Page 55 of The Truth of Our Past: Unframed Art MM Romance

Ophele woke the next morning to the soft sound of rain.

It was a cool and misty dawn, a preview of the coming autumn, and she nestled drowsily into Remin’s warmth, surprised that for once she had awakened before him.

It was an important day, the day she would meet her hallows, and she wondered what she would wear, and if she should do something more with her hair.

It was cool enough that she thought Remin wouldn’t grumble if she wore one of her wool gowns.

“It’s raining,”

he rumbled sleepily against the top of her head, as if he sensed by some animal instinct that she was awake.

“Mmm-hmm,”

she murmured, burrowing contentedly into him.

The sound of rain made her want to stay in bed and doze all day.

It was raining hard enough that Remin decided to skip their morning ride and went out only to retrieve breakfast and the usual stack of papers, arriving with both just as Ophele was pulling the kettle off the fire.

They had to be careful with food and drink in the cottage; the least crumb would attract mice, which Remin warned would attract snakes, and Ophele did not like to think of either scampering about the place where she slept.

But it was a nice change to have their breakfast at the table with steaming cups of fragrant tea, and the sounds of the rain muffled the noise of traffic on the road outside, the clatter of horses and wagons and the calls of men on their way to work.

Usually, the correspondence was organized first by importance and secondly by how interesting Sir Edemir’s secretaries thought it would be to Remin, and he was only a few pages down when he grunted and handed a letter to Ophele.

“The old man’s found you a lady,”

he said, tearing into his seventh sausage roll.

He had been eating like he was filling in a pit since supper the night before.

“Fourth paragraph.”

Duke and Duchess Ereguil had taken charge of hiring Remin’s household staff, and there was already a valet on the way, along with several house maids, footmen, and a boot boy, which Sousten Didion declared was of paramount importance.

Though it would be some time before the final finishes of the floors, walls, and windows were completed, the idea of a lot of rough men tracking mud into the house of the Duke of Andelin had provoked lengthy soliloquies about the proper maintenance of a ducal house.

But a lady-in-waiting was quite a different animal than these other servants.

Ophele skimmed the relevant passage.

Mionet Verr, a twenty-seven year-old noblewoman from Perche, wrote Duke Ereguil.

A lady of some accomplishment, apparently.

Duchess Ereguil vouches for her skill and says she is a fine companion.

I can assure you that her background is above reproach.

Given the season, I have taken the liberty of sending her ahead, so she might arrive before the first snow. If she doesn’t suit the duchess, she might do for Genon, as she has some knowledge of healing…

“Lady Verr,”

Ophele said, trying out the name.

The thought of being waited on by a lady was oppressive.

“If you don’t like her, you don’t have to keep her,”

Remin said, as if he had read the trouble in her face.

“All the servants are on limited contracts for the first year.

They’ll be taken care of, if it doesn’t work out.

But you need ladies, wife.

You’re the third woman in the Empire, after the Empress and the Crown Princess. ”

“I know.”

She was the bastard princess.

Ophele bent her head to painstakingly write a note thanking Duke and Duchess Ereguil for their efforts on her behalf, shy and stilted sentences that revealed at the very least she was not a practiced correspondent.

She would not reject anyone out of hand, especially someone who was already making the long journey to the valley, but the Lady Verr of her imagination bore a strong resemblance to Lady Hurrell, and it was making butterflies flutter in her belly.

A lady was not the same as a maid.

A lady would know her courtesies. A lady would realize exactly how much Ophele didn’t know.

The thought made her hands feel cold, and her quill stuttered to a stop.

How long did she have until the lady arrived? Why hadn’t she just asked Sir Edemir for all the books she wanted weeks ago? Months ago.

Would it really have been so bad? She could have suffered a little suspicion if the alternative was immediate confirmation of her many deficiencies.

“It’s so many new people,”

she said, leading with the deficiency Remin already knew about.

It was even true; the thought of meeting and commanding so many strangers made her mouth go dry.

“The servants, and now Lady Verr, and the…my hallows.

There were books about the early empire in Aldeburke, they had whole chapters about hallows.

I wish I had read more of them.”

“I meant to talk to you about that,”

Remin said, his quill scratching away at his own paper.

He was surprisingly good at multitasking.

