“Must have been a hard life.”
Drefan turned his back on them and seemed to stare into the candles for a time before he went on.
“It was life. The only life I knew. But I do know that I was woefully tired of living each day in fear that he might come.”
“He’s dead,” Richard said. “You no longer have to fear him.”
“That is why I’m here. When I felt the bond break, and it was later confirmed that he was dead, I decided that I would end my private terror. I’ve been guarded since the moment I arrived. I knew I wasn’t free to leave this room. I know the reputation of the guards you surround yourself with. That was all part of the chance I took to come here.
“I didn’t know if the new Lord Rahl would want me eliminated, too, but I decided to end the constant death sentence hanging over my head. I’ve come to offer my services to the Master of D’Hara if he will have me; or, if it is his will, that my life be forfeit for my crime of birth.
“Either way, it will be over. I want it over.”
Drefan, his eyes watering, turned to face Richard.
“There you have it, Lord Rahl. Either forgive me, or kill me. I don’t know that I much care which anymore, but I beg you to end it—one way or the other.”
His chest rose and fell with labored breaths.
Richard appraised his half brother in the dragging silence. Kahlan could only imagine what Richard must be thinking, at the emotions of those deliberations, at the painful shadows of the past, and the light of hope for what might be.
At last, he held his hand out.
“I’m Richard, Drefan. Welcome to the new D’Hara, a D’Hara that fights for freedom from terror. We fight that none have to live in fear, as you have done.”
The two men clasped wrists. Their big, powerful hands were the same size.
“Thank you,” Drefan whispered. “Richard.”
18
“I heard that you saved Cara’s life,” Richard said. “I want to thank you. It must have been hard, knowing that she was one of my guards who might end up harming you… if things didn’t go right for you.”
“I’m a healer. It’s what I do—Richard. I’m afraid I may have trouble calling you anything but Lord Rahl—for a time, anyway. I feel the bond to you, to you as the Lord Rahl.”
Richard shrugged self-consciously. “I’m still having trouble getting used to people calling me Lord Rahl.” He stroked a finger along his lower lip. “Do we… do you know if we… have any other half brothers, or sisters?”
“I’m sure we must. Some must have survived. I’ve heard a rumor that we have a younger sister, at least.”
“Sister?” Richard grinned. “Really? A sister? Where do you think she is? Do you know her name?”
“I’m sorry Lord… Richard, but all I know is the name: Lindie. The words passed on to me said that if she is still alive, she would be perhaps as much as fourteen years. The person who told me her name said that all he knew was her first name, Lindie, and that she was born in D’Hara, to the southwest of the People’s Palace.”
“Anything else?”
“I’m afraid not. You have now heard everything I know.” Drefan turned to Kahlan. “How are you feeling? Did the herb woman, what was her name, stitch you up properly?”
“Yes,” Kahlan said, “Nadine did fine. It hurts some, and I have a headache, I guess from everything that’s happened. I didn’t sleep well last night with the ache of my shoulder, but that’s to be expected. I’m fine.”
He moved toward her, and before she knew it, he had her arm in his hand. He lifted it, twisted it, and pulled it, asking each time where it hurt. When he had satisfied himself, he moved around behind her and gripped her collarbone with his fingers while pressing his thumbs to the base of her neck. Pain shot up her spine. The room swam.
He pressed under her arm, and at the back of her shoulder. “There. How’s that?”
Kahlan rotated her arm, finding the pain greatly diminished. “Much better. Thank you.”
“Just be careful with it; I’ve numbed some of the pain, but it still must heal before you put it to heavy use. Do you still have the headache?” Kahlan nodded. “Let me see what I can do for that.”
He pulled her by the hand back toward the table and sat her in a chair. He towered over her, blocking her view of Richard.
Drefan pulled her arms out toward himself, squeezing and manipulating the webs between her first fingers and thumbs. His hands made hers seem so small. He had hands like Richard: big, and powerful, though less callused. He was hurting her, he was pressing so hard, but she didn’t voice a complaint, thinking he must know what he was doing.
With him standing right in front of her, she had to turn her eyes up lest she be forced to stare at his tight trousers. Kahlan watched his hands kneading hers—his fingers working over her flesh. She remembered his hand on Cara. She vividly recalled those strong fingers working their way down under Cara’s red leather and between her legs. Working into her.
Kahlan abruptly jerked her hands away.
“Thank you, that’s much better,” she lied.
He smiled down at her with a penetrating, hawklike, blue-eyed, Rahl gaze. “I’ve never healed a headache so quickly. Are you sure it’s better?”
“Yes. It was just a little headache. It’s gone now. Thank you.”
“Glad to help,” he said. He watched her for a long moment, the little smile still on his lips. Finally, he turned to Richard.
“I was told that you are to be wedded to the Mother Confessor, here. You are a very different sort of Lord Rahl from our father; Darken Rahl would never have considered marriage for himself. Of course, he probably was never tempted into marriage by one so beautiful as your betrothed. May I offer my congratulations? When’s the wedding?”
“Soon,” Kahlan interjected as she moved to Richard’s side.
“That’s right,” Richard said. “Soon. We don’t know the exact date, yet. We… have a few things to work out.
