someone who is devoted to you, and I will try…” He cleared his throat. “I will be that.”
She backed away from him, shaking her head. “I would rather you did not say things like that, lies like that. What did Igbar tell you?”
“You cannot think that I came to you because I did not want you,” he said.
“I think you came to me because you wanted her,” she said. “I think that she will be the mistress of this house, and she will see me growing heavy with your child, and she will despise me.”
“I will not let her harm you,” he said.
She searched his gaze again.
“She is… she can be… sometimes, I hate her,” he said, his voice guttural. “Perhaps, this, between you and me, perhaps it can be something that is actually loving and good. We owe it to the child to try.”
“If you had any influence over her, you would have stopped her from marrying Elrion,” said Nathre.
“Then you and I will leave,” he said, his nostrils flaring. “If we must, we’ll take the child and go.”
She hesitated for a very long time. Finally, she said, “I need to think about it.”
But she didn’t think about it for very long. She sent word with Igbar, only hours later, that she would accept his offer of marriage.
AERHRIL SAID GOODBYEto Flaihir that day. She always remembered that, remembered waving off the train and then heading back to Foxglove Peak, where she would spend only a few more nights before she marry Elrion.
Everything was quite difficult then there at the Peak, because she had been bought off by another man, and neither Celedin nor the steward were pleased with her. However, Elrion had paid even more money for them to keep her, saying that it would not be proper for her to be under his roof before the wedding without a chaperone, and that he must insist she stay right where she was until the day of the wedding.
She walked back to the Peak and she dallied outside, looking out at the east field and then at the wildflowers, and then Dathor was there.