“If you want to let Lord Hurrell continue administering Aldeburke, it’s your choice, but you should be collecting income from it.

Edemir looked into it and there’s a walnut plantation and sawmill, both of which are profitable.

Darri is leaving soon. I can have him look in on it and send you anything you’d like.”

“The library,”

she said mournfully, a little joke to conceal her real troubles.

But Remin took it completely seriously.

“I already told Sousten to build that next,”

he said absently.

“I’ll have Darri bring some men with him to pack up the books at Aldeburke.

You can heap them in our bedroom until the library’s done, I don’t care as long as there’s room for the bed.”

He had already ordered one of those, too, a vengefully massive creation that could have slept ten Remin Grimjaws and withstood a cavalry charge.

Ophele stared.

Transporting the entire library to Tresingale? It was a lunatic idea, and while she knew the Hurrells wouldn’t care about the books themselves, Lady Hurrell would furiously oppose allowing Ophele to remove so much as a handkerchief from the estate.

Who knew what she might do in retaliation?

But she had Remin now, Ophele thought, looking sidelong at the fearsome specimen beside her.

Nothing in the world could hurt her if he was there.

And it was books.

“It would be so much work…”

She wavered.

“Write the orders.

I’ll tell Darri tonight.”

Remin did not see anything extraordinary about the theft of a library.

“It’ll go faster if he has orders with your seal and signature.”

“I don’t have my seal,”

she objected, nervous now that it was really going to happen.

“I didn’t think to take it when we left.

I’m sorry, little owl.”

He caught her fingers and lifted them to his lips in apology.

“You can use mine, and I’ll have Darri collect yours.

Edemir would be glad to get his hands on those books, too.

He’s started looking for full book collections, just to save time.”

“For me?”

Her eyes widened.

She hadn’t asked him for that many books, had she?

“Not just for you,”

he said, amused.

“Between the Academy, Juste’s observatory, and you, we’ll have one of the foremost libraries in the world.

You’re saving us some trouble and expense, actually.

And House Hurrell doesn’t seem like scholars to me.”

“Well, if it will help…”

Ophele couldn’t suppress a smile at the way he got around her.

His mind was so endlessly twisty.

For a few minutes, they wrote their various letters in silence, but she couldn’t help glancing at him only to find he was eying her, the corner of his mouth twitching.

Under the table, his big boot bumped her foot, a wordless communication that made her glow inside.

Dearest Azelma, she began, feeling as if she would sooner write a poem than a letter, if she was to tell about Remin.

It has been some time since my last letter.

I hope you received it, and perhaps this letter shall cross yours on the road.

How many things have happened here! But I will assure you first that I am well and very happy …

Ophele was aware that Remin might still read her letter, to make sure she didn’t reveal anything that might be dangerous, but it was the thought of Lady Hurrell that made her pause.

So often she had heard the lady reading letters aloud, mocking them in private to the delight of her listeners, and the thought of her own letter receiving such treatment made her flush hot with anger and embarrassment.

But she would do that anyway, and the thing she would least like to read was that Ophele was happy.

…so very happy.

Only yesterday, His Grace held the valley’s first tourney, and how exciting it was! You know we never had such things at Aldeburke, and it was so splendid, with knights on horse, and archers, and a grand melee which His Grace won, and even jousting.

I never knew there was such an art to jousting…

Maybe it was a little mean to linger over the tourney when she knew that Julot and Lisabe had never seen one, and weren’t likely to.

They had been raised in exile, just as she had.

And anyway, this was a message to Azelma, not a spite letter for House Hurrell.

Ophele shook herself.

But it has not been all tourneys and birthday parties.

I told you about the building underway in the valley already, and it is my delight to see it growing bit by bit every day.

Only a few days ago, I went with His Grace to see the place where the orchards will be.

Black plums and white cherries, do you remember? I mentioned it to His Grace months ago, and do you know that he has sent for folk to tend them, all the way from Benkki Desa! They are clearing the land now, so it will be ready when they come next year.

And though there are some who might mock him for it, I am so proud to see that His Grace does not scruple to toil with his own hands.

It is hard work, clearing trees, and in that particular hollow is an oak native to the valley which they call ironheart oak, a curious species that gets harder the deeper into the trunk one goes.

