She made a mock-serious face. “Poor Lew, are you cold? Yes, I suppose we must go inside to sleep.” She gathered up our heavy outer clothes and carried them. She spread them out on an old, abandoned pallet in the farmhouse, wrinkling a fastidious nose at the musty smell. I said, “It is better than dog,” and she giggled and sat down on the heap of clothing.
She had on a thick woolen shift, knee-length and with long sleeves; I had seen her far more lightly clothed at Aldaran, but there was something about being here like this that roused an awareness that fear and weariness had almost smothered. All during this trip she had slept within the circle of my arm, but innocently. Perhaps because I was still recovering from the effects of Kadarin’s brutal beating. Now, all at once, I was aware again of her physical presence. She felt it—we were lightly in rapport all the time now—and turned her face a little away, color rising along her cheekbones. There was a hint of defiance as she said, “Just the same, I am going to take down my hair and comb and braid it properly, before it gets tangled like Mhari’s and I have to cut it off!” She raised her arms, pulled out the butterfly-shaped clasp that held her braids pinned at the nape of her neck, and began to unravel the long plaits.
I felt the hot flush of embarrassment. In the lowlands a sister who was already a woman would not have done this even before a grown brother. I had not seen Linnell’s hair loose like this since we were little children, although when we were small I had sometimes helped her comb it. Did customs really differ so much? I sat and watched her move the ivory comb slowly through her long copper hair; it was perfectly straight, only waved a little from the braiding, and very fine, and the sun, coming in cracks through the heavy wooden shutters, set it all ablaze with the glint of the precious metal. I said at last, hoarsely, “Don’t tease me, Marjorie. I’m not sure I can bear it.”
She did not look up. She only said softly, “Why should you? I am here.”
I reached out and took the comb away from her, turning her face up to meet my eyes. “I cannot take you lightly, beloved. I would give you all honor and all ceremony.”
“You cannot,” she said, with the shadow of a small smile, “because I no longer …” the words were coming slowly now, as if it were painful to speak them. “—no longer acknowledge Beltran’s right to give me in marriage. My foster-father meant to give me to you. That is ceremony enough.” Suddenly she spoke in a rush. “And I am not a Keeper now! I have renounced that, I will not keep myself separate from you, I will not, I will not!”
She was sobbing now. I flung the comb away and drew her into my arms, holding her to me with sudden violence.
“Keeper? No, no, never again,” I whispered against her mouth. “Never, never again—”
What can I say? We were together. And we were in love.
Afterward I braided her hair for her. It seemed almost as intimate as lying down together, my hands trembling as they touched the silken strands, as they had when I first touched her. We did not sleep for a long time.
When we woke it was late and already snowing heavily. When I went to saddle the horses, the wind was whipping the snow in wild stinging needles across the yard. We could not ride in this. When I came inside again, Marjorie looked at me in guilty dismay.
“I delayed us. I’m sorry—”
“I think we are beyond pursuit now, preciosa. But we would only have had to turn back; we cannot ride in this. I’ll put the horses into the outbuilding and give them some fodder.”
“Let me come and help—”
“Don’t go out in the snow, beloved. I’ll attend to the horses.”
When I came in, Marjorie had kindled a fire on the long-dead hearth and, finding an old battered stone kettle discarded in a corner, had washed it, filled it at the well and put some of our dried meat to stew with the mushrooms. When I scolded her for going into the yard—in these snow-squalls men have been lost and frozen between their own barnyard and doorway—she said shyly, “I wanted us to have a fireside. And a … a wedding-feast.”