Chapter 20 Playing the Rogue’s Wife
Playing the Rogue’s Wife
“I’m going to be your what?” I was sure I hadn’t heard him right.
“My wife.” Radven was looking more and more amused by the second.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m dead serious,” he replied, grinning.
“Therador works a little differently than your world—in some ways it’s more progressive, but in others, far less so.
Trust me, after spending a decade in your world I much prefer many of your social mores, but here, a young, unmarried woman walking into an inn with a young, unmarried man is sure to attract attention.
Far easier for everyone if we just play the part of a married couple. ”
That made sense, though I was honestly a little bitter about it. “So you’re telling me that in this world a woman can be as powerful as Laitha but she can’t walk around without a man?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. There are certainly women who hold positions of power here, both in an official capacity and in the political underworld.
And plenty more who travel on their own, for various reasons.
But they almost always draw attention, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid.
Far Meadow sees many travelers, but they’re still a small village, and people talk.
We want to pass through without notice.”
I had plenty of thoughts about that, but I had to admit that he had a point for the time being. I’d had enough close encounters for the day—my best bet was to lay low until I could figure out my next steps.
I glanced around, looking for a place I might change in private. There was a small clump of berry bushes near the edge of the trees that looked like it would provide plenty of cover—and was in the opposite direction that the boarlath had run—so I headed there.
“Don’t even think about trying to steal a peek,” I said over my shoulder to Radven.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, butterfly,” he called back, and I could hear the wicked smile in his voice.
I ducked behind the brambles, then, after the briefest moment of hesitation, peeled off my T-shirt and jeans. Both were stained and torn beyond repair, so I shoved them beneath the bushes out of sight. Then I pulled on the white dress.
It was a little too long, and definitely too tight across the chest, but it mostly fit.
I had the same issue with the brown tunic—I could get it on over the under-dress, but I’d have to be careful not to trip on it.
And I couldn’t even begin to tighten the laces across the bust. I never thought of myself as having a particularly generous chest, but I was practically bursting out of this.
Forget Ren Faire maiden, I thought, shifting the fabric to make it slightly less obscene.
I‘ve gone straight into ‘busty barmaid’ territory. Eventually, I managed to get the dress and tunic to lay across my chest in a way that didn’t look quite so vulgar, and only then did I step back around the bushes toward Radven.
He’d been watching the woods in the direction the boarlath had gone, but he turned when he heard me approaching.
And his eyes went wide, his lips curling devilishly.
“Don’t say anything,” I warned.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, wife.”
My entire face flamed, and I tried to ignore the part of myself that was secretly pleased at his reaction, telling myself I had more self-respect than that.
“Let’s just go,” I said.
“We will. Just a moment.” Radven reached up and undid the tie that had been holding his hair in a small knot on the back of his head. His hair fell to his shoulders, black and sleek and giving off all sorts of sexy vampire vibes. Then he grabbed a small section just behind his right ear and pulled.
Nothing happened. Except Radven gave a small curse and pulled it again.
”Is something stuck in your hair?” I asked, trying to understand what he was doing.
“No,” he said curtly. “The damned curse—” He cut himself off and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I have other means.”
He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it until it had some texture to it, and then reached into a little pouch on his belt.
I craned my head to see what he pulled out. “Are those…contacts?”
“Your world possesses some interesting resources,” he said, holding the small contact lens case in one hand and plucking out one of the contacts with the other. “Colored contacts are just one of them.”
As I watched, he popped the pair of colored contacts into his eyes, hiding his forest green irises behind a very ordinary shade of brown.
He returned the contact case to his belt and pulled out what appeared to be a small container of tinted powder, which he rubbed between his palms and ran through his mussed hair.
It dulled the sheen of the strands, reminding me of how my hair had looked that time I’d failed to brush my dry shampoo in properly.
As disguises went, those two small modifications didn’t seem like much, but I was shocked by how much they changed Radven.
Even his bearing changed—his shoulders slumped slightly, and he held his face a little slack.
