Darrell Paeter Branton the III had found
some time alone in the later hours of the
afternoon before supper. It had been quite a
chore, really, to sneak away unnoticed -- he
was, afterall, seven feet tall! Sometimes he
thought that the room would very well crush
in atop him, even those large ones in the
Keep that he had claimed for himself. Alas,
through some miracle of miscommunications
with the Keep's staff he was able to excuse
himself from his beautiful Aurine's company
and not actually be needed.
Thought to be in one place by all
parties, Darell had wisely taken control of
the situation which was how he now found
himself in the level beneath the great
square-towered Keep that housed the Branton
fortunes, such as they were. The rooms were
hewn right from the rock of the hill on Lok
Luina's eastern shores, with smoothed, thick
columns to help hold up the structure above.
There were no lamps of torches here and the
interconnecting rooms were a honeycomb, a
labyrinth that could hold mounds of wealth.
Wealth, that had diminished greatly in
the years of Darell Branton the First and
Second's reigns. All that was left were a
few suits of antiquated armors, a tiny
gallery of statues and paintings that would
occasionally be recycled back into the niches
and upon the walls of the Keep above, and a
few small chests filled with the golden
assets that served as capital to keep his
Duchy running.
Darell sat alone at table of rough planks
with two uneven legs at opposing corners that
would shift the surface if too much weight
was unevenly distributed. A bright tallow
candle burned at far edge of the table and
before the Duke's golden eyes, aglow as a
wolf or bear's in the candlelight, lay a
thick, black velvet sheet covered with a
scattering of cut gems.
The man was in love and had a family now
by that love and passion, but had been so
full of caring for his lover and their child
that he had not found the time to make these
new arrangements official. He knew that
Aurine knew he loved her with all of his
heart and that their baby son would be his
heir, of that there would be no question!
But he also knew that she did not want to be
known as the mother of the Duke's bastard,
she wanted to be the Duke's wife and mother
of his heirs.
The Duke of Brookshire held a gleaming
gem of emerald up to the candlelight between
his thumb and forefinger. His sharp eyes
studied its deep color and smooth facets in
search of any flaw, no matter how
indiscernible, as he slowly rolled the edges
of the rounded gem in his grip. His intense
face was bathed in a kalidescope of greens as
he sat there for long minutes. Finally his
mouth twitched with a grin of satisfaction
for the chip in his huge hands, a fair sized
stone though by any smaller man's standards,
which he gently deposited in the small pile
of three clear diamonds, another emerald of
emerald-cut the size of his pinky-fingernail,
and various cuts of jet.
Happy with his selections, he placed each
type of stone in its own tiny gem bag, then
gathered up a leather coin pouch of gold that
would pay for and create the engagement gift
he would soon present to Aurine. He stuffed
these into a larger pouch for ease of
carrying and then grabbed his candlestick to
leave, but paused at the door to look back
once more upon the true prize of his family's
treasure: a tiara of braided white and yellow
gold whose thick strings wove loosely above
the center over the wearer's brow to hold in
its looped net a sparkling firmament! At
each intersecting thread of gold sparkled a
chip of jet or emerald and held aloft in the
center was a triangularly-set trio of stones;
a black opal whose faceted corners sparkled
with its internal golden flecks flanked
beneath and to either side by twin star
emeralds whose translucent green shone with
its own inner starburst of white rays.
Soon, he hoped to present the Tiara of
the Brookshire to Aurine on their wedding
day. But first he needed to get his current
package to the jewelers of MystHaven.
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