Nobody's Son by Sean Stewart

didn’t get out fast enough, the girl might have a baby, and if she had a baby you ought to marry her, and if you were married to someone you should never leave them, and if he was going to the Ghostwood he might very well not come back. So he had tried not to think about girls, and made love to his fist when he had to.
    Most of what he knew of swiving was from watching rams on ewes. A Princess now: a Princess would have expectations.
    They must know things, these thin-fingered gentlemen. Probably that’s summat else you get taught if you’re Somebody’s Son.
    Gail wore tights and a tunic the first time he laid eyes on her. Tights! What did you do about tights? The girls he had lain with were wearing dresses and nothing else: you didn’t need to be too handy, and they were helpful anyways. But tights! And corsets! These women wore corsets. Mark groaned. Nails to nuts the wedding dress will be a lace-and-button nightmare .
    How long d’you think she’ll wait while you paw and fumble? How long d’you think she’ll stay with a jack who doesn’t know how to please a lady?
    She’d take a lover. He knew it. And everything he had worked for would be in ruins. His house would be a cuckoo’s nest, some smirking courtier would be slipping his powdered pizzle into his wife, his servants would sneer at him, his soldiers would make horns behind his back.
    “Shite!” He grabbed the brass-handled poker and jabbed at the fire, breaking its red heart.
    And another thing: you swear too much.
    Well.
    No point in getting sick ower things that might never happen. Hell, the only times you’ve seen her, she hasn’t had much use for well-dressed pricks like Peridot.
    The looks she’s given you, good and bad both, have been proud and sharp and straight as arrows. She’ll not take a lover behind your back, Shielder’s Mark. If she wants quit of you she’ll stick a dagger in your belly from the front!
    And you could learn. You’ve clever hands for most things: no reason swiving should be different. It won’t be your body that lets you down.
    She liked him well enough to look at, or she wouldn’t have challenged him with her eyes, daring him to ask for her hand. She’d seen him dirty then, and it hadn’t been his silver tongue that caught her fancy.
    He had come back from the Ghostwood.
    He could be a husband now, and a father too.
    And to be a father…
    They would be man and wife, after all.
    A sudden memory rushed over him from some tipsy holiday night, the press of skin on skin, the smell of a woman’s hair in his mouth, her laughter smothered against his shoulder. Her stomach pressing up hot against his and his hand in the small of her back.
    Mark drifted slowly to his bed, sat on the edge and pulled off his boots. Unbuckled his belt.
    That could be Gail, nipping on his shoulder, her slender arms vined around his back.
    A spark jumped through him. The salt taste on his lips could be her royal sweat; it could be her brown eyes kindled with candlelight, her thighs that made a valley for him to;—
    There was a knock at the door.
    Goat’s-piss and puppy-guts ! “Coming, coming!” Blinking to rid his mind of his fantasy of Gail Mark leapt up, swore, ran to the door in his stocking feet and wrenched it open with what he prayed was an easy smile.
    Lissa, Gail’s serving woman, stood on his threshold. Her eyes flicked from his stockinged feet to his strained smile: adding him up like a manor steward toting rents. She’s got you pegged to the last penny-piece, lad. O god .
    “I beg your pardon, worthy sir, for my untimely interruption.”
    Demure, attentive, and unthreatening, Lissa was just what Mark expected a princess to be: tall and willowy, with wavy gold hair that framed her face. Earlier it had been plaited into an elaborate coiffure, but now, long after bed-time, it fell free, and rustled against her satin shoulders as she walked.
    She was leading him down one of the darker, narrower, draughtier corridors in the