Page 74

In the darkened cottage, Ophele woke up confused.

At first, she turned automatically to burrow into Remin’s reassuring warmth, but his side of the bed was cold and empty, and then she remembered that he was still in council with his men, planning the long journey to the Spur.

She would have to get used to an empty bed.

Slipping out from under the covers, she wrapped the pink blanket around her shoulders and padded over to the fireplace.

It had burned low since she had gone to bed, but the floor before the hearth was still pleasantly warm on her bare feet, and she added a few logs and stirred up the embers, puffing lightly until the dry wood caught.

She didn’t go back to bed.

Her long hair pooled around her on the floor as she crouched before the fire, gazing into the leaping flames and feeling the silence of the night.

It wasn’t bad to be alone.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had really been alone, without her guards or Elodie or Lady Verr.

Lately she had felt besieged with people.

Good people, kind people, with nothing but praise for her from all sides, but so very many of them.

She should be happy.

Of course, she liked to be praised.

It was good to receive approval from the people around her, and especially from people who she respected and admired.

Only that afternoon, Sir Edemir had asked her advice about a problem in the harbor, where in spite of a theoretically adequate number of docks, porters, and warehouses, the ferries kept having to anchor offshore and wait to be unloaded.

It was exactly the sort of problem that she liked, and Sir Edemir believed that she could solve it.

And there was Sir Justenin.

His approval meant nearly as much to her as Remin’s.

He was her teacher, and his quiet way of leading her through a question until she discovered the answer for herself suited her exactly.

Sir Justenin had not said a single word of praise.

Instead, he had given her three new books to read, one on philosophy, one on economics, and one that she was sure was from the advanced Imperial curriculum.

“These will be difficult for you, my lady,”

he had said, meeting her eyes with a mingling of challenge and approval.

“Read them very carefully.”

He meant that he had thought they would be too difficult before.

But he did not think so now.

Fat tears welled in her eyes and splashed onto her bare toes.

Would they still be so proud of her if they knew she didn’t even know her grammar? Or the parts of a sentence? That she hadn’t even known a sentence had parts until Leonin happened to mention it to Jacot? She still didn’t know what they were, unless they might be the bits between the punctuation.

But grammar wasn’t even the real trouble.

The trouble was all the things that she didn’t know she didn’t know, lying invisibly before her like traps waiting to be sprung.

The things that she had no way of learning from books, like dancing, or how to play music.

The things she inescapably was.

A lying bastard.

A little mouse.

A poisoned sweet.

Maybe she had had a nightmare.

Even now, alone in the dark, she felt as if a thousand eyes were upon her, crushing her until she couldn’t breathe, and her hands crept up to cover her ears as if that would muffle the phantom whispers.

That was how it would be, when everyone learned what she really was.

How disappointed they would be.

And how much worse it would be now, when they were all so proud of her.

Somehow, in some way she couldn’t anticipate or avoid, she was going to fail them.

There were so many things she didn’t know, it was inevitable that sooner or later she would make a mistake.

And then they would know she had deceived them, she had lied to them and humiliated them all.

The more they boasted of her now, the more embarrassed they would be later.

Wrapping her arms around her knees, she rocked, silent tears streaking down her cheeks.

She wanted Remin.

And she was so glad that he was leaving.

It was all too easy to picture his face, the sound of his voice when he said he was so proud of her, and imagine all that love and pride bleeding away, the look of angry betrayal when he realized the scope of her deception.

He would be so ashamed of her.

* * *

Remin could not have asked for a more perfect afternoon.

As if to compensate for so thoroughly detonating his plans, the skies had cleared and the sun shone warm and benevolent, picking out the gold, copper, and scarlet of the remaining leaves.

Ophele was a vision in green when he arrived at the cottage, her hair long and loose the way he liked best, with her eyes as clear and cloudless as the glorious sky.

“Where are we going?”

she asked as Remin lifted her onto Lancer’s back.

She had been subdued when he woke her that morning, with tear tracks down her cheeks that he did not need to examine.

“You’ll see,”

he promised, settling her before the pair of tall baskets slung over the horse’s hindquarters.

“You never tell me anything,”

she said, her lower lip edging outward in a way that only made him want to tease her more.

“I’ll give you a forfeit if you can guess before we dismount,”

he said, his arm tightening around her as she settled comfortably before him in the saddle.

“Your hint is that this whole thing was your idea.”

“Was it?”

she asked thoughtfully, waving to the guards at the north gate as they trotted by.

“Something that will need baskets…”

They had barely reached the edge of the forest before she came up with the answer.

“Hazelnuts?”

she asked, turning to look up at him with delight.

“Are we going to gather hazelnuts? Because I told you about the cookies in Aldeburke? ”

“My hunters tell me we’ll have to fight the squirrels for them,”

Remin replied, glancing at her with a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“I am not afraid,”

she said with a toss of her head that made his smile break through completely.

“I need to name this place,”

Remin said as they moved into the trees, reminded anew that everyone, including his hunters, was still calling it the old forest.

