seven #2
He was erudite when not exhausted by work.
Educated. Empathetic. Full of the kind of romantic vigor that would make most women swoon.
Never mind the nobility shit. Money, land, and the respect of their peers.
Void, what was wrong with Sulim, again? Didn’t she know how good she had it?
Unfortunately, she did. Which was why she also tried.
While she and Sonall had their private agreements that neither of her in-laws knew about, she still tried to be an attentive wife.
She tried to acquiesce to a future with him and all that entailed.
He even knew about her preference for women.
He had claimed he wouldn’t mind an open marriage for them both after enough time had passed and Sulim was ensconced in the family dynamics.
But there was claiming one thing and committing oneself to another.
He’s everything I need in a best friend. Sulim closed out of her browser and sat back in her desk chair as the screen blackened. She turned her head toward the bathroom door, hoping to wistfully imagine her husband going about his business as if she were a newlywed in love.
Instead, it was what to read before bed. She was in the middle of a good book, after all.
Mira rather hated to admit that life in Gardiah Estate was much more interesting than weeks of camping in the elements with the occasional hotel stay in towns and cities as they moved from one shrine to the next across the Federation.
Her mother agreed, but that wasn’t hard to see: Joiya loved people, all kinds, and would doubtlessly spend the next few years here if it meant getting to intimately know every single person on this tiny slice of bucolic Arrah.
As for the humans who lived here… they swung between woefully forgettable and latching onto Mira’s mind for reasons she didn’t quite understand.
Among the family, Lord Vern was the king of the castle, but kept to himself—at least he dedicated his days to hard work and minding the family’s continuous finances for future generations; Lady Jacelah was a bit neurotic and prone to having one eye always over her shoulder,
but she was a gracious hostess and treated her staff with professional kindness; Graella was hopped up on love and the thrill of getting married, her high-pitched voice always echoing in the halls and defying her keen intellect and learned words;
Sonall worked as hard as his father but had a social side to him that often came out when he had time to join the others for tea.
As for his wife? Sulim skirted the edge between family and help, often dressed down like one of the maids but carrying with her a regal sense of self-awareness. She was the biggest distraction in the house, despite Mira’s curiosity leading her to drama elsewhere.
After all, a maid was having an affair with one of the ranchers, who was already married to a woman who lived in the nearest town.
Their love child was barely a year old and was often strapped to the (unmarried) maid’s back as she went about her chores before retiring to her tiny room on the third floor.
The head chef also lived on the premises while his assistants, now called in for the daily feasts provided to Lady Joiya and her entourage, trekked in from town just to help with dinner before slinking away again.
He’s got a bit of a drinking problem. Mira overheard that the steward often griped about how much cooking alcohol she had to purchase.
Not to mention all the bottles in the recycling. Lady Jacelah must have overlooked this.
Many of the house staff were young or recently employed.
When Mira inquired why, one of the old-heads, who bossed the other maids around, silenced her with a cold look.
At first, Mira assumed Lady Jacelah was the culprit, but if she was, she had greatly changed her demeanor in recent years.
She treats them better than Great Dame Dunsman treats anyone in our family.
Then again, humans were known for their shorter tempers and inability to put up with poor conditions for too long—not like Mira blamed them. We should probably learn from them.
She didn’t get to meet many of the ranchers, although she enjoyed her early morning walks that often coincided with them meeting in the front yard to go over that day’s tasks with both Lord Vern and his son, Sonall, before they dispersed, usually on horseback.
Even then, there was clear delineation between who was in charge (anyone with the last name Gardiah) and who followed for a paycheck (everyone else.)
One exception, of course: a man named Marco di’Flare, whom Mira eventually learned was the highest-ranking member of Gardiah Estate who didn’t share the name.
He lived in a cabin somewhere on the estate, straddling the line between importance and independence.
From what Mira gathered, he had met Lord Vern when the man was in college for animal husbandry, and they were fast friends, with Mr. di’Flare joining the team as a manager before quickly ascending to Vern’s right-hand man.
I can’t believe they’re the same age. Marco appeared much younger, with an affable demeanor and a natural charm that often had the maids laughing and the ranchers ready to do whatever he said.
