Page 10

“Sir Tounot of Belleme.”

The knight lowered himself to one knee and laid his sword at Ophele’s feet, a burly man with curling brown hair and a cleft in his chin.

“I swore my service to His Grace eight years ago, when he was mustering in Norgrede.”

They had heaped fuel on the fires tonight to illuminate these proceedings properly, a ceremony held under the night sky with the stars as witnesses.

“Belleme,”

she said thoughtfully.

She knew who he was.

She had memorized all the major and minor Houses of Argence over one endless winter when she was ten, along with all their banners and words, but even without that, everyone in the Empire knew the Knights of the Brede.

“The Earl of Irenvale?”

“Speak louder,”

the duke murmured behind her, and she blushingly repeated herself.

“Yes.

I am his son.”

Sir Tounot smiled and inclined his head.

“And now my sword is yours.”

Ophele smiled back shyly.

She still felt a little strange from the wine, weirdly disconnected, and was trying very hard not to feel the gazes of forty other knights and a dozen squires on her; she couldn’t find a place to rest her eyes or her hands.

And it was embarrassing to be sitting on a tree stump as if it were a throne, with a cushion even, and His Grace looming behind her.

All at once he was convinced that she was made of glass and wouldn’t hear of her sitting on the ground.

He had explained the purpose of these formalities at length, as well as what she should and should not do.

It wasn’t just an exchange of oaths; she needed to know the men who were sworn to her service, and so ideally, she should offer a few personal words to each of them.

It was a challenge for a timid girl, but the duke was being surprisingly kind.

Every time she floundered, she could feel his hand press lightly at her back.

“I will accept your oath, Sir Tounot of Belleme,”

she said, just as she had said to Sir Auber Conbour, Sir Huber Adaman, Lord Edemir of Trecht, and Sir Darrigault of Ghis.

It didn’t feel real.

These were famous men, heroes, the bravest and strongest knights in the entire Empire.

What were they doing kneeling to her?

“Under the stars and before all here assembled, I, Sir Tounot of Belleme, swear my fealty and homage to the House of Andelin and its new lady, Her Grace Ophele, Princess of Argence, and now the Duchess of Andelin.”

Only a born nobleman could have so effortlessly ordered and recited her titles, and in the Empire, a woman’s principal title devolved from her husband’s.

“I will defend the safety and honor of my lady even at the cost of my own life, and further offer the fealty of all my heirs, so long as House Andelin endures.

Should I violate this oath, or fail in this trust, let my life be forfeit.”

Ophele knew the proper steps of this ceremony.

She had read it dozens of times in various books, sometimes in excruciating detail.

At this point, she should take his hands—as if he needed her help to get up—and offer him the sword he had laid at her feet.

But the duke had firmly vetoed the idea of her standing to accept the oaths of forty-some men, handling swords, or even allowing her to rise just for the amount of time it would take for the formal clasping of hands.

Ever since she had failed to tell him she was hurt the morning they left Celderline, he had been so determined to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.

Like a bear, she thought as she looked up at his forbidding face, big and black and grumbling in a way that was almost…sweet.

It made her feel both guilty and grateful.

“Speak up,”

the duke reminded her now, and she sat up straight, trying to forget all the men watching from the other side of the fires.

At least she didn’t have to think of what to say.

She had read these words countless times.

“In return, I swear to guard my honor with sincerity, so that I never bring shame to my House, my Lord, or his retainers,”

she replied.

“And to be careful of my own safety, to honor the sacrifices of my defenders.

Please rise, Sir Tounot of Belleme.

I accept your sword.”

It was sobering to look into a man’s face and listen to him tell her that he was willing to die to protect her.

What had she ever done to deserve that? And more to the point, considering what her mother had done to the man looming at her back, Ophele knew exactly how unworthy she really was.

But there was nothing for it.

She was the duke’s wife now, joined inseparably to him unto death and beyond, and her honor was now the honor of his House.