“Look, Drefan, I could use your help. We have a number of wounded men, and some of them are in grave condition. They were wounded by the same man who hurt Cara. I’d really appreciate it if you’d see what you could do to help them.”
Drefan retrieved his knives, slipping them away without having to look at what he was doing. “That’s what I’m here for: to help.” He headed for the door.
Richard caught his arm. “You’d better let me go first. Until I change the orders, you will die if you step out of a room before me. We don’t want that.”
As Richard took Kahlan’s arm and turned toward the door, she met Cara’s eyes for an instant. Her hearing wasn’t affected, Drefan had said. She could hear everything, even though she couldn’t react. She had to have heard Kahlan warn him not to put his hand on her there again. She had to have known what Drefan had been doing, but she had been unable to do anything stop him. Kahlan’s face heated at the memory.
She turned and hugged Richard’s waist as they went through the door.
Richard looked up and down the quiet hall, and when he saw no one, he backed her to the paneled wall outside her rooms and pressed a kiss to her lips. She was glad that Drefan had eased the pain in her arm earlier in the day; it hardly hurt to circle both arms around Richard’s neck.
She moaned against his mouth. She was tired from the long day, and her arm did still hurt just a bit, but it wasn’t weariness or discomfort that drove out the moan—it was longing.
He drew her into his arms and turned so that he was leaning his back against the wall instead. His powerful arms crushed her to him, almost lifting her toes from the floor as his kiss became more insistent. She returned it in kind. She pulled his lower lip through her teeth and then backed away for a breath.
“I can’t believe Nancy or one of her women isn’t here, waiting for us,” Richard said.
He had left their guards farther up the hall, around the corner. They were at last alone—a rare luxury. Even though she had grown up with p
eople always around, she now found their constant presence wearing. There was great value in simply being alone.
Kahlan gave his lips a quick lick and a kiss. “I don’t think Nancy will be bothering us.”
“Really?” Richard asked with a sly grin. “Why, Mother Confessor, who will protect your virtue?”
Her lips brushed his. “Dear spirits, no one, I pray.”
He surprised her with an abrupt change of topic. “What do you think of Drefan?”
That was a question she was not prepared to answer. “What do you think of him?”
“I’d like to have a brother I could trust and believe in. He’s a healer. The surgeon was impressed with the way he helped some of those men. He said that at least one of them will live only because of what Drefan did for him. Nadine was more than a little curious about some of the compounds he carries in the leather pouches at his belt. I’d like to think that I have a brother who helps people. Nothing seems so noble as that.”
“Do you think he has magic?”
“I didn’t see any trace of it in his eyes. I’m sure I would have been able to tell. I can’t explain how I can sense magic, now, how I can see it sometimes sparkle in the air about a person, or show in their eyes, but I didn’t see any of that with Drefan. I think that he is simply a talented healer.
“I’m grateful that he saved Cara. At least he said he saved her. What if she had recovered on her own after Marlin was dead and her link with him was broken?”
Kahlan hadn’t thought of that. “So, you don’t trust him?”
“I don’t know. I still don’t believe in coincidence.” He sighed in frustration. “Kahlan, I need you to be honest, and not let me be blinded because he’s my brother and I want to trust him. I haven’t proven a very good judge of brothers. If you have any reason to doubt him, I want to hear about it.”
“All right. That seems fair.”
He tipped his head toward her. “For example, you can tell me why you lied to him.”
Kahlan frowned. “What do you mean?”
“About your headache being gone. I could see that he didn’t make it any better. Why did you tell him that it was gone?”
Kahlan cupped a hand to the side of his face.
“I’d like you to have a brother you could be proud of, Richard, but I want it to be real. I guess what you said about coincidence has made me wary, that’s all.”
“Anything other than simply what I said, about coincidence?”
“No. I hope he can bring a little brotherly love to your heart. I pray that it is nothing more than simple coincidence.”
“Me, too.”
She gave his arm an affectionate squeeze. “I know he has the women on the staff all aflutter. I suspect he will soon be breaking hearts, what with all the swooning looks I’ve seen.
“I promise to let you know if he gives me reason to suspect something amiss.”
“Thanks.”
He didn’t smile at what she said about the women all liking Drefan. Richard had never displayed any jealousy, he didn’t have reason to, even if she hadn’t been a Confessor, but still, there was a painful history with Michael that she realized could make reason less than relevant. She wished she hadn’t mentioned it.
He ran his fingers back into her hair, holding the sides of her head as he kissed her. She pulled back.
“Why did you take Nadine with you this afternoon?”
“Who?”
He leaned toward her again. She pulled back. “Nadine. Remember her? The woman in the tight dress?”
“Oh, that Nadine.”
She poked his ribs. “So, you noticed her dress.”
His brow drew together. “Did you think there was something different about it, today?”
“Oh yes, there was something different about it. So, why did you take her with you?”
“Because she’s a healer. She’s not an evil person—she has good qualities. I thought that as long as she was going to be here, she might as well make herself useful. I thought that that might make her feel better about herself. I had her check that the men were making the quench oak tea properly, that it was strong enough. She seemed happy to help.”
