A Matter of Taste - Chapter 2

A few days later found us wandering through the market on a lazy weekday morn. I had been trying to work, but Bansi had convinced me to let it be for a few hours, had cajoled with his beguiling smile and pleading eyes.

I was unaccustomed to leisure. It felt ill on me, as mismatched as if I'd tried on Ban's clothing, all embroidered ribbons and silk brocade. But it distressed Ban to see me work so, constantly, even as we talked and laughed through the evening. So I set my work aside and smiled and let him draw me out of the house, all the while calculating how I could make up the lost time. Ban would have frowned at me, if he'd known my thoughts, but I couldn't help it. It was who I was, and how I lived.

"Renad!" The shout went up across the hubbub of the market. It wasn't Bansi's, so I turned my head to seek its source, surprised by the interruption.

"Ilis." I smiled when I found her, an old woman with hair as soft and white as the clouds above us, and more wrinkles in her face than there were stones in the river. I bought bread from her sometimes, when I didn't make it to the baker's before he sold all his loaves for the day. I'd once fixed the clock her grandfather had given her, whose own father had given it to him, and his father the same, back and back until the provenance was lost to time and aged memory, and in return, she always slipped me little packets of sweets or dried fruits along with my bread.

"How are you, Ilis?" I stooped so she could kiss my cheek without having to straighten her hunched back to reach. "We haven't seen you in an age."

"Busy, busy." She laughed and clasped my hand between hers. "Corine had her babe last month, you know. A little boy. I've been staying with them to help out, but the poor lamb still isn't getting much sleep."

"No! A whole month? You should have sent word. We must come by and see them." I turned, searching for Bansi. He was admiring some lemons sold at the stall we had stopped in front of. I caught his arm and tugged him around. "Ban, let's go visit Corine tomorrow, shall we? Did you hear? She had her child. A boy, and nearly a month old! We've been remiss in visiting."

"We could visit more if you didn't work yourself to the bone," he said automatically, like he couldn't help it. And then, "Tomorrow? No, I can't. We're meeting with the wheelwright to negotiate the cost for repairs to our wagons. It'll take all day, and that if we're lucky."

I frowned at him. "They need you there for that?"

He bridled, his shoulders tightening and his fingers curling against his palms. "No. I need to be there for it. Papa's rheumatism is troubling him more and more, and the travel isn't good for him. He'll be staying home soon, instead of leading the caravan. Maybe next year, maybe the one after. But soon. I need to learn what I can from him while I'm still able, if I'm to take over in his absence. I need to be there."

I took a quick half-step back from him, hands raised. "All right, all right," I said. When the tension had eased from him and he'd loosened the muscle in his jaw, I muttered beneath my breath, "Gods, it was just a question."

Ilis shot me a conspiratorial smile and patted my hand again before she turned to Bansi. "That's no matter, then. You needn't wait until tomorrow. She's here working the market. She'd probably shower you both with kisses if you offered to take the child off her hands for a few minutes. Come along." She hooked her arm through mine and began leading me down the market lane. "I'll take you to her."

Bansi hesitated before he followed us, long enough that he ended up a full stride behind. I tried to gesture him forward, to reach back and clasp his hand so I could bring him up to walk at my side, but his gaze was always elsewhere, scanning the stalls, the merchants and patrons, lingering over the wares set up on display.

I left him to it, when the crowds became too close to risk walking through them without looking where I was going, and settled instead to talking with Ilis. She rambled all the way about her grandson, whom Corine had named Yvas after her late grandfather, and Ilis had had to wipe a tear from her eye after relating that. She spoke of how big he had grown already, how he had a shock of hair as red as rhubarb, and how he'd gotten that from Corine's side of the family.

"But Corine's hair is brown," I said, laughing, as we wended our way up the narrowing aisles between stalls.

Ilis grinned at me, a gleam in her eye, and tugged at a lock of her own hair. "I wasn't born silver, you know. Yvas gets the red from me."

