Chapter 4 – The Knights of the Brede #4
“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.
* * *
In the Daitian cosmogony, there was a demon of desire that seduced women with such sweet words, his love-talk lingered in their ears forever afterward, until they starved their hearts out with longing.
His Grace wasn’t much for talking, but he certainly looked like he could be a demon of desire.
Stretched out on the rug by the fire with his jerkin undone and his boots kicked partway under the bed, Ophele couldn’t understand what someone like him could possibly want with someone like her.
He was so big, so male, so serious and forbidding.
Husband. In what mad world was Remin Grimjaw nibbling on her fingertips? And why did she like it?
“Come here,” he said, pulling her to him to torment her some more. She sprawled over his chest as he kissed her, his hand framing her face so the rough pads of his fingers brushed her cheek, curling back into her hair as if he were learning the shape of her bones.
Ophele still felt shy when he kissed her, uncertain what she should do, how she should respond.
It wasn’t at all what she had imagined it would be, neither the chaste kisses from the romances she read or the fearful and repellant act she had imagined in a loveless marriage.
He teased her with the slow motions of his mouth, drawing her in like a whirlpool, slow and dizzy and sucking her under before she knew where she was.
He bit her lips. One hand moved stealthily over her body to cup her breast and when she gasped, he stroked his tongue into her mouth, a diversionary tactic to precipitate an invasion.
This was not chaste. It didn’t feel loveless.
But he didn’t love her.
“I wonder if you’ll ever tell me what’s going on behind those eyes,” he said against her lips, making her blink in incomprehension, and then he crushed her mouth under his own, his big hand gripping the back of her neck to eliminate all hope of escape.
He kissed her as if he were drinking her down, the muscles of his neck and jaw working as his tongue plundered her.
There were sounds to the kiss, liquid and hungry as the sea, the sound of his heavy breathing like the roaring of waves.
He sat up. Somehow she was in his lap with her arms around his thick neck, feeling his hands sliding over her body from her shoulders to her thighs, eager caresses that made her feel as if she was melting.
When he lifted his head, he looked so handsome he almost didn’t seem real, and she thoughtlessly lifted a hand to touch his broad cheek, her thumb brushing the swooping scar over his cheekbone before she realized what she was doing.
She jerked her hand back.
“You can…you can touch me,” he said, low. “Ophele…”
He closed his eyes at her tentative caress.
The corners of his eyes tilted upward; she hadn’t noticed that before, an almost exotic curve at their outer edge.
After everything they had been through over the past few days, it wasn’t quite so embarrassing to touch him, to feel the stubble on his jaw and the line of his straight nose, the bristle of his thick black brows.
Like a huge dog, he pushed his face into her palm and made her giggle.