The only thing she could do was treat her own life and honor carefully, so as not to betray these men further.

And hope that they never ever found out what Lady Rache Pavot had done.

“Sir Justenin,”

said the next knight, a lean man with sandy hair and a scar bisecting his left eyebrow.

“I joined His Grace’s army as soon as the Emperor gave him command of the forces of the Andelin.”

He gave no place name or family name.

Was it because his parents died along with the rest of the duke’s extinct House? She supposed that the children of some of their servants and retainers had escaped, and then gone on to serve Remin, the last son of their vanished House, because of the same oath Sir Tounot had just sworn.

The loyalty of my heirs.

These men were promising not just their own service, but the loyalty and service of their progeny.

She would have to think about that later.

The duke’s big hand pressed lightly against her back and she straightened again, searching for something to say.

“I…I never thought about the service all of you have already given His Grace,”

she began hesitantly, looking from Sir Justenin to the rest of the assembled knights.

“I will do my best to learn from your example.

Thank you for serving him so well, all these years.”

She thought that was a good thing to say.

Sir Justenin bowed his head and repeated the same oath Sir Tounot had given, and so the night wore on.

Conscious of the solemnity of the oaths they were taking—and the long wait as the men shuffled forward to take their turn kneeling before her—Ophele tried hard to pay attention, and say her own words each time with the same sincerity she had said them the first time.

“You did well,”

the duke said when it was over, escorting her to one of the fires, which had burned low over the course of the ceremony.

“Do you want more tea?”

She nodded, too tired to pretend she didn’t.

The second day of riding hadn’t been as painful as the first, but the duke had still dosed her with more wine in the morning and she felt dull and achy from her head to her toes.

She only dimly remembered getting on the horse after the noon meal yesterday, and things had been blurry until she woke up for supper today.

“Here,”

he said, handing her more bread and cheese.

At night they usually had a hot meal as well, a sort of stew made with dried beef and root vegetables that were hard as stones after passing the winter in the bottom of a sack, but it would be some time before that was ready.

A tin kettle was already on the fire, steaming its way to a boil.

“Thank you.”

To her surprise, he sat down beside her and stretched out his long legs, ripping into a chunk of crusty brown bread with his fingers.

Uneasily, she watched him through her eyelashes.

Before, he had given her food like he was putting down hay for his horse and then left to talk to his men, but lately he had been staying to talk with her.

“We’ll be stopping in Granholme tomorrow,”

he said.

“It’s a small town, nothing like Celderline, but there’s a market and a few shops.

If there’s anything you need, we can buy it.”

“I’m f—”

she began automatically.

“We will be buying more dresses for you,”

he interrupted, looking down at her with narrowed eyes.

“And whatever other things women need.

You’re my wife, you’ll have clothes that fit.

The Knights of the Brede want a lady they can be proud of.”

Oh.

She looked down at her lap.

She knew she wasn’t a princess anyone would admire, but she hadn’t thought that implicit in all the oaths she had taken tonight was the promise that she would try to be, that she owed it to the people in her service to try to make them proud of her.

“All right,”

she agreed quietly.

He sighed.

“You mumble,”

he told her.

“Speak up.

And you mistake my meaning.

I don’t know anything about the things women need.

But I want my wife to be as comfortable and well-dressed as any other noblewoman.”

“The maids at Aldeburke had four new dresses twice a year,”

she offered hesitantly, watching him from the corner of her eye.

“I would hope I could do at least that much.”

His eyebrows lowered ominously.

“How many dresses does the Lady Lisabe have?”

“Oh, I don’t need that many,”

she said, her eyes wide at the very idea.

“Gowns are so expens—”

“How many?”

“I don’t know,”

she admitted.

“A lady dresses for afternoon and for supper, and then there are kirtles and chemises and stockings and br—other things.”

The Duke of Andelin could not be the least bit interested in women’s fashions.

“I don’t need that much.”