A pang went through me as I thought of the child Bansi and I would be having and whether it would have hair like his own rich brown, or the mother's fair locks, like fields of wheat in the summer, or if we'd all be treated to a surprise from past generations, as Yvas and Corine had been.

I didn't care if our child had brown hair or fair, or any shade in between, but I was sorely looking forward to finding out.

Bansi caught up with us as we made our way through the textile area of the market, dodging past stalls of rugs and tunics and bolts of silks, and the merchants exhorting us to buy them. I'd have guessed these would catch his eye more so than the food stalls he'd lingered over, as Bansi had a healthy love for clothing and fabrics of all kinds, but I was glad to have him with us again all the same, so I smiled and brushed my hand across his in greeting as he reached my side. "See anything you liked?"

"I saw something you would," he said with an enigmatic smile, and drew a small, immaculate orange out of his pocket.

"You sneak!" I accepted it eagerly, and lifted it up to my nose as I began to peel it, so I could savor the bright, sharp tang of it. "That's why you wouldn't walk with us?"

He draped an arm around my shoulders and smiled down at the street passing beneath our feet. "And here I thought I was being so clever."

"You don't have to be clever when you ply me with oranges instead." Bansi had told me once that where he lived, there were groves and groves of orange trees, so thick and sweet they perfumed the air for miles around. I had told him that I thought that was a greater wealth than his fine house or elegant clothes. Oranges were a delicacy here, and a rarity, and priced as such. The only groves were the tiny orangeries of the wealthy, and they kept them locked behind walls and gates for their own private enjoyment.

I ate the orange segments slowly, savoring them, and tucked the peel into my pocket. Bansi had been bemused the first time he'd brought me one and I'd set the curls of rind on the windowsill in the sun to dry, then carefully folded them up into sachets for my wardrobe. At home, he said, they threw the peels onto the street, and trod them into the mud without a thought, and it made him laugh to see me treasure something he'd long considered little more than refuse.

We found Corine in a tiny stall in the back of the market, squeezed in elbow-to-elbow with the weaver she sold her yarns to, who wove intricately-patterned throws out of them. She had a babe in one arm, with a shock of hair just as brilliantly red as Ilis had promised, and her spindle in the other, trying to work as she nursed, but Yvas seemed fussy and her thread kept snapping.

"Corine, my dear, see who I've brought you?" Ilis took the spindle and wool from her, and deftly took up the work. "There now. Give the poor boy his lunch so you can show him off."

Corine turned a grateful, if weary, smile on her mother. When she turned to Bansi and me, her smile brightened with true pleasure. "It's been a week past forever, hasn't it? I'm so sorry. Each day seems endless, and yet they all fly by faster than I can count. How have you been?"

We exchanged pleasantries while she nursed. When Yvas had had his fill, I begged her to let me see him. She handed him over, and admonished me to be sure I kept his head supported.

"You needn't tell him that," Bansi said, looking up from where he had been standing to the other side of the stall, inspecting the weaver's blankets. "Renad knows everything about infants it's possible to learn without having birthed one himself."

"I want to be prepared," I said, my cheeks heating. He said it as though it were a bad thing to have done, or at least a silly one. "You can't fault me for that."

"Don't be silly, of course he can't," Corine said briskly. "You should have seen my Ewin when the baby came. Wouldn't touch him for the first week, he was so afraid he'd break him. He still can't change a diaper to save his life."

I shot Bansi a look that said, You see? We wouldn't want to be like those men, now would we, and with no wife to take up our slack? But he was looking at the blankets again, and paying me no mind.

"Ban." I made my voice sharp enough that he looked up at me. "What are you doing? Come here and meet Yvas."

"Look at these, Renad." He picked up a blanket, shook it out and held it so I could see the design, an intricate bit of work with looping vines and leaves that faded gradually from from a rich, dark green at the bottom to palest yellow on the top. "Aren't they nice? They've got blues, too. And reds. You should feel it. It's good wool," he said with a smile to Corine. She acknowledged the praise with a pleased smile of her own and a gracious nod. "I'll buy you one, if you like it."

