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smackenzieMaggie did not know if there was a price on her head in the king-in-exile's adopted country - she had never chased a ship flying its flag, and none of the places her navy had attacked belonged to it - but she did not come so far to be careless now, so she had Doren drop anchor in a small cove along the coast to the south of the capital where she told her crew to sit tight and behave, and from there she and the priest took a rowboat up to the harbor.
It took some time for her to convince the harbor guards that she was there to see Sebastian, Duke Laverry, known as the king-in-exile, but she and the priest were kept in a small but comparatively pleasant holding room until word came back from the Duke that yes, he did know Captain Lawton, and yes, she and her companion should be conveyed to his manor in the city, there to stay as his guests.
The king-in-exile's city manor was large and imposing, if not among the largest and most impressive. It was made of stone and marble, and the grand entrance hall to which Maggie and the priest were conducted was excessively and ornately decorated. They were told that the king-in exile was out but would return in time for supper, to which they were of course invited, and then they were shown to their rooms. If they wished, they were told, they might bathe, and if they did not have appropriate dress for the evening, a tailor would be sent for.
And then Maggie and the priest were alone in their separate rooms. Maggie did not have formal clothes for supper with the king-in-exile, which she now thought was a mistake. She had not imagined she would be made a guest in his home, or that he would include her in his entertaining. She had only thought she would speak with him and that she and the priest would have found lodging elsewhere in the city. She had come in disguise, in a dress and silk wrap that she had appropriated from a captured merchant ship, but she had planned to wear breeches and her red coat and captain's hat for her meetings. She now saw that she had perhaps not thought this through as thoroughly as she had imagined.
She changed her clothes and left her room in search of someone to either fetch her a tailor or direct her towards a shop in the city where she might find suitable clothes for the evening. She did not think to bring the priest, and when she returned several hours later - having found a servant to guide her in her quest for a new outfit - she discovered him sitting in her room, waiting for her. He had found a book and looked very much at home in the opulent and overdecorated room. She knew nothing about his life before he became a priest, and now she wondered if he had come from the aristocracy, if he had been a noble's younger son, and he seemed so comfortable in the king-in-exile's guest room because once he had been used to such luxury.
Or it could simply be that he always seemed at home among Maggie's things, in whatever lodging she happened to be using.
"They told me you went shopping," he said when she came in, a servant bearing boxes behind her. The servant deposited her purchases and silently left the room.
"I needed clothes," she said. "I did not think to ask if you wished to come. I apologize."
The priest shrugged. "I do not need fancy clothes, only clean ones. I do not imagine they expect luxury from a man of the cloth, even a defrocked one. I did however have a bath. It was wonderful."
"I have not, but now I do not think there will be time." She pulled off her coat and dropped it on the bed. "I did not come here to wine and dine. I have not planned for this."
"All will be well. These are your people, are they not? Your countrymen and fellow exiles? There will be a room full of people who have not heard of your navy, and who might be interested to hear how you built it."
"Are you mocking me?" He had not sounded as if he were, but she knew he was tired of hearing about her navy and had grown disgusted with the way he thought it had changed her, and she could not imagine that he was pleased with the fact that she could now repeat the story of how she had built a pirate navy to an entirely new audience.
"I am not." He stood and came over to where she was standing next to the bed, looking at the things she had bought and wondering how this had happened. "I will speak to other people of other things, so I do not have to hear you again. But I still support you, Maggie, and I still believe you will accomplish your goals. You will be able to speak to your king among his friends, and perhaps this will give you the support you need from them. You may not have to speak to him formally, if you can offer your navy and have him accept it tonight. Sometimes deals are made at the dinner table, as much as they are in meeting rooms." He took her hand, lifted it to his lips, and kissed the palm. "You are a smart woman. You know that you can turn this to your advantage. You will be beautiful and charming and you will get what you need."
But it was not quite so. She dressed for dinner in a way that she had not done in years, and the priest came to escort her to the dining room where the king-in-exile held court in a small way for several of his friends. They were not all of them exiles, but rather some of them were local nobles, and as soon as the king-in-exile introduced Maggie as one of his supporters in his drive for the throne, one of the guests asked what she had been doing since then - perhaps a rude question, to ask what she had been doing in her exile, but not all of the king-in-exile's friends had good manners, and in any case this man had asked out of simple curiosity and not a desire to be offensive - and she said she had turned to piracy. The guests pounced on that as the most exciting thing they had heard at the king-in-exile's house in months, and peppered her with questions about her life. She answered as best she could in ways that she hoped did not incriminate her, and she realized that either there was no bounty on her head here, or these people were too enamored of her adventurous life to even think of turning her in.
