“Ah, but where does it come from? The Merida didn’t have two coins to make their purses jingle when we drove them north. And we had to spend a lot to replace the animals that died of the Plague.”
“We’ve been careful,” she protested. “We’re not extravagant people. We can say that regular trade has filled our coffers again.”
“And that I’m a miser!” He chuckled. “No, love. Trade isn’t regular again yet, that’s the point. We haven’t had time enough to get rich on that. Trade will be the focus this year, more than ever before. With so many princes and athr’im dead and so many youngsters in their places, power has shifted. I’m afraid it’s gone in Roelstra’s direction, not mine. I have to counter that, and my best weapon is dragon gold.”
“Buy them?” She said as if the words had a sour taste. “How can they lean toward him when you were the one who gave them dranath!”
“I could say that they see the deaths, not the lives spared, and it would be true. I could say they suspect me of having hoarded the drug at the very beginning, and that, too, would be accurate from their point of view. But the real reason—”
“Is that Roelstra has influence with these young lordlings who understand only one kind of power. His kind. We’ll have to educate them.”
“We shall. But I don’t plan to buy them.”
“Well, you’ll have to think up a reason why you won’t be out there killing a mating sire, you know. The vassals expect it.”
“I know,” he sighed. “People have such absurd notions about proof of a prince’s virility, thanks to my father.”
Her shoulders flinched and he cursed himself. “They certainly can’t prove it by me,” she whispered.
“Sioned—my father was forty years old before I was born. There’s time.”
She pulled out of his arms and faced him. “I’ve never carried a child very long. I haven’t been pregnant since the Plague. I’m not going to give you any children, Rohan, and we both know it.”
“Stop that. We’re both young and strong—”
“You need an heir.”
He drew in a deep breath. “If it comes to it, and it won’t, then Maarken is my choice. But you shouldn’t fret about it, Sioned.”
“How can I not? Rohan, I’ve studied the law. There’s nothing that says your heir must be the son of your wife—only the acknowledged son of your body.”
“Sioned!” He grasped her shoulders roughly. “What are you talking about?”
“I won’t give up my place as your wife and your princess, but you need an heir.”
He stared at her. “So you’d send some girl to my bed and then watch her swell with my child? Could you do that, Sioned?”
“I have your heart and your mind.”
“And my body. Always. Only you. Tell me you could never do that, Sioned.”
“I could,” she insisted, though tears sprang to her eyes.
“And after the child is born, what then? Would you send its mother away? Or keep her here and watch her take precedence over you as the mother of my son? Have you thought about this at all, you little fool? You’d make me into another Roelstra!”
“I have thought about it! Rohan, I can’t give you—”
“There’s nothing I want that you can’t give me. And one day we’ll give each other a son. Sioned, I wouldn’t want a child by any other woman. I couldn’t look at a son that didn’t have you in his face and his eyes.” He looked into those beautiful, doubting green eyes. “But can’t you see that it doesn’t matter to me? You’re enough. You’re more than I ever thought I’d have. Sioned, you are my life.”
And to prove it to her the only way he knew, he coaxed her down onto the moss and made love to her as the waterfall sang nearby. She wept a little, bittersweet tears tasting of her love for him and her despair that she was unable to bear a child. Afterward he rocked her against his chest, her hair a silken curtain over their bodies. When she lay quiet at last, he loosened his hold and raised himself on one elbow to look at her. Years of living in the Desert had burnished her fair skin to light gold and paled her hair a little, streaking it with blonde glints to make a finer setting for those eyes. Pride, surety of his love, and confidence in herself as a princess showed in every line of her face, as royal now