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A disgruntled Wen appeared at the door sometime later, just as Sir Justenin was helping Sim and Jaose haul the dressing table upstairs, while Adelan hovered behind them with his arms outspread, waiting for all three to fall on him.

Ophele tore her eyes from the impending catastrophe.

“Earning your lunch, I see,”

Wen said sourly, setting a heavy hamper of food on the floor with a thump.

“I won’t be making a habit of this, Your Grace.

Two thousand men in town, it’s all I can do to get away for a pi—to take ten minutes for meself.”

“We will come down tomorrow,”

Ophele promised, approaching to relieve him of the hamper.

“What is it?”

Wen straightened and set his hands on his hips, observing the vast empty space.

“Food.

Good, plain food.

Come up in the world, haven’t ye,”

he drawled, his tiny, muddy eyes narrowing.

“Soon ye’ll be so fine I’ll hardly know ye.

Got a house cook yet?”

“Not yet,”

she answered, glancing at Sir Justenin.

She had spoken to both him and Wen privately about how they might manage Remin’s food until a new cook arrived, but so far Remin had rejected everyone Duke Ereguil proposed.

“I’m no cook for a fine lord’s house,”

Wen said flatly.

“Soldiers’ food, that’s me.

It’d be the honor of me life to cook for His Grace til I drop down dead, though that will come sooner rather than later if ye make me haul me fat ass up that hill twice a day.

But I’ll not live forever.”

“I’ll send someone to collect it next time,”

Sir Justenin replied, polite as ever even with Ophele’s dressing table sitting on his shoulders.

That still wasn’t a long-term solution.

Ophele and Wen exchanged another look, and the cook shrugged expressively and stumped out the open front doors, jamming a wide-brimmed straw hat onto his head.

Though there was enough food for everyone, the servants politely excused themselves while the ladies ate in refined splendor on the floor.

It seemed to Ophele they might have unbent the rules a little bit today of all days, but in the Empire, they were assiduous about the divisions between class.

She would have liked a cup of tea afterward, and Wen had provided a small, sealed parcel of it, but the instant Sir Justenin finished packing away the leftovers, Lady Verr rose, brushing off her skirts.

“I believe that was everything for the dressing rooms,”

she said.

“Would you like to arrange your dressing room yourself, my lady, or would you prefer to leave it to me?”

Ophele would very much have preferred to leave it to the lady, but surely Adelan and Sir Justenin would be suspicious if she refused.

All the books she had ever read said that the mistress of the house should know every inch of it.

And it wasn’t Lady Verr’s fault that everything from the flawless drape of her gown to the inquiring tilt of her head made Ophele feel like a little brown mouse.

Her last bit of bread felt like dust on her tongue as she swallowed.

“I will come,”

she said, taking the hand Sir Justenin offered to stand up.

“Thank you, my lady.

Emi, Peri,”

Lady Verr said, and the sight of Emi and Peri in their dark dresses and white aprons made Ophele’s heart clench.

Her shoulders hunched reflexively as she preceded them up the stairs, with Davi’s long arms on either side of her to make sure she didn’t topple off backward.

The stairs had not been made for a small woman with long skirts.

She was painfully aware of the footsteps behind her, two maids and the long, clacking strides of Lady Verr’s heels.

It made her want to run to her room and lock the door.

But the locks were still being installed on the doors of her bedchamber, one of a suite of rooms that occupied the eastern half of the second floor.

Two large dressing rooms adjoined onto both the hall and the bath chamber, with the unfinished solar on the back of the house and a bedchamber that stretched the full width of the house, with balconies overlooking both the courtyard and the river.

Ophele inadvertently opened a number of closets before she discovered her dressing room.

It was as bare and plain as all the other rooms, with timber floors and smooth plaster walls, but it was a promising canvas for future endeavors.

“We thought you would like this room, my lady,”

said Peri, gesturing to Ophele’s dressing table, already placed against the far wall.