She was starting to feel a bit like a living party trick, like a pet that people keep around as long as she is entertaining, when someone asked the priest who he was and where he came from and what was his connection to Maggie and the king-in-exile, and his answer that he was a priest without a church was apparently interesting enough for the conversation to turn away from Maggie's piracy for a while.
She did have a chance to mention her navy, but no one seemed much interested in the accomplishment or its goal, and in fact by the time the evening came to an end and she went up to bed, she had the distinct impression that the king-in-exile's friends - and she hoped this was not a representative sample - where a lot of silly, wealthy, pleasure-seekers, and that he seemed quite comfortable among them.
The priest unsurprisingly crept into her room as she was brushing out her hair and getting ready for bed, and she did not have the heart to turn him away. He had come with her, after all, and even though she had asked, he could have said no. And she was starting to worry about what the king-in-exile would say when she brought news of her navy to him, when she offered up her sixty pirate ships so that he might try to win back the throne from the Usurper. Maggie was starting to wonder if he would even want the throne.
And if he did not, if he was comfortable here in his manor house with his silly friends, what would she do?
She and the priest were very quiet, and comparatively quick, and afterwards she curled against him and asked if he had enjoyed himself at dinner.
"Yes," he said. "And no. I do not have anything in common with these people, other than I left my church and some of them left their homes. They did not seem to have any political ambition to help you or your king."
"I hope they are not all like this, that there are yet exiles who would stand with me and the king-in-exile and bring the Usurper down."
"I enjoyed the food. It is nice to sit at a table on a cushioned chair and eat dishes that have been prepared by skilled hands with fresh ingredients."
"You drank very little of the wine." She had not meant to watch him, but he had been seated opposite her and it was hard to ignore that his wineglass had only been refilled once. She was used to him drinking more than that, or at least she was used to it affecting him more.
"I did not want it to go to my head. I wish to be sharp for your sake, and I do not want to embarrass myself."
"You are a good man, priest. I am glad you are here with me."
"You asked."
"You did not have to come."
"But you knew that I would."
"I did, yes. I feel as if I should apologize for that, because I asked a favor of you already knowing what you would say."
"Do not apologize to me." He brushed her hair back and kissed her forehead. "Will you see your king tomorrow?"
"I have made an appointment, yes. I hope - I do not know what I hope. That he will listen to me, that he will take my navy, that he has begun making plans for regaining his throne. I do not want to stay here much longer. I wish to be at sea."
"But this is important. I do not think you can rush this."
"No. But I wish I could. I know that I gathered a navy of pirates, that I talked independent men into following a woman - men who do not take orders and who believe a woman on a ship is bad luck - but priest, I do not think I am made for diplomacy."
"I believe in you," he said quietly. "It is not like you to be so anxious."
"I do not know what has come over me. I should not be nervous." She yawned. "I should sleep. I will be better tomorrow."
And she was. After breakfast she dressed in her pirate captain's clothes, her red coat and her newly-brushed hat and her boots and her breeches, and she wore her rings, ones she had stolen and a few she had made, and her pirate's hoop earrings (pirates and even law-abiding sailors believed they helped anchor a person to the deck and were thus lucky), and she went to speak to the king-in-exile.
She offered her navy to his service and told him that in three months her sixty ships and near seven thousand men would be in the water off the coast of his adopted country, in preparation for meeting the Usurper's navy and smashing it to pieces.
"We are at your service, my lord," she finished, "when you have need of us."
