Page 71

“That is a Rose of Segoile,”

Remin said later that night as they came home from supper.

He did not sound especially pleased about it.

“Is it a bad thing, to be one?”

Ophele followed him into the cottage, subdued.

Watching Lady Verr at supper had been a painful experience.

Even Lady Hurrell could not compare to Lady Verr’s manners and polish, and though no one said anything, Ophele knew how much she suffered by comparison.

The fact that Remin had bolted down his own meal and departed immediately with the excuse of the busy day tomorrow could only mean he thought the same.

“I don’t want that here,”

Remin said bluntly, crouching before the hearth to lay a fire.

“I didn’t like Segoile.

I don’t want their nonsense in my land.

I wonder why the duchess sent her.”

“She didn’t seem that bad,”

Ophele replied, startled and perversely defensive.

“She was very nice about my…gowns.”

“That’s what she’s supposed to do, and I want you to tell me if she is not,”

he replied, striking flint and steel together a little harder than necessary.

“I wanted someone to be a companion for you, wife, and to help you with your things, but I don’t want you learning her manners.

This is not Segoile, we’ll do things our own way in our own home.

Blast it.”

He shook out his fingers, which had gotten between the flint and the steel.

“She seemed very elegant to me,”

Ophele said, low.

“I like you the way you are,”

Remin retorted.

He very nearly snapped it.

Then he sighed and turned to face her.

“I’m sorry.

I don’t know what I mean. I embarrassed you again tonight and I’m sorry for it. When Tiffen gets here, you’ll have a hundred gowns, with cloth-of-gold and Bhumi silk if that’s what you like. I should have told Miche to fetch your gowns from Aldeburke.”

Guilt smote her at the thought that her Aldeburke gowns were even shabbier than her Tresingale gowns.

And he had tried to get her nice things in Granholme, but she had refused, so determined not to be a burden that she had become an embarrassment.

It hadn’t seemed to matter before, but now that other women had come to the valley, Ophele found she cared very much.

She would like a champagne-colored gown that made her look like a sunset.

She would like to dazzle Remin, like Lady Verr said.

“I didn’t think of it, either,”

she admitted.

“You did offer to buy me more.

I want to look nice for you.”

“Then don’t take Lady Verr as your model, I beg,”

he said wryly.

“I asked Tiffen to come because Lady Belleme said he doesn’t hold with all that fashionable foolishness.

He had some trouble over it, actually.

I want you to be comfortable as well as pretty, wife.

Wool in the summer, no wonder ladies come over faint all the time.”

“I like my silk dress, the green one,”

Ophele agreed.

“It is so much better with only two layers.”

“Then tell Tiffen that.

And tell Lady Verr, too, if she tries to talk you into a lot of nonsense.

You are my duchess, not her.”

He said it so easily.

He wasn’t even looking at her when he said it, and it was more grumble than compliment, but it warmed her to her toes.

Even worse than supper had been those first moments in the warehouse, when Ophele had looked up to see Remin’s eyes on the exquisite Lady Verr, gowned and jeweled and looking far more like a princess than Ophele ever had.

For the first time, she had realized it was possible that he might prefer another lady to herself.

He hadn’t chosen her, after all.

“If I must dress as a lady, then you must dress as a lord,”

she said, trying to shake these thoughts away.

“You’re the Duke of Andelin.”

“Suppose I will,”

he agreed, and came to stand behind her, dropping a kiss on top of her head.

“Never mind all that now.

Hurry with your letter, I’ll put a kettle on.”

The letter had arrived with Lady Verr and a great many gifts from Ereguil, and was the first letter from Duchess Ereguil that had been addressed directly to Ophele.

Most of the accompanying items had been sent to the manor to be opened later, but there was one parcel sitting on the table to be opened tonight.

Both of them already knew what was in it.

Sitting down in her chair, Ophele slipped her thumbnail under the wax seal on the letter.

To Her Grace Ophele, Duchess of Andelin, greetings and good wishes.

I hope this letter finds you well, even if it is a little late in coming.

Due to the complexities of your situation, I thought it prudent to allow things to settle, as it were, though I have been pleased to read your contributions to Remin’s lamentably irregular correspondence.

I do believe I was better informed of his movements when there was a war on.

This letter comes to you in care of Lady Mionet Verr, along with some other items for your new home.

Please be kind to the lady; she is not long a widow, and there was some unfortunate scandal with her husband, but as the lady herself is blameless I will leave it to her to determine whether and when she wishes to speak.

She is a great friend to my daughter-in-law Carolen, and I hope will prove a diverting companion for you…

“She’s a widow,”

Ophele said sympathetically, looking up at Remin as he dumped tea into the hot water.

He liked very strong tea.

“Lady Verr.”

“Murdered him, did she?”

“Remin,”

she chided, shocked.

“Very well, I am sorry,”

he said, though he didn’t sound like it.

She knew Remin had not enjoyed Segoile, or the society he found there, but she hadn’t realized he was this adamantly against it.

…and with introductions made, I cannot tell you how pleased I am to speak directly to you, my dear.

It is beyond anything to hear that you and Remin have come to such a felicitous understanding.

The boy was never a poet, but I was overjoyed to know he would not only find an affectionate partner in his wife, but very nearly say so in writing.

Please tell me all about yourself, as we are certain to be great friends in future.

Friendship with the Duchess of Ereguil.

Ophele had to pause to process the idea.

The friends in her life had been very few and far between, and never before a duchess.

And the duchess who had raised Remin, for those periods when he was in Ereguil.

