Go back, I tell you. I’ll bring you meat later.
“FitzChivalry?” This from Kettricken, warily.
I snapped my eyes back to her face. “I beg pardon, my lady. My mind wandered.”
“Then that anger in your face is not for me?”
“No. Another has … crossed my will this day. For you, I have concern, not anger. Will not you mount Sidekick and let me take you back to the Keep?”
“I wish to see Verity.”
“My queen, it will not please him, to see you come so.”
She sighed and grew a bit smaller inside her cloak. She looked aside from me as she asked more quietly, “Have you never wished to pass your time in someone’s presence, Fitz, whether they welcomed you or not? Cannot you understand my loneliness … ?”
“I do”
“To be his queen-in-waiting, to be sacrifice for Buckkeep, this I know I must do well. But there is another part of me … I am woman to his man and wife to his husbanding. To that I am sworn as well, and am more willing than dutiful to it. But he comes seldom to me, and when he does, he speaks little and leaves soon.” She turned back to me. Tears sparkled suddenly on her eyelashes. She dashed them away and a note of anger crept into her voice. “You spoke once of my duty, of doing what only a Queen can do for Buckkeep. Well, I shall not get with child lying alone in my bed night after night!”
“My queen, my lady, please,” I begged her. Heat rose in my face.
She was merciless. “Last night, I did not wait. I went to his door. But the guard claimed he was not there. That he had gone to his tower.” She looked aside from me. “Even that work is preferable to how he must labor in my bed.” Not even that bitterness could cover the hurt under her words.