"That is very generous of you, captain," he said. "But in all honesty I have made few plans and have given little thought to regaining the throne. I have been granted a barony here and have begun to rebuild my fortune. I am not prepared to lose it all in another bid for a throne I could not hold the first time. In another few years, perhaps, when I have the money for a strong army and a navy to rival Penelle's, then I might attempt a coup. But not now. Not yet." He sipped his wine. "But it is always good to see one of my former countrymen, and I do appreciate the money you have sent these few years for my war chest. As you may have guessed, there is no price on your head here. You may come and go as it pleases you. This is a lovely country, captain, and the city holds a great many pleasures. I am in fact hosting a ball in four days, and I would be honored if you and your companion would attend as my guests. There will be a great many of our countrymen there, as well as local nobility, and perhaps you will be able to sway them to your cause, and they may sway me." Another sip of wine. Maggie did not know how to respond. To tell this man that she wished to go back to the Black Lightning and chase merchant ships from Tanne until she could rejoin her navy and sail for the Usurper seemed rude and ungrateful. And he was giving her an opportunity to gather more support for her goal. That it should have also been his goal was something she would have to contemplate later.
"Thank you, my lord. We would be pleased to attend your ball. But I have no appropriate clothes to wear, and if you have a tailor whose services I might employ, I would be grateful."
"You do not wish to appear as a pirate?"
"I do not. I would not feel right. I would be out of place and inappropriately clothed. I do not wish to be an entertainment, my lord, someone to gawk at and mock."
"You brought quite a lively discussion to dinner last night."
"And I was wearing a dress." Was it rude of her to press this point? She was not at all subtle about her desire to be taken seriously, and her desire to not be seen as merely an entertaining person who had been invited to the ball for no other reason than to make things more exciting.
"Yes. Well. I will have the tailor fit you for a gown. Your companion as well, if he wishes. Have the bill sent to me."
"You are very generous, my lord. Thank you."
"It is good to see someone from the home country, captain, especially someone who has been so steadfast in her support. Make yourself comfortable in my home, please. Enjoy yourself while you are here."
"I will, thank you."
And since that seemed to be the end of the conversation, Maggie left the room.
She did not know quite what to do with herself for the next four days. The tailor came and measured her for a gown and discussed fabrics and colors and styles with her, and then he sent her to a cobbler with a swatch of fabric so that she might buy dancing shoes to match. She convinced the priest to be fitted for a new suit - as much as he might think of himself as an ordained priest, he was still without church or congregation, and he had still left his order, and she told him that the king-in-exile would pay for his new clothes. She was not surprised - or disappointed - when the suit he chose was all black.
"You really are still a priest in your heart," she said.
She had someone take a message to the cove where the Black Lightning was docked, telling the crew of her plans and suggesting Abna restock the hold and Doren make any repairs. She made appointments to speak with another few exiles, men she remembered from her days in the king-in-exile's service, so she could find out how they felt about the king-in-exile challenging the Usurper again, if they had made any plans, if they would support such a thing with arms or men or money. She walked around the city enjoying the fact that she could move about freely and not have to worry about being caught and taken to jail, to be turned in for the bounty. She felt, if only for a few days, almost as if she were Lady Cleystone again, a member of the nobility with estates and a title, well-bred, well-educated, and cultured.
The night before the ball, she and the priest went to the opera and sat in a box among the city's wealthy and elite, and they drank good wine and listened to the singing and read the libretto from a copy that Maggie bought in the lobby. The priest kissed her during the interval and told her that he hadn't understood a single word of any of the arias, and Maggie laughed and reminded him that that was why she had bought a libretto. He acted more like the priest that she knew - teasing her, kissing her, drinking too much wine. She slept with him in his room that night, for variety, and while they tried to be quiet out of respect for the members of the king-in-exile's household, the priest tickled Maggie and made her laugh, which made her cover her mouth in embarrassment, which just made her laugh more. She slept deeply and well, and in the morning the priest had a headache from all the wine, but she was awake bright and early, and laughed at him when he pulled the pillow over his head and asked her to please be quiet and to close the curtains.
They took a stroll up and down the street after he recovered enough to get out of bed and put on some clothes. The king-in-exile's impressive house was full of people coming and going and setting up for the ball. A tent had been erected on the back lawn. There were more people staying in more of the guest rooms. The kitchen was crowded with platters and the entire courtyard was full of the smell of roasting meat. The place was chaos, and even though it was a nostalgic chaos for Maggie, reminding her of the days when she was still at home and her parents would host great numbers of people for festivals or other celebratory occasions, it was still not the kind of chaos she wished to be around for. The weather was fine and she thought the priest would appreciate the fresh air.