“Well, it will be a long time before we go back to the capital, and there aren’t likely to be any balls in Andelin for a while either,”

he said, chewing thoughtfully.

“I don’t see a point in buying finery you won’t have reason to wear.

But I won’t have my wife dressing like a maid.

If you need something, tell me.”

She nodded solemnly, and he looked at her hard.

“Promise?”

And he actually extended his big hand to seal the bargain, as if they had agreed on some trade.

He would buy her clothes, and in exchange she would tell him truthfully if she needed something? And she wouldn’t look like a beggar’s brat?

She gave him her hand, her small fingers vanishing into his vast palm.

“I promise.”

* * *

Though Remin increasingly doubted that his new bride was going to murder him in his sleep, he found there were plenty of other reasons to worry about her.

He should have gotten her a maid.

Remin was reflecting on his actions and repenting.

He’d had no idea how much tending women needed.

The princess needed help dressing, she needed help undressing, she had long hair that took hours of maintenance, and he could hardly hand her over to one of his knights.

At night, they hauled the supply cart off the road and screened it off with cloaks so she wouldn’t have to sleep in her extremely limited selection of dresses.

“You don’t have to do all this,”

she said as he lifted her onto the supply cart one night, doing his best not to notice the gentle curves under her chemise or the fluttering silk of her hair.

“Yes, I do,”

he said gruffly.

It was his fault she didn’t have anything to wear.

“Go to sleep.”

That was another worry.

Remin was convinced she didn’t sleep like a normal person.

He didn’t know if it was a thing all women did, or a unique vulnerability of her own, but there seemed to be a significant risk that she would kill herself before they ever reached Tresingale.

The first two mornings after they left Celderline, he put it down to the wine.

But the third morning he knew for sure that she was stone cold sober when she woke in the chilly gray dawn and tumbled off the front of the supply wagon, only to rise like one of the shambling undead of the Undebige Valley.

“Princess?”

He started up from his place by the wagon wheel and caught her wrist.

“Muh.”

She pawed her hair out of her face.

Her eyes were open, but unfocused, and she squinted up at him with none of her usual timidity and said, “privy.”

“Over there,”

he said, gesturing to a clump of bushes.

She wasn’t usually so plainspoken; normally she tried to sneak away like a thief.

“Your shoe,”

he added sharply as she stumbled off, seemingly unaware that one foot was bare.

“Princess, are you well?”

“Mmm.”

It took several tries for her to slide her foot into the fur-lined slipper, during which time she seemed to forget where the bushes were.

His long arm shot out to point her in the opposite direction.

“That way.”

When she returned, she sleepily washed her hands in the basin he offered, then crumpled over in front of the fire, asleep in seconds.

Maybe she had never really been awake.

Remin fetched his cloak from the wagon and covered her with it, eying her uneasily.

The third concern was the reason he was sleeping against the supply wagon, rather than stretched out in a bedroll with her.

Having experienced sex with her, his body reacted to her presence with infuriating eagerness.

He would have been within his rights to have her whenever and wherever he chose, but she was still recovering from the rigors of their first night together and he was not about to engage in such activities with fifty men listening nearby.

It would be disrespectful to his wife.

Who would probably die of shock.

And who also deserved a bed, not a filthy blanket on the ground, or being pushed roughly against a tree, or rolled under a hedgerow.

Not that he had been contemplating such things.

His mind knew this.

His body remained stubbornly unconvinced.

And so, though ordinarily he would never have considered paying money for an inn when there were perfectly good hillsides outside town, it only made sense to get an inn for the night, if they happened to arrive in Granholme before sunset.

It would be irrational to force his gently bred wife to sleep in a supply wagon when there were beds available and she was clearly longing for a bath.

And if she stayed at the inn, then as her husband it was only right—no, it was his duty—to go with her and sleep with her.

At the inn.

Maybe this was compensation for all those years of deprivation.