The men say the bigger trees might as well be made of stone.

Well, it happened that they were laboring at one such tree while we were there, and they finally managed to sink the axe only for it to stick there, like Hulainn’s sword in the stone in the old story.

And His Grace does hate to watch folk struggling, so he hopped off his horse, had the axe out, and then took down the tree in four whacks, like it was a sapling! He will swear it is nothing, and I am no judge, but the men were certainly impressed .

We lingered a while so that he could help with other such oaks, and so I saw as they cleared them how they divided the trees up, so the pines went for building and the oak, walnut, and chestnut to the carpenters, and the rest will be for fire and charcoal.

Nothing goes to waste.

Is it not something to think that the trees felled today will become useful and perhaps beautiful things, used for years and years by people who do not even know where they came from? But it pleases me that I know.

Remin teases me when I say such things, but he loves things made in the valley best of all.

The letter was very Remin-y, when it was done, and Ophele rather hoped he wouldn’t read it after all.

Glancing over at him, she found him characteristically scowling at his papers, his heavy black brows furrowed together.

But if she should speak to him, she knew his eyes would light up and there would be nothing but warmth in his voice.

She did not care if other people knew such stories of him.

No.

She hoped they would tell them.

They passed the morning in tea and correspondence, as the rain pattered musically on the cobblestones outside the windows.

* * *

By noon, the rain still had not abated.

Ophele endured an undignified transport from the cottage to the cookhouse, cradled in Remin’s arms to save her skirts from the mud and holding her oilpaper parasol over his head.

She looked as respectable as she was ever going to look in a violet gown with lace panels in the bodice, and the cookhouse was breezy and cool when Remin set her down, its doors flung open to admit the rainy air.

Three men were already waiting by a roaring fire, Sir Justenin’s sandy blond head bent between two others.

Ophele shook out her parasol, suddenly feeling anxious.

“My lord.”

Sir Justenin spotted them and moved instantly to greet them, bowing.

“My lady.

May I present Sir Leonin of Breuyir and Davi Gosse? They are to be your hallows.”

The two men bowed, ill-matched even at a glance.

The black-haired man was medium height and very elegant, dressed in an immaculate blue doublet and breeches as if he had never heard of mud.

His companion was tall and stringy, brown as a bean from his hair to his skin and dressed in rough homespun.

He did not bow as if he were accustomed to it.

When he straightened, she saw he was missing his right eye.

“You,”

she said, startled.

She had a good memory for faces, and while there were a number of one-eyed men in Tresingale, she remembered this rawboned face with its rough eyepatch.

“You worked on the wall, didn’t you?”

He offered a familiar crooked smile, one corner of his mouth tugging up higher than the other.

“Aye, lady,”

he said, shifting back to keep from looming over her.

“Davi Gosse, at your service.

You fetched me trowel once or twice, when I was fumble-fingered.”

“And you fought with Re—His Grace,”

she amended, glancing up at Remin beside her.

“Davi was the first to welcome me at the wall.”

“I have good men on the wall,”

Remin agreed, extending a hand to Davi and a flick of his eyes to her that reminded her to be evenhanded with them.

He had said several times that it was important not to play favorites.

“Sir Leonin of Breuyir, that’s in Tries, isn’t it?”

she asked, turning her eyes to the black-haired knight and blessing the many hours she had spent among Aldeburke’s books of heraldry.

“I saw the falcon device on your helmet.”

“Yes, my lady.”

His eyes were a sharp and penetrating blue, clear as ice crystals.

“I am honored.”

“Both of you honor me,”

she said, with a nervous waving of her hands.

“I think I remember Sir Auber mentioned you were at Jardingard.

With the trebuchets?”

“Yes, my lady,”

he repeated, with a single well-bred nod.

“I joined His Grace after he crossed the Brede.”

She never knew what to say to remarks like that; you must be very brave was both obvious and trite, and she felt vastly unqualified to comment on the war in any way.

She couldn’t help glancing at Remin for help, uncertain what was expected of her.

“I know them both well,”

he said, taking her elbow.

“Wen will be along with luncheon, there’s time to talk.”

It was a little more comfortable once they were seated by the fire, given a wide berth by the small groups of men who had come for their meal.

