Chapter 2
Spring’s Eve
Alina smoothed the soil over the cabbage
seeds and glanced out the window facing west into the courtyard for
about the hundredth time. The higher the sun rose in the sky, the
more edgy she became, which was ridiculous. This man Leif was
coming to sup with her brother and her father, not her, and wasn’t
even the man who’d been watching her from the ship, according to
Anders’s description.
Still, she couldn’t shake the nervous energy
that had kept her awake half the night and up at the first light of
dawn. She kept telling herself it was the change from winter to
spring, and the excitement of the upcoming festivities. But even
she didn’t believe it.
She ran her fingertips across the feathery
leaves newly sprouting from her fennel plant, a gift from a healer
who’d traveled to Sea Ridge from the southern shores of the Mid
Earth Sea last spring festival, and concentrated on working compost
into the soil around the bulb without injuring it. She heard men’s
voices outside and turned to the door as it opened and her father
walked in, the looking glass in his hand, followed by Anders and a
tall, blond man who looked more Northman than Green Isler.
“Leif MacKinnon,” her father said, “meet my
daughter, Princess Alina.”
“It is an honor, Princess,” Leif said in the
Northern tongue with only the slightest hint of an outsider’s
accent. He stepped forward, holding his hand out and smiling as if
he expected her to swoon at his feet.
“The honor is mine, Leif MacKinnon,” she
said, staying where she stood and holding her hands up, palms out,
to show they were covered in soil.
“This is Roark MacInnes,” her father said as
a man with wavy auburn hair brushing his shoulders and a short
beard of the same auburn curls stepped from behind the others. The
man from the ship yesterday.
“Princess Alina.” His voice was deep and
rich, and he spoke with a heavy accent. Dressed in a clean white
linen tunic and leather vest, he was tall, though not as tall as
his companion, built for power with a broad chest, slim waist, and
strong, muscular legs by the way his leather trousers fit him. His
face and neck were covered with freckles matching his dark auburn
hair, but the most arresting thing about him was his eyes. They
were the color of rain, and Alina was standing on solid ground,
drowning in them.
“Alina?”
“Huh?” She pulled her gaze from Roark’s and
looked to her father. “What?”
“I was about to explain to Leif and Roark how
we move the glass roof panes seasonally, but since they were your
idea, I thought you might want to.”
“The, ah, glass panes,” she said, clearing
her throat and gathering her wits. She pointed up to the ceiling.
“As you can see, we have three separate panels of glass, all of
which can be mixed and moved with the other solid panels of the
roof.” She glanced at her audience. Her father and Roark were
looking up at the panels. Anders and Leif were looking out the open
door.
“We move the panels from season to season to
get the best use of the sun,” she continued. “Today, we positioned
one each west, south, and east. In the summer we put two panels
facing north and one east, in the autumn, two south and one east,
and in the winter, two south and one west.”
Roark held his hands up thumb to thumb,
turning a slow circle around the greenhouse as if framing and
following the sun’s seasonal arcs. He lowered his hands.
“Brilliant,” he said, grinning at Alina with the heat of a summer
sun.
Alina took a deep, cooling breath. “It, ah,
gives me, gives us, the ability to start seedlings a moon earlier
than if we had to sow seed outdoors,” she said, warming to her
subject and Roark’s interest. Or maybe it was his melting grin. She
turned to the herb bed. “I can grow many herbs year-round that
would normally die out in the winter.”
Roark stepped over and stood by her,
inspecting the herbs while her father gazed up through the glass
panes with the looking glass and Anders and Leif stood outside the
door, talking between themselves.
“I saw you on the beach yesterday,” Roark
said, his voice low. “Riding your horse.”
“I know.”
He smiled and she flushed from head to toe.
She reached down and ran her fingers over the fennel leaves. Either
that or run them through his auburn waves. He reached down and
touched the feathery leaves too, his long, blunt-tipped fingers
brushing hers and sending a surge of awareness up her arm. He
leaned in closer to her. “You smell of cherry blossoms,” he said,
his voice a husky whisper.
“I, ah, I was in the orchard earlier,” she
stammered. He smelled of soap, sun, and salt air. “The first
cherries of the season have ripened.”
“Come on,” Anders called from outside the
doorway, causing Alina and Roark to startle. “The tables are set up
outdoors and they’re carrying out the food. I for one don’t intend
to start the night’s festivities on an empty stomach.”
Alina met her father’s grin and shook her
head. Anders loved a good celebration.
“Did you bring masks for tonight?” Anders
asked Leif as the rest of them filed out of the greenhouse.