She and Emi could not be sisters—Emi was medium height with chestnut curls and Peri was small and black-haired—but their cheerfully polite expressions were so similar it seemed they must have been together for a long time.

“We will need clothes hooks,”

Lady Verr noted, producing ink, quill, and paper.

“This closet is sufficient for everyday wear, my lady, but do you know if Master Didion plans additional storage for your gowns?”

“No…”

As the three women turned to look at her, Ophele could feel heat instantly flooding her face.

Lady Verr made another note.

“We can just hang your gowns directly on the rails for the time being,”

she said, waving a hand to Emi and Peri.

“I do hope Master Didion intends some cedar to keep out the moths.

They got into my winter shawls one year and positively massacred the cashmere…”

She was good at mingling bright chatter with work, and Ophele tried hard to pay attention, though the closet felt very crowded with all four of them inside.

The sight of the elegant lady and apron-clad maids gave her the unpleasant feeling they were about to drag her off to be scrubbed.

“Hang them at the waist, please,”

Lady Verr instructed, moving swiftly to adjust Ophele’s blue and bronze gown on the rail.

“It will save you the trouble of steaming away wrinkles later.

And if you stuff the toes of the slippers, they will keep their shape…”

They didn’t really need Ophele.

It was not for her to do any of the actual work of fetching objects and stowing them away under Lady Verr’s glittering eye, and it was obvious that the lady knew far better than their mistress how such things ought to be arranged.

Silently, Ophele watched and listened and absorbed every detail, so practiced at being invisible that Lady Verr almost forgot she was there.

“And move the mirror to the bedchamber,”

she said, and then turned and spotted Ophele and added as smoothly as if she had always meant to say it, “…if it pleases you, my lady.

There is only one full-size mirror for yourself and His Grace.”

“Oh.

Yes. Please.”

The question had surprised her as much as she had surprised Lady Verr, and in an awkward silence, Ophele realized they hadn’t heard her.

Suddenly, she didn’t know where to look. “Yes,”

she repeated louder, trying to keep her voice from quivering.

Little mouse.

“Th-that’s a good idea.”

They wouldn’t hurt her.

And Sir Leonin and Sir Davi were right outside if anyone ever tried.

No one had been anything less than kind, polite, and deferential, and it was her own fault if she was so silly as to be afraid.

And she had to learn, she didn’t know anything, not even how her wardrobe should be managed.

She had never had a wardrobe to speak of.

Sweat beaded, hot and sticky along her hairline.

Remin said he didn’t want her to learn Lady Verr’s manners, but surely Ophele should at least stand so gracefully, and oh, if only she could talk like that, so clever and proper and unbothered.

She listened as Emi and Peri consulted each other and then Lady Verr on essential items, and every time the lady turned to write down another note, Ophele burned it in her memory.

“Thank you very much,”

she said when they were done, repressing the urge to scurry away.

The dressing room was still echoingly empty, but it was at least well-ordered, and all her things were tidied neatly away.

It was pleasant to look at all her slippers in particular, a splash of color in the back of the closet.

She hadn’t realized she had so many.

“Your Grace,”

said Emi and Peri together with a curtsy, and Lady Verr exited with a dignified nod.

Her exquisitely shaped eyebrows hinted at a frown.

It was a very long day.

For all that she had been forbidden to carry anything heavier than a book, Ophele had not been on her feet so continuously since her sun sickness, and there was a surprising number of objects that still needed a home.

Sim and Jaose ferried the empty boxes downstairs almost as energetically as they had carried them up, Adelan worked as tirelessly as a Rendeva automaton, and by the time Sir Justenin appeared with another hamper of food at sunset, Ophele wanted nothing in the world so much as a chair .

“Would you care for supper first, my lady? Or will we draw you a bath?”

asked Lady Verr, looking as if she would command Emi and Peri forward like cavalry, and Ophele had had enough.

“No.

No, thank you,”

she repeated, louder, fighting the urge to knot her hands together.

