Chapter 1 – A Tale of Wolves #8
“You…be careful,” she said vaguely, her eyes unfocused. Her lips were tingling.
“I’ll be home soon,” he promised, reluctantly straightening.
Ophele stood in the doorway to watch him swing up onto his horse, straight shoulders and handsome head, everything a knight should be.
He always turned to look back at her at the bend of the road, his black hair flying as his horse turned neatly on its hooves, and Ophele lifted her hand to wave at him, feeling giddy and foolish for missing him already.
He was only going to be gone for the afternoon.
Even from a distance, she could see how he twitched his shoulders before he kicked his horse into a gallop, as if he were embarrassed by the display of affection.
There was always some mending to be done or buttons to be reattached, and Sir Edemir gave her most of their accounts to reconcile now, especially since she could save them precious paper by adding up even a very long column of figures in her head.
The mending and the accounts were far too difficult and far too easy, respectively.
Sewing was an activity that Ophele was coming to loathe with all her soul.
Based on what she had seen of Lady Hurrell, this was what she was supposed to be doing with her time.
Not mending, of course. Ophele’s clothing at Aldeburke had been patched and much-mended, so she knew very well that such work was the province of maids.
A lady embroidered. They stitched beautiful and intricate works of art into their slippers, sashes, and handkerchiefs.
Lady Hurrell had used shimmering silk thread to make flowers and birds, stitching the high-flying kite emblem of House Hurrell into everything, as if sheer repetition would make it reality.
The tourney was only a week away, and Ophele had many pleasant daydreams about presenting Remin with a sash she had embroidered herself, perhaps with a little owl and bear tucked away in a corner, a love-note for him to discover.
But so far, her only successes had been with buttons.
Either she was spectacularly bad at mending torn clothes, or Remin was spectacularly good at tearing them.
Gloomily, she set the day’s mending aside and went early to the cookhouse to meet Jacot.
She would have to unpick all those stitches again.
No matter what she did, they just didn’t look even, and she was afraid Remin might guess how much she didn’t know if she gave him something so incompetently done.
In her mind, it was like the tip of an iceberg: as soon as she let one failure bob above the waves, he was bound to discover the mass of them she had hidden under the water.
Absorbed in her troubles, she didn’t hear the man approaching from the side of the cookhouse and almost bumped into him as she came around the corner.
“Oh, pardon me,” she said politely, trying to sidestep him, but he stepped quickly to block her.
“Look at you,” he said, catching her elbow. “You’re a pretty one, ain’t you? What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“What—why?” she said, stepping back and trying to tug away, looking up at him in puzzlement. He was tallish and lanky, with brown hair and eyes, and was wearing a strange expression that made her heart bump. She didn’t know him. “Please let go. Are you a builder?”
“Thought you girls weren’t allowed on this side of town.” If anything, his grip tightened. “No need to play coy, girl. Happens I have a silver sov. Come on, I know a spot.”
“What do you mean? Where are we going?” she asked, dragging her feet as he pulled her toward the back of the cookhouse. She was becoming more nervous by the minute. “I don’t want any silver, let go!”
“My lady!” Jacot called, racing toward them, the freckles standing out on his pale face. “You daft ass, let go of her, that’s the duchess! ”
The man let go of her as if she’d burned him.
“The—what?” He stared at her in utter horror, and Ophele retreated a pace, her eyes huge. She didn’t quite understand what was wrong, but his fear suddenly made her feel very afraid. Jacot of Caillmar was livid.
“Apologize,” he snarled, shoving his face into the man’s as if he weren’t twenty years younger.
“B-beg p-pardon, m’lady.” The man bowed deeply. His face was ashen. “Excuse me. Please forgive me. Didn’t mean any—”
“You can apologize to His Grace, too,” Jacot interrupted hotly, but the man suddenly shot away like a jackrabbit, over the street and into the trees at the end of the line of cottages. Ophele rubbed her elbow, staring after him.
“What girls?” she asked, looking at Jacot. “On this side of town? Are there girls on the other side of town?”
“He meant the whores,” Jacot said, glaring at the distant shrubbery.
“What’s a whore?”
“Oh, stars. Nothing. Never mind.” A brick-colored blush climbed up the boy’s neck. “Heaven save us, when I think what might’ve happened—I need to tell His Grace. He’s not here?”
