She landed flat on her back. By the time breath had seeped back into her lungs and she opened her eyes, Challen was very casually lowering his big body to cover hers.

“Thus are you defeated.”

Tedra blinked. He was no longer looking angry or disappointed in her. He was looking rather smug, as if something he’d done had worked out exactly as he’d hoped it would. She didn’t have to beat her brains to figure out what.

“Very clever,” she said, but her lip curled to taunt, “But you won’t be here to collect, will you? Or are you going to keep all those shodani waiting for you indefinitely?”

“You assume I mean to demand another month of the same service? This is not my thought at all, chemar. No, I will instead have of you women’s duties of the more laborious kind, and enough to keep you so busy, you will not have time to even think of new ways to bedevil me-nor will you have time to cause any other mischief. The while I am gone, you will be under my uncle’s direction. You will follow his orders, and do you disobey him, it will be his lot to punish you. This will be your new challenge loss service, to continue until such time as I return. Is this understood by you?”

“But you could be gone for weeks!”

“That is indeed possible.”

“So I’m to be punished the whole time you’re away? Do you call that fair?”

“You will be punished only do you disobey my uncle, woman. Your labors, Darasha labors to be sure, are no more than the service you just lost to me. I see no unfairness in that, since the service is mine to name, yours to do. Is that not so?”

“If you think I don’t know I’m being punished for last night, you’re nuts. So don’t think I’ll be waiting here with open arms for you to come back.”

“You will be here, woman-”

“Sure I will,” she cut in, giving him a tight little smile. “But my first service to you will be over by the time you return, or just about. And you can bet your farden weight in gold that I won’t be challenging you anymore, so you can forget about all future service, of any kind. I’m getting my rights back and keeping them, and that includes the right to tell you to-”

He shut her up the way he’d found to be the easiest. After a few minutes of having her lips pleasantly mashed along with the rest of her body, she was no longer thinking of her rights.

“I hope that was a preview of what’s on the morning’s agenda before departure. If it is, shouldn’t you tell our audience to leave?”

“He has already gone. Does this mean you want me again?”

“I always want you, babe. It was only your damned dhaya juice that temporarily changed the program, for which… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that to you, but doing it, I should have told you about it last night.”

He kissed her again, then picked her up and carried her to his bed. Her apology didn’t get her new service changed, but the taunting she’d done before it almost guaranteed the barbarian would hurry home.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Tedra would never have admitted it to a soul, but she was having a great good time performing her new service. Challen’s uncle, like her, had assumed she wasn’t to particularly enjoy her labors, so he didn’t set her to easy tasks like serving meals or even cooking, though she’d have made a nice mess of that if he’d insisted she try. No, he set her to more strenuous work like washing dishes all day, or scrubbing down walls and floors-there were enough in the castle that she could have worked for a month and not finished- or beating rugs, or cleaning leathers.

Oh, she got tired after a full day of doing everything she was supposed to, but it was a good tired. What Lowden uncle didn’t know was that there wasn’t anything he could come up with that would be more strenuous than the kind of exercises she had put herself through for most of her life, exercise she had been missing since meeting up with the barbarian.

It did confound him, however, and that really gave her a kick. Some of his expressions were priceless, like the day he’d told her to rearrange some heavy furniture so it could be cleaned under. He’d come back after about a half hour, probably thinking he’d gone too far this time-the furniture really was heavy-only to find everything moved and the floor already cleaned.

She hadn’t wilted over the hot sink as he’d expected. She hadn’t balked at having to go up and down ladders to wash the high walls, or getting on her knees to scrub the floors. She’d caused such a dust cloud in the back court from beating the great oval carpets that everyone at the front gate was coughing from it, and Lowden had to find someone else for the job who didn’t put so much effort into it.

But no matter what he had her do, he wasn’t getting the results he was looking for, which were some complaints, at least some signs of exhaustion. And then he thought he’d hit on something she’d really object to: getting her delicate hands dirty working in the vegetable gardens. Stars love him, she certainly did after that one. But she’d never tell.

Even her status dropping several notches with the women, Tedra found amusing. They, too, thought she was being punished with Darasha labors, and Marel, for one, figured to have some fun while she had the chance. She waited until Tedra was scrubbing the hall outside the women’s gathering rooms before she came out with some of her cronies.

Tedra would have ignored them altogether, except that Marel was carrying a long switch. Tedra had no doubt any longer that women here weren’t switched, for punishment or otherwise. Neither were Darasha. There was no need for that kind of discipline when there were so many other kinds. But when Marel started complaining loudly that Tedra wasn’t working fast enough, Tedra knew what direction this scenario was supposed to take, and she was having none of it.

Before the young girl could get up the nerve to actually hit her with that switch, Tedra took it away from her and broke it, not just in half but into little pieces, no easy task since it was green wood. Marel, of course, started screaming for Master Lowden. By the time he arrived, the rest of the ladies had come into the hall to watch, but only Marel was making any noise. She was in for a surprise, however, when she made her complaints to Challen’s uncle. What could the man do, after all, regarding the charge that Tedra had been slacking off in her work, when she was nearly finished with what should have taken her all day to do? As to the charge that she had then attacked Marel, Tedra was the one surprised upon hearing a good many of the ladies take her side by denying it. And since not one of Marel’s cronies supported her in the claim, the poor girl got herself punished for causing trouble-back in the kitchen peeling the falaa she hated.

That was the day Challen returned. That he was back in only five days surprised everyone except Tedra. She’d figured that he wouldn’t drag his feet at the meeting, and now she still had two weeks remaining on her first service to him. But hearing that he was approaching the castle ended her second service, and she quit what she was doing to go with everyone else to the courtyard to greet him.

But her first sight of him coming through the gate ended the good humor she’d retained in his absence. Sitting in front of him on his hataar was a very pretty blonde wearing-nothing. And from what Tedra could see around the shoulders of the warriors in front of her, the woman seemed to be crawling all over Challen, and he didn’t appear to be doing anything to stop her from making such a spectacle of them both.

“Another captive, shodan?” Lowden asked in greeting.

Challen laughed at his long-suffering look. “You need see to this one only until Tamiron returns, uncle. Since it was his suggestion I steal her, I have decided he may have her.”