"It's nice," I said doubtfully. Yvas had an iron grip on my little finger and was determinedly gnawing away at it. "It's a little big, though, don't you think? And we won't even know what colors to choose until the baby's here. I don't know that now is the time."

Bansi's brows furrowed with a slow frown. He looked down at the blanket in his hands and folded it up again with quick, jerky moments. "I was thinking for your bed, Renad." His voice was stung, unhappy. I sighed and shifted Yvas in my arms. "Nevermind. Maybe later. Maybe when the baby's come. If he's still making them in that pattern then."

"Come hold him, Ban." I moved over to him and put Yvas into his arms. I didn't want to fight. I just wanted to coddle Corine's baby and anticipate our own. I couldn't be testy with tiny hands clutching my finger. I didn't expect Bansi could be, either. He would hold the child, and then we could say our farewells to Corine and Ilis and go home, and then we could lie in bed like sloths and idly discuss names or hair colors or whatever else we pleased, and leave this tension so far behind we'd both have forgotten all about it by morning.

He held him awkwardly, his arms stiff and extended instead of holding Yvas close against his body. His expression was uncomfortable, verging on panic.

"Here, let me show you," Corine said, smiling fondly at them. She came over to try to help, but Bansi just held the baby out to her.

"I think maybe you'd better take him," he said. "He's unhappy. He wants his mama."

I looked over at them both. Yvas wasn't crying yet, but he was twisting in Bansi's arms and fussing. "He's unhappy because you're holding him like a sack of beans, Ban. You might have better luck if you cradled him like you actually wanted him to be there."

"It's all right," Corine said. She took her son back and tucked him into the crook of her arm. "It was nice to see you two. You should come by soon. We'd love to see you."

"We will," I promised, and kissed her cheek. "Next time, I'm going to steal that little one away from you for more than a minute."

We returned the way we'd come through the market. Bansi walked at my side this time, and carried on a rambling conversation about anything and everything that caught his eye or struck his mind. I couldn't find it in me to hold up my half of the exchange, but Bansi only hesitated the once, waiting for my response. He glanced at me askance, then carried on as though nothing untoward had happened, and talked twice as much to make up for the gap I refused to fill.

We were at the fringes of the market and nearly home when he gave a sharp sigh. "Your mood took a turn, didn't it? What's the matter, Renad?"

"I don't know," I said, too sharp, too angry. I stopped and took a deep breath, searched for calm, but I couldn't find it. "I was hoping you could tell me."

He turned his head to frown at me. "Tell you why you're upset?"

"Tell me why you're suddenly holding babies as though they're vipers that are going to sink fangs into you if you let them too near. I've seen you hold infants before and you've never been like that. Or maybe you could tell me why you turned grey as ash whenever I mention our child." I stopped and stared at him. "There, you've done it again. You want to know what's the matter? Well, so do I."

Bansi turned his face away from me, staring straight ahead. His lips pressed into a tight line, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. "I'd never thought of it too well before. Now, now that we'll have one of our own soon, I can't stop thinking about it. How small they are. How fragile. How they come out tiny, screaming balls who eat and sleep, and it's up to us to make them into a person. And--" He drew a deep, unsteady breath. "What if I'm not good at it?"

A measure of my irritation evaporated. "At being a father?"

He gave a tight nod, still staring forward at nothing, as though he couldn't bear to look at me with the weight of his fear still riding him. "Ban. Don't be ridiculous."

"I'm not!" he snarled, then drew himself up short and made a visible effort to restrain himself. "It's not ridiculous. It's a valid concern, isn't it? I'm going to have half the responsibility of raising this child, and I'll probably screw it up. But it's not a job, it's not some task where failure means maybe a small setback and a second attempt. It's a person. I don't know how to be a father at all. I don't think I can do it."