Remin had spent most of his adolescence suppressing his sexual urges with constant physical training, knowing that any woman he bedded might very well try to stab him to death in the middle of the act.

Now, with the prospect of an inn, a bed, and his wife in the bed on the horizon, he was finding it very difficult to think of anything else.

“Your Grace,”

she protested, looking up at him with blushing cheeks the second time his lips inadvertently grazed her neck.

“The breeze is cold,”

he observed, adjusting his cloak to cover them both.

She eyed him as if she suspected he had some other mischief in mind, and he pretended he had nothing at all to do with the hand sliding around her waist to stealthily caress her under the cloak.

“There are people,”

she whispered, but all he could see was the slow curving of her pink lips when she spoke, and his hand slid upward all by itself over her belly to cup her breast.

“Your Grace.”

“Watch the road.”

His breath felt unsteady.

She smelled so good, it was making it hard to think.

Remin bent his head, breathing her intoxicating scent and sorely tempted to tell his men to leave them for a half hour or so.

He was fully aware that this was not the time or the place, but he could see the pulse beating frantically in her throat and all he wanted to do was bite it.

Her ears were red.

Anyone who saw her could guess what he was doing; indeed, his knights were suddenly being very careful not to look in his direction.

But she wasn’t one of the hellcats that had marched along with his army, and he was not an animal.

He could endure for a few more hours.

He had always been contemptuous of men who couldn’t control their baser impulses.

He lectured himself severely and sighed.

“Tonight,”

he murmured, pressing his lips chastely against her forehead and trying to ignore the glint of her tawny eyes through her thick lashes.

If he looked at her once more, he really might pull his horse off to the side of the road.

They arrived in Granholme that afternoon, and he dispatched his men to see to supplies, messages, and accommodations.

He intended to look after the princess’s new wardrobe himself.

Left to her own devices, he suspected she would only dare to purchase four new dresses twice a year.

Was that normal? It didn’t seem right.

“Bertin, Ortaire, with me,”

he said, ordering two of the older squires along as escorts and looking down at the princess severely.

“Stay in my sight, understood?”

She nodded, her slim shoulders hunching, and hung back behind him all the way to the market.

Remin frowned down at her.

Sometimes it was almost like she was nervous around him, and he didn’t know why.

He was keeping her close for her own safety as much as his own.

Granholme was in the duchy of Firkane, whose lord was not just loyal to but devoted to the Emperor.

If she wasn’t actively in league with her father, that made her a potential hostage.

It was unexpectedly awkward, walking with her.

Her strides were so much shorter than his own and he didn’t know what to say.

And it didn’t help that she kept stopping to gawk.

After months in the capital, the marketplace of Granholme looked small and shabby to him, but the princess was drinking it in with wide, solemn eyes, like a watchful little owl.

“Is there something you want to see?”

he asked the fourth time he had to stop for her.

She started and said something inaudible, hurrying over to his side.

“And don’t mumble,”

he added, scowling at her in perplexity.

She was making him feel like an ogre.

“We have time.

If you want to look at something, tell me.”

“It’s just, I’ve never been to a town before,”

she admitted, looking at an inebriated lutist picking indifferently at his instrument as if he were a traveling fair.

He kept forgetting that.

She wasn’t just unaccustomed to crowds; she had never seen a town in her life before Celderline.

She had grown up a prisoner in Aldeburke, in the questionable care of House Hurrell.

“All right,”

he said, laying her hand on his arm as he had seen couples in the capital do.

“You choose where we go.

Look at whatever you want.”

“Really?”

Her look of delight made the back of his neck feel hot.

“Yes,”

he said stiffly, his face freezing into hard lines. “Go on.”

She was fascinated by everything, from the barking negotiations of the ironmonger to a cooper forming staves into a barrel.

At a pastry stand he bought her a hot berry tart and repressed a smile when she bit into it too soon and yelped.

“All right?” he asked.

“Yeth,”

she said, fanning her burned tongue and looking up at him with comical chagrin.

