Chapter 5 – An Imperfect Creation #7
This was fascinating. Ophele had never considered how her food came to the table, much less how that small miracle fit into the creation of a town.
For weeks she had been listening to the duke and his knights plan how they would build the town, from the walls to the herds to the drains, and it made her wonder who had built Aldeburke, who had planned it, how all that stone and glass and plaster had become a house.
These men had built everything here. The benches. The tables. The two stone hearths, blazing away at either end of the room. It was such a monumental undertaking, and she wanted to know all about it, every bit of it. She wanted to help, if she could. Even if it was only in a small way…
The sounds of their voices faded away as she drifted into the dream, and then into a doze, her head drooping over her plate.
“…wife home,” said a deep voice close by, and she lifted her head, blinking owlishly.
“Oh, I beg your pardon.” She looked around, trying to shake the fuzz out of her head. For some reason she thought she had fallen asleep on horseback again. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s time we left.” The duke caught her elbow and lifted her over the bench entirely, minding her long skirts as he set her back down. “Good night, lads. Go easy on the ale, I’ll make you work it off tomorrow.”
“Good night,” Ophele said over his shoulder. “We don’t have to go,” she added, looking up at the duke as he strode toward the doors of the cookhouse, opened to admit the cool night breeze.
“You were falling asleep in your seat, Princess.” He didn’t sound annoyed. Outside, he lifted her up into his arms again, his boots crunching down the gravel path to the lane. “Besides, the wine is flowing, and they’ll soon be in their cups. It’s no place for a lady.”
Would he take her to the cottage and then go back to the cookhouse himself?
Or would he stay? Heat washed through her, reddening her cheeks, and she was glad the darkness hid her face.
It hadn’t hurt at all, that night in Granholme.
She had liked it. He had been so tender, so passionate, but then the assassin had come, and ever since, he looked at her as if she were his enemy.
What if that was what he wanted, though?
Should she ask? Should she try to apologize for her father, as little as that would mean?
The duke was silent, carrying her up to his cottage.
Its front window glowed golden from the oil lamp she had forgotten to blow out, and it didn’t look so bad like that. It looked like a home.
“Stand still, I’ll unlace you.” Once inside, he set her down gently. “We’ll put this in storage tomorrow, and find another trunk for your things. If there’s something you need that you don’t have, tell me.”
“I will.” His hands moved over her back and she lowered her head, standing perfectly still.
She remembered how he had pushed his face into her hand like a huge dog, and that look in his black eyes, and…
why had he done that, if he hated her? How could she bear it if he touched her again tonight, and then pushed her away in the morning?
Silently, he removed her overdress, hanging it over the back of a chair.
His hands settled on her shoulders, such big, warm hands, his rough thumbs gliding over her skin to undo the fastenings of her kirtle.
It slid off her body in a whisper of silk, and he laid it with the overdress.
For a moment, she was sure she would feel his lips on the back of her neck, and even imagined she felt his breath, a tickling warmth against her skin.
“I’ll sleep on the floor.” He said into the silence, low. “Go to bed, Princess.”
“Oh. Oh, but…but no, it’s your bed,” she stammered, turning to look up at him. His expression was unreadable. “You’ll get cold, and…you don’t have to sleep on the floor.”
“No,” he said quietly. “It’s too soon for children.”
She had forgotten that. Of course. Of course, that was what she was for. That was why he had married her, to have children with the Emperor’s blood. In time he would touch her again, but only to get a child in her. This was what he wanted from her. This was all he wanted from her.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said through the tightness of her throat. “It’s your bed, too. I can sleep on the edge. I don’t take up much room at all, I’ve slept in very small spaces. You’ll get sick if you sleep on the floor.”
There was a peculiar look on his face.
“No. Go to bed,” he said, turning his back. “Don’t argue with me.”
And that was that. He couldn’t stand her enough to sleep beside her, but soon enough he would put a child in her.
Silently, she turned away to slip under the blankets.
The mattress was filled with lumpy wool, but it was soft, even if the bed was so big she felt like a single potato bumping around in a very large barrel.
She didn’t look at him as