"Hi," Stacy said, clearly confused. "Is there a problem?"
"Not at all, miss." Jayr smiled at the table of giggling teens. "Enjoy your meal."
"Thanks."
Jayr bowed and returned to the high table to refill the men's goblets. Two of the men left to join the troupe of acrobats who had entered the hall to perform their last act of the season.
"Deftly handled, Jayr." Robin of Locksley came to sit in one of the vacant chairs. "I am supposed to be the Kyn most irresistible to women. I believe I am jealous."
"Too many of us in one room can make such things happen." Jayr glanced at the girl, who seemed engrossed in a conversation with her companions. "I shall have to speak to the maintenance crew about installing a larger exhaust fan."
"Who is this Tom Welling?" Harlech wanted to know.
"A young television actor much admired by adolescent females of this era." Ruefully she ran a hand over her short hair. "It seems I bear a moderate resemblance to him."
"Those brats are a nuisance," Byrne muttered.
Locksley leaned close to whisper, "Someone is jealous because his fierce visage does not attract more pretty girls."
"I could be more careful about how much scent I shed," Jayr admitted. "That is what brings them to me, in truth."
"What about the boys?" The smile Locksley gave her turned mischievous. "A few strapping young males might prove amusing. At least you could get some pleasure out of them."
A chalice slammed down on the table, staining the cloth red with spilled bloodwine. The hot smell of heather grew thick as Byrne lurched to his feet.
"Jayr, with me." He ignored the astonished faces around him and strode out of the hall.
"Harlech, see to the visitors. Forgive me, my lord." Jayr bowed quickly to Locksley and then hurried off after Byrne.
Chapter 4
Jayr waited until she and Byrne were alone in his chamber before she spoke. "Do not be angry with Locksley, my lord. I am sure that he meant no offense."
"Rob's tongue runs away with his wits." Byrne shrugged out of his mantle and surcoat and tossed them over the back of his chair. He looked as if he might throw the faux crown out the window, but at the last moment turned and thrust it at her. "How many children like that girl tonight go about making calf eyes at you?"
"Not very many." She busied herself by shaking out his outer garments and hanging them in the armoire. The offending crown she placed on a lower shelf, out of sight. "It happens once or twice a season."
He didn't like that. "You've nae said a word to me."
"I never thought I should have to, my lord. I've dealt with them as quietly and discreetly as possible." Why was he so upset over the girl's behavior? "I spoke to Stacy while she was bespelled and made the appropriate suggestions. She will not return here again."
"Where were her parents?" he asked. "Why did they not accompany her and keep her in check?"
Byrne's disdain for the modern world often kept him oblivious to the changes in human society. The first time he had seen a human female in trousers, during the American suffragette movement, he had declared that mortal society must be on the brink of collapse.
"Adolescent girls today are permitted to go out without chaperones," Jayr said, trying to keep the irony out of her voice. "There are fewer dangers to them, especially when they go about in groups to public places. Stacy was with her friends."
"Those giggling brats? They were as young and silly as she." He swept the air with his hand. "All of them should be locked up by their fathers until they can be married off."
"You know very well that Americans no longer arrange marriages for their young, my lord." She kept a straight face. "Mothers and fathers both work, often more than one job, to afford a decent living and better education for their children."
"Children who apparently have nothing better to do than toss themselves at you." He gave her a suspicious look. "'Tis not amusing."
She pressed her lips together carefully. "It seems as if they have too much freedom, but I think they pay for it in loneliness." She remembered the terrible yearning in the teenager's eyes. "They are denied affection and the closeness of family, and so seek to find it from strangers."
"The girl." Byrne braced his hands on either side of one window, looking down at the gardens. "Did you fancy her?"
"Stacy?" She felt bewildered. "No, my lord. I fed earlier, before the performance."
"I saw you kiss her brow."
If he meant… But they never spoke of such things, out of respect for each other. "It was to comfort her. I felt sorry for her. I did not fancy taking blood from her."
"I dinnae mean her blood."
Or perhaps all the respect was on her side. "I may look like a boy, my lord," she said stiffly, "but I have never desired other females."
"So you feel no desire at all." He made it a statement.
