For Love or Money by Lady MSM

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Nerdanel Makes her Choice

Chapter 11: Nerdanel Makes her Choice

I wake up late the next morning, with more of a headache than I like to admit (oh, please, it was free beer and we were celebrating—any young gent worth his salt would have done the same). Harma and Mahtan have been kind enough to let me sleep most of it off, but hangovers are never pleasant.

Nerdanel isn’t around the house when I get out of bed—Mahtan says she’s out back washing clothes with Harma. Poor girl, she had to deal with the horses alone while I was lying around in bed recovering from my drunken revelry. Although she did participate in some of that. I almost don’t want to hear what she has to say about our sort-of reconciliation last night. Honestly, there’s always so much weirdness between that girl and I that thinking about it gives me a headache.

To clear my head, I decide to take a bit of a walk. Mahtan’s taking the day off (he’s almost as hungover as I am) and there’s really no work for me to do until this evening, so I run a comb through my hair and head off into town.

“Morning, Narie,” I say to Ararast’s wife, who’s manning the bookshop when I come in. “Where’s Ararast?”

“Where the rest of ye spent most of the morning, I suppose…dead to the world!” Narie laughs. “Ye did our ward proud yesterday, Ernil, all of ye did. I’m that proud that I’ve been bragging about me husband’s team to everyone who comes in here! Soron’s wife, now, she won’t even talk to me,” she adds, satisfied.

“I’m sure she won’t,” I reply, smiling. “Anyway, I should be getting on my way…I just stopped in to say hello. Tell Ararast good afternoon for me when he wakes up.”

“Sure and it’ll probably be afternoon when he wakes up, too. I’ll tell him ye called.”

Having concluded that bit of important business, I head back out into the street. My headache has mostly alleviated by this point, so I figure I should start getting home, since I don’t want to miss lunch…

“Hullo, Ernil.”

I look around and there’s Bril, sitting outside his father’s shop looking utterly dejected. Well, I’d look dejected too, if my ward had lost the race by half a second.

“Oh, hullo, Bril,” I say. “Er…are you all right?”

“I swear, sometimes I wonder if yer as clever as they say ye are,” he snorts. “Do I look all right?”

“Listen, if this is about the race, we…”

“No, it’s not about the race, ye bloody idiot. Ward Six has only won twice this year and we certainly weren’t expectin’ to this year. No, I think ye know full well what I’m really mad about.”

I frown. What is he on about?

“Bril,” I ask, “what are you on about?”

“Ye really don’t know? Fine, then let me tell ye what happened to me this morning. Almost as soon as Da and I open up shop, in comes Nerdanel wantin’ to speak to me privately. ‘Huzzah,’ I think, ‘she’s finally going to say she’ll marry me.’ Ha!” He shakes his head. “No, she tells me that no matter how much time she spends with me she’ll never love me like I love her, and so she’s very sorry but she’ll never be able to marry me. She dumped me, Ernil. Dumped me before she was ever me girlfriend.”

Partially out of pure shock and partially because my headache’s come back, I have to sit down. Bril gives me a disgusted look and scoots a few paces away.

“Do you know what brought this on so suddenly?” I ask.

“She only hinted at it, but I’ve got it figured out,” Bril replies. “She’s got her eye on someone else. I know I really should have figured it out last night after the race…sure, she barely talked to me.”

“She’s got her eye on someone else?” I say, desperately trying to sound like I don’t care. “Do you have any idea…who?”

Bril hesitates for a moment, then shakes his head. “No, I’ve got no idea. Now could ye please get out of here? The fewer people I talk to this morning the happier I’ll be.”

I nod and stand up. “Well, I hope things work out for you, Bril. Good morning.” He doesn’t reply, and I start walking home. As soon as I know I’m out of his sight, I run.

Nerdanel’s not out back washing clothes when I get home. Harma tells me that she’s in her workshop (she gives me a slightly odd look when she sees how out of breath I am, but she doesn’t ask what’s going on, which is good because I doubt I would be able to give her a straight answer).

