"You must give love time to blossom, my lord," Temigast whispered to Lord Feringal. He'd ushered the young lord to the far side of the garden, away from Meralda, who was staring out over the sea wall. The steward had discovered the amorous young man pressuring Meralda to marry him the very next week. The flustered woman was making polite excuse after polite excuse, with stubborn Feringal defeating each one.

"Time to blossom?" Feringal echoed incredulously. "I am going mad with desire. I can think of nothing but Meralda!"

He said the last loudly, and both men glanced to see a frowning Meralda looking back at them.

"As it should be," Steward Temigast whispered. "Let us discover if the feeling holds strong over the course of time. The duration of such feelings is the true meaning of love, my lord."

"You doubt me still?" a horrified Lord Feringal replied.

"No, my lord, not I," Temigast explained, "but the villagers must see your union to a woman of Meralda's station as true love and not infatuation. You must consider her reputation."

That last statement gave Lord Feringal pause. He glanced back at the woman, then at Temigast, obviously confused. "If she is married to me, then what harm could come to her reputation?"

"If the marriage is quickly brought, then the peasants will assume she used her womanly tricks to bewitch you," Temigast explained. "Better for her, by far, if you spend the weeks showing your honest and respectful love for her. Many will resent her in any case, my lord, out of jealousy. Now you must protect her, and the best way to do that is to take your time with the engagement."

"How much time?" the eager young lord asked.

"The spring equinox," Temigast offered, bringing another horrified look from Feringal. "It is only proper."

"I shall die," wailed Feringal.

Temigast frowned at the overwrought lord. "We can arrange a meeting with another woman if your needs become too great."

Lord Feringal shook his head vigorously. "I cannot think of passion with another woman."

Smiling warmly, Temigast patted the young man on the shoulder. "That is the correct answer for a man who is truly in love," he said. "Perhaps we can arrange the wedding for the turn of the year."

Lord Feringal's face brightened, then he frowned again. "Five months," he grumbled.

"But think of the pleasure when the time has passed."

"I think of nothing else," said a glum Feringal.

"What were you speaking of?" Meralda asked when Feringal joined her by the wall after Temigast excused himself from the garden.

"The wedding, of course," the lord replied. "Steward Temigast believes we must wait until the turn of the year. He believes love to be a growing, blossoming thing," said Feringal, his voice tinged with doubt.

"And so it is," Meralda agreed with relief and gratitude to Temigast.

Feringal grabbed her suddenly and pulled her close. "I cannot believe that my love for you could grow any stronger," he explained. He kissed her, and Meralda returned it, and glad she was that he didn't try to take it any further than that, as had been his usual tactics.

Instead, Lord Feringal pushed her back to arms' length.

"Temigast has warned me to show my respect for you," he admitted. "To show the villagers that our love is a real and lasting thing. And so I shall by waiting. Besides, that will give Priscilla the time she needs to prepare the event. She has promised a wedding such as Auckney-as the whole of the North-has never before seen."

Meralda's smile was genuine indeed. She was glad for the delay, glad for the time she needed to put her feelings for Lord Feringal and Jaka in the proper order, to come to terms with her decision and her responsibility. Meralda was certain she could go through with this, and not as a suffering woman. She could marry Lord Feringal and act as lady of Auckney for the sake of her mother and her family. Perhaps it would not be such a terrible thing.

The woman looked with a glimmer of affection at Feringal, who stood watching the dark waves. Impulsively she put an arm around the man's waist and rested her head on his shoulder and was rewarded with a chaste but grateful smile from her husband-to-be. He said nothing, didn't even try to take the touch further. Meralda had to admit it was . . . pleasant.

*****

"Oh, tell me everything!" Tori whispered, scrambling to Meralda's bed when the older girl at last returned home that night. "Did he touch you?"

"We talked and watched the waves," Meralda replied noncommittally.

"Do you love him yet?"

Meralda stared at her sister. Did she love Lord Feringal? No, she could say for certain she did not, at least not in the heated manner in which she longed for Jaka, but perhaps that was all right. Perhaps she would come to love the generous lord of Auckney. Certainly Lord Feringal wasn't an ugly man-far from it. As their relationship grew, as they began to move beyond the tortured man's desperate groping, Meralda was starting to see his many good qualities, qualities she could indeed grow to love.

