Thank you so much for the feedback and 'votes of confidence' as I put up the latest chapters, which mark a shift in tone. I was anxious about how that would go down, so I'm very grateful to see you are still enjoying the story. :heart:
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Tashka trailed into Arianna's room and sank into one of the blue and yellow armchairs. She shut her eyes and lay still. Her mind was like a herd of deer, so many thoughts running this way and that, appearing in brief dappled shadows in a sunny wood. Her body lay absolutely still and relaxed in the soft cushions. She felt a touch on her cheek and started up, seizing Arianna's cool hand in a hard grip.
"Prithou pardon," she said, letting Arianna's hand go and sinking back into the cushions. Her blue eyes turned aside while Arianna cleaned her cheek and applied some salve to it.
"Anna," she said mournfully, "Vadya wants to be married the night."
"Ar't sad for that?" Arianna asked in surprise, putting the jar of salve onto a table beside the armchair.
"Oh no," Tashka said carelessly. "It will be nice to be able to lie with him without him fretting about my honour and whatnot. Only, I know not what to wear," her mouth turned petulantly down at the corners. She turned her eyes upwards, trying to smile at herself but Arianna did not laugh at her. "Of course, I never thought I would wear a pink dress, ha ha," Tashka said. She sat up and fiddled with the handguard of her rapier. "I just thought ... I would think of something special but I never did. I mean, of course Vadya does not care. He has the worst sense for clothing I ever saw! Only ... he must marry his officer, who drinks and swears and fights, and Anna, when I had to be betrothed to him, I started to wonder what sort of woman I would have been." She looked nervously at Arianna, who had seen her in a dress.
"Woulds't have been an heartbreaker," Arianna said promptly. "Has't such beautiful eyes, has't a merry witty way with you and a strength of heart to make men swear their lives away. And ar't sexy, there is no denying it." She smiled into Tashka's shyly pleased face.
"Oh well," Tashka said. "I would have liked to be a woman for Vadya, just for one night. But he does not like me to wear a dress. In fact, he forbid it!" she laughed.
"How about a suit made in the style your friend Anata wears?" Arianna answered, looking with a warm love into Tashka's wistful face. "She does not wear dresses but nobody will say she is not a woman."
Tashka thought about her friend's Northern peasant clothes: wide-hipped trousers and little jackets made from fabrics in dashing colours embroidered with animals, birds and flowers. Anata Yrai was a storming P'shan beauty and Pava and Tarra had both rushed to flirt with her, but she had dismissed their attentions with a biting wit. She barely tolerated the advances of the immensely wealthy Hanya el Jien only because he was so shy that he always treated her with extreme courtesy.
"I could still wear my sword!" Tashka said, her eyes brightening, "but Anata is too short, I cannot borrow her things and we will never have time to get me a new suit before the night," her face fell again, she pouted and her eyes glinted with regret. "Perhaps Vadya would let me wear my old Sietter parade silks or there is my brocade suit I suppose but I have lost a button off the breeches."
Arianna got up off the stool she had been sitting on and went over to her door. "If gives't up this easily on the field of battle," she said, "I am amazed ever wons't a name for yourself as a soldier!" She leant out of her door and shouted: "Fiotr, go and beg to come to me the Lady van P'shan, the Lady Sevianne, Dame Anastelle Yrai and Mistress Faffie Velor. Ask Vidor Hyaline to come too. Get Lisette, Ladda and Tisha! Run to it!"
Tashka stood up and stared. Arianna crossed over to a big wardrobe in the corner of her room, opened the doors and pulled out a deep drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe, out of which she began taking bolts of silk cloth.
"Are ... are you going to make me a wedding suit?" Tashka asked, her eyes narrowing nervously up as if she could not bear to believe it.
"It might be difficult to go down to the shops and get you any other wedding present," Arianna answered with a laugh. "So musts't accept this suit instead." She threw a pink silk on the bed, unrolled it and held up the edge of it to Tashka's face. "Oh dear! no, even I can see pink really does nothing for you. But it is more like your luck that I invited Vidor Hyaline and Faffie Velor to our party. Faffie worked at embroidery for the King's robemakers, so you will have a royal edge to your wedding suit. And Vidor has been trying to get Faffie to help him do some stitching but she only laughs at him. That is something to make you smile, my sweetness, is it not? To have a wedding suit designed by Hyaline and embroidered by one of the King's robemakers."
~#~*~#~
Clair got up from the table of food laid out for lunch and looked with a frown out of the sitting-room windows - one of which had had to be covered over with a board. "Where is Tashka?" he said irritably.
"I will go and see," Vadya started for the door, Clair came with him and they passed out of the sitting-room and up the stairs to Arianna's room together. A footman came hurrying down the stairs past them with a tray laden with beautiful bowls slopped with dregs of tea and matching plates covered in cake crumbs.
"What! are they having a tea party while this war crashes about our ears?" Clair said crossly, knocking perfunctorily on Arianna's door and opening it without waiting for her to say he could enter.
He and Vadya stood on the threshold and stared. Arianna's bed was a mess of material: ivory silk, peach silk, pale blue silk. Tangled amongst the lengths of cloth were bits of lacy lingerie that made Vadya's eyes start in their sockets. Two servants, Anata and Sevie were kneeling on the floor cutting out some fawn raw silk cloth. Faffie was sitting in an armchair, embroidering something. Lady van P'shan was sitting in the other armchair dangling snippets of cloth for Arkyll and Hanya to play with.