Kahlan remembered Nadine’s smile when Richard had asked her to go with him. She had been happy, all right, but not simply to help. The smile was for Richard, as was the dress.
“So,” Richard said, “you think Drefan is handsome, as all the other women do?”
She thought his trousers were too tight. She pulled Richard into a kiss, hoping he wouldn’t notice her face flushing and misunderstand the reason for it.
“Who?” she breathed dreamily.
“Drefan. Remember him? The man in the tight pants?”
“Sorry, I don’t remember him,” she said as she kissed his neck, and she nearly didn’t. She ached for Richard and nothing else.
There was no room in her mind for Drefan. Almost the only thing in her thoughts was the time she had been with Richard in that strange place between worlds where they had been together, truly together, as never before or since. She wanted him that way again. She wanted him that way now.
With the way his hands were slipping down her back, and the urgency of his lips on her neck, she knew he wanted her the same way, and just as badly.
But she also knew that Richard didn’t want to even appear to be like his father. He didn’t want anyone to think she was no more than Darken Rahl’s women had been: an amusement for the Master of D’Hara. That was why he always let the women on the staff so easily keep him at bay; despite his frustrated objections, he never overruled them when they shooed him away.
The three Mord-Sith, too, always seemed to be protecting Kahlan from being seen as less than the true betrothed to the Master of D’Hara. Whenever she and Richard thought to go to his room at night, even just to talk, either Cara, or Berdine, or Raina was always there, asking some pointed question that seemed to keep them apart. When Richard scowled, they reminded him that he had instructed them to protect the Mother Confessor; He never countermanded the orders. He was trying to rekindle their morals. He would be a hypocrite if virtue didn’t apply to him.
Today, the three Mord-Sith were scrupulously following his orders, and when he had told Cara and Raina to guard him from around the corner and down the hall, they had remained there without objection.
With their wedding so soon, Kahlan and Richard had decided to wait, even though they had already been together once. That time seemed somehow unreal—in a place between worlds, in a place with no heat, no cold, no source of light, no ground, and yet they could see, and they had lain in dark space firm enough to support them.
More than anything, she remembered the feel of him. They had been the source of all heat, all light, all feeling, in that strange place between worlds where the good spirits had taken them.
She was feeling that heat, now, as she ran her hands over the muscles of his chest and stomach. She could hardly get her breath with the feel of his lips on her. She wanted his mouth everywhere on her. She wanted hers everywhere on him. She wanted him on the other side of her door.
“Richard,” she whispered in his ear, “please, stay with me tonight.” His hands were making her lose all sense of restraint.
“Kahlan, I thought…”
“Please, Richard. I want you in my bed. I want you in me.”
He moaned helplessly at her words, and at her hands.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” came a voice.
Richard jerked up straight. Kahlan spun around. With the thick carpets, they hadn’t heard Nadine’s silent approach.
“Nadine,” Kahlan said, catching her breath. “What…?”
Kahlan self-consciously clasped her hands behind her back, wondering if Nadine had seen where they had just been. She had to have seen where Richard’s had been. Kahlan felt her face going red.
Nadine’s cool gaze moved from Richard to Kahlan. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just came to change your poultice. And to apologize
.”
“Apologize?” Kahlan asked, still gulping air.
“Yes. I said some things to you earlier, and I guess I was a bit… out of sorts at the time. I thought I may have said some things I shouldn’t have. I thought I should apologize.”
“That’s all right,” Kahlan said. “I understand how you felt at the time.”
Nadine lifted her bag and her eyebrows. “The poultice?”
“My arm is fine for tonight. You could change the poultice for me tomorrow, though.” Kahlan sought to fill the dragging silence. “Drefan did some of his healing on it earlier… so it’s fine for tonight.”
“Sure.” She lowered her bag. “You two off to bed, then?”
“Nadine,” Richard said in a restrained tone, “thanks for checking on Kahlan. Good night.”
Nadine regarded him with a cold glower. “Don’t even plan to get married first? Just going to throw her down on the bed and lay claim to her, like some girl you come across in the woods? Seems a bit crude for the high and mighty Lord Rahl. And here you were pretending you were better than us common folk.”
She glanced down at Richard and then turned her glare on Kahlan. “Like I said before, he wants what he’s shown. Shota told me about you. I guess you know about what pushes men off the fence, too. It seems you would do anything to have him, after all. Like I said before, you’re no better than me.”
Bag in hand, she turned and marched off down the hall.
Kahlan and Richard stood in the uncomfortable silence, watching the empty hall.
“Out of the mouths of whores,” Kahlan said.
Richard wiped his hands back across his face. “Maybe she has a point.”
“Maybe she does,” Kahlan admitted reluctantly.
“Well, good night. Sleep well.”
“You, too. I’ll be thinking about you in that little guest room you use.”
He bent and kissed her cheek. “Not going to bed right off.”
“Where are you going?”
“Oh, I thought I’d go dunk myself in a horse trough.”
She caught him by the wide, leather-padded band around his wrist. “Richard, I don’t know if I can stand this much longer. Are we ever going to get married before something else happens?”