Chapter 23 #2
The house was ready in just a few weeks.
The three of them moved out of the eyrie on a late autumn evening.
Hired gargoyles ferried the chests of clothes and sewing baskets and a few other indispensable possessions to their new house, and then Cléa said her tearful goodbyes, although Rikard suspected she would be quite happy to entertain more in their absence, once she got used to it.
Roul kindly flew Hanna all the way to their new doorstep, where he waited with her in the parlor while Rikard and Carlijn made the journey on foot. After a house tour of the main floor, he departed, leaving them alone with their new, rather nervous household staff.
“We need to choose a name,” Rikard decided.
“For the child? That is your responsibility,” Hannalinde said, frowning at the floor.
“For the house.”
Her face brightened, and she glanced up at him. “True. It isn’t Lamont House any longer.”
“Hanna’s House,” Carlijn suggested.
Hanna shook her head, looking appalled. “Not very dignified.”
Rikard grinned. “Does it need to be dignified?”
She stared at him in astonishment. “Of course it does. It will be our son’s one day and his son’s and his son’s. It should be something they can be proud of.”
“I would think they’d be very proud of their mother or grandmother,” he said quietly, for her ears only even if Carlijn and the new servants could hear.
His fingers curved around the back of her arm, the lightest touch as he leaned close.
“They’d be lucky to inherit her strength and fortitude.
Her way with people. They will prosper because of the seeds she’s planted. ”
Her cheeks pinkened as she exhaled, clearing her throat. “Rose House, then. I think, in a few years, it will be quite covered with them.”
“Pretty!” Carlijn exclaimed, clapping.
“Rose House it is. I will have a new nameplate carved for the cornerstone.”
“Th—” Hanna began, but heeded his warning look and stopped before thanking him. Why should she be grateful when the house was stolen from her to begin with? “That would be wonderful,” she amended, much to his satisfaction.
“Would the ladies like to retire?” Cyril, their new butler stepped forward solicitously from his discreet position by the parlor door. It was quite late for humans, nearing midnight. “I can summon a maid to help them dress for bed.”
“Don’t wake anyone,” Carlijn said, yawning into the back of her hand. “I can manage on my own, and Hanna has her husband to help her.”
The butler’s eyes popped at the impropriety, but he bowed to Rikard. “Indeed she does. Good night, sir. Ladies.”
Hannalinde took Rikard’s proffered arm, and they followed Carlijn up the stairs, parting from her at the top.
She’d taken the chamber on the other side of the nursery from the lord and lady’s chambers, the room that had once belonged to Hanna.
He wondered whether Hanna would sleep in his chamber or her own freshly decorated one, the one that had been her mother’s.
His, he hoped, as she had in the eyrie, even though it was no longer strictly necessary, given that they had more rooms now.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Hanna asked.
His attention snapped to her. “Mind what?”
“Helping me undress. Carlijn volunteered you, but you don’t have to. I can ring the bell in my dressing room and call a maid.”
“Not at all.” He sounded courteous but felt anything but at the prospect of unlacing his lovely wife. It was no imposition. In fact, he would relish it. “Your room or mine?”
She paused, a smile lifting the corner of her mouth. “You haven’t looked in mine, have you?”
He hadn’t, in fact. He’d left the décor to Carlijn’s oversight, and it somehow felt like an invasion of privacy to visit it without Hannalinde’s explicit permission.
She led him to her bedroom door and pushed it open.
It was decorated more as a sitting room than a bedroom, with a pair of cushioned chaises rather than a bed, and another seating area with a table and chairs by the large bank of windows.
Her sewing things were arranged here, and her books, new and old.
Though one could rest and relax in the room, she clearly did not intend to sleep here.
She’d already chosen to share his. She’d had the option not to, and she’d chosen otherwise.
“I sleep better when you watch over me,” she murmured, watching him take it in.
“As do I.” He swept her up in his arms and carried her through their connected dressing rooms to his—now their—bedchamber.
He set her down beside the enormous canopy bed and turned her gently by the shoulders. He worked her laces free, mindful that his claws did not slice through them. One eyelet gave, then the next, until the gown sagged from her and slid to the floor.
Her shift had loosened at the neck. He drew it down off one shoulder, baring the soft slope of skin there, her scars pale in the moonlight that streamed through the balcony doors. He traced over their lacy patterns, and she shivered.
“I wish I had made these,” he said, kissing where his finger had touched, hoping to warm her.
“You would never hurt me like that,” she said firmly, turning to him with her shift clutched over her breasts and belly.
He brushed a stray lock of her hair from her forehead. “No, but I wish we had the bond you share with him. I often wish I could feel your thoughts.”
“And I, yours?” she asked teasingly.
“Not so much,” he admitted, chuckling. The inside of his mind was a tempest sometimes.
Half-remembered battles, bitter resentments.
Impatience, boredom, lust that could never be sated.
She would think less of him if she knew that he was as scarred inside as out.
“I’m afraid they are not as pretty as yours. ”
She sobered. “Perhaps mine are not as pretty as you assume.”
“And yet I want to know them,” he said, a little surprised by himself.
But it was true. He wanted to feel her frustration when her stitching went wrong and her fear about the prospect of giving birth.
He wanted to feel her impatience with his more somber nature and her annoyance when Carlijn and Lucan ignored their warnings. Every petty emotion.
“Then ask, and I’ll tell you. It’s as simple as that.”
He bent his head to nose her ear and breathe in her rosy scent. It was not so easy. Beyond knowing her mind, he also wanted to bite her. He wanted to sink his teeth into her shoulder himself, taste her blood, bind her to him forever. Some biological drive to mate, he assumed.
He walled off the impulse. He’d promised her no biting. Ironically, it was the line he could not cross if he wanted to keep her. She’d drawn it before any other boundary.
He would not ask her or even hint at it again. He would not allow the hunger to show on his face, because if she saw it, it would destroy the trust between them that had taken months to build.
And even if, years from now, she agreed to his bite, it would not bind them.
The mating bite was singular. One per lifetime.
She was already bonded to the gargoyle who’d used it to track and torment her, and a second bite would not take.
Her body could reject it because another gargoyle was already in her blood.
And the rejection would mean he’d put his teeth in her for nothing, reopened a wound that had finally healed.
Proved that gargoyle desire always ended the same way: with her skin broken and bleeding.
He’d never do it. He held on to that thought as she drifted off to sleep in his arms.