Meanwhile, Lord Gardiah looks like he’s twenty years older than he is.
The man wasn’t even fifty, but had silver streaks in his hair and a hardened, weathered face that contrasted with his quality clothing and impeccable posture in the saddle.
The man was well-bred and learned, but hardly capable of all that was required.
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That was what his wife was for. Yet Jacelah was exactly the kind of person Mira avoided whenever she could. After all, she couldn’t stand fake niceties from women who exhibited the very core of the status quo.
Which was why it was so interesting that a woman like Sulim existed in their midst.
She was an outsider, through and through.
Although from a small, titled family, she was more commoner than noble.
She was educated, but hilariously down-to-earth.
The staff often went to her before Jacelah, which must have left Lady Gardiah feeling torn between natural authority and a keen sense of relief that her future replacement already had the respect of the help.
While Sulim was polite to a fault, especially to the party from Yahzen, nobody mistook her for Lady Gardiah, now or in the future.
And her dynamic with her husband? Fascinating.
They came across as an arranged marriage, where they tolerated each other enough, but with the tacit understanding that there was no romantic love there.
But unlike Sonall’s parents, who were the very definition of an arranged marriage, Sonall and Sulim often cracked inside jokes with one another—and more than once, Mira came upon them standing very close, not in passion, but in confidence.
They were never embarrassed upon being seen, further pushing Mira’s belief that they were close friends before anything else.
And from the way Sulim had explained it?
They had been friends on Qahrain before Sonall asked her to marry him.
But why? To give his friend a better life? To have at least said he chose his own wife?
Maybe it was the gossip in her. After all, she was bored.
When she wasn’t locked up in the room she shared with her mother, she was caught up in her mother’s priestly machinations that serviced the locals, both on Gardiah Estate and in town, which was a brisk two-hour walk away.
(Or forty minutes by carriage. Twenty by automobile.)
Often, Mira accompanied her mother to the town Temple for services and to volunteer out of a need for something to do, even though she herself was no longer a priestess.
But hanging around Gardiah Estate, which she sometimes chose to do instead, allowed her to watch Sulim come and go from her daily chores.
And the more Mira watched her from afar, occasionally coming up with something to talk to her about, the more she realized she quite fancied the newest member of the Gardiah family.
It was purely sexual, of course. Sulim was exactly her type, both physically and intellectually.
I even like that she’s human. Not because of her short lifespan, but because Mira could hardly see herself striking up a lifelong companionship with a woman of her own kind.
Julah were… complicated. Humans? Not so much. She liked that about them.
And she liked the way Sulim walked through the house, never minding her mother-in-law’s brusque criticisms of her appearance.
Which was strange. Sulim was very fetching, with a pronounced face and dark blond hair she kept cut above the ear.
She was also a close friend of Graella’s, based on how often the one was in the other’s room to talk of the wedding and whatever quip Sulim made that had Graella howling in laughter.
Often, Mira never had the chance to talk to Sulim because she was so busy.
Minding her chores, socializing with the other family members…
or disappearing entirely, probably to her hidey-hole in the woods.
That her husband helped refurbish for her as a wedding present. Wasn’t that nice of him?
I wonder if she’s happy with him, though…
As Mira had noted, there was no romantic intimacy between them.
Despite the quick kisses to the cheeks, the lingering hugs, and the pleasant chidings of a couple who knew each other well, Mira could not imagine them hurrying back to their room after dinner to indulge in what her mother would call heated moments.
Hell, the only reason Mira knew they slept together was because she had walked by their open bedroom door more than once and clearly saw the large, comfortable bed for herself.
The most intimate portrait of them hung in Jacelah’s salon, where she had smartly framed a wedding portrait of her son in a suit fit for a lord and Sulim in a slim, silky ivory dress and a lacy veil that obscured her face.
They sat together on a chaise lounge, their hands on each other’s knees.
Still, they looked more like brother and sister than the actual siblings in question.
Mira drove herself half-crazy with wonder, but she didn’t wonder why.
I want her. That’s all there is to it. But it wasn’t worth upending a happy marriage.