“I’m not a child!” Corelle whined. “I have a right to hear-”
“Now!”
Corelle flinched backward from Eldest, shot an angry glare at Jerin, and then bolted from the room. Her footsteps thundered up the stairs and her door slammed shut with a bang.
Jerin sat frozen, hands still over his mouth.
“The rest of you too.” Eldest indicated the youngest sisters, and they filed out.
“Who was it?” Eldest asked quietly, emotionlessly, when he was alone with his middle and oldest sisters.
His voice would only come out as a whisper. “Princess
Rennsellaer.“ Unbearable silence followed. He had to break it. ”She didn’t mount me.“ The silence continued. ”She was sitting in the dark when I came down for something to eat. I didn’t see her until she had me in her arms, and-and-I tried to resist. I asked her please not to-and she pushed me against the hearth and kissed me. She didn’t mount me-we didn’t go that far. Father told me ways to make a woman happy, and that satisfied her.“
“The bitch!” Eldest muttered finally. “Come to our home, eat our food, sleep in our beds, and then rape our little brother!”
Jerin wrung his hands, feeling guilty for not confessing that he had done nothing he hadn’t wanted to, that it wasn’t truly rape. He was afraid, though, of his sisters’ fury, and the cold disapproval he would have to live with until he married well, proving he wasn’t ruined by the incident. His life would be bearable only by claiming the part of wronged innocence.
Still, it galled to leave the dangerous word floating there, uncountered. “I’m still a virgin, technically. In the end, when I said that going farther would ruin me, she let me go off to bed alone.”
The level of anger in the room lessened slightly. He rocked slightly in his chair, chiding himself for being a coward. Should he tell them how he surrendered to the seduction, enjoyed giving pleasure to the princess, and received ecstasy beyond description? Who was the true hussy in this family?
“Do you think,” Summer said quietly into the stunned silence, “he did enough to catch any diseases she might have?”
“She’s a princess!” Jerin cried.
“She’s a rapist,” Eldest snapped.
“She didn’t rape me. She didn’t try to use any crib drugs on me. I’m still a virgin.”
“She took you. Maybe not completely, but still she took you against your will.”
Was it rape? He didn’t know. Certainly if she had let him go when he first asked, he would have fled back to his bed, remaining chaste in his lips, his hands, and his memories. Now only parts of him were virgin. He wavered in the belief of his virginity. Maybe being a virgin was like planting a garden-you could turn the earth and rake down the soil all you wanted, but until you pushed a seed into the dirt, you hadn’t created a garden. Or was being a virgin like a frosted cake, where once someone stole a slice, you couldn’t proudly serve it to visitors?
He realized that while he debated his virginity, his sisters were discussing the issue of diseases. It would be too soon, they had decided, to tell if he had caught something. They would take him to a doctor, but one far away, so his reputation would not suffer.
He remembered with sudden, sickening clarity how experienced Princess Ren had seemed, how sure her touch, how skilled her kisses. If she could have any man that she wanted, then what was to say that she hadn’t already taken them all? What was to say she wasn’t diseased? Had they been intimate enough for him to catch something from her? God, they could barely have been more intimate!
If he was diseased, who would take him as husband?
The answer was obvious. The Brindles would take him.
The thought made him cover his eyes and weep.
Eldest pulled him into a hug, murmuring, “Hush, honey, hush,” as the rest of the family fled or were shooed away.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Jerin sobbed.
“We don’t blame you, honey,” Eldest murmured.
“I could have fought.”
“She’s a princess. All her life people have obeyed her commands. You’re a boy. All your life you have listened to others. It was up to her to stop at any no you gave, even if it was whispered.”
“Please don’t hate me, but I didn’t say no. I protested some, but I didn’t say no, not until the very end, and she listened to it.” He could not look at Eldest when he admitted, in a whisper, “I liked what we did, only I was afraid to do more.”
When silence was the only answer, he peeped at her. Eldest gazed unseeing across the room. When she finally looked at him, her eyes were sad. “I don’t hate you. Truly, it is easier to know you gave in to passion. It hurt to think you had been pinned and taken against your will in our very kitchen. I’m still angry with her. Making advances on you is akin to dangling candy before a child.”
“I’m not a child. In a few months, I’m going to be a married man.”
“That’s not what I meant. Jerin, have you not noticed how we are with Doric compared to Heria? Boys are cuddled by everyone from the day they are born. Heria, we discipline sternly. We’ve taught her how to protect what belongs to us. Doric would think nothing of a stranger wanting to cuddle with him. Heria would look for knives.”
Sell one, swap the other.
Jerin’s last words rolled about in Ren’s head during the ride to Heron Landing. Strange how two days could change one’s perspective. She had presided over countless marriage cases-all those bitter battles over money and men as if one were interchangeable with the other. Every season for the last six years, she had attended the society functions designed to bring prospective wives and the sisters of unmarried brothers together-buyers and sellers. When she was sixteen, she had even married a man her older sisters had bought.
It seemed as if she had stood on the moon and watched the process from that emotional distance. Now, gods have mercy on her, she saw with her heart engaged.
Sell one, swap the other.
Gods, how cold, like they were horses or pieces of furniture. But the man in question wasn’t either. The man was Jerin. Beautiful, sweet Jerin, who had asked for nothing but her own safekeeping.
Sold to strangers. Given to strangers.
She tried not to think of horror stories she had judged. True, humans could inflict terrible cruelty upon one another, regardless of sex. Men, though, had no legal protection or recourse. They were their wives’ property. She could not even count the times she had heard of men committing suicide to escape impossible situations.
Surely Jerin had the right of it-with four brothers his sisters could refuse offers. Eldest Whistler impressed her as an intelligent, reasonable woman. Ren trusted that Eldest would choose good wives for her brother.
I’ll probably be swapped for a husband… maybe with the neighbors.
Ren remembered with a start that Corelle and the younger sisters had been off courting the neighbor boy. She wondered what kind of women these neighbors were.
Queens Justice met the royal party at Heron Landing. Ren greeted Lieutenant Bounder with a nod. The officer had been out to the campsite to ensure that the river trash received proper burial and that the body of Egan Wainwright was sent north to be buried with his wives.
Raven took out her portable desk and scratched out orders onto a piece of stationery. “If you find anything else out, report to me.”
“Keep an eye on the Whistlers,” Ren commanded. “It’s unlikely they’ll be bothered for their part in this- but one can’t be sure.”
“The Whistlers can probably fend for themselves better than I can look out for them,” Bounder said.
“Perhaps,” Ren allowed, then pressed on. “I don’t want a repeat of last time, the menfolk and the youngest alone, the older sisters out courting the neighbor, and death nearly at the doorstep.” Ren tried to remain ca-sual as she finally asked, “What do you know about these neighbors?”
Bounder snorted. “Not as much as I would like.”
“Meaning?”
“The Brindle women are lazy brutes that like to pick fights. They’re horrible farmers, but they still manage to build new barns and outbuildings. I suspect they might be one of the families that smuggle in my area, but so far I