“He’s at the barracks.”
“Sir Edemir, then. C’mon. Please,” he added, bobbing a bow. “M’lady.”
Puzzled, she went, and felt like both a fool and a child, standing there in the office while Jacot whispered an explanation to Sir Edemir.
Why couldn’t he say it out loud? The man had apologized, hadn’t he?
No harm had been done. She had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that this was something she should already know, and she turned scarlet when Sir Edemir snapped at one of his secretaries to go fetch His Grace.
“That’s not necessary,” she said, her face burning as all of them turned to look at her. “I’m perfectly fine, and the man apologized. I just want to know what he wanted. I don’t understand.”
“I beg your pardon, my lady,” Sir Edemir said, looking more uncomfortable than she had ever seen him. “But I think it would be His Grace’s place to explain it.”
This was even more confusing. Was it because Remin was her husband, or because he was the duke? Either way, the thought of disturbing him with her ignorance made her cringe inside .
“Then he can explain it to me tonight,” she said, and was mortified to hear the quiver in her voice. That man must have done something wrong, and she was too stupid to understand what it was, and all of them were looking at her now with embarrassment and pity. “Jacot, let’s go have your lesson.”
“Your Grace—” Sir Edemir began, and though she wanted to lie to herself that it was a dignified retreat, it was a retreat because she couldn’t face any of them for an instant longer.
If only she had understood what that man wanted, she might have told him no.
She could just imagine what Lady Hurrell would have done: a masterpiece of icy, offended dignity that would have sent him scampering off like a whipped dog.
“M’lady, wait!” Jacot called from behind her as she walked stiffly to the cookhouse. Ophele only moved faster. She was so embarrassed, she had gone beyond blushing; her face was actually prickling, a tingling numbness, and her ears were filled with a vast buzzing.
“Come and sit down,” she tried to tell him, her voice bouncing through several octaves.
“My lady, I really don’t think—” he began, this fourteen year-old boy whose voice hadn’t even completely broken yet, but somehow still knew more of the world than she did.
“Just open the book,” she said, struggling for some semblance of dignity, but it was too late. As a perfect finale, she started to cry.
* * *
They sent for Remin anyway.
“I’m fine, I’m fine!” she said, bursting into tears of pure vexation when he appeared in the door of the cottage, looking like one of Noreven’s Three Idols of Wrath.
Jacot had fled as soon as he persuaded her to go home.
It had been a farce, with him alternately threatening to get Sir Edemir and pleading with her to stop crying, while she tried to order him to read Summer’s Golden Songs.
“Then why are you crying?” Remin wanted to know, shutting the door with a thud. “Edemir said someone tried to make off with you. Come here and let me see you. You’re all right?”
“No, he wanted a whore. What’s a whore? No one will tell me. I told them not to bother you, I’m fine. ”
“Come here,” he repeated, with a sharp undercurrent of command, and Ophele reluctantly emerged from the corner of the bed to let him look at her, since apparently they would make no further progress until he had.
“Jacot said there were whores on the other side of town. And a man said he would give me two silvers if I went with him. And Sir Edemir said it wouldn’t be proper for him to explain why, which means it’s something only my husband should talk about.
” Ophele laid out her reasoning as Remin looked her over, as if searching for some invisible injury.
“So, are whores women that do…that for money? That’s what he wanted? Do we have those?”
Remin hesitated.
“Do we?” she asked, her voice rising, because if there was one thing that could rouse her meek temper, it was being denied knowledge.
“There are two dozen of them, between the bridge and the mason’s camp,” he said, sighing. “The men would riot otherwise. Bram keeps them safe and out of sight. And you shouldn’t say whore . It’s a rude word.”
Her face flamed.
“Oh,” she said, mortified, and let Remin move her into his lap as he sat down on the edge of the bed with a jingling of chainmail. “I didn’t know. I’ve never…I never heard that word before.”
“I would hope not,” he said sharply. “Jacot has been told to mind his tongue before ladies. If you have to talk about them, say prostitutes. But it’s not a subject for polite company.”
It didn’t matter; neither word had made its way into the books in Aldeburke’s library. And she had never been in company, polite or otherwise.