"You don't want to do it," I said quietly, looking down at the dust on the toes of my boots.

"That's not what I'm saying."

"Isn't it? You don't want anything to do with babies anymore, you don't want to hold them, you don't want to talk about them. And you didn't think to say any of this before we started trying to conceive one?"

"I did," he said, low and fierce. "I tried. Every time I brought it up... You thought it was just cold feet. You told me it would be fine."

"It will! It-- Gods and devils. I don't understand why you're so afraid. I don't know why you think you'd be bad at it."

"I don't know why you're so certain I'd be good at it," he said quietly, staring solemnly down at his feet. "I'm not like you. I'm not..."

I waited, wondering how he'd finish the sentence. But time stretched, and he just sighed and seemed to grow unhappier by the minute. "Ban," I said. My chest felt tight, my heart rattling against my ribs with panic I could barely restrain. "Bansi. You need to tell me right now if this isn't something you want."

He glanced up at me. As soon as his gaze touched my face, his expression crumpled. "Don't look at me like that, Renad." His voice broke. "Gods. Just... forget it." He squared his shoulders and began striding forward, his steps determined and his back straight as a post. "I'm sure you're right. You're always right. It'll be fine."

He didn't sound like anything was fine at all. I followed after him and tried to talk to him about it, but he refused to speak to me further. When I pressed, he snapped, "Stop! Just stop." And then he was the one who stopped, standing motionless halfway down the street. I leaned my shoulder against a streetlamp and waited.

"Go on," he said softly. "I think I'd best go home."

I snapped my head up and scowled at him. "You're running off? Because you're vexed with me?" We'd had our fair share of arguments, like any couple would. But he'd never run away from me before. Usually he stayed, and we battled it out until somewhere beneath all the hurt and upset, we found a resolution.

"No." He took two steps back, and raised a hand when I tried to follow. "I'm just going home. There's that meeting tomorrow. I'll need to be well rested, and up early. And I'd never be able to find a hack here at that hour of the morning. It just makes more sense."

"Of course." I sighed. "All right, then." I turned on my heel and continued home, too stung by his abrupt change in demeanor to look back or wave him on his way.

*

Two weeks on, we'd made arrangements to meet with Leisl, the woman who'd agreed to bear us our child. Bansi sent a carriage by to pick me up, which sat ill with me. If any of the neighbors saw, they'd think I was getting airs, and I'd never heard the end of it. But refusing would only lead to another argument, and we'd had enough of those, of late. I could suffer through the uncomfortable helplessness of being waited upon, if it kept the peace between us a few days longer.

He'd rented her a flat in Regent's Walk, said that Leisl was working for us and deserved to be compensated well, though I secretly suspected she'd have settled for a place half as large and a stipend half as grand, and still counted herself lucky.

I couldn't very well argue the expense, when it was Bansi's money paying for it, and our child benefitting from it.

She greeted us at the door, dressed in silks and looking quite fine. "Evening, milords," with a bob of her head and a little dip of a curtsy.

When we'd first met her, she'd called us "gen'lmen" and hadn't bothered with such niceties as curtsying. I suspected she was trying to make herself seem more genteel, to justify the sum we were giving her.

"How are you, Leisl?" We exchanged the kisses of greeting and she led us in. Her flat was very fine, with big windows that looked out on the river and plush pillows all about the place. She had a bowl of fresh fruit on her tabletop, spilling over with oranges and berries. She plucked one out of the bowl as we passed it, peeled and bit into it as though it were commonplace, and she'd eaten oranges every day of her life.

"I am unwell, I'm afraid," she said, casting us both a coy, sidelong glance.

"You are ill?" Bansi frowned. "Should we send for a physician?"

"Ban. Don't be silly." I put a hand on his arm, then turned my gaze on Leisl. My chest felt squeezed too tight to speak, but somehow I managed to force the words out. "Is it morning sickness?"