“We can’t keep calling it the old forest forever.

Half the forest in the valley is old forest.”

“Names are hard,”

Ophele agreed, patting Lancer’s neck.

“Did you know, a lot of old forests and hills are just old words for forest and hill? Like Maghegdom in Rendeva.

Technically that’s just hill hill hill in three old dialects.

Mag, heg, dom.”

“One language is sufficient to trouble me,”

Remin replied, amused.

“Though I am starting to think that names just come in their own time.

I heard some of the men calling that lane from Eugene Street to the town square Goose Road.”

“I heard that too, Davi called it that,”

Ophele replied.

“Though I don’t know if they deserve to have a road named for them, the mean things.

They tried to chase me.”

“Did they?”

Remin’s eyes narrowed.

“Sir Leonin fought them off.

They hissed at me, did you know they do that?”

“Yes.

There were geese at Rospalme.”

Evil-tempered creatures.

“I admit I did not have geese in mind when I assigned you guards.

How are you getting on with them? They will be with you every day, while I am gone.”

“All right,”

she said, with a quirk of her eyebrows that meant something was worrying her.

“They are so different from each other.

They don’t always agree on what is proper.”

“Let them work it out, and trust your own instincts,”

Remin advised.

“You are sensible enough to know what is right, and they’ll make a good team, once they sand away the rough edges.

Miche and Juste couldn’t stand each other when they first met, did you know that?”

“Stars, I can imagine,”

she said, with a little giggle, and Remin kissed the top of her head and cheerfully gossiped about his men, wishing the ride would never end .

In a way, it was fortunate the leaves had cleared away so early, or he would not have dared to bring her so deep into the forest.

His scouts had cleared the area ahead of time, just to be absolutely sure there were no devils lurking in the hollows, but Remin paused to listen before he lifted Ophele down from the saddle.

He left Lancer to graze on the sweet shade grass with his reins hung over the saddle horn.

The war horse was trained to come at Remin’s call and would try to kill anyone else that approached him, so it was safe enough to leave him to crop grass by himself.

“The trees are supposed to be somewhere around here,”

Remin said, spotting the granite outcropping his hunters had said to look for.

“I don’t know what a hazelnut tree looks like, though.

You’re the authority on forage, wife.”

“They are small trees with heart-shaped leaves and are covered with hazelnuts this time of year,”

Ophele noted, rising on tiptoe to peer into the forest.

“I don’t see any yet.

Maybe further in?”

Remin slung the baskets over his shoulder and took her hand as they walked into the trees, a cool and secretive place with many trickling springs and moss-covered rocks.

Harduin Cherche, the arborist, had already arrived and was in ecstasies over the many ancient trees in the valley, and Remin could feel that great age here: tall, knotted, twisting trees, and a sense of long-settled quiet.

It was a comfortable feeling.

“Oh, there!”

Ophele cried about half a mile from the road, pointing.

There was a clearing below them with a lot of small trees, and even from the hilltop Remin could see that the ground was littered with brown nuts.

“Look how many…”

“Enough to see us through the winter,”

Remin agreed, taking her elbow to keep her from sliding down the steep hillside.

Those little green slippers were not meant for tramping about a forest.

“Are you sure? They don’t look like hazelnuts.”

“Most of them are still in the husk,”

she explained, bending to show him the nut inside.

“And they have to be roasted.

I wonder if this used to be an orchard, it seems like a lot of trees together to be growing wild.”

“They might have been in rows,”

Remin agreed, cocking his head to examine the low trees.

“Is it hard, roasting hazelnuts?”

He handed her one of the baskets as she explained the process, bending to scoop a handful of nuts from the grass into his own basket.

The sun felt good after the cool shadows under the forest .

“I just wanted them so Azelma would make hazelnut cookies,”

Ophele said, pausing to pluck away leaf and husk tidily before she threw the nuts into her own basket.

“I wonder if Wen could make some.”

“We might persuade him,”

Remin said vaguely.

“I wouldn’t mind trying them myself.”

It was amusing to realize that he could literally listen to Ophele recite recipes and find it fascinating.

Together, they moved down the row of trees as the squirrels chattered wrathfully overhead.

More than once Remin had to shoo the bold creatures out of his basket.

They must have come at the perfect time to harvest.

The hazelnuts were dropping out of the trees even as they plucked them from the ground; it seemed like every time Remin bent over, another one plunked against his shoulders or bounced off his head.

“I ought to just shake them down,”

he said, brushing a hand through his hair as he glared up into the branches.

“It’s like standing in a storm.

Maybe the squirrels are retaliating.”

“They do sound annoyed.”

Ophele sounded as if she were trying not to laugh.

“You can hear them chattering.

Like they’re plotting.”

“A coordinated assault?”

The idea tickled him.

“I was worried about running into a bear or wolves, but Tounot said they’d all be fat and lazy this time of year.

It didn’t occur to me we’d have to be worried about squir— damn these little…”

He cut the insult off and looked automatically behind him as a nut swished by his ear.

