Golden Fool (Tawny Man #2)

“About what?” I asked, but my heart sank with the answer I already knew.

He sniffed, looking aside from me. “About Svanja.” His voice grew deeper and thicker. “She’s cast me off, Tom. Just like that. And I’ve already heard that there is someone else for her—or maybe always was. A sailor on one of those big trading ships.” He looked down at the floor between his feet. He swallowed. “I guess they had been . . . close, before his ship last sailed, in the spring. Now he’s back, with silver earrings for her, and fancy cloth and a spice perfume from far away. Gifts for her parents, too. They like him.” His voice grew softer and softer as he spoke, so that his last words were barely audible. “If I’d known,” he said, and then his voice trailed away.

It was a very good time for me to be silent.

“I waited for her one night, and she just didn’t come. And I got very worried, frightened for her. I was scared that something bad had happened to her on her way to meet me. And finally I got up the courage and went to her house. Just as I was going to knock on her door, I heard her laughing inside. I didn’t dare to knock on the door because her father hates me so much. Her mother didn’t used to hate me so much, but then you got into that fight with her father and—Well. Anyway. So. I thought it was just that she hadn’t been able to get out, well, actually, to sneak out to meet me. Because her father had started to be very watchful, you know.” He halted, face flushing. “It’s strange. As I look back at it now, it seems shameful and childish. Us sneaking about, hiding from her father, her lying to her mother to get time to spend with me. It didn’t seem like that at the time, not at all. It seemed romantic and, well, fated. That was what Svanja always said. That we were fated to be together, and should let nothing stand between us. That lies and deceit didn’t matter, because together we were a truth that no one could deny.” He rubbed his brow with the heels of his hands. “And I believed it. I believed it all.”

I sighed, yet admitted, “If you had not believed it, Hap . . . well, then it would have been worse than foolish to do as you did. So.” And then I halted, wondering if I had just made it worse.

“I feel such a fool,” he admitted after a time. “And the worst part is, I’d take her back in a breath if she came to me. Faithless as I know she is, first to him and now to me, I’d still take her back. Even if I had to wonder ever after if I could hold her.” After a time, he asked quietly, “Is this how you felt when I told you Starling was married?”

A hard question, but mostly because I didn’t want to tell him that I had never truly loved Starling. So I just said, “I don’t think any two pains are ever exactly the same, Hap. But the part about feeling a fool, oh, yes.”

“I thought I would die from it,” he declared passionately. “The next day I was out on an errand for Master Gindast. He’s come to trust me with making his purchases about town, because I am very exact with what he wants and what he will pay for it. So. I was hurrying, and then I saw a couple coming toward me. And I thought, She looks so much like Svanja, she could be her sister. And then I saw it was Svanja, but wearing silver earrings and a shawl dyed such a violet as I had never seen. And the man beside her held her arm and she was looking up at him exactly as she looked up at me. I could not believe it. I stood gawking, and as they went by, she glanced at me. Tom, she blushed red, but pretended not to know me. I . . . I didn’t know what to do. We have had to sneak about so much that I thought, well, perhaps this is her uncle or a man her father knows, and she must pretend not to know me. But even then, I knew it was not so. And when I went into the Stuck Pig two days later, in hopes of seeing her, the men in the tavern mocked me, asking how it felt to be small fry now that the big fish was biting again. I did not know what they meant, but they soon explained it to me. In detail. Tom, I have never been so humiliated. I all but fled, and I’ve been too ashamed to go back, lest I encounter them. A part of me wants to, a part of me yearns to tell her sailor how faithless she is, and to tell her that I’ve discovered how worthless she is. Yet another part of me longs to fight and best him, to see if that would bring her back to my side. I feel both a fool and a coward.”

“You are neither,” I told him, knowing he could not believe me. “Walking away from it is the wisest thing to do. Fight him and win her back, and what do you have? A woman no better than a bitch in season that goes with the strongest dog. Confront her and have her disdain you, and you will only have added to your humiliation. Think of it this way, if it comforts you at all. She will always wonder at how easily you seemed to let her go.”