Renegade's Magic
“Who, then?” I demanded impatiently.
She picked up her baby, kissed the little girl with a flourish, and then announced to me, “Caulder Stiet. There. What do you think of that?”
For a moment my mouth hung open. Then I replied darkly, “I fear she has played right into his hands.”
“What?”
“Yaril saw it as a chance for them to build something, for themselves, perhaps together, perhaps not. They are both, she wrote, tired of being pawns in their elders’ games. Caulder is quite certain he wishes to marry her, but she has honestly told him that she is uncertain and does not wish to be married for many years yet. Still, they are friends enough to conspire. She and Caulder feigned a monstrous quarrel, with shrieking and broken crockery! You know, from the way she writes of it, I think she enjoyed it! She mentions she smashed enough cups from the old china that her father will have to let her buy a whole new set now.”
“Well, it was enough of a to-do that your father finally ordered both of them to leave his house. And so of course, off they went, back to Old Thares, with Caulder taking the rocks in his baggage. He had quite a time getting them to Her Majesty, but he prevailed, and guess what? For service to the Crown, the Crown has issued another grant of land to your father, more than doubling his holdings, and adjacent land to Caulder Stiet himself, to be held in trust for him by his father, his real father, until Caulder reaches his majority. It’s almost like the Crown forcing him to take Caulder back as his son. No title for Caulder, more’s the pity, but he will at least join the landed gentry when he comes of age.”
“How nice for him,” I said dryly. The news of my father’s holdings increasing was good news, for it made Yaril an even more desirable bride. She would have better choices than Caulder Stiet, I hoped. The idea of the Stiet family having a holding adjacent to Widevale appealed to me far less.
Her mention of her mother triggered another concern of mine. I tried not to sound accusing as I said, “You sent my soldier-son journal to your father, didn’t you?”
She paused, then faced me squarely. “I did. It seemed wisest to me then. I didn’t think Yaril was old enough to deal with the very frank things you’d written in it.” Here, despite all her aplomb, she flushed slightly. “And I feared that your father might destroy it. I believed there was too much valuable information in it to allow that to happen to it. So I sent it to my father, with a request that he leave it sealed. He is an honorable man, Nevare. I knew that he would respect my wishes, and I never, ever thought that my mother, of all people, would be interested in a soldier-son’s journal. I’m so sorry.”