At the glassblower’s stand he watched her watch a sturdy bald-headed man delicately whisper molten glass into a chrysanthemum, so utterly absorbed that Remin had a momentary impulse to ask the fellow if he wanted to move his trade to Tresingale.

Surely they’d need glass eventually, and the lady seemed like she could watch him forever and never get tired of it.

“Is it very difficult?”

she asked, once the glassblower lifted his head from the pipe.

“Takes practice,”

he said.

He looked from her to Remin and his men, taking their measure at a glance.

“Want me to make you something, lady?”

She glanced back at Remin, and it would have taken a heart of stone to refuse.

He nodded.

“Could you make a bear?”

she asked.

It was not one of the animals laid on the counter.

Remin would have guessed she’d pick a flower or a bird or some such.

But the glassblower nodded.

“Aye, can do,”

he said.

“Even smoke the glass for you.”

“To make it black?”

She leaned over to watch as he made it, a tiny figure with tawny eyes bright with interest, filled with questions and talking more than Remin had ever heard her speak at one time.

Even the gruff craftsman softened under her sincere interest, and by the time he finished the bear, he actually smiled at her.

Unexpectedly, she instantly turned around and presented it to Remin.

“It’s for you,”

she said, her eyes fleeting away from his, and hurried back to the glassblower’s display.

Remin looked down at the useless object, flummoxed.

It was small, hardly bigger than his thumb, and looked as if there was smoke contained inside it, crystal on the outside and swirling black within.

The bear sat on its haunches with one paw extended, detailed down to the claws.

Why had she given it to him? Was it some kind of message?

It was time they left, anyway.

“The seamstresses will need time to sew,”

he said, steering her to the side street where they had been told there was a tailor.

It was a small place, but tidy.

The lady inside looked as if she were about to swoon when Remin ducked in the door.

“Yes, this is my shop, my lord,”

she said faintly, her eyes as wide and staring as a fish’s.

A wise merchant knew how to recognize a nobleman at a glance.

“How…you need…clothing?”

“The Duke of Andelin,”

put in Bertin, who was touchy of His Grace’s honor.

“And his lady.”

“Oh.

Oh, my.

Please excuse me.”

She curtsied.

“I am honored, it is…I am Violet Courcy, and I will do my humble best to serve.”

“My wife needs clothes,”

Remin said, pushing the princess forward.

“By tomorrow.”

“Everyday dresses, and kirtles, and…so on.”

Ophele glanced back at Remin’s knights, her ears turning pink.

“Um…do you need to measure me?”

“Bertin, Ortaire, wait outside.”

Remin wasn’t about to leave her alone with a stranger, and it was nothing that he hadn’t already seen, anyway.

But his eyes still sharpened as Ophele reluctantly stripped down to her chemise with Mistress Courcy’s help, baring that fine, velvety white skin, the soft shape of her breasts visible under the linen.

For a moment, he considered ordering Mistress Courcy out of the shop, too.

“We have a pomegranate-patterned silk that will look lovely on you, m’lady,”

the seamstress said, scribbling down her measurements on a bit of paper.

“I don’t need silk,”

Ophele said, gentle but decided.

“Dark colors that are easy to clean, simple and comfortable so I can work.

And I need to be able to put them on by myself.”

From the look on the seamstress’s face, this was the realm of maid’s clothing.

“Two formal gowns, Princess,”

Remin said, as if he had the least idea what those were.

He wasn’t trying to humiliate her by making her dress like a servant. “Silk.”

“Princess?”

Mistress Courcy echoed, glancing between them, and he saw the shock of recognition in her face.

“Princess Ophele? And you need—I beg your pardon! How could I make such a mistake, the Duke of Andelin, of course…”

But the look she had given the princess was fleeting, expressive, and unmistakable: pity.