Please, I thought. Please, please, please.

She bit the edge of her lip and worried it between her teeth before slowly shaking her head. "No, sir. Forgive me. I was trying to be delicate. I only meant that..." She made a vague gesture at herself. "I am unwell."

I realized what she meant, then. It was a common enough euphemism, though used more amongst the rich and titled than the sorts of people on Copper Street. But Ban still looked confused. Leisl gave a sharp sigh. "I am bleeding," she said, giving him a pointed glance. "It didn't take."

I shut my eyes against the wave of disappointment that swept through me. I had to fight against it, to draw slow, deep breaths and remind myself that patience was a virtue I'd best start cultivating now, if I meant to parent a child. 

When I opened my eyes, Bansi was staring at her with a strange look in his eye. I didn't know what to make of his expression. I didn't think Leisl did, either -- the smile she gave him was uncertain, and a little forced. "We will try again, yes? One miss means nothing. Now we have the whole month." She moved toward him, caught him by the lapels of his coat and drew him in to an intimate distance. She leaned in for a kiss. "We will try again."

Bansi stiffened and pushed her back. "I don't know. I--" The look he sent me was wild, wide-eyed. "We should-- We should go home, shouldn't we? We can talk about this there. Please." He reached to take my hand, to pull me with him. "Let's talk about this at home."

He had that look in his eye, the same one he'd had at the market with Ilis and Corine, the one he seemed to have every time I caught him while his thoughts were wondering. I'd spent two weeks convincing myself it was nothing, that I was jumping at shadows.

This wasn't a shadow, and it wasn't in my head. Bansi looked like if I didn't come with him, he was going to run out of here by himself, and maybe not stop running until he got all the way to the other side of the city.

I glanced at Leisl, just for a moment before my gaze swung back to Bansi like a magnet seeking north. I swallowed down the sudden dread that coated the back of my tongue like acid, and gave a stiff nod. "Very well. Let's go home."

My legs were longer than Bansi's, but I still nearly had to jog to keep up with the pace he set as he tore down the hall and out of the building. When we came out onto the street, he gulped air like he'd been drowning, bent double with his hands on his thighs.

I stood at his side, arms crossed and silent, every muscle in my body tense with foreboding.When the carriage came around, I waited until Bansi climbed in first, then I followed.

I slammed the door shut behind me without waiting for the coachman and dropped onto the seat opposite Bansi. "All right. Talk."

He was hunched over, elbows on his knees and fingers knotted at his nape. He tilted his head, looking up at me through the hair that had fallen over his face. "I can't, Ren."

"You can! It's just us here. There's no point waiting until home, and I won't have it. Tell me what's going on!"

He shrank away from me as though I'd moved to strike him, pressing his back into the seat and slinking down. "I can't," he whispered. "I can't do this.

"Do what?" 

He looked at me miserably, and I knew.

"Our child." I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes and drew a deep breath. "That's what you mean. You're still on about that."

Bansi hissed out an angry breath. "On about it? I haven't been on about anything. Every time I try to talk to you about it, you look like I've torn your heart from your chest."

"You're scared," I said. Calm was beyond my reach, but I struggled to be reasonable, to restrain the urge to fly across the carriage at him and strike him for doing this to me, for doing it now. "Do you think I don't know it? Do you think you're alone? I'm afraid, too, of course I am. It's a great responsibility, but--"

"I don't want it."

I lowered my hands and lifted my head. I stared at him. My heart pounded so hard I could count the beats, each one battering my ribs like a hammer's blow until my whole chest hurt. "What?"

"I don't want a child. I don't want the responsibility."

"You... We talked about this. You said--"

"You wanted a child." Bansi turned his head away from me and stared out the carriage windows, his expression hard as glass. "I knew you wanted it. I'd have to have been blind not to know."

"And you lied to me." The words sounded hollow and false on my tongue. They were wrong. The Bansi I knew -- the one I'd thought I'd known -- wouldn't have lied to me about something this important.

