Unfortunately D'nar's immediate reaction was a grin of warm admiration. He felt an adrenaline rush and the erotic buzz of blood flowing to his penis and loins as he understood how thoroughly he had been deceived. Standing in the doorway of his house, he ducked his head shyly down like some foolish boy who wants to hide his emotions. But it was very many years now since he had been in the habit of ducking his head to hide boyish emotions.
Even before he got to his house he had had his suspicions. The city was awash with rumours of an uprising in Andarria. In the wooden stalls of the muddy marketplace they were saying that significant forces had been collecting into an army and had suddenly started massing on the border with Tarknan. But when he got to his house, the modest one-storey timber and mud building with the pretty courtyard hidden inside, the door was locked as was usual at night. From the outside all appeared to be as it had always been when he returned from a tour of duty.
When he opened the door and stepped into his house he heard the silence. It held a stillness of a wholly different quality to the usual quiet peace that had come to reign in his home, which was full of the small creaks and clicks and hushed sounds of a lived in dwelling. He saw the abnormally tidy state of the tiny hallway: no little cloak or boots strewn carelessly about, no toy left just where an unwary returning parent might tread on it and break it. He knew then that she had taken the Crown and had gone.
Yet she had locked the door. She had scrupulously cleaned and tidied his home and had left it safely locked so that his goods and belongings would not be stolen or vandalised. She herself had not gone through the house she had cleaned and cared for these past five years wreaking vengeance on objects she would know were dear to his heart.
He went through the rooms, calling out sometimes softly: "little dove, sweetmeat, my pretty, are you there?" or in more commanding tones: "'Lissa! some beer if you please and heat up water for a bath!" It was clean and tidy all the way throughout except for a week's light dust lying on every surface.
She had taken the Crown and had gone.
He could not believe how foolish he had been. He had actually selected her to care for the Crown. He could not help that warm grin of admiration lifting the corner of his mouth and sparkling in his eyes again. He reminded himself that she must have been a mistress of military arts to have deceived him: D'nar, a Commander of the Akhan of Tarknan's forces, who had been entrusted with the care of the Crown of Andarria.
That slumped lumpy figure in the shapeless garments with the bland dark eyes. It was only the love that softened those dark eyes when she looked on the Crown that had been genuine -- the submissive passion for the Crown which a shitty trickster of an Andarrian would be completely unable to disguise, and he had been the more deceived by it. That adoring submissive softness in her eyes had actually made him believe even more in her lying pissing presentation of herself as a slack-shouldered weak slave woman whose presence in his home and closeness to the Crown he had rapidly come to accept. He had considered this shuffling soft-eyed slave posed as little threat to his or the Crown's safety as did the kitchen table.
Ah, the kitchen table.
He paused in the kitchen with the small blue enamelled cooking range and the red tiled floor, the cupboards with the pretty china door knobs painted with flowers in which she had always displayed such a lack of feminine interest.
Oh yes. Now that she had actually gone there were all sort of things which he realised ought to have made him suspicious.
Here at this kitchen table where he took her for the first time in passion. He ought to have realised then except that his mind was reeling from the pleasures he found in her unexpectedly powerful body. For the first time he frowned in anxiety. Was it for that reason that she lay with him, was it only so as to distract and deceive him the more, had she never felt for him the irresistible, the electric shiver of absolute desire for her to which he had succumbed?
But she had locked his house up, secured it for him, when she left it.
And more than that, when he remembered how she had been with him -- even that first time, he knew that she had liked it with him, that she had liked him.
It started one time he came back late in the night from a tour of duty. He unlocked the door quietly, meaning only to sneak in and leave his bags before going to a brothel to slake his lust. He had meant to come home again first thing in the morning of course, to see the Crown.
He went stealthily into the kitchen for a glass of water and there she was, lying across the table in the deep sleep of the fully physically weary, the hood of her unflattering garment fallen away from the close-cropped dark-haired head. The guttering candle threw light softly onto the hard lean planes of her handsome face and the delicate eyelids hooded the hard eyes which she would make blank towards him.
He had felt suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. He was physically exhausted himself with the long days of hard riding, the mental challenge of negotiations along the borders, the effort required to discipline his men. Coming into this peaceful bright kitchen with the woman who was so tired out with keeping it clean that she had fallen asleep sitting at the table, he felt keenly aware of the neatness of his home around him. What had once been a dull bachelor place to throw himself down in and sleep if he could not be troubled with the brothels had become a home shining with a military polish that he deeply appreciated. The blue of the cooking range, the red tiles of the floor, the dusky yellow walls seemed to glow with a limpid efficiency, to salute him with the easy warm companionship of a comrade in arms.
In an unthinking gesture of affection and gratitude he put his hand softly on her shoulder. He would never have done it if he had not been so tired.
She surged up from the table instantly, the one hand seizing his right, his fighting arm, the other gripped on the hilt of his sword, her narrowed dark eyes stared intently into his eyes, glinting dangerously in the candlelight.
As she realised who he was, she drew a deep breath. What must he have smelt like! fresh off campaign, he must have stunk of horses and some bread and garlic they chewed in the saddle while riding home and most of all of salty musky sweaty man. Now he realised how familiar all those smells would have been to her and so instead of standing away from him in disgust, bowing her head in her usual deceptive tricksy pissing submissive way, she had moved closer towards him, her eyelids narrowing over her eyes and the dangerous glint in her eyes becoming the glint of desire.
Straight off the tour of duty and expecting to go to the brothel, he was already stiff with lust, the blood already starting to flow about his penis in anticipation. Instead of attempting to throw off her grip on his wrist and wrestle with her for the sword, he pulled his arm in so that she came even closer, his mouth closed on hers before he could think about it.
