Noble Beginnings by D.W. Jackson Read Free Book Online Page B

grin. He brought a hand gingerly to his hip,
where a particularly nasty hit of hers had landed squarely on the
bone.
    She shrugged. "What did you expect? But it
was a good fight. You done for now?"
    "I think so, yes." She was just as calm and
composed as she always was after a fight, Dorran noted, and
suddenly he was overwhelmed with the desire for matters between
them to be normal or at least less contentious. "Walk with me?"
    "Sure." She waved to the others with him and
followed him out.
    "So," he said, holding the hall door for her
and shutting it behind them. "How have you been?"
    "Fine. Busy." She examined a couple of
knuckles that had been scraped in one of the skirmishes, then shook
her hand out. "Too busy to come out every day like I used to,
actually, so it feels like every time I do train I have to work
twice as hard to avoid falling behind. I feel like I'm slipping out
of shape."
    "You're only getting better, as far as I can
see." Dorran rubbed his still-sweaty hand absently on his tunic as
they walked down the halls. "Look, I'm...I'm sorry for getting
angry at you before. Is there any chance you can tell me now what
you have been so busy with?"
    She gave him a pointed look. "No."
    He held up his hands. "All right, all right,
I was just checking. I won't press from now on, I promise." He cast
about desperately for a change of topic. "You want to go bathe?"
was the first thing that came to mind. "I haven't had much chance
to train, and today was unseasonably muggy so, I know I could use
one right now."
    She considered the suggestion, then said,
"Sure." And then it was like they were small children again, as
Dorran led her down to the servants' bathing rooms, which thanks to
ever-running fires, were always ready to accommodate two more
guests.
    As they set out their respective tubs and
retrieved several buckets of water from where they waited over the
embers, Dorran certainly remembered that they were no longer
children. He averted his eyes as they stripped and sank into the
small tubs, no longer anywhere near as luxuriously large as they
had once felt. But after that he did sneak a glance or two at her
bare body.
    A raised eyebrow on her part ended up
deterring him from this, however. He'd figured she wouldn't be
interested in anything of that nature. While he suspected that
Edith did enjoy her own time with men, she seldom had the patience
for even flirting when her mind was elsewhere. And he'd been right,
he noted; she had a fair share of welts, the same as his.
    "Hope I didn't hit you too hard," he said,
nodding at the bruises.
    She snorted. "I hope you're joking. I was
considering scolding you about that. You do realize, I think that
the point of training is building habits. If you train yourself to
be afraid of bruising your opponent, how do you expect to be able
to kill a real one?"
    He looked away. "I know that, but it won't do
me any good if I broke my fellow soldiers' trust in me. And
fighting is more about self-control, anyway. Isn't that what Vernis
has always told us?"
    Edith shrugged and turned around, reaching
for a nearby bar of soap and beginning to scrub her back. "Should
that really matter, in my case?" she asked.
    Her voice was perfectly casual, but Dorran
froze. They'd never talked about this, about Edith's chances of
being allowed to become a soldier. "What do you mean?" he
asked.
    "I want to be a soldier," she answered, still
casual. "But..."
    "I know." And he did, she had mentioned it so
many time over the years the fact had been branded into his mind.
"But how..."
    "There already aren't enough men in the
kingdoms to sustain the war," Edith said, "and I don't intend to
have children for years yet, if ever. I don't see why I can't do
the same things my brothers did."
    Dorran just shrugged, then used a basin to
rinse the soap off his body. He sat back and watched the ceiling,
enjoying the sensation of heat sinking from the water into his
bones.” I think you should."
    There was a beat of