Why, it was very nearly like having a mother-in-law.

While I would never presume to usurp the place of his beloved mother, I will tell you that I hold no less affection for him than I do my own sons.

As such I welcome you to our family, dear, and charge you with the difficult task of looking after his welfare.

I warn you; he has no regard for it himself; sometimes I think the stars gave him an army because nothing else was sufficient to the task.

I also name you my chief correspondent and expect reports on the general’s activities.

Regularly and thoroughly, if you please.

While I wait in greatest anticipation for news of you both, I will tell you some things about your husband that may be good for you to know:

He loathes pickles.

He is mildly allergic to peanuts and will develop hives, though it bothers him less when they are cooked.

When he was nine, he had a pet cat that he named Smoky…

“No, you can’t read it,”

Ophele said, hugging the pages protectively as Remin loomed over her.

“This was addressed to me.

Smoky was fine, but Sooty was out of the question?”

“Smoke—she’s gossiping, isn’t she?”

he accused.

“She is giving me necessary information,”

Ophele said loftily, with her small nose in the air, and stared at him until he thumped into his own chair, grumbling like a discontented bear.

“She exaggerates,”

he warned.

“She says I have to know, so I can take care of you properly,”

she replied, peeking over the letter at him, and saw the unmistakable curve of his smile.

There was a great deal more such information, page after delightful page, and later she would linger over every word, imagining Remin as a boy with a cat, a boy learning to ride a horse, a boy who had snuck out to gorge on green apples, with unfortunate results.

The duchess was right; Remin would never think to tell her such stories about himself.

Finally, I have included with my gifts a package of his mother’s belongings, which he would never have requested if he did not hold you in highest regard.

I am sure you know how precious these things are to him, so please treat them with great care and respect.

They are beautiful objects in their own right and might be handed down to your own daughter, in time.

I had some acquaintance with his mother, and I promise nothing would have pleased her more than for you to keep and use them.

I look forward to your reply.

Please keep yourself well and look after my dear boy.

With greatest affection,

Liliet Ereguil

“Go on,”

said Remin as soon as she set the letter aside, sitting up straight in his chair as if he needed to brace himself.

Rising, she untied the strings of the parcel, opening the cloth wrapping to reveal another, softer cloth inside.

It was a pretty pink blanket trimmed in white fur, the sort that might go over a lady’s lap on a cold winter day.

“Is this your mother’s?”

she asked as Remin’s large fingers reached to stroke the fur.

“Yes.

One of the maids saved it from the fire.”

Even as she watched, she could see the emotion bleeding away from his face, the sharp, arrogant angles hardening.

“She grabbed everything around my mother’s chair.”

Ophele wondered who that maid was.

She wanted to ask, to know that such a good and faithful servant had lived and been rewarded.

But she thought it was best to let it pass, for the present.

Suddenly, she was nervous as she drew back the blanket to reveal the rest.

Wrapped inside was the promised embroidery box, a beautiful object of gold-flecked burl wood with a glass lid depicting a willow tree over a lily pond.

The silk thread inside was a little faded with age, but carefully spooled and ordered by color.

There was a needlebook with silver needles of graduating sizes, and silver shears with playful cats forming the handles, their peridot eyes glittering.

A large squashy strawberry served as a pincushion, with worn green leaves.

Above her, Remin’s hand reached toward the box, hesitating for a moment before he plucked out the strawberry.

Ophele watched as he lifted it to his nose.

The look in his eyes made her hastily drop the cat shears and go to him.

“It’s all right,”

she said as his arms wrapped around her, so tight she could barely breathe.

Her arms went around his neck.

“It’s all right. ”

With his face pressed to her breast, she felt him draw a deep, deliberate breath.

His words were muffled, but steady.

“It still smells like her.”

“Oh, Remin…”

Helplessly, she stroked his black hair.

Grief was like this, she knew; years later, her grief for her own mother could still rise up and strangle her without warning.

It was hard, and cruel, and there was no remedy for it.

“We can put it aside for a bit, if you want,”

she said when he lifted his head.

His face was as forbidding as ever.

“No.

They’re meant to be used,”

he said, cuffing her in a rough, grateful caress.

“I’m fine, wife, go on and look at the rest.”

He pulled her into his lap as she carefully withdrew the remaining objects.

In a smaller cloisonné box, there were a half dozen thimbles, several of them jeweled and exquisite, and three of them quirky little treasures that must have come as a set: a frog, a bluebird, and a fox.

Charmed, she slipped one onto her finger and felt Remin’s arms tighten around her waist.

“There are six of them,”

he noted, a little gruff, but making an attempt at his usual humor.

“One for each of our daughters.”

“But I want to keep the frog,”

she replied, tapping it against his lower lip like the peck of a kiss.

It drove the shadow in his eyes back another step.

The last treasure was in the bottom, a folded piece of silk that must have been the last thing his mother ever made.

House Roye, whose emblem was the starling, gregarious birds who formed massive flocks over summer meadows in the evenings.

The beginnings of that soaring dance were captured in the silk, larger birds in the foreground diminishing to small silhouettes.

They looked so real, as if Remin’s mother had captured the motion of their flight with silk.

“I will learn to do this,”

Ophele said softly as she held it up, more to herself than to Remin.

Not just because embroidery was something a noblewoman should know how to do.

This was the inheritance Remin’s mother had left for his wife.

A woman’s art passed from mother to daughter, a challenge to become more than what she was.

And later that night, as she dreamed of mothers and secrets and things left behind, a windstorm blew through the Andelin Valley, and swept the leaves from the trees.