Page 56

Thoughts of lambs and wolves kept Remin up late that night.

When all was said and done, he was a practical man.

Though some took their oaths of marriage lightly, he was not among them.

His marriage to Ophele was an irrevocable fact, an oath he would keep beyond death.

It could not be undone.

The fact that he had come to love her was a blessing and a curse; that she loved him back was nothing less than a miracle. He wouldn’t undo it even if he could.

But it was also a fact that he had forced Ophele to marry him.

And then nearly repeated the error with her hallows, without ever realizing what he had done.

Political marriages were far more common than love matches, but Remin knew his own had been highly irregular.

Usually, they would have had ample time to get to know each other, often from childhood.

They would at least have had a chance to correspond.

It was true that Remin had extracted a promise from the Emperor that made the endless negotiations of a political marriage unnecessary, but the Emperor had hidden Ophele until the last possible moment, then offered her up without the slightest interest in what became of her.

The Hurrells had only been interested in manipulating her. And threatening her, Remin recalled, with a flash of anger. He hadn’t forgotten that Lady Hurrell had tried to make Ophele frightened of him.

Yes, Ophele had been a lamb, of the sacrificial variety.

No one had tried to protect her, including her new husband.

Remin was honest enough to admit that when he married her, protecting her had not even entered his mind, except in the strictest accordance with his marital oaths.

He had been every bit the wolf when he snapped her up.

“You’re still awake?”

Ophele murmured sleepily, as if she could feel the churning of his thoughts.

It was well after midnight .

“Just thinking,”

he said, low, and pressed his lips to her forehead.

It felt so natural now to sleep with her soft warmth in his arms, he couldn’t imagine sleeping any other way.

“…talk about it?”

Her eyes were still very much closed.

“I would just say I’m sorry again.”

His arms tightened around her.

“Love you,”

she mumbled, a reassurance so familiar she could literally say it in her sleep.

Ophele was incapable of holding a grudge.

Maybe he should talk to Miche.

He wasn’t sure what to do, or if he should do anything at all.

Destroying their happiness with his guilt seemed foolish, but it also didn’t seem right to just accept that he had benefited so richly from wronging her.

Even after he married her, there had been a few precious months when the valley was closed and filled with people he trusted, when she might have enjoyed real freedom.

And he had squandered it because he was afraid of her.

He had always hated the thought that he had taken her from one prison to another, and now he had just put guards on her.

“Where do you want to go?”

he asked her the next day as he lifted her into the saddle.

It was a beautiful clear morning, with lingering coolness from yesterday’s rain.

“We’re not due anywhere in particular.”

“Outside the wall?”

she asked eagerly.

“If that’s what you want.”

He clicked his tongue to urge his horse along, wrapping his arm around her waist.

It was cool enough that she was wearing another of her wool gowns, this one pale blue with pink ribbons, fresh as a periwinkle.

“Abner.”

Ophele settled into the crook of his shoulder and looked up at him expectantly.

The black stallion’s ears flattened.

“That sounds like a donkey’s name.”

Remin did not need to ask.

Ever since Ophele learned that he hadn’t named his horse, she had been attempting to remedy the oversight.

“Stormcloud.”

He couldn’t imagine saying that out loud.

“I don’t know,”

he said dubiously.

“Sooty?”

“No,”

he said, suppressing a smile.

She chewed her lip.

“Nightshade?”

“That’s a good one,”

he said, impressed.

“It sounds like a mare’s name, though. ”

“How is that a mare’s name? Henbane,”

she suggested vengefully, and gripped his arm as he gave her a deliberate bounce.

“He’s a warhorse, wife, spare his dignity.”

“Paprika.”

This was so unexpected that he nearly laughed aloud, especially with the naughty expression she gave him.

But alert as always for watching eyes, Remin throttled it.

“No,”

he said, his black eyes glinting with humor, and endured a series of increasingly bizarre suggestions as they rode out the north gate.