It was an unusually fine repast, with china and silver and a meal surpassing the standard bread and cheese.

Several game birds had been stuffed with red currants and roasted, so succulent they fell apart with a fork, and there were platters of tubers and greens, potatoes, and the hearty rolls Wen usually served at supper with thick pats of pale yellow butter.

“How did you come to serve His Grace?”

she asked when the table was laid, the first polite question that came to mind.

Really, she wanted to ask why under the stars they would choose to bind their lives to her, but she sensed she should not lead with that question.

Sir Leonin and Davi exchanged glances, and Sir Leonin spoke first.

“I am the fifth son of my family, my lady,”

he said, laying his utensils down before he spoke.

“I wished to make my own name.

And I had just survived my first social season in Segoile,”

he added, with a hint of humor.

“Valleth seemed the lesser evil.”

This won a chuckle from Remin and Sir Justenin, and Ophele smiled politely, uncomprehending.

“And you, Sir Davi?”

she asked.

He glanced at Sir Leonin before he too laid his utensils down.

“I’m not a knight yet, if you’ll pardon, lady,”

he said bluntly, but with such good will she didn’t feel chastised.

“Just a common soldier, that’s me.

Marched under Duke Norgrede first.

I wasn’t there for the bit on the Gresein, but I was at Kiel Gorge.

When Duke Andelin gave me command of me own lads, I asked to say me oaths to him. Worked out well enough,”

he finished, with another flash of that crooked smile.

“You didn’t want to keep building?”

she asked, a little plaintively.

To her, it seemed like such a waste, to survive the war and learn a trade only to take up a sword again.

“Sword fits my hand better, lady,”

he said with an apology in his voice.

“Tried it His Grace’s way, just to see what it was like, but it ain’t for me.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything…bad,”

she said quickly.

“Huvara said there are some people meant to stand watch, and some people are meant to listen for the bells.

She’s at the baths.

Huvara, I mean.”

“One of the Benkki Desa women?”

Sir Leonin rescued her as Ophele reddened at her clumsy explanation.

“The one who fought yesterday?”

“No, she’s one of the other ladies.”

An avalanche of information about the serenity of maidens threatened to burst forth but ran solidly up against her own clumsy tongue, stuck firmly to the roof of her mouth .

“It was a good bout,”

Sir Leonin said, filling the silence politely.

“I confess I know little of that country, but Master Balad has been good enough to tell us…”

Under the table, Remin’s hand brushed hers, but it was less consolation than usual.

It had just dawned on her that these men were going to see all her embarrassing moments.

They would witness every mistake, every awkward conversation, inevitably discover every secret.

Her life in Aldeburke had at least afforded her some privacy.

And she couldn’t even protest on those grounds; a normal noblewoman would be accustomed to attendants and guards from earliest childhood.

These two men would be with her the rest of her life.

She would see them every single day.

Sir Miche had blown apart her objections so effortlessly, it felt like whining to voice them again, but she still couldn’t accept it.

And though until very recently her opinions and feelings had no bearing whatsoever on what happened to her, Remin and his knights had been listening respectfully to her foolishness for months.

Ophele waited, nerving herself to speak.

“I’m sorry,”

she began, at the first break in the conversation.

“I know it’s already been decided, and you fought so hard for it yesterday, but I don’t see why you have to be hallows instead of regular guards.

I don’t see why you would…want to be one.”

It came out every bit as awkward and childish as she feared.

Remin’s eyes flicked to Sir Justenin’s, a wordless communication.

“I was against it, at first,”

the knight began, with a nod to Ophele.

“There are many reasons why hallows are no longer used.

The interjection of the Temple in such worldly matters is awkward, especially among noble Houses.

The oath of a hallow is the most sacred oath a guardsman can swear.

The punishment for betraying it is purification by the Temple, which is a very painful way to die, and requires the Temple to perform a public execution, which they have not done for over a hundred years. In His Grace’s case…”

Sir Justenin glanced at Remin with a tight-lipped smile.

“If one is willing to antagonize both the Temple and the Emperor, it means that if anyone attempts to bribe, blackmail, or interfere in any way with your hallows, the Temple will be forced to recognize the blasphemy.

Even if the person attempting to subvert them is acting on behalf of someone of divine blood. ”

“Oh,”

Ophele said, looking at Remin with appreciation.

“It would cause trouble between the Temple and the Emperor, if he tried to do anything?”

“It’s not a guarantee,”

Remin acknowledged.

“But it’s a deterrent.

And if reminding the Temple of their duty antagonizes them, that’s their problem, not mine.”

“Opinions differ,”

said Sir Justenin blandly.

“But His Grace is right that it is much harder to bribe or blackmail a hallow in the first place.

Sir Leonin and Davi will renounce all blood ties and take the name of the House of Andelin, as if they were adopted into the household.

In the eyes of the Temple, it will be as if they were related to you by blood.”

Which would come with another lengthy set of prohibitions.

Relations between a hallow and their ward were regarded the same as incest.

Ophele was silent, processing the new information.

She should have asked these questions yesterday.

“You have time to think about it, wife,”

Remin assured her.

“They’re not hallows today.

They can’t take the oath until the cleric arrives, anyway.”

Ophele nodded, trying to take comfort from that.

She didn’t even know why she didn’t like this so much; she hadn’t had time to think through her objections, but it felt as if she accepted these men today, it would be that much harder to speak up later.

“Why would you want to do that?”

she asked, turning her attention to the two strangers sitting opposite her at the table.

“Give up your names and your families…is it that you don’t have one? Or you don’t—I’m sorry for asking such personal questions,”

she added, flushing.

“I got a family, lady,”

Davi answered steadily.

“From Lomonde.

Fourth city Valleth attacked, last time they invaded.

You might’ve been too young to hear much about it, but it went hard for the people in the first three.”

“Oh,”

she said, recognizing the name instantly.

“That’s the city His Grace—”

“I told you, you don’t owe me anything for that,”

Remin interrupted gruffly.

“I didn’t do it for you.

I just saw an opportunity.”

“I think I do, m’lord,”

Davi retorted.

His accent thickened as he spoke, pure Westland farmer.

“I got four sisters.

What would’ve happened to them, I don’t like to think.

And I don’t forget me debts. I been following you seven years, looking for a way to pay. Not that you ain’t a good lady,”

he added, tugging his forelock in Ophele’s direction.

“Don’t see as it’ll be a hardship, serving the Lady of the Wall.

But I owe.”

As motives went, this was hard to argue.

Ophele’s eyes went to Sir Leonin.

“My reasons are not so nice, I’m afraid,”

he said pleasantly.

“I disagree with Davi.

I think being the hallow of the Duchess of Andelin will be very difficult.

It is a singular calling.

That is why I wish to attempt it.”

She wasn’t sure what to make of that.

And really, who was she to judge? As Sir Miche had said, their lives were theirs, to spend as they pleased.

What difference did it make if they were sworn hallows or regular guardsmen? They would be following her around forever either way.

She did make an effort to participate in the lighter conversation that followed, but she was very much distracted and all too soon the time came for Remin and Sir Justenin to go to the barracks for their afternoon exercises, which made no allowances for weather.

Trailing behind Remin to the cookhouse doors, she felt bereft.

Remin couldn’t even kiss her good-bye with other folk about.

“I meant what I said,”

he said in a low voice as Sir Justenin waited a discreet distance away.

“If you don’t like them, we’ll find someone else.”

“I know,”

she agreed, subdued.

“What’s wrong, then?”

“I don’t know,”

she admitted, feeling foolish for the complaint.

“Everything you and Sir Justenin said made sense, and if they don’t mind, I guess…but…but I don’t know them, and it’s for my whole life,”

she burst out in a whisper, looking up at him unhappily.

“Beyond my life.

I know I’m the Duchess of Andelin and I will have guards, so it doesn’t really matter if they’re hallows or not, but they’re strangers and I don’t want to take an oath with a stranger for my whole life.

I’m sorry.”

Something flickered in his eyes.

“Don’t apologize.

You’re right.

That is…a serious thing,”

he agreed.

There was an odd note in his voice, but his face gave nothing away, set in its usual stern lines.

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

He fell silent as the rain poured in sheets behind him.

“There will be no oaths unless you want to make them,”

he said finally.

“It is a sacred oath.

It shouldn’t be forced on anyone, unwilling.

But that means you don’t tell me you are if you aren’t.

Promise? ”

“I promise,”

she said, inexpressibly relieved.

Tentatively, she brushed his fingers with hers, wishing she dared to kiss him.

“Thank you.

Be careful riding in the rain.”

Her prospective hallows waited until Remin and Sir Justenin had gone to approach her.

“We are yours to command, Your Grace,”

said Sir Leonin, standing very straight.

“His Grace was vague as to the details of your routine.”

“He said he wasn’t going to tell us nothing so you’d have to talk to us,”

Davi said bluntly.

A short laugh escaped her, even as her ears reddened.

“That is my next appointment,”

she said, gesturing to Jacot, pelting toward them through the rain.

For the first half of the afternoon, she hardly needed to talk to her guards at all.

As soon as a dripping Jacot took his seat by the fire, they moved back, though the boy eyed them narrowly before he determined they were not a threat.

“They’re my guards,”

Ophele explained when the younger boys arrived.

She would not call them her hallows until they actually were.

“The ones who fought His Grace yesterday?”

Blond Gavrel asked, staring at them in round-eyed awe.

“Yes,”

she admitted, and exchanged a rueful glance with Davi as the boys exploded into a recounting of the match and an avalanche of questions for the two participants.

Davi seemed willing to at least entertain them, but Sir Leonin shook his head.

“Do you think you ought to distract the duchess’s guards from their work?”

he asked them, with a chill in his polite voice.

“If you are hoping to be knights, you must think of Her Grace’s safety before your own satisfaction.”

This squelched them quite effectively, though Ophele felt very self-conscious with her guards in earshot; she was confident in her teaching of Jacot, but there was so very much she didn’t know that even ten year-old pages had already learned.

She was just settling into the lesson when a small figure appeared in the open doors of the cookhouse, draggled as a drowned rat.

“Elodie?”

she said, bewildered, and hurried to usher the girl over to the fire.

“You’re soaked! Does your mother know you’re here? ”

“Mama’s at auntie’s house, my lady.”

Elodie dropped a curtsy and the beginnings of a puddle onto the floor.

“ I’m supposed to serve you, aren’t I?”

She gave the assembled boys a bristling glance.

“They’re having their lessons,”

Ophele explained, wondering why she was defending herself to a nine year-old.

“You shouldn’t have come out in the rain, I’m sure your mother will worry, and what if you get sick? Oh, bother.”

She bit her lip, thinking.

The easiest answer would be to ask one of her guards to take the girl home, but she didn’t need Sir Leonin to tell her that was wrong; they were guards, not errand runners.

“I’ll take her, m’lady,”

said Jacot, who had only just begun to dry out.

“By the north gate, right?”

“Yes, thank you, Jacot,”

she said gratefully.

“You can take my parasol so at least you won’t get soaked again. Elodie—”

Elodie’s lowering eyebrows were like rainclouds on the horizon.

“You don’t want me to wait on you, my lady?”

she asked, glancing mournfully at the despised boys.

“Not today.”

Barring the page boys, Ophele hadn’t had much to do with children since she was one, and wasn’t quite sure what to do.

“I’ll come and talk to you and your mama about it soon.

But if you want to be my pagegirl, you must mind what I say and wait.”

This was sufficient for peace, and Jacot set off wearing a thunderous expression that promised a lengthy lecture for Elodie.

Ophele had witnessed several forceful corrections to the younger boys and recognized the warning signs.

Sliding back into her chair at the table, Ophele found herself confronted with five pairs of censorious eyes.

“You want her to be your page, my lady?”

Little Valentin asked, wielding his large, sad brown eyes like a dagger to her heart.

“Well, I do,”

she began, casting about for some consolation.

“I need someone to help me while you’re all busy learning to be knights, don’t I?”

“I guess,”

said Legeriot, into a mutinous silence.

“And then one day I’ll watch you fight like Sir Leonin and Mr.

Gosse did yesterday,”

she added encouragingly.

“You’ll have to work hard if you want to be as good as they are. ”

The boys exchanged glances.

“Does that mean we’ll have to fight His Grace, too?”

asked Gavrel uneasily, and their collective dismay at the prospect made Ophele bite her lip to keep from laughing.

“Why don’t you work up to that,”

she suggested, and set them back to their lessons.