The Harvest Ball #2
They wove among the other couples in a clover leaf pattern, and while she simply tried to stay afoot and oriented, Lord Penburn smiled and seemed to enjoy himself.
He wasn’t bad looking, and she liked him as much as one could like a lord-governor, which was something she couldn’t say about all nobles.
“So,” he said, not out of breath whatsoever, “have you ridden to Darden of late?”
She felt her own expression go flat at his reference to the notorious midnight ride she’d made prior to giving in to the Rider call. The rumor she’d done it in the nude seemed to be the foundation of his fascination with her, no matter how many times he’d been corrected.
“Perhaps you would consider visiting my country estate this summer,” he said. “It would be my honor to host you.”
“Um...” She was saved from having to answer by the dance master’s call to change partners. Penburn winked at her and she whirled away.
Rise and Fall
She swept past Zachary in the weave pattern to her new partner, a heavyset gentleman of middle age who, unlike Hendry Penburn, huffed and puffed and had gone red in his cheeks with the exertion of the dance.
His hands were slick with sweat and she tried not to let her revulsion reflect on her face.
He was having enough trouble with his own feet that, also unlike Lord Penburn, he could not help her with hers and they were both stumbling around.
“Ouch!” she cried when he stomped on her toe.
By now, however, she was getting the feel of the dance and decided to treat it like a sword training session with Arms Master Drent.
She attacked the dance and the eyes of her hapless partner bulged as she took the lead and swung him around the dance floor.
She kept her footwork lively enough to prevent more toe stomping, but he began to take on the quality of an anchor.
It felt like she dragged him around the floor for hours when the dance master at last called again to change partners.
Lord Sweaty Hands looked relieved, and she whirled away to her next partner, a young lieutenant of the light cavalry impeccably outfitted in his formal uniform of blue adorned with a red sash and numerous medals glinting at high polish on his chest. He looked no more than seventeen or eighteen and had a look of distaste on his face.
“You can take the Greenie out of the barn,” he said as they danced, “and you can fancy her up, but you can’t take the barn smell out of the Greenie.”
Wonderful, she thought. She was paired with an arrogant twit and he was probably of noble lineage to have been invited to the ball.
There were a lot like him in the exclusive light horse.
It was unlikely this young fellow had ever seen battle, and the medals on his chest were probably for excellence in boot shining and the like.
“You are no lady,” he continued, “wearing boots and breeches like a man to a ball. You insult our king and queen.”
Oh, so he was allowed to wear his uniform and she was not? Well, his accent was of the east, no doubt Coutrean, so he was of a conservative mindset.
“And disgustingly disfigured,” he added. “I do not know why they invited you.”
As they wove in and out among the others, she struggled with herself not to knock him down.
She could let go and walk away, but it would disrupt the pattern of the dance for all the others, creating something of a scene.
Besides, she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of thinking he had cowed her.
“I’m dancing with a girl who smells of horse shit,” he added.
Considering she had thoroughly bathed, and her formal uniform had not seen the interior of any stables, and the Eletian longcoat gave off a pleasant scent of greenery and wild flowers, he had to make up insults to put her in her place as a lowly commoner pretending to be someone important.
Also, as he was some years her junior, he had no call to refer to her as a girl.
The more she resisted rising to his bait, the more disgruntled he appeared and the harder he jerked her around in the dance, but once again employing her training with Master Drent, she did not give when he jerked but planted her footwork as she would when moving through intricate swordfighting forms. It was balance and counterbalance with him, and it was he who stumbled.
“You are no lady,” he muttered again, but he stopped trying to jerk her around.
She smiled as sweetly as she could manage, which made him frown.
She would not give in to her temper like she might have in her school years.
Back then she would have wiped that smirk right off his haughty face.
Her dark self really wanted her to, but she was no longer the schoolgirl, and she didn’t need to draw further attention to herself by causing a spectacle.
Plus, it was hardly as if she’d never heard such comments before.
Green Riders had always been the subject of derisive name-calling, even if it had decreased in recent years.
Still, she stewed inside as they dipped and careened with the music, other conversations an indistinct babble around them.
Her dark self goaded her to tell him that it must be hard for him being the youngest boy of a lord with heirs in line before him and all his father’s holdings and land divided among his older siblings, leaving him with nothing.
Dark Karigan wanted to make him feel small, to disparage his status and to call him a bastard because he might very well be the bastard son of a noble.
It was common for the children of landless nobles as well as bastards to end up in the military as officers, even without training, to give them some standing in life, and it was usually the light horse that received them because it was considered elite.
It was more likely because noble children knew how to ride.
It was the military or the monastery for them, and in that, Karigan found some pity for the young lieutenant.
No pity, her dark self told her. Tell him these things. Make him feel small and unwanted. Make him cry as you did the bullies in school.
I will not, Karigan thought, no matter how much she wanted to take a swipe at his arrogance, but arrogance was often a shield against an underlying lack of self-esteem compensated by denigrating others to make one feel superior and strong.
Instead, she complimented him on his dancing, which, as a noble’s son, he would have also been trained in.
Her dark self sighed in disappointment, and the young man looked perplexed that she would compliment him after his nasty comments.
Perhaps, instead of a compliment, he perceived it as mockery. Not much she could do about that.
Despite her unwillingness to give in to her temper, she was not above a certain amount of pettiness. Before their set came to an end, she said, “Please give Horse Marshal Martel my best.”
“Why would I do that?” he demanded.
“Oh, over the years he has tried to recruit me to the light cavalry, but I prefer the messenger service.”
At that moment the partner change was called and she released him. Before the lieutenant moved on, Zachary came to her and bowed deeply.
“My Lady Winterlight,” he said brightly.
“Your Majesty,” she replied, bowing in turn.
“It is an honor to dance with you again,” he said, and he whisked her onto the dance floor.
The last she saw of the young lieutenant, he was watching them with an astonished expression on his face before he finally left the dance floor.