By now everyone in the Empire had heard of the Emperor’s secret daughter, Princess Ophele, confined to Aldeburke since infancy, married to Remin Grimjaw in her sister’s place, robbed of the rank she had never been able to exercise, and now here she was getting dragged off into another exile and told to buy simple clothes she could work in.

That was what had happened, for very good reasons, but it put his back up.

The opinion of the people wasn’t irrelevant.

This gossip would spread.

The Emperor would have loved this scene so much, he could have written it himself.

“I am trusting her to you, Mistress Courcy,”

Remin made himself say stiffly.

“We are just married and I know little about the things women need.

Please take care of her.”

He could almost see the woman flutter, if only in the mercantile part of her heart.

That meant an open purse.

Let that story spread.

And it wouldn’t be bad, to see the princess in a pretty gown over supper.

Remin sat back in the chair Mistress Courcy had offered, stretching his long legs.

He remembered his mother and father’s table, the grand banquet hall, the music, the murmur of conversation.

That place was gone forever, and the Andelin Valley had been a battleground for a hundred years.

But he wanted to make it a place fit for women and children, as safe and prosperous as the rest of the Empire, with a graceful banquet hall and the noblest of ladies at his side.

No.

If he was honest, he wanted to make the Andelin the flower of the Empire.

He wanted to make a garden that would make the Emperor sick with envy, not only prosperous, but a center of culture and learning.

And no one would ever look at his wife with pity again.

“You can have the rest sent along to the valley?”

he asked, when they had agreed on a quantity of overdresses, gowns, kirtles, and other accoutrements that made Ophele look convincingly horrified and the seamstress very happy.

“Yes, Your Grace,”

she said, hastily totaling the figures with practiced flicks at an abacus.

“I can call on half of Granholme if need be, everyone will be so excited to help with the princess’s trousseau! We will see it done, never fear.”

“Isn’t it a lot of money, though?”

The princess asked, clutching the first page of the bill of sale anxiously.

“Your Grace, are you quite sure? You don’t have to—”

“Yes.

Give me that.”

He plucked the paper from her hand and added it to the sheaf in his own.

Duke Ereguil had always said that there were many uses for money, with the acquisition of goods being only the most obvious.

But between a bill of sale he could barely read—what the hell was a tippet?—and the glass bear in his pocket, Remin wasn’t entirely sure what he had bought today.

He could only hope that such things as tippets and bears could lead to the building of a garden.

* * *

Unexpectedly, the princess had one more bit of business before they went back to the inn, the place Remin was longing to be with all of his soul.

The marketplace was closing for the evening as they made their way up the side of the cobblestone street, and the princess looked on with interest as the shops shuttered and the merchants cleared away their stalls, entirely innocent of the plans he had in store for her.

But coming around the corner onto the town’s main road, she stopped so suddenly, he nearly tripped over her.

“Rou?”

she said in surprise, and then darted away with a cry, picking up her skirts to run.

“Rou! Rou, wait!”

There was a small tinker’s wagon ahead, but it rolled to a stop and a small, bearded man appeared from around the front, weathered as a nut and wearing steel-rimmed spectacles and a disreputable hat.

“Princess?”

he said, disbelieving, and caught her hands in his own.

“Princess! What are you doing here? Did you decide to run away with me after all? Or did Julot—ah.”

Hastily, he let go of her hands and stepped back as Remin appeared, looming and thunderous as a storm.

“She got married,”

Remin said, glaring down at the little man.

“Princess, don’t run off.

Who’s this?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, this is Rou,”

she said, flustered.

“He visits Aldeburke sometimes, you know we can’t go into town.”

“I meant no disrespect, Your Grace,”

said the tinker with a deep bow.

He had already guessed who Remin must be.

“Rou Kurder, at your service.

I have known Her Highness since she was a child.”

“I am pleased to meet any friend of my wife’s,”

Remin replied, surveying the cart.

It looked like any other tinker’s wagon he had seen, compact and rugged, with wooden awnings that could be lifted to display his eclectic wares or locked down to secure them.