And that night they dressed in their finery and a maid came to fix Maggie's hair in an elaborate arrangement of knots and curls and pins. The priest was struck dumb when he came to her room to escort her down to the ball.
"Have I rendered you speechless?" Maggie asked, teasing. "You look quite fine yourself. You might even pass for a gentleman in that suit." It fit him well, as it should have, and the black suited him. He had shaved and a manservant had trimmed his hair. He kissed Maggie's hand and they went down the stairs and to the grand ballroom, where she was announced as "Captain Margaret Lawton, Lady Cleystone" - even though she had lost her title when the Usurper sent her into exile - and the priest was announced with his given name.
"You will no doubt tell me that I will always be simply 'priest' to you," he murmured to Maggie, who grinned and whispered that yes, he would always be just her priest.
She did not even realize what she had said, that she had called him her priest after a year of telling people that he was not hers, until he repeated it back to her later.
"Did I really say that?" she asked. They were sitting at a round table already littered with small plates and half-empty glasses that people had left behind when their conversational partners wandered off or they got up to dance.
"You did."
"Then I suppose it must have finally settled for me. It had become a reflex, telling people that you were not my priest. I never thought that it might ever be true."
"Shall I hear your confession now?" He was smiling. She laughed.
"What shall I confess to you? You look lovely in that suit. I am not used to having my hair dressed like this." She reached up to touch it, and then let her hand fall to twist around one of the red curls resting on her shoulder. "There are a great many people here, and I should go speak to more of the ones I know. I do not mind telling people that I am a pirate, that I have been so since I was sent into exile. I do not feel like a party entertainment." She sipped her wine. "Is that an acceptable confession?"
"Everything about you is acceptable to me."
"Are you drunk already, priest?"
"Perhaps. I hope not. I am trying to pace myself so I do not embarrass myself or wear out too soon."
"You will be keeping up with me?" Her smile widened. She was enjoying herself much more than she had expected. Perhaps it was the wine, and perhaps it was that she could indulge the small hidden part of her that had never accepted her exile and her descent into piracy, that still believed she was landed gentry with estates and a title that commanded respect, that believed her exquisite gown and elaborate jeweled hair and silk dancing slippers were simply things that were due her for her station and her bloodline.
And perhaps she was enjoying herself because she enjoyed the priest's company.
"Come dance with me," she said, standing abruptly and pulling him towards the floor where couples were lining up for a dance.
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It took some time for her to convince the harbor guards that she was there to see Sebastian, Duke Laverry, known as the king-in-exile, but she and the priest were kept in a small but comparatively pleasant holding room until word came back from the Duke that yes, he did know Captain Lawton, and yes, she and her companion should be conveyed to his manor in the city, there to stay as his guests.
The king-in-exile's city manor was large and imposing, if not among the largest and most impressive. It was made of stone and marble, and the grand entrance hall to which Maggie and the priest were conducted was excessively and ornately decorated. They were told that the king-in exile was out but would return in time for supper, to which they were of course invited, and then they were shown to their rooms. If they wished, they were told, they might bathe, and if they did not have appropriate dress for the evening, a tailor would be sent for.
And then Maggie and the priest were alone in their separate rooms. Maggie did not have formal clothes for supper with the king-in-exile, which she now thought was a mistake. She had not imagined she would be made a guest in his home, or that he would include her in his entertaining. She had only thought she would speak with him and that she and the priest would have found lodging elsewhere in the city. She had come in disguise, in a dress and silk wrap that she had appropriated from a captured merchant ship, but she had planned to wear breeches and her red coat and captain's hat for her meetings. She now saw that she had perhaps not thought this through as thoroughly as she had imagined.
She changed her clothes and left her room in search of someone to either fetch her a tailor or direct her towards a shop in the city where she might find suitable clothes for the evening. She did not think to bring the priest, and when she returned several hours later - having found a servant to guide her in her quest for a new outfit - she discovered him sitting in her room, waiting for her. He had found a book and looked very much at home in the opulent and overdecorated room. She knew nothing about his life before he became a priest, and now she wondered if he had come from the aristocracy, if he had been a noble's younger son, and he seemed so comfortable in the king-in-exile's guest room because once he had been used to such luxury.
Or it could simply be that he always seemed at home among Maggie's things, in whatever lodging she happened to be using.