“You all have worked so hard, and you must be tired, too.

I will have supper privately, please.”

“Shall we set the table?”

Lady Verr asked, her red brows drawing together, and fortunately Sir Justenin saw the plea in Ophele’s eyes.

“I believe this will suffice,”

he said, stooping to pluck two smaller crocks from the supper hamper.

“His Grace left a few additional items for you to discover privately, my lady.

Please make sure to lock the doors behind you.

Good night.”

Even in absentia, no one would contest Remin’s will.

Ophele breathed a sigh of relief, went upstairs, and shut the door.

She had been so busy, she had hardly had time to look at her new quarters herself.

Turning the heavy lock, Ophele pocketed the key and went to investigate, overwhelmed by the vast space.

The bed was the most prominent object in it, a massive creation wide enough to sleep four Remin Grimjaws.

Moss-green curtains hung from its tall canopy, and it was the finest object in the room by far, saving the tapestry and mirror from Ereguil, and a copper fire screen that looked out of place before the rough fieldstone fireplace.

That was where she found the first of Remin’s surprises.

A small seating area had been set before the hearth, a table and chairs with her own tea service set in the center, and a pink lap blanket laid over one chair to make it clear it was hers.

They were rough, plain furnishings, but someone had contrived a little footstool with a grate for a heated brick beneath it, to warm her feet.

And on the table was a stack of books she had never read before: a natural history of the Andelin Valley, a small book of poetry, and The Mortal Manifest, a philosophical book by a noted detractor of Vigga Aubriolot.

A small smile touched her lips.

There was a rough desk beside one window, already covered with her papers, quills, and inkpots, with her other books on shelves above.

Her desk would evolve with the house: when the solar was done, it would move there, and then to a temporary office downstairs, and one day she would have a grand new desk in her permanent office, adjacent to a private library and Remin’s study.

It warmed her to think of them working side by side, managing their own little fiefs within Tresingale, building Remin’s great dream.

When he came home.

If he came home.

Ophele gave herself a shake and set the crocks by the hearth for later, padding down the hall to draw herself a bath.

Oh, what a wonder was hot water, streaming straight from the tap! Piped water was one of the innovations of Ospret Far-Eyes, and the boiler was already sitting in solitary splendor in the dirt pit of the basement, one of the manor house’s few luxuries.

It would be far too difficult to add one later.

Sinking into the steaming water, Ophele lined up her soaps and cosmetics on the shelf beside the tub, pleased with the simple familiarity.

By the time she was clean and had picked over her supper, she felt well enough to peep out the doors and say good night to Leonin and Davi, who would shortly be replaced by Yvain and Dol for the night watch.

“Call us if you need anything at all, my lady,”

said Davi.

“We’re up in the cabins now too, second row back, so we’ll be here at a whistle.”

“One of us will bring breakfast up tomorrow,”

Leonin added, inclining his head.

“Sleep well, my lady.”

It was when she went to bed that she found the last surprise.

Tired though she was, Ophele lay awake a long time, lonely in the big bed.

The headboard was so big, she had to flop backward with her head at the foot of the bed to see all of it, a carved panorama of the Andelin Valley that swept from the Berlawe Mountains to the east to the long grasses of the Talfel Plateau, trailing down to the bleak salt moors.

But that wasn’t all.

A smile curved her lips as she spotted a little hedgehog trundling beneath a bush, pointed nose lifted inquisitively.

Prairie chickens pecked in the long grass, a long-tailed courser cat bounded in the distance, and there in the forest was the feathery little head of an owl, peeping out between the leaves.

A love-note from Remin, carved into the oak of their bed, to last the rest of their lives.

Ophele’s breath hitched and her eyes filled.

Oh, how she missed him.

And maybe he had expected that, too.

For glaring down from the carved mountains on the right side of the headboard was the last and mightiest of the beasts: an Andelin silvertip bear, hump-shouldered and massive, gazing fearless over his domain.

Watching over her, as she slept.