Free By Heresies Distressed by David Weber Page A

vacillation. Yet who she was seeing in this moment was the young man—the
husband
—Sharleyan’s letters had described. Not the emperor. Not the invincible admiral, or merciless dictator of terms, or leader of schism against God’s Church, but her daughter’s husband.
    Oh my God
, a quiet voice said softly, almost prayerfully, in the back of her mind.
Sharley
wasn’t
just trying to reassure me. She was telling me the truth. She truly loves him . . . and maybe even more important
, he
truly loves
her.
    Alahnah Tayt had watched her daughter sacrifice too much already on the altar of responsibility, give too much to the weight of the crown she had been forced to assume when other girls were still playing with dolls, surrender too many of the joys which should have been hers. Sharleyan had never complained, never wasted effort on self-pity or admitted she missed those things, yet Alahnah had missed them for her. In the lonely watches of the night, she had prayed for her daughter’s happiness, begged God to give her some small scrap of
personal
love and joy as partial compensation for all of the cold, demanding prestige, power, and wealth of her queenship.
Surely
God could not have condemned her to a bitter, cold marriage after all He had already demanded of her! Yet that was exactly what Alahnah had feared . . . and if Sharleyan had never admitted it, her mother had known it was what
she
feared, as well.
    Now, for just an instant, the queen mother’s lips trembled, and then—to her astonished embarrassment—she burst into totally unanticipated tears. Green Mountain rose quickly, stepping urgently around to her, going to one knee beside her chair and taking her right hand in both of his, and she heard his soft, urgent questions. Heard him asking her why she wept. But she couldn’t answer him. She could only stare down the length of the table at the young man who had so unexpectedly, without saying a single word, told her that her daughter had found the one thing in the world her mother had most feared she would never know.

    Cayleb Ahrmahk watched Queen Mother Alahnah weep, listened to Green Mountain speaking softly and urgently to her. He’d been as surprised as Sharleyan’s first councilor by the queen mother’s tears, but only for a moment. Only until he’d recognized the way her eyes clung to him, even through her tears, and recognized that the one thing in which she did not weep was sorrow.
    He patted his mouth with his napkin, laid the snowy linen aside, and pushed back his own chair. At his express request, he, Alahnah, and Green Mountain were dining privately. Even the servants had withdrawn, waiting to be summoned by the ringing of Queen Mother Alahnah’s bell if they were needed. Even Merlin Athrawes stood outside the private dining chamber’s door, guarding the privacy of all its occupants, and now Cayleb went to one knee at the other side of Alahnah’s chair. He took her free hand in his own, raised it to his lips and kissed its back gently, then looked up at her—or, rather, across, for he was as tall kneeling as she was sitting.
    â€œYour Grace,” he murmured, “I feared the same thing myself, in many ways.”
    â€œ ‘Feared,’ Your Majesty?” Alahnah repeated, and he nodded, then reached up with his left hand. A gentle thumb brushed tears from her cheek, and he smiled softly, almost sadly.
    â€œYou feared your daughter had been caught in a trap,” he told her. “You were afraid of a loveless marriage of state, a thing of cold calculation and ambition. From what Sharleyan’s told me, I believe you recognized the reasons for that calculation, understood the necessity behind the ambition, but still, you feared them. As did I. I had reports of your daughter, descriptions. I knew her history. But I didn’t know
her
, and I was afraid—so afraid—that if she accepted my proposal, I would be