"Don't you still love Jaka?" Tori asked.

Meralda's contented smile dissipated at once with the painful reminder. She didn't answer, and for once Tori had the sense to let it drop as Meralda turned over, curled in upon herself, and tried hard not to cry.

It was a night of torrid dreams that left her tangled in her blankets. Still, Meralda's mood was better that next morning, and it improved even more when she entered the common room to hear her mother talking with Mam Gardener, one of their nosier neighbors (the little gnome had a beak that could shame a vulture), happily telling the visitor about her stroll in the castle garden.

"Mam Gardener brought us some eggs," Biaste Ganderlay explained, pointing to a skillet of scrambled eggs. "Help yourself, as I'm not wanting to get back up."

Meralda smiled at the generous gnome, then moved to the pan. Unexplicably, the young woman felt her stomach lurch at the sight and the smell and had to rush from the house to throw up beside the small bush outside the door.

Mam Gardener was there beside her in an instant. "Are you all right, girl?" she asked.

Meralda, more surprised than sick, stood back up. "The rich food at the castle," she explained. "They're feeding me too good, I fear."

Mam Gardener howled with laughter. "Oh, but you'll be getting used to that!" she said. "All fat and plump you'll get, living easy and eating well."

Meralda returned her smile and went back into the house.

"You still got to eat," Mam Gardener said, guiding her toward the eggs.

Even the thought of the eggs made Meralda's stomach turn again. "I'm thinking that I need to go and lay down," she explained, pulling away to head back to her room.

She heard the older ladies discussing her plight, with Mam telling Biaste about the rich food. Biaste, no stranger to illness, hoped that to be all it was.

Privately, Meralda wasn't so sure. Only then did she consider the timeline since her encounter with Jaka three weeks before. It was true she'd not had her monthly, but she hadn't thought much about it, for she'd never been regular in that manner anyway. . . .

The young woman clutched at her belly, both overwhelmed with joy and fear.

She was sick again the next morning, and the next after that, but she was able to hide her condition by going nowhere near the smell or sight of eggs. She felt well after throwing up in the morning and was not troubled with it after that, and so it became clear to her that she was, indeed, with child.

In her fantasies, the thought of having Jaka Sculi's babe was not terrible. She could picture herself married to the young rogue, living in a castle, walking in the gardens beside him, but the reality of her situation was far more terrifying.

She had betrayed the lord of Auckney, and worse, she had betrayed her family. Stealing that one night for herself, she had likely condemned her mother to death and branded herself a whore in the eyes of all the village.

Would it even get that far? she wondered. Perhaps when her father learned the truth he would kill her-he'd beaten her for far less. Or perhaps Lord Feringal would have her paraded through the streets so that the villagers might taunt her and throw rotten fruit and spit upon her. Or perhaps in a fit of rage Lord Feringal would cut the baby from her womb and send soldiers out to murder Jaka.

What of the baby? What might the nobles of Auckney do to a child who was the result of the cuckolding of their lord? Meralda had heard stories of such instances in other kingdoms, tales of potential threats to the throne, tales of murdered infants.

All the possibilities whirled in Meralda's mind one night as she lay in her bed, all the terrible possibilities, events too wicked for her to truly imagine, and too terrifying for her to honestly face. She rose and dressed quietly, then went in to see her mother, sleeping comfortably, curled up in her father's arms.

Meralda silently mouthed a heartsick apology to them both, then stole out of the house. It was a wet and windy night. To the woman's dismay, she didn't find Jaka in his usual spot in the fields above the houses, so she went to his house. Trying not to wake his kin, Meralda tossed pebbles against the curtain screening his glassless window.

The curtain was abruptly yanked to the side, and Jaka's handsome face poked through the opening.

"It's me, Meralda," she whispered, and the young man's face brightened in surprise. He held his hand out to her, and when she clenched it, he pulled it close to his face through the opening, his smile wide enough to take in his ears.

"I must talk with you," Meralda explained. "Please come outside."