Jayr supposed when it came to sex that she was more coldblooded than most Kyn females, but living an abstinent life had not been her choice, only her obligation.
"I feel many things," she defended herself. "I have my predilections and desires, like any Kyn, but little time to indulge them."
"Then why not use these humans who become infatuated with you?" Under the fine linen of his shirt, his broad back muscles tensed. "Their sort would be, as Rob said, a convenience."
"Stacy is a child. I cannot. It is not something that I require anyway." Jayr felt very uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. "With your permission, my lord, I should go and make sure the last of the visitors have left."
"Wait." His tone brooked no argument. "Tell me of these desires of yours. How do you control them so well?"
Would he force her to recite her every flaw?
"My duties take up much of my time, so I have little to spare for idle pleasures. I have learned to do without human companionship. That is all I meant." That much was true. "In all other ways I am Darkyn."
"I have never known you to take any lover. You wouldnae be so foolish as to trifle with Harlech or the garrison." He turned to face her. "So what do you do when you want f**king, seneschal?"
Jayr knew her master could be crude when it suited him, but he had never used such language with her. As she was thinking of how to respond, her tongue decided the matter for her. "That is not for you to know."
"Isn't it?" He came across the room, looming over her before she could take a breath. "You serve me. You belong to my household. Your choices reflect on me. You'll tell me whatever I wish to know. You'll tell me now."
She ignored the fact that he was shouting in her face and stood her ground. "There is nothing to tell you."
"Is it Locksley, then?" His lips curled back from his dents acérées, which were fully extended. "Is that how you see to him every time he comes on a visit? Did you think you could conceal such a thing from me?"
Her jaw dropped. He thought she would sleep with a visiting suzerain, an important lord who also happened to be his best friend?
"I do not bed Lord Locksley, nor any of the Kyn," she protested. "Nor do I take humans, male or female."
"You would have me believe you a virgin?"
"You know very well that I am not." She took some satisfaction in seeing him recoil. "When I have need, and the time to attend to it, I see to myself."
"You…" As her meaning registered, he stared. "Yourself? Why?"
"Do you never look at me, my lord?" she asked softly, gesturing toward her front. "As I am, no one questions my playacting a squire. I look like one. Were I not so tall, humans would think me a child."
Byrne lifted his hands as if to touch her, and then let them fall away.
"It does not have to be so," he told her, not meeting her eyes. "There are males who find females such as you fetching."
"The only male who would desire this body of mine," she said flatly, "would wish to be with another male, or perhaps very young girls. I would not interest the former, and I would never permit the latter to touch me."
"Not all," he insisted.
For a long moment they stared at each other. Jayr could not tell Byrne her true feelings: that she wanted no other man to touch her but him. She would not further revolt him. She belonged to him already, and that was enough.
It had to be enough.
"As you say, my lord." Heather suffused the air, making Jayr remember her suspicions about the cause of her master's unruly temper. He needed relief. "Forgive me for speaking out of turn. Do you wish some company for the night?"
"I dinnae care." He went to sit in front of the fire and stared at the flames. "Go. See to the Realm."
Jayr stepped out into the hall. Her hands wanted weapons; her chest wanted more air. Suppressed rage made her shoulders rigid and gnarled in her gut, a red-hot viper. Deliberately she made herself relax and see the situation without emotion. Whether her lord wished to admit it or not, he had needs of his own. Her duty was to see to them, and quickly.
The air crackled as she drew on her Kyn talent and dissolved into a blur of motion.
It took her only a few moments to reach the employee lounge, where their human staff spent their breaks and kept their personal belongings. As most were leaving for a full month of paid vacation, the atmosphere was happy and somewhat celebratory.
"Jayr." Sally, one of the kitchen crew, gave her a clumsy hug. She smelled strongly of ale and swayed on her feet. "Come out and have a drink with us. The head cook and all the waiters are going clubbing after work." She frowned down at Jayr's chest. "Your clothes just come out of the dryer?"
"No. I thank you for the invitation, but I cannot go out with you and your friends." Over Sally's head she caught the eye of a sober horse trainer she trusted, who gave her a nod in return. She looked into Sally's foggy eyes. "I would like you to go home with Bill tonight."