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“Only because I was inspired by you,” he replied. “No wonder all those knights of old tried so hard in their jousts and on their quests. They wanted to demonstrate their love for the fair maidens.”
“I don’t want to be just a spectator waving the hero on.”
“You shall be whatever you wish, my dearest love.”
“No,” Sarah replied sadly.
“Why not? I will see to it.”
“You can’t.”
“You don’t know what I can do.” He gestured grandly.
“But I would really like to be a mighty sorceress with a host of arcane powers.”
Kenver laughed and pulled her into his arms.
Epilogue
“Too expensive,” said Kenver’s mother as the two of them sat together in her parlor two months later. She flipped the top page of the plans he had presented with one contemptuous fingernail. “We can’t fling money about. You are naive and irresponsible.”
Kenver kept a strong rein on his temper. “Slate roofs last three or four times longer than thatch,” he replied.
She looked surprised, as she always did when Kenver showed a good grasp of some business matter. Still.
“They’ll hold up better in the storms from the sea as well.”
“Slates can be blown off. There will be repairs.”
“Yes, Mama. As with any sort of building at all.”
She bent to look again at the drawings. Her face creased as if she was swallowing unpalatable medicine. “It’s possible that your idea hassomemerit.”
“Slate roofs will be solid when my great-grandchildren are managing Poldene.”
She blinked, gazing at him.
“Same as the oaks we planted for replacement beams,” he added.
At last he had reached her. They bent over the document together and began to dissect its details.
Kenver had found that if they could move past her habitual way of responding to any hint of disagreement, his mother was actually open to new ideas. Her habit was just so engrained that an attack always came first. If she got no reaction, she tried again. It was like descending stairs from insulting to irritable to grumpy and then finally to reasonable.
It was wearisome. Kenver had nearly snapped more than once. But then Sarah had suggested that it was like re-educating a horse who was an inveterate biter. A trainer who calmly kept at it could change the animal. The comparison had made him laugh, and it gave him something to cling to when Mama was particularly recalcitrant. Kenver really didn’t know what he would have done without Sarah. His life would have narrowed down to nothing. He suppressed a shudder.
As usual in their discussions, his mother’s long experience with the Poldene lands was useful. “That’s a good point,” he told her along the way. He noted a change on the plans.
When he looked up again, she was staring at him. “I should not have said irresponsible,” she said. “That was…an exaggeration.” She swallowed. “No, it was untrue.”
Yes, it was, Kenver did not say. She so rarely admitted as much.
“I’m sorry,” she added.
It was difficult to keep his jaw from dropping. Mama had apologized. Sincerely. To him! He tried to remember another time this had happened. He could not. Thinking that anything he might say would disturb this fragile new balance, he simply nodded. Mama would never be easy, but he felt a touch of hope.
His mother avoided his eyes. She snatched up a bill from the pile of papers before them. “Now this is highway robbery. You must tell Hicks we will not pay so much.”
Reading upside down, as he had lately become proficient in doing, Kenver saw that it was the charge for repairs to the state suite. Allowing a tinge of irony to enter his tone, he said, “Hicks did work very quickly. When you asked.”