"It's warmer in here," Jaka replied in his usual sly, lewd tone.

Knowing it unwise but shivering in the chill night air, Meralda motioned to the front door and scurried to it. Jaka was there in a moment, stripped bare to the waist and holding a single candle. He put his finger over his pursed lips and took Meralda by the arm, walking her quietly through the curtained doorway that led to his bedchamber. Before the young woman could begin to explain, Jaka was against her, kissing her, pulling her down beside him.

"Stop!" she hissed, pulling away. "We must talk."

"Later," Jaka said, his hands roaming.

Meralda rolled off the side of the bed and took a step away. "Now," she said. " 'Tis important."

Jaka sat up on the edge of the bed, grinning still but making no move to pursue her.

"I'm running too late," Meralda explained bluntly.

Jaka's face screwed up as though he didn't understand.

"I am with child," the woman blurted softly. "Your child."

The effect of her words would have been no less dramatic if she had smashed Jaka across the face with a cudgel. "How?" he I stammered after a long, trembling pause. "It was only once."

"I'm guessing that we did it right, then," the woman returned dryly.

"But-" Jaka started, shaking his head. "Lord Feringal? What are we to do?" He paused again, then turned a sharp eye upon Meralda. "Have you and he-?"

"Only yourself," Meralda firmly replied. "Only that once in all my life."

"What are we to do?" Jaka repeated, pacing nervously. Meralda had never seen him so agitated.

"I was thinking that I had to marry Lord Feringal," Meralda explained, moving over and taking hold of the man to steady him. "For the sake of my family, if not my own, but now things are changed," she said, looking Jaka in the eyes. "I cannot bring another man's child into Castle Auck, after all."

"Then what?" asked Jaka, still appearing on the very edge of desperation.

"You said you wanted me," Meralda said softly, hopefully. "So, with what's in my belly you've got me, and all my heart."

"Lord Feringal will kill me."

"We'll not stay, then," Meralda replied. "You said we'd travel the Sword Coast to Luskan and to Waterdeep, and so we shall, and so I must."

The thought didn't seem to sit very well with Jaka. He said "But . . ." and shook his head repeatedly. Finally, Meralda gave him a shake to steady him and pushed herself up against him.

"Truly, this is for the better," she said. "You're my love, as I'm your own, and now fate has intervened to put us together."

"It's crazy," Jaka replied, pulling back from her. "We can't run away. We have no money. We have nothing. We shall die on the road before we ever get near Luskan."

"Nothing?" Meralda echoed incredulously, starting to realize that this was more than shock speaking. "We've each other. We've our love, and our child coming."

"You think that's enough?" Jaka asked in the same incredulous tone. "What life are we to find under such circumstances as this? Paupers forever, eating mud and raising our child in mud?"

"What choice have we?"

"We?" Jaka bit back the word as soon as it left his mouth, realizing too late that it had not been wise to say aloud.

Meralda fought back tears. "Are you saying that you lied to get me to lay down with you? Are you saying that you do not love me?"

"That's not what I'm saying," Jaka reassured her, coming over to put a hand on her shoulder, "but what chance shall we have to survive? You don't really believe that love is enough, do you? We shall have no food, no money, and three to feed. And how will it be when you get all fat and ugly, and we have not even our lovemaking to bring us joy?"

The woman blanched and fell back from his reach. He came for her, but she slapped him away. "You said you loved me," she said.

"I did," Jaka replied. "I do."

She shook her head slowly, eyes narrowing in a moment of clarity. "You lusted for me but never loved me." Her voice quivered, but the woman was determined to hold strong her course. "You fool. You're not even knowing the difference." With that she turned and ran out of the house. Jaka didn't make a move to go after her.

Meralda cried all through the night on the rainy hillside and didn't return home until early in the morning. The truth was there before her now, whatever might happen next. What a fool she felt for giving herself to Jaka Sculi. For the rest of her life, when she would look back on the moment she became a woman, the moment she left her innocent life as a girl behind her, it would not be the night she lost her virginity. No, it would be this night, when she first realized she had given her most secret self to a selfish, uncaring, shallow man. No, not a man-a boy. What a fool she had been.