I dash into the forge, somehow managing not to trip over anything, swing open the trapdoor, and jump down into Nerdanel’s workshop without even touching the ladder.

“Nerdanel!” I say considerably louder than I intended to, causing Nerdanel, who is hard at work on something, to jump in surprise and then turn around and scowl at me.

“Why don’t we try that entrance again, this time without scarin’ the daylights out of me,” she says irritably.

I sigh, climb back up the ladder, and re-enter the room. “Nerdanel,” I say. “Is it true what Bril told me?”

“That he can hold his breath for a full minute underwater? Aye, it’s true, but it’s not that impressive a feat.”

“I don’t mean that,” I say exasperatedly. “He never even told me that.”

“So what did he tell ye, then? Ye can’t expect me to know every conversation ye have with him. I’m a busy woman.”

“He said you told him this morning that you could never marry him.”

“That’s also true,” says Nerdanel calmly, not looking up from her work. “I should think ye’d be pleased.”

“Well, I am, if that’s what you want,” I reply. “But…he also said he thought you rejected him because you’re interested in someone else.”

“Sure and I guess he’s a bit sharper than I gave him credit for,” she remarks.

“So you are interested in someone else.”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“Well,” I say, “well, in that case, who is it?”

Nerdanel lets out a scream of frustration and throws her chisel across the room. She whirls around and looks at me with pure fury. “Oh, honestly, Ernil, who the hell do ye think? Haven’t ye got a brain in yer head? Ye know damn well that there’s only one person in Fana’s Crossing I could ever have me eye on!”

When I don’t say anything, she lets out another shriek and swings up the ladder out of the room. I sigh and shake my head. Why did I think that I would ever get a straight answer out of Nerdanel?

Then I see what she was working on.

It’s me.

Like the sculptures of her parents, it’s just my head and shoulders, and it’s obviously not finished. But it’s me, all right. She got everything—from the haircut she gave me to the burn scar on my cheek to the smart-arse smile I get when I think I’m being funny.

And I know, with absolute certainty, that Nerdanel loves me.

Without another thought, I climb up the ladder and dash back into the house like a madman. Nerdanel’s in her room, sitting on the bed. I storm in and slam the door behind me.

“Get…” she starts to say, but I don’t let her finish. Instead, I pull her to her feet and kiss her.

The kissing goes on for some time (and is not at all unpleasant, I might add) before Nerdanel puts her hands on my chest and pushes me away.

“So ye’ve figured it out, have ye?” she says, obviously trying to be sarcastic but not quite managing it. “Ye certainly took yer own sweet time.”

“We stopped kissing just so you could make some funny little comment?” I ask. “What a waste. I was really enjoying the kissing.”

“Well, excuse me for wanting to figure this out a bit. So I take it that yer a bit fond of me as well?”

“A bit fond?” I laugh. “Nerdanel, I am extremely fond of you. In fact, there is a high probability that I love you.”

“Really? After the way I treated ye? And even though we only made up last night? Sure and I didn’t think hate changed to love so quickly.”

“I never hated you. I was certainly angry at you, but that’s not the same thing.”

“I think I was pretty fond of ye all along,” Nerdanel admits. “Well, maybe not in the very beginning, when ye were goin’ about telling everyone to make yer tea and sew ye some clothes, but when we were feeding the horses and talking about our families…aye, that’s what did it for me.”

“I think I knew I liked you after you cut my hair. That was a very intimate moment, you know.”

“Aye, I do know. Sure and it was all I could do to keep me hands from trembling.”

“You’re joking, right?”

She shrugs. “A little.

I’m not really sure what to say in reply to that. So I just laugh and kiss her again. Fortunately, this time she doesn’t interrupt.

Chapter End Notes

All hail the stupid couple.

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For Love or Money by Lady MSM

Nerdanel Makes her Choice

Chapter End Notes