"They told me you went shopping," he said when she came in, a servant bearing boxes behind her. The servant deposited her purchases and silently left the room.
"I needed clothes," she said. "I did not think to ask if you wished to come. I apologize."
The priest shrugged. "I do not need fancy clothes, only clean ones. I do not imagine they expect luxury from a man of the cloth, even a defrocked one. I did however have a bath. It was wonderful."
"I have not, but now I do not think there will be time." She pulled off her coat and dropped it on the bed. "I did not come here to wine and dine. I have not planned for this."
"All will be well. These are your people, are they not? Your countrymen and fellow exiles? There will be a room full of people who have not heard of your navy, and who might be interested to hear how you built it."
"Are you mocking me?" He had not sounded as if he were, but she knew he was tired of hearing about her navy and had grown disgusted with the way he thought it had changed her, and she could not imagine that he was pleased with the fact that she could now repeat the story of how she had built a pirate navy to an entirely new audience.
"I am not." He stood and came over to where she was standing next to the bed, looking at the things she had bought and wondering how this had happened. "I will speak to other people of other things, so I do not have to hear you again. But I still support you, Maggie, and I still believe you will accomplish your goals. You will be able to speak to your king among his friends, and perhaps this will give you the support you need from them. You may not have to speak to him formally, if you can offer your navy and have him accept it tonight. Sometimes deals are made at the dinner table, as much as they are in meeting rooms." He took her hand, lifted it to his lips, and kissed the palm. "You are a smart woman. You know that you can turn this to your advantage. You will be beautiful and charming and you will get what you need."
But it was not quite so. She dressed for dinner in a way that she had not done in years, and the priest came to escort her to the dining room where the king-in-exile held court in a small way for several of his friends. They were not all of them exiles, but rather some of them were local nobles, and as soon as the king-in-exile introduced Maggie as one of his supporters in his drive for the throne, one of the guests asked what she had been doing since then - perhaps a rude question, to ask what she had been doing in her exile, but not all of the king-in-exile's friends had good manners, and in any case this man had asked out of simple curiosity and not a desire to be offensive - and she said she had turned to piracy. The guests pounced on that as the most exciting thing they had heard at the king-in-exile's house in months, and peppered her with questions about her life. She answered as best she could in ways that she hoped did not incriminate her, and she realized that either there was no bounty on her head here, or these people were too enamored of her adventurous life to even think of turning her in.
She was starting to feel a bit like a living party trick, like a pet that people keep around as long as she is entertaining, when someone asked the priest who he was and where he came from and what was his connection to Maggie and the king-in-exile, and his answer that he was a priest without a church was apparently interesting enough for the conversation to turn away from Maggie's piracy for a while.
She did have a chance to mention her navy, but no one seemed much interested in the accomplishment or its goal, and in fact by the time the evening came to an end and she went up to bed, she had the distinct impression that the king-in-exile's friends - and she hoped this was not a representative sample - where a lot of silly, wealthy, pleasure-seekers, and that he seemed quite comfortable among them.
The priest unsurprisingly crept into her room as she was brushing out her hair and getting ready for bed, and she did not have the heart to turn him away. He had come with her, after all, and even though she had asked, he could have said no. And she was starting to worry about what the king-in-exile would say when she brought news of her navy to him, when she offered up her sixty pirate ships so that he might try to win back the throne from the Usurper. Maggie was starting to wonder if he would even want the throne.
And if he did not, if he was comfortable here in his manor house with his silly friends, what would she do?
She and the priest were very quiet, and comparatively quick, and afterwards she curled against him and asked if he had enjoyed himself at dinner.
"Yes," he said. "And no. I do not have anything in common with these people, other than I left my church and some of them left their homes. They did not seem to have any political ambition to help you or your king."
"I hope they are not all like this, that there are yet exiles who would stand with me and the king-in-exile and bring the Usurper down."
"I enjoyed the food. It is nice to sit at a table on a cushioned chair and eat dishes that have been prepared by skilled hands with fresh ingredients."
"You drank very little of the wine." She had not meant to watch him, but he had been seated opposite her and it was hard to ignore that his wineglass had only been refilled once. She was used to him drinking more than that, or at least she was used to it affecting him more.
"I did not want it to go to my head. I wish to be sharp for your sake, and I do not want to embarrass myself."
"You are a good man, priest. I am glad you are here with me."