“Have you been long in Firkane?”

“Thirty years,”

said the tinker.

“I added Aldeburke to my route by accident, you know.

It’s not so far into Leinbruke.”

“It was kind of you, to serve Lady Pavot in her exile.”

Rou scratched his chin.

He understood what Remin was asking.

“Well, I don’t know about that, Your Grace.

No one ever named the lady to my ears, and didn’t seem like something that wanted inquiry, did it? Especially not from a tinker on the back roads of the Empire.”

The princess watched this byplay curiously.

“It was very good of Rou to come and see us,”

she agreed.

“Can I see Anzel, Rou? Is he dyspeptic?”

“No, he’s always peptic when you’re about.

With His Grace’s permission,”

Rou added, gesturing toward the front of the wagon, where a small donkey pricked its ears at her and immediately began nosing her pockets.

“I wish I had a carrot for you, clever boy,”

she said, stroking his gray muzzle.

“There are carrots in the front of the wagon, Your Highness, feel free to give him one.”

The tinker spoke without moving to follow her.

He knew perfectly well that the duke wasn’t finished with him.

With a flick of his fingers, Remin ordered Bertin and Ortaire around to the front of the wagon, to keep an eye on things.

“Will you be staying in town tonight?”

he asked.

“I’d welcome the chance to talk to someone who knows my wife so well.

I’m sure we could find space at the inn for you.”

“I’m afraid not,”

Rou replied, and unwittingly passed the first test.

Remin would have thought less of anyone who would accept a bribe so easily.

“The moon will be full tonight and the roads are good, I mean to put some miles behind us.”

“That’s a shame.”

Remin made a decision.

“We have need of tinkers in the Andelin.”

“I had heard that Your Grace was taking things in hand,”

the tinker said, nodding slowly.

“It might be an opportunity for an enterprising man.”

Ophele appeared around the side of the wagon, pausing to make certain she wasn’t interrupting.

“Pardon…do you have new books, Rou?”

“I do indeed.

Take any of them that you like as my wedding gift, Your Highness.”

The man’s smile looked genuine.

He even tapped the brim of his hat in a small salute, and then glanced up at Remin.

“With your permission, of course.”

“It’s a generous gift.

Are you sure I can’t compensate you?”

“It is a gift.”

There was a gentle emphasis on the last word.

And Remin would look through the books himself, later.

He knew he was paranoid and accepted it.

Any number of unlikely-looking people had tried to kill him.

But as the tinker doffed his battered hat to say farewell, Remin found himself hoping that the man would make his way to the Andelin.

Trade between the small villages was almost nonexistent and he would prefer to keep his eye on a man who was such a good friend to the princess.

“Did you take all his books?”

he asked as Ophele appeared, bearing a tottering stack of books that ended at her nose.

“Bertin, Ortaire, carry those.”

“No,”

she said unconvincingly as the squires relieved her of her cargo.

“But Rou said I could have the ones I liked, and I haven’t read these yet…”

She had to be bullied into accepting a second formal gown, but was willing to rob a tinker if it was books.

The corner of Remin’s mouth twitched.

“I would be surprised if anyone has ever read A Second Treatise on the Will Immanent and the Will Absolute,”

he observed dryly, reading off one of the better titles.

“We’ll need another wagon to carry all these.”

“Will we? I didn’t think of that,”

she said, crestfallen.

“I am teasing you,”

he informed her, drawing her beside him to walk together up the hill.

The sky was brilliant with sunset and it had been surprisingly pleasant to watch her wander the market.

Lights glimmered in the windows of the houses as they went by, added a pleasant golden glow to the evening, but then the sight of a lamp in a window had always made him think, home.

“There’s plenty of room in the wagon.”

She nodded, her hand resting lightly on his arm.

He could see her watching him from the corner of her eye and waited until she finally said, “Rou is my friend.”

“So I gathered.”

“I only mean, I hope you don’t mind what he said,”

she said, looking up at him anxiously.