“We did,” Leif said. “They’re in our packs
back at the gate.” He slowed down to walk beside Alina, forcing
Roark to walk behind them. “What will you be tonight, Princess?” he
asked her. “I’ll be a bear. A big, strong, hungry bear.”
“I prefer to keep it a secret,” she said, and
heard a male chuckle behind her. “I find it more interesting that
way.”
Roark and Leif took seats across from Alina
at her family’s table, giving her an unfettered view of the two men
who couldn’t have been more different. Where Leif was loud,
outgoing, and overly sure of himself, Roark was quieter and took
the time to think before he spoke. He watched and listened to what
people did and said, and though he didn’t seem to be shy or
bothered by the attention he and Leif were attracting, he didn’t
seek it either.
Except for Alina’s.
He watched her with those rain eyes and
smiled his bone-melting smile at her and spoke with her more than
he did with anyone else at the table. Alina reveled in it while
trying to politely ignore Leif, who insisted on interrupting their
conversation with some inane question or comment while ogling her
like she was some prized broodmare. Aware of her mother’s
increasingly curious gaze as she observed the three of them, Alina
tried to focus on her meal, though she couldn’t help stealing
glances at Roark, and he at her.
“How are you enjoying your food?” her father
asked the men as a maidservant filled their cups with more
beer.
Roark glanced at Leif, who was busy ogling
one of the maidservants. “The food is delicious, sir,” he answered
her father, “and I’m not just saying that because I’ve been eating
ship food for a fortnight.”
Her father laughed. “Ah, yes, the food is one
of the few things I don’t miss about sailing, though I did enjoy
tasting many an exotic food in many far-off lands.”
“I would enjoy hearing of some of these
lands,” Roark said.
Her father eyed Roark with his piercing
eagle’s gaze, and to his credit, Roark didn’t shrink or shirk, but
sat up straight and met and held her father’s gaze. “I think you
would much rather see some of those lands for yourself.”
“Not enough to become a sailor,” Roark said
without apology. “I’m more a man of the earth than the sea.”
Her father nodded. “May I see the looking
glass again?” he asked. “What do you call it?”
“A spyglass,” Roark said, handing it across
the table to her father, who held the lens end up, inspecting
it.
“How does this lens work?”
“It’s convex,” Roark explained. “A refracting
lens, which converges the rays of light coming in into a wider
field of view. It bends the light so you can focus on one point.
You can take the lens out and look at it,” he told her father, who
did exactly that, turning it this way and that and holding it up to
the sky.
“Would you be interested in trading for
this?” he asked Roark, putting the lens back in the tube.
“If I were to trade it, King Jerrik, it would
be with someone like you who appreciates it for what it is.
However, I cannot.” He cast a quick glance at Alina. “Some things
are priceless.”
“Yes,” her father said with raised a brow as
he handed the spyglass back to Roark. “Some things in this life
are.”
Roark put the spyglass into a special sheath
attached to his waist belt, and her father turned his attention to
Leif, who was speaking loudly with Anders about beer and women.
“You two speak our Northern tongue well for
Green Islers,” he said to Leif.
“My mother is from the west coast of the
Northlands,” Leif told him. “She’s spoken her native tongue to me
since the day I was born, and to Roark every day for the past ten
years.”
“That explains it then,” her father said. “As
well as your Northern looks. Have you been to the Northlands
before?”
“No,” Leif said. “This is my first time here,
and Roark’s.”
“How has your trading gone?”
“So well that we plan on leaving tomorrow,”
Leif said.
Alina looked at Roark, unable to hide her
dismay. “So soon?”
“I’m afraid so,” he said, and seemed
disappointed.
“We’ve finished almost all of our business
here,” Leif said, “and will set sail sometime tomorrow, depending
on how much beer we drink tonight.” He laughed at his own humor and
slapped Roark on the back. “Roark has been anxious to be done here
and on our way home.”
“What are you anxious to get home to?” Alina
asked.
Roark pressed his lips tight and shook his
head.
“My sister,” Leif said, grinning broadly at
Alina as if he hadn’t just shot an arrow through her heart. “His
betrothed.”
“Oh.” Alina dropped her gaze from Roark’s. “I
see.” She saw that she was no more than a bit of fun and flirtation
for a man whom she had thought different from most. Apparently,
she’d thought wrong. She tried to smile like this revelation meant
nothing to her, like she too had only considered him a bit of fun
for a day. Unfortunately, she was terrible at hiding her
feelings.
“Gwyneth and I have been betrothed since I
was ten and she four years of age,” Roark said, his smile fleeting