"You asked."
"You did not have to come."
"But you knew that I would."
"I did, yes. I feel as if I should apologize for that, because I asked a favor of you already knowing what you would say."
"Do not apologize to me." He brushed her hair back and kissed her forehead. "Will you see your king tomorrow?"
"I have made an appointment, yes. I hope - I do not know what I hope. That he will listen to me, that he will take my navy, that he has begun making plans for regaining his throne. I do not want to stay here much longer. I wish to be at sea."
"But this is important. I do not think you can rush this."
"No. But I wish I could. I know that I gathered a navy of pirates, that I talked independent men into following a woman - men who do not take orders and who believe a woman on a ship is bad luck - but priest, I do not think I am made for diplomacy."
"I believe in you," he said quietly. "It is not like you to be so anxious."
"I do not know what has come over me. I should not be nervous." She yawned. "I should sleep. I will be better tomorrow."
And she was. After breakfast she dressed in her pirate captain's clothes, her red coat and her newly-brushed hat and her boots and her breeches, and she wore her rings, ones she had stolen and a few she had made, and her pirate's hoop earrings (pirates and even law-abiding sailors believed they helped anchor a person to the deck and were thus lucky), and she went to speak to the king-in-exile.
She offered her navy to his service and told him that in three months her sixty ships and near seven thousand men would be in the water off the coast of his adopted country, in preparation for meeting the Usurper's navy and smashing it to pieces.
"We are at your service, my lord," she finished, "when you have need of us."
"That is very generous of you, captain," he said. "But in all honesty I have made few plans and have given little thought to regaining the throne. I have been granted a barony here and have begun to rebuild my fortune. I am not prepared to lose it all in another bid for a throne I could not hold the first time. In another few years, perhaps, when I have the money for a strong army and a navy to rival Penelle's, then I might attempt a coup. But not now. Not yet." He sipped his wine. "But it is always good to see one of my former countrymen, and I do appreciate the money you have sent these few years for my war chest. As you may have guessed, there is no price on your head here. You may come and go as it pleases you. This is a lovely country, captain, and the city holds a great many pleasures. I am in fact hosting a ball in four days, and I would be honored if you and your companion would attend as my guests. There will be a great many of our countrymen there, as well as local nobility, and perhaps you will be able to sway them to your cause, and they may sway me." Another sip of wine. Maggie did not know how to respond. To tell this man that she wished to go back to the Black Lightning and chase merchant ships from Tanne until she could rejoin her navy and sail for the Usurper seemed rude and ungrateful. And he was giving her an opportunity to gather more support for her goal. That it should have also been his goal was something she would have to contemplate later.
"Thank you, my lord. We would be pleased to attend your ball. But I have no appropriate clothes to wear, and if you have a tailor whose services I might employ, I would be grateful."
"You do not wish to appear as a pirate?"
"I do not. I would not feel right. I would be out of place and inappropriately clothed. I do not wish to be an entertainment, my lord, someone to gawk at and mock."
"You brought quite a lively discussion to dinner last night."
"And I was wearing a dress." Was it rude of her to press this point? She was not at all subtle about her desire to be taken seriously, and her desire to not be seen as merely an entertaining person who had been invited to the ball for no other reason than to make things more exciting.
"Yes. Well. I will have the tailor fit you for a gown. Your companion as well, if he wishes. Have the bill sent to me."
"You are very generous, my lord. Thank you."
"It is good to see someone from the home country, captain, especially someone who has been so steadfast in her support. Make yourself comfortable in my home, please. Enjoy yourself while you are here."
"I will, thank you."
And since that seemed to be the end of the conversation, Maggie left the room.
She did not know quite what to do with herself for the next four days. The tailor came and measured her for a gown and discussed fabrics and colors and styles with her, and then he sent her to a cobbler with a swatch of fabric so that she might buy dancing shoes to match. She convinced the priest to be fitted for a new suit - as much as he might think of himself as an ordained priest, he was still without church or congregation, and he had still left his order, and she told him that the king-in-exile would pay for his new clothes. She was not surprised - or disappointed - when the suit he chose was all black.
"You really are still a priest in your heart," she said.