He was quiet for a long time. The rattle of the carriage across the cobbles filled my ears until it was deafening, and I thought I might go mad from it. "I wanted you to be happy," he said at last, barely a whisper.

"How happy do I look right now to you?"

He glanced sidelong at me. His gaze lingered, tracing over my face. The more he saw, the more his expression hardened. "I don't want it," he said again, sullenly, and stared out at the city once more. "I don't want something like that depending on me. I don't want to wake up to screaming all night long. I don't want to be tied down, unable to go where I want or do what I want because something needs me."

"You should have told me," I said, and my voice was hoarse, broken. "You should have said something, a month ago. A year ago. I told you--" I broke off, too hurt and too angry to speak for a moment. "I told you I didn't want to do this if you didn't. You've been stringing me along all this while, and you thought... what? That I would change my mind? That the desire would pass?"

"I don't know." He was still staring outside. He wouldn't even look at me. I wanted to hit him until he did, until he had to, and had to face the hurt he'd caused. Instead, I just sat there and trembled. "I always thought there was time. Until there wasn't."

The carriage came to a stop and a moment later, the coachman opened the door, his face impassive, as though he hadn't just been sitting up above listening to us shout the whole way home.

I climbed out, feeling as though I suddenly carried the weight of a horse upon my shoulders. When my feet were on the ground, I moved aside and turned back, waiting for Bansi. But he was still sitting in the dark of the carriage, not looking at me.

"Come on, Ban." I was exhausted. My words dragged as though I hadn't slept in days. "We're not done with this yet."

"We are." He shifted, rolling his back toward me, his face turned entirely away. "I think I should go home."

"I'll come with you, then." I made to climb the steps back up into the carriage. "But we have to finish this. You can't just--"

"No, Renad." He faced me, then, spun about and stared at me with eyes gone hard as flint in a face that was set with anger in a way I'd never seen from him before, not directed at me. "I'm going home. We're sending the wagons back for the next season's run, now they've been repaired. I'm going with them." His mouth pressed into an unyielding line. His throat worked once. "I'm going back."

I barely registered the grip of the coachman's hand upon my arm, holding me back. I didn't know what I'd have done without it. "You're leaving?"

He broke his gaze away from mine. "There's no point to this anymore. I don't want what you want."

"You're leaving."

He stiffened at the accusation in my words. "Yes! I'm leaving. I'm going home, where I belong, and I'll take over for my father and I'll marry the daughter of some other merchant family like Mama's been after me to all these years." He stared straight forward, though there was nothing to see opposite him but the seat I'd left vacant. "It's just easier, if I do what's expected of me."

"Ban." I hated how my words turned desperate, pleading. "Don't be rash."

He exchanged a look with the coachman, then a nod, and leaned back in his seat. The coachman tightened his grip on my arm and pulled me away. "Beg pardon, milord."

"No. Ban!" I pounded my fist against the carriage's door while the coachman clambered back up to his seat. When he clicked to his horses and shook out the reins, I moved back automatically, out of the way of being trampled. But I followed two swift steps down the street, shouted, "Bansi!" after them with all the breath in my lungs.

The carriage rolled on. It turned the corner and disappeared without so much as slowing down.

I stood there, on the street instead of the walk, being stared at by all those who had been around to witness the end of our fight, and I didn't care. I didn't care about any of it.

I turned slowly back home. I was still only a few strides from the door, but every step felt trudging and laborious. I dragged myself up the stairs and inside. When I had the door secured behind me, I leaned back against it, eyes shut and breathing hard. I was falling apart, crumbling, piece by piece. I could feel it happening, the tremors starting in my hands, the way each breath shuddered through my lungs.

Everything was wrong. This wasn't the life I was meant to have. This wasn't the future that we had planned.

I didn't have a child. I didn't have Bansi. I didn't have anything.

I slid down the door on jelly legs, curled into a ball at its base, and let myself fall to pieces.