The Pillars Of The World

when it’s told by a man. Remember that.”
    Neall didn’t see any movement, but the small man was no longer standing there.
    “Let’s get home before anything else happens,” Neall muttered to Darcy.
    He kept to the woods for as long as he“ could, skirted the tenant farms his uncle controlled, and finally reached Felston’s manor house. As he gave Darcy a hurried grooming, he noticed Royce’s horse wasn’t in its stall yet, which probably meant his cousin had stopped at the tavern in Ridgeley. He imagined the place would be crowded tonight with the younger men who wanted a roomful of witnesses in case a girl pointed a finger in their direction. It didn’t matter if the man left early or came late. They would protect each other to keep from getting caught.
    Slipping out of the stables, Neall headed for the back of the house. The kitchen door was unlatched, and there was no one sleeping by the hearth. Well, even servants weren’t excluded from the delights— and dangers—this night could hold, and he could well imagine what would happen to a young servant who had the misfortune of being the first man a gentry lady saw—especially Odella, if she was still out.
    Using the servants’ stairway, Neall made it up to his room and gratefully bolted the door. Quickly undressing in the dark, he got into bed, releasing a sigh of relief.

    Not that any of the gentry girls would have wanted to make an offer to him . He had no more to offer any of them than the servants. At least, nothing he was ready to acknowledge yet.
    He had turned twenty-one a few weeks ago. He could own property in his own name now, without “
    Uncle” Felston claiming control over it as his guardian. He could leave Ridgeley and finally go back to the mistily remembered place that had been his home as a small boy. His mother’s house. His mother’s land.
    “Why do I have to go with them?” Neall asked. Tears filled his eyes, despite his efforts not to cry, as he watched Ashk calmly fill the trunk with his clothes and the wooden toys his father had made for him. “I don’t know them.” His young voice rose to a wail.
    Ashk turned to look at him, her woodland eyes filled with dry grief. “Your father was a good man.
    If he had lived, he would have taught you what you need to know about the world. But he is gone, so you need to learn those things from his people, his family.”
    “But I don’t know them! Why can’t I learn those things from you? Why can’t I stay with you?”
    She knelt before him, brushed her fingers through his hair. “First you must learn what your father
    ’s people can teach you. Then, when you are grown and return here, I will teach you other things about the world.”
    Neall sniffed, studied the eyes of his mother’s closest friend — eyes that reminded him of his mother’s. “I can come back ?”
    “This house and land will be waiting for you. That much I can promise.” She hesitated. “But you mustn’t tell your father’s people about the land. It belongs to the daughters, and no one else has any say here.”
    So he’d kept the secret about the land from Baron Felston for all these years. One of the many secrets he’d thought he’d kept well since he was brought to the baron’s house as a young boy grieving the loss of both parents.
    Now that he was grown, and no longer legally Felston’s ward, there was only one thing that stopped him from saddling his horse and riding to the western part of Sylvalan: Ari. He wanted her to go with him, but he didn’t think she would ever leave Brightwood. And he knew, despite his daydreams of being her lover and husband, that being with her here would be no good for either of them. Even if they married, he would always be considered Baron Felston’s poor relation as long as he stayed around Ridgeley. And Felston, claiming a “family” connection, would look with already-greedy eyes on the bounty Brightwood held and expect to make use of it.
    Ari was still young, barely more than a girl. Now that her mother and grandmother were gone, maybe she would be willing to leave Brightwood, and the cruelty she faced every time she went to Ridgeley, and start a new life somewhere else . . . with him.
    He would give it another year . . . and spend another year working from sunup to sunset as the baron’s unofficial steward, wearing Royce’s castoff clothes while Royce, Odella, and the baron and baroness spent all the profits that could be squeezed from the estate,