She had someone take a message to the cove where the Black Lightning was docked, telling the crew of her plans and suggesting Abna restock the hold and Doren make any repairs. She made appointments to speak with another few exiles, men she remembered from her days in the king-in-exile's service, so she could find out how they felt about the king-in-exile challenging the Usurper again, if they had made any plans, if they would support such a thing with arms or men or money. She walked around the city enjoying the fact that she could move about freely and not have to worry about being caught and taken to jail, to be turned in for the bounty. She felt, if only for a few days, almost as if she were Lady Cleystone again, a member of the nobility with estates and a title, well-bred, well-educated, and cultured.
The night before the ball, she and the priest went to the opera and sat in a box among the city's wealthy and elite, and they drank good wine and listened to the singing and read the libretto from a copy that Maggie bought in the lobby. The priest kissed her during the interval and told her that he hadn't understood a single word of any of the arias, and Maggie laughed and reminded him that that was why she had bought a libretto. He acted more like the priest that she knew - teasing her, kissing her, drinking too much wine. She slept with him in his room that night, for variety, and while they tried to be quiet out of respect for the members of the king-in-exile's household, the priest tickled Maggie and made her laugh, which made her cover her mouth in embarrassment, which just made her laugh more. She slept deeply and well, and in the morning the priest had a headache from all the wine, but she was awake bright and early, and laughed at him when he pulled the pillow over his head and asked her to please be quiet and to close the curtains.
They took a stroll up and down the street after he recovered enough to get out of bed and put on some clothes. The king-in-exile's impressive house was full of people coming and going and setting up for the ball. A tent had been erected on the back lawn. There were more people staying in more of the guest rooms. The kitchen was crowded with platters and the entire courtyard was full of the smell of roasting meat. The place was chaos, and even though it was a nostalgic chaos for Maggie, reminding her of the days when she was still at home and her parents would host great numbers of people for festivals or other celebratory occasions, it was still not the kind of chaos she wished to be around for. The weather was fine and she thought the priest would appreciate the fresh air.
And that night they dressed in their finery and a maid came to fix Maggie's hair in an elaborate arrangement of knots and curls and pins. The priest was struck dumb when he came to her room to escort her down to the ball.
"Have I rendered you speechless?" Maggie asked, teasing. "You look quite fine yourself. You might even pass for a gentleman in that suit." It fit him well, as it should have, and the black suited him. He had shaved and a manservant had trimmed his hair. He kissed Maggie's hand and they went down the stairs and to the grand ballroom, where she was announced as "Captain Margaret Lawton, Lady Cleystone" - even though she had lost her title when the Usurper sent her into exile - and the priest was announced with his given name.
"You will no doubt tell me that I will always be simply 'priest' to you," he murmured to Maggie, who grinned and whispered that yes, he would always be just her priest.
She did not even realize what she had said, that she had called him her priest after a year of telling people that he was not hers, until he repeated it back to her later.
"Did I really say that?" she asked. They were sitting at a round table already littered with small plates and half-empty glasses that people had left behind when their conversational partners wandered off or they got up to dance.
"You did."
"Then I suppose it must have finally settled for me. It had become a reflex, telling people that you were not my priest. I never thought that it might ever be true."
"Shall I hear your confession now?" He was smiling. She laughed.
"What shall I confess to you? You look lovely in that suit. I am not used to having my hair dressed like this." She reached up to touch it, and then let her hand fall to twist around one of the red curls resting on her shoulder. "There are a great many people here, and I should go speak to more of the ones I know. I do not mind telling people that I am a pirate, that I have been so since I was sent into exile. I do not feel like a party entertainment." She sipped her wine. "Is that an acceptable confession?"
"Everything about you is acceptable to me."
"Are you drunk already, priest?"
"Perhaps. I hope not. I am trying to pace myself so I do not embarrass myself or wear out too soon."
"You will be keeping up with me?" Her smile widened. She was enjoying herself much more than she had expected. Perhaps it was the wine, and perhaps it was that she could indulge the small hidden part of her that had never accepted her exile and her descent into piracy, that still believed she was landed gentry with estates and a title that commanded respect, that believed her exquisite gown and elaborate jeweled hair and silk dancing slippers were simply things that were due her for her station and her bloodline.
And perhaps she was enjoying herself because she enjoyed the priest's company.
"Come dance with me," she said, standing abruptly and pulling him towards the floor where couples were lining up for a dance.
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