“He always likes to tease, he doesn’t mean any harm.”

“I am glad you have such a friend.”

He hadn’t decided whether he would ask more about the content of the teasing, or whether he would ask it of her, but it would be cruel to make her worry in the meantime.

Covering her hand with his own, he squeezed.

“Are you feeling well? You walked a lot this afternoon.”

“Yes.”

Ophele turned a little pink and glanced back to make sure Bertin or Ortaire were a discreet distance away before she whispered, as if it were a deadly secret: “Riding hardly hurt at all today.”

“Good.

You’ll ride a little bit more tonight.”

“I will?”

Stars, she was going to kill him.

Remin stretched his legs, hurrying her toward the inn.

He was a civilized man.

He let her eat dinner.

It wasn’t the finest inn in Celderline, but they still managed to find two maids to serve the Exile Princess, and he steadfastly ignored the subtle and not-so-subtle jibes of his men as he tried to estimate how long it would take them to bathe her.

It took about half an hour to wash his horse, but she had all that long hair to tend, and the maids in Celderline had rubbed all manner of sweet things into her skin…

The image of his pretty wife lingering in her bath did not make it easier to be patient.

Remin glared into his cup of wine for nearly an hour before he said goodnight and went up, pausing to give himself a scrub in the common baths.

For some reason, he was more unsettled tonight than he had been on his wedding night.

But something in his chest seemed to loosen when he opened the door to find her sitting alone by the fire, cross-legged on the floor with a book in her lap.

“No,”

he said quickly.

“Don’t get up.”

She watched him with those solemn eyes as he approached, her cheeks still rosy from her bath.

It was clear that she expected him to pounce on her, and perversely this made him want to draw things out.

She was the Emperor’s daughter, yes, but she was surprisingly sweet-tempered and he was finding her company far more pleasant than he had expected.

Silently, he sat down behind her, lifting the end of the thick plait that streamed down her back.

The maids had put her hair back for the night, but he wanted to feel it in his fingers and see it fall in a curtain around her.

“May I?”

he asked, plucking at the ribbon, and saw her tentative nod.

Untying the ribbon at the end, he pulled it loose, and the plait came apart like skeins of silk, so long and luxuriant that it coiled around her on the floor, shining in umber and maple.

“What are you reading?”

he asked, maneuvering her slender body into the shelter of his own.

“The Will Immanent.”

She clutched the book as if she thought he might take it from her.

Her dark lashes lowered, hiding her tawny eyes, and he couldn’t resist tugging her hair aside to bare her beautiful shoulders, brushing his lips over her skin.

Just a little taste.

“What’s it about?”

“Theology,”

she said.

“About how the divine manifests in the world and how the will of men conflicts with the will of the divine.”

“Oh?”

Her chemise was loose around her shoulders, a wide opening that bared the back of her neck and several inches of her spine, the contours of fragile bones and smooth, light muscle under skin like sugar.

“It’s interesting,”

she was saying.

“Like this: If we assume the divine infinite as a perfect presence, then what purpose has the divine for creation? If the divine is a perfect presence manifest in all things, what is the purpose of imperfect beings? The divine is the divine, its supremacy is innate.

Therefore, the contest of wills is the will of the divine.”

It had been a very long time since Remin had a tutor.

“What does that mean?”

he asked, more interested in what she would say than what the book said.

“Well, I haven’t read the arguments yet,”

she began, “but I think it’s saying that if there is a divine presence like the stars, then the fact that they created the world and put people in it that contradict their will is proof that they want the conflict to happen.

If you were a god and you created me, and you didn’t crush me like a bug when I argued with you, it must be because you want me to argue with you.”

“And they tried to convince me you were simple,”

he said, after a moment.

“Well, that’s just what I think,”

she said, embarrassed, and looked up into his eyes as he took the book from her and set it aside.

“I want you to stop thinking,”

he murmured, and covered her mouth with his.