After many years spent as the target of arrows, he was good at guessing an object’s origin from its trajectory and was shocked to find Ophele standing a few yards behind him, one hand extended in an underhand toss, caught dead to rights and guilty as sin.

Her hand rotated upward to point at the trees overhead.

“It was the squirrels,” she said.

That was a lie.

An outrageous, shameless, boldfaced lie.

Remin started for her and Ophele gave a little shriek and started running.

“So you were on their side all along?”

he demanded, fighting not to laugh as he gave chase.

He was ridiculously pleased that Ophele would play such a prank.

“You will pay for this treachery, wife.”

“Only if you catch me!”

she called, clutching her skirts as she raced through the trees.

She was faster than he expected.

Remin was actually having to exert himself to overtake her, and she was a wily little opponent, careening through the tight places where the trees bunched together to slow him down.

“This is a diversion, isn’t it?”

Remin lunged and almost cut her off, and Ophele dodged away with a squeal, giggling madly.

“Leading me away so the squirrels can raid our baskets.”

“Yes, yes!”

she gasped, and shrieked again when he lunged and nearly caught her.

“Hail the legion of squirrels!”

That made him laugh so hard she actually gained a little distance.

Remin accelerated after her, his heavy boots crunching leaves and branches underfoot.

Ophele was a flurry of green skirts and flying hair, her eyes glowing with delight at this play, fleet as a deer.

In a small grove of birches, he cornered her, and Ophele retreated, so light and quick on her feet that he knew she would eel past him if he gave her the least opening.

He had never expected her to give him such a chase.

“Where will you go now?”

he asked, his teeth flashing in a predatory grin.

The chase had excited him in more ways than one.

The sight of her flushed and breathless and retreating before him fired his blood.

“I think—”

Her eyes flicked right and she went left, a clever feint that left Remin momentarily grasping air.

With another lunge, he was on her before she had gone a half dozen paces, and she squealed and struggled as he snatched her off the ground.

“Got you,”

he rumbled.

“What will you do?”

she asked, turning her head to look up at him.

Her voice was suddenly altered, soft and breathy and tempting.

“I shall have to punish you, of course.”

Just saying those words made him harden like an oak.

His hands slid down her body, holding her tight against him.

Remin bit the back of her neck.

“No one can hear you scream out here, wife.”

“Here? Now?”

she breathed as his fingers pushed between her legs, and he had to catch her as her knees wobbled, both of them tumbling into the grass.

Here.

Now.

He hadn’t planned for this to happen, but he was not at all averse to it.

Remin bent over her to cup her breasts from behind, his hips pushing into her clothed backside.

He was so aroused he couldn’t think straight .

Which was probably good, or he might not have had the guts to do it, out in the open in the middle of the day.

Dragging her skirts up, he yanked at the laces of his breeches and thrust into her.

He had just enough sense not to damage her clothes, but oh, how he wanted all that soft, tempting skin, and he brushed her hair over her shoulders to leave the marks of his mouth all over her neck, his breath scorching her.

Oh, stars, it felt so good.

“Remin…”

Her hips moved under him, a sinuous roll backward, and Remin drew back and thrust deep.

“Be loud,”

he ordered.

It was like a dream.

A wild golden dream where they were the only people in the world, a fantasy of dappled leaf shadows shifting on her skin as they moved frantically together.

The sound of her voice unstrung spurred him to go harder, faster, his own groans bursting from his deep chest with every stroke.

“Hard—harder,”

she begged, the words broken between hammering thrusts.

“Oh, more, Remin, more!”

Could he really? There was no squeaky bed to stop him here.

Some rudimentary caution sounded as he increased his speed, and her hips moved under him, eager.

Remin lost every remnant of his reason and pounded them both into oblivion.

Lying in a tangle of clothing afterward, he felt absurdly as if he had been caught at some mischief.

It was the most erotic thing they had ever done together.

“Did I hurt you?”

he asked when she shifted under him, all but hidden beneath his body.

“No…”

she purred, nestling into him like a kitten.

“Sooooooo good…”

“I am glad,”

he said, amused and relieved, and turned to sit them both against a tree.

He was still a little light-headed, and he was reluctant for this interlude to end, a wordless togetherness no less intimate than the joining of their bodies.

For a long and peaceful time, it was only the two of them, his lips brushing her forehead, her cheeks, her eyes.

It was just what they needed, Remin thought, nuzzling into her soft hair.

Feeling her in his arms, the soft, warm weight of her.

A breath for themselves, before they must part.

In this place, they could just be Ophele and Remin, with no greater responsibility than the hazelnuts .

“Do you want to go back home, wife?”

he asked as they washed in a nearby stream.

Ophele’s knees were considerably grass stained.

“Could we stay a little longer?”

she asked hopefully.

“There’s still plenty of hazelnuts on the ground, and in the trees…”

“And we need enough to last the winter,”

he agreed, lacing his fingers in hers.