The fact that she so often asked to go riding outside the walls seemed to echo his own feelings.

It felt freer there, as if adventure waited just beyond the horizon, and he wanted nothing more than to let her gambol like a kitten, and explore to her heart’s content.

“We’ll start harvesting next week,”

he said, looking out at the golden fields rolling northward, rippling in the morning breeze.

“It’ll be rough on Wen’s boys; they’re going to be hand-milling the wheat all winter.”

“Are the winters really so terrible?”

she asked.

“Everyone keeps talking about the snow.”

“You never had snow in Aldeburke?”

“Not much.

I remember once it snowed enough to cover the grass, and Tam showed me how to make a snowman.

A very small one,”

she added.

“You’ll have enough for an army of snowmen here,”

he replied.

“The clouds hit the mountains and then stay for days.

I hope that tailor from Abory gets here before the cold.”

“There’s a tailor coming?”

“I thought I told you,”

he said, surprised.

“A man named Tiffen.”

The man was supposed to be practical and creative, though at this point Remin was mostly concerned about keeping the Duchess of Andelin from freezing to death this winter.

“Oh, the one Lady Belleme recommended?”

She brightened.

“I liked what he said, about how the first test of a lady’s clothing should be whether the lady can move in it.”

The road formed the outer perimeter of Tresingale, a pleasant ride on the edge of the forest to the northeast, with glimpses of loggers shouting at each other as they cleared the land before the palisade.

The forest curved away by itself on the east side of time, baring gentle green slopes perfect for grazing.

It was there that they found Juste, dressed in a simple jerkin and breeches and looking very much like any other herdsman.

“Well enough, my lord,”

he said when Remin inquired after the sheep.

“Though there’s a break in the pasture wall somewhere, we keep finding sheep amongst the goats.

Your rams are starting fights.”

“We could go look for it,”

Ophele offered, looking up at Remin.

“Couldn’t we?”

Looking into those golden eyes, glowing with the gentle light of morning, Remin couldn’t think of anything he’d like more.

The eastern hills were beautiful.

Vivid green from frequent rain, the grass was cropped to a smooth carpet by grazing herd beasts and solitary trees crowned the hilltops.

Though Remin knew his usual coterie of guards was nearby, there was still the tempting illusion that they were alone.

Sometimes it was as if Ophele’s touch lingered on his skin, and it was easy to imagine taking her to one of those solitary trees so she could touch him again, and he could watch leaf shadows dance over her skin.

“I promised Elodie she could start attending me tomorrow,”

she said as they walked together.

They had left Remin’s horse back at the herder’s croft, glaring at the herdsmen.

“She came to the cookhouse to ask while I was having lessons.

Though I’m still not sure what to do with a pagegirl, exactly.”

“My mother had one that carried her embroidery box for her,”

Remin remembered.

“She would have been ten or eleven, I think.

Whenever she was sitting down, my mother was embroidering.”

“I think my mother did too, but I don’t remember it much,”

Ophele replied.

“She liked to dance with me and read together.

She always said you can never be too lonely if you have books.”

Remin squeezed her hand.

They were both orphans, for all that her father was alive.

But soon, his mother’s embroidery box would arrive, one of the few things he had left of her.

He was looking forward to giving it to Ophele.

Elodie could carry it about for her, and before long he might have something that Ophele had made for him, embroidered with a wolf demon or a bear or even a silver R. He was utterly confident that his clever wife could turn her hands to anything.

A little more than a mile from the road, they spotted the break in the wall, though only because several sheep were actively escaping through it .

“Oh, those bad things,”

said Ophele, and seized his hand to break into a run, flashing a smile at him of sheer exuberance.

Remin stretched his long legs and won a squeal of delight from her as he swept her along, her little boots barely skimming the grass.

They had almost reached the sheep when it happened.

Three of them were already through the gap and a fourth one was squirming through when it stumbled on a flat rock at the base of the wall.

Its head went down, its legs went up, and it turned a slow somersault and landed flat on its back between two large rocks, four legs stuck stiffly in the air.

The sheep let out a bleat of protest and looked directly at them, shocked.

Remin just shook his head, checking another laugh.

He had gone a few paces before he realized that Ophele was no longer with him.

She was sitting on the grass behind him, laughing so hard she could barely speak.

“D-did you see his face?”

she gasped, holding her sides.

“Me-eh-eh-eh, he said. Meheheh.”

It was actually a fairly decent imitation of the sheep’s bleating.

Remin’s lips quivered dangerously as he went to right the sheep while Ophele expired behind him, grabbing for the animal’s flailing legs.

It wiggled, looked him dead in the eye, and bleated again.

“Me-eh-eh-eh,”

said Ophele.

“Ophele,”

he said warningly.

His own sides were starting to shake.

And it wasn’t that the sheep was heavy, but it was surprisingly hard to get a grip on, between its loose, shifting skin and thick wool.

He grunted as the sheep’s flailing back legs kicked him in the shin.

The way it was bleating and struggling made him feel like he was molesting the unwilling beast.

“Me-eh-eh-eh,”

the sheep protested, flinging out an accusatory foreleg.

“Me-eh-eh-eh,”

said Ophele, laughing wildly, and Remin lost it, a burst of laughter erupting before he could check it.

“Stop that,”

he gasped, fighting to get the sheep out of there before Ophele killed him.

He didn’t even care if it was going off to pick a fight with the goats.

That thought finished him.

In desperation he kicked one of the rocks next to the sheep loose and let it scramble to its feet on its own, sagging back onto the stone wall and laughing so hard tears streamed down his cheeks.

His sides actually hurt.

He was only just getting hold of himself when Ophele appeared beside him with her features arranged in a naughtier version of the sheep’s shocked face and set him off all over again.

“Stop, stop, I mean it,”

he wheezed, covering her face with one huge hand.

“Enough.

Enough, I yield.”

She pulled his hand down, laughing.

“I’ve never heard you laugh before,”

she said, delighted, and her giggles fluttered against his belly as he pulled her against him, wrapping his arms around her slender waist.

“I don’t laugh much,”

he admitted.

“I like your laugh.”

Her chin tilted up, an obvious invitation to kiss her.

For once he did, long and slow, never mind who might be watching.

“Let’s go collect the sheep before they start a brawl,”

he said, pulling her along with him and trying not to laugh again as she softly and tenderly bleated behind him.

It was as if a dam had burst.

For the rest of the day, he kept flashing back to that ridiculous sheep, making him bite his tongue to keep from smiling while he was at the barracks that afternoon.

At supper Ophele passed him the rolls with a muttered, me-eh-eh-eh, that made him look down hastily to control an explosion.

“Ophele,”

he said warningly, covering his mouth with his hand to hide it, but he couldn’t hold it back and suddenly he was tired of living this way, hiding what he felt for fear that someone somehow would use it against him.

He laughed.

In full view of his astonished knights and everyone else in the cookhouse, he laughed, and caught her chin to kiss her naughty sheep face.

“I told you to stop that, wife,”

he said, more caressing than admonishing, and let her go, glancing at his knights with a flash of his black eyes to let them know this was how things were going to be from now on.

“Tell Miche what happened with the sheep.”

She told them.

Remin’s eyes lingered on her, wondering that she could tell such a story with no shyness at all, and make them laugh when she told it.

She even made him laugh again, and he let it come, amazed that it could leave him breathless and at the same time make him feel like he had finally stopped suffocating .

It reminded him of what Ophele had said, about how they had made an oath to share all of their joys and sorrows.

Well, he owed her the full measure of this joy.

All his life, by nature and necessity, Remin had been a wolf.

For her, he would try to become a little more like a lamb.