|
|
It
was almost a month since Marina had confessed her feelings to
Antoninus. In that time he had barely approached her, had barely
spoken to her outside of rigidly formal greetings to her if he
happened to be so unlucky as to run across her in the General's home
or outdoors. "The man is truly denser than I thought," Ana told her
at breakfast on a Wednesday morning. "I think perhaps I should speak
to him."
Marina's head came up in alarm, "No! Er, I mean, I'd rather you
didn't - I don't want the poor man to feel we're ganging up on him."
"Ganging up is one thing," the General interjected, glancing up from
his bowl of stewed apricots in cinnamon, "knocking some sense into
his thick skull is another matter entirely. I think perhaps I should
be the one to enlighten him."
This was getting worse by the minute! Marina looked from one to the
other of her breakfast companions, "Please - let me try one last
time before you intervene. I don't want him to feel he has to do
something because he's been ordered to do it - that's not what I
want at all."
Maximus grinned at her, amused by her patent alarm, "Little girl,
it's been my experience with 'Ninus that unless he's hit over the
head with the merits of a new idea, he just doesn't even know it
exists. Unless it's his idea in the first place, that is."
Slightly ruffled at his using the term "little girl", Marina
realized that what the General said was true. She'd heard it from
enough other people now and from her own experiences with the man to
accept that as a fact of his personality that she was unlikely to
change. And truly, she didn't want him to change - it was the man,
with all his flaws and frailties as well as his points of excellence
- whom she had fallen in love with. If he were some plaster statue
of the god of virtue, she wouldn't care for him at all. "I know
that," she answered Maximus now, using her most persuasive glances
from under her long eyelashes on him as practice for use on
Antoninus later, "but I intend to hit him with a slightly softer
weapon."
No matter how patiently the General asked, she wouldn't enlighten
him on her plan. Ana, who knew exactly what she planned, merely
looked innocent and changed the subject. By the time Maximus broke
free of his desk - piled high with account ledgers and lists of
necessary items to be bought for the estate - Marina had
disappeared. Nobody seemed to know where she had gone. He gave up on
eliciting her plans from her, sighed in resignation and commented to
his head farrier about the deviousness of women when they were
plotting to drop the net of matrimony over some poor unsuspecting
man. The farrier, who had just avoided such a net himself - dropped,
as it was by the much older, very stringy widow of a nearby small
farmer - nodded with enthusiasm.
As for Marina, she was determinedly making her way out through the
olive groves shortly before noon, intent on a cooling swim in the
pond. The workmen were all on the other side of the groves, indeed,
on the other side of the entire estate property, today mustering the
General's horses and separating the mares and their progeny so the
young horses could be sorted for sale, keeping, etc. Antoninus was
there, but she knew he would be asked by Lady Ana to run an errand
for her before much longer. And that errand would be part of their
plans for his future.
She arrived by the pond, glancing around to be sure she was alone
before untying her sash and slipping out of her thin linen stola.
She unlaced her sandals, walked onto the little beach of crushed
gravel and waded into the water. It was warm, but in contrast to the
heat of the air, it felt refreshingly cool on her skin. She dove and
swam about for half an hour before emerging to sit on a big, smooth
boulder. It was a favorite perch of hers, and she wrang the water
out of her long hair before taking her ivory comb from the pouch
attached to her sash. She began running the comb slowly through her
long locks, enjoying the sensation as it parted and smoothed her
hair. When her hair flowed over her shoulders like a living, dark
golden cloak, she set the comb aside, tipped her face to the sun and
just sat, eyes closed.
It was so quiet she could hear the hot wind rustling the olive tree
branches, and even, she thought, the distant shouts of the horsemen
working a long distance away. Birds twittered, a grasshopper or two
clicked in the tall grass, and she smiled at the peace of it all.
She loved her home and her life - except for the one thing missing
from it - Antoninus. She knew with a conviction stronger than any
logic that he was the man for her. Now she had only to convince him
of that.
Antoninus, irritated that Lady Ana had suddenly called him away from
his work haltering the reluctant foals, shortly found himself on
what he could not but think of as the errand someone much younger
and less important should be doing - going out to the pond to fetch
the palla she had left there the day before. "It's been there this
long," he muttered to himself, "surely it could have waited until
later when I was finished with the colts - but no, nothing for it
but to run right out here and fetch the blasted thing."
He stumbled on a tree root, only just managing to keep himself
upright by exerting himself and grabbing a branch. "Edepol! All this
needs is for me to break an ankle," he snarled. Just for spite, he
snapped off a small branch-end from the tree whose root had
exhibited the bad manners to trip him.
He was almost at the pond. As he neared it, sweating under his
simple linen tunic, he thought perhaps he would indulge in a swim
before heading back with the object of his trip. It wouldn't hurt to
be a bit late, he reasoned. The lady had probably already forgotten
sending him on his fool's errand in the first place. He walked out
of the olive trees and onto the soft grass surrounding the pond. Ah
- the water did look cool and inviting. And nobody was about.
He saw Lady Ana's stola folded on the rock, right where she told him
she'd left it, and just rolled his eyes at the forgetful nature of
women, even women he admired greatly. None of them were immune from
lapses of memory, it seemed. He unbuckled his well-worn leather belt
and put it on the big boulder near the shore. He shrugged out of his
tunic and inguinal sash and placed them on top of the belt,
stretching luxuriously at being bare naked and totally free out
under the brilliant blue skies of late summer. Smiling to himself,
loving his life, he climbed onto the fallen tree he and the General
favored, and dove cleanly into the pond.
The water was cooler than the air temperature and closed over his
outstretched toes, refreshing and comfortable. He swam underwater
for a short distance to emerge, shaking water from his hair and
shouting in pleasure. By the gods, he thought, this is
Elysium on Earth. He turned onto his back and floated, relaxed,
eyes slitted as he gazed up at the heavens. He needed nothing more
in his life - he was content.
A small splash nearby brought him out of his self-satisfied musings
and he glanced up in surprise, made the moreso when he realized who
else was in the lake. "Lady Marina!" he exclaimed in outraged
modesty. He slid under the water so quickly he swallowed what seemed
like half the pond before emerging again to cough and splutter at
the amused girl. "You should not be in here!" he finally managed to
choke out.
One dark blonde brow rose in inquiry, "Why ever not? I swim here all
the time, I've as much right to be here as you, sir." And she
actually swam closer to him, causing him to back water in alarm.
"Stay away!" he warned her, retreating, then realizing the futility
of that. If he backed too far away, he'd be right out of the lake
altogether, standing stark naked on the shore. He stopped moving and
just floated there, only his head and shoulders out of the water.
"Stop doing that and listen to reason - you cannot be in here when
I'm in here!"
Marina smiled, enjoying how the tide of his blush came and went with
the tenor of his thoughts. "I most certainly can be in here - it's
you who must get out."
"How do you figure that?" he wanted to know.
"I was here first," she pointed out logically, and gestured to where
her garments hung from a branch on a nearby apple tree. "See? I put
them there - in plain sight - I'm surprised you didn't see them when
you came blundering up here through the olive grove."
"I did not blunder!" he retorted, realizing she'd seen him stumble
over the tree root - and take it out on the tree branch. Would he
never stop falling on his arse around her, he wondered. "And how
could I be expected to search out every bit of cloth hanging on
every tree limb - I was hunting for Lady Ana's stola."
"I don't think it would suit you," Marina teased him. She loved how
he blinked and looked puzzled for a moment before realizing she
meant it wouldn't look good on him. The man was too darling!
"I wasn't going to wear it," he barked, "gods, you are an
exasperating woman!"
She laughed, tipping onto her back to float languidly around, limbs
barely moving, the water caressing her body softly. She heard his
indrawn breath as he no doubt ogled her nude form, then heard him
thrashing in the water as he rushed to turn his back. He was so
predictable, just as was the Lady Ana. In fact, it should be just
about time. . .
"Oh,
Edepol!" Antoninus suddenly hissed, head tilted to one side
as his ears caught the sound of someone approaching. "Get out of the
water - someone's coming!"
Maddeningly, she chose not to move. Instead she turned onto her
stomach, swam closer and stopped, dog paddling in place, just her
head, shoulders and arms above the water. He could see her round
breasts just under the crystalline surface, though, their soft pink
tips elongated by the coolness of the water. "I think it's too late
to get out now," she informed him. And, to his total chagrin, she
turned so she was right beside him, facing the shore of the pond as
both Lady Ana and General Maximus emerged from the olive trees. "Hellooooo!"
she called to them, waving gaily.
"Hell and damnation," Antoninus snarled, and, totally out of his
normal character, which would never have seen a well-bred lady - or
almost any lady, for that matter - come to any harm, he tried to
shove her behind him for modesty's sake and only managed to shove
her under the water. "Gods - Lady Marina!" he stuttered, and tried
to pull her head up so she wouldn't drown. He succeeded in pulling
her hair so that when she emerged, she struck at him with both
wildly flailing arms and managed to swat him a hard blow that would
probably blacken his right eye. "Edepol!"
Ana nudged Maximus, who had suddenly caught on to the entire plan
and who was almost purple-faced with stifled laughter, "I think
you'd best rescue Marina before he drowns her - or she kills him."
Maximus strode forward into the water, stopping only to undo his
sandals first, and grabbed Marina by one arm, "Come with me, and
don't hit him again - he can't hit you back."
Marina, whose scalp still tingled from having her hair pulled so
hard, stopped trying to yank Antoninus' thick dark hair out of his
scalp in revenge and moved docilely ashore with her guardian. Ana
wrapped her in her stola, having retrieved it from the apple tree
branch, and set about comforting her while Maximus merely stood,
grinning widely at his earstwhile lieutenant, who was beginning to
feel totally foolish.
"Best get out of the water and face the music," Maximus advised him.
"But - I - she - we - the minx wouldn't get out of the water!" 'Ninus
finally managed. Realizing that sounded a bit ungallant, he hastened
to explain further, "I told her she had to get out - before somebody
saw us, that is - and she wouldn't go."
Maximus nodded, "Perfectly logical to me - you wanted her to get out
of the water, stark naked, and - do what? Array herself on the
boulder for you to ravish? Were you playing at being Poseidon, come
to pillage the beauteous local maidens?"
Antoninus, who had gone from purple to red to white in the face in
the space of that one question, shook his head fiercely, "No - no-
nothing like that - I just wanted her to get out of the water."
"So you could see her completely naked?" Ana asked him, glancing up
from getting Marina's stola bound by her sash. Marina fought the
urge to giggle, hiding her face as if mortified, looking down at the
grass and biting her lip.
Antoninus looked at Lady Ana, even more mortified, "No - nothing
like that - I told you - she wouldn't get out of the pond - and I
told her she had to do it - get out, I mean - and she wouldn't go,
and then you came - and I meant to shove her behind me - and
naturally nothing she does is ever normal, so she went under the
water instead - and then she smacked me in the eye."
Ana and Maximus merely gazed at him while Antoninus panted and
wondered how everything had gone so wrong. One minute he'd been
happily floating, contemplating Nature and how his life was so
perfect and now, no more than a quarter of an hour later, he was
chest-deep in water and feeling as if it were quicksand under his
feet and not the sandy bottom of the pond. Marina looked up then and
he caught the expression on her face before she could school her
features. He realized he'd just been neatly trapped. "Like a trout,"
he told himself. And he'd fallen right into it. Hooked, and hooked
well, dragged up onto the shore, and now waiting for the conk on the
head to put him out of his misery.
Well,
hell.
-------------------------------
Copyright 2002 by wildbearies
To
PART 50
|