He was no longer dangerously beautiful, or even especially interesting to look at—he’d somehow transformed himself into someone perfectly indistinct.
Handsome still, if you looked close enough, but not someone you’d bother looking at twice.
“Now we can go,” he said, then looked at me and hesitated. “Wait—we should probably hide those pearls. People will wonder how someone of your status came to possess so many. And why.”
He started toward me, but I stopped him with a firm, “I can do it myself.”
Unfortunately, whatever knot he’d tied in the twine proved far too complex for me to undo, no matter how much I twisted the necklace around and tugged at it. After several frustrating minutes, I was forced to glance at him in defeat.
“Fine,” I said. “You do it.”
He only looked slightly smug as he sauntered over to me. This time, rather than deal with the necklace from the front, he walked around behind me.
His fingers gently brushed the hair away from my nape, and the flash of danger!
in my mind had nothing to do with Radven’s character and everything to do with the quiver on my skin as he touched me.
He took his time untangling the knot, and I could feel his breath stirring my hair, steady but the tiniest bit charged.
I could smell him, too, and his scent was different from those of his brothers—like sandalwood and smoke, the way I imagined a secret might smell. It was dangerous and tempting.
After what felt like a lifetime of holding my breath, the knot finally came free.
“We should tie them somewhere out of sight,” he said. “Perhaps around your ankle.”
“I can do that myself,” I assured him. The thought of him kneeling at my feet, his hands under my skirt and his fingers brushing against the bare skin of my leg, gave me all sorts of feelings I didn’t want to examine.
Look at you, I thought as I crouched down to tie the pearls securely around my ankle. Pop on a medieval dress and suddenly your sensibilities have gone all medieval, too. Since when did it become so scandalous for a man to touch your ankle, of all things?!
I pushed that question aside as well, focusing instead on triple-knotting the twine so there was no way the pearls could fall off.
“Okay,” I told Radven, determined to keep all lustful, sex-starved thoughts out of my mind for the time being. “I’m ready.”
We walked down to Far Meadow together, crossing a field to join a packed dirt road that wound along the river. When we began to pass other people, Radven took my arm in his.
“We should discuss what we’re going to call each other, wife,” he said, clearly taking great glee in teasing me with that word. “What would you like your name to be?”
I considered it. “I have no idea what a normal-sounding name around here would be.”
“Ah, fair point.” He gave it a second’s thought, then said, “Let’s call you Cateline.”
Cateline. It was very pretty, I had to admit.
“And what about you?” I asked.
“I was thinking Elric,” he replied. “I’ve never used the name Elric before.”
“So this is a regular thing for you, making up new identities?” I asked, softly so a passing farmer wouldn’t overhear.
“Only when necessary.”
“But you clearly enjoy it.” I found a smile spreading across my lips. “Now I understand why you felt the need to call yourself George in my world.”
“I called myself George because it was necessary,” he said.
“My brother’s names weren’t common in your country, but at least they could be passed off as eccentric.
But Radven was far more unusual, and thus far more likely to attract questions we didn’t want.
People in your world never questioned the name George. ”
“Fair enough.”
We’d reached the outskirts of the village, and now that the sun had mostly faded, the buildings were starting to light up from within, spilling firelight through open windows out onto the street.
“The inn is just around the corner,” Radven told me, ambling along like we were out for a pleasure stroll. “Let me do all the talking.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep my mouth shut,” I assured him. Then, “Random question, but how exactly do I understand people here? Are you telling me there isn’t a language barrier between our worlds?”
Radven smiled, and it somehow looked slightly less devilish in his current disguise.
“That would be the essence. Don’t ask me how it works—I’ve always been less concerned with how it works and more interested in what it can do for me.
No one understands all the mysteries of essence, not even those who have it in abundance—which I don’t.
But I do know that it’s a force as old as Therador itself, and that we humans have hardly begun to grasp its mysteries. ”
“Okay,” I said. That cleared up absolutely nothing, but I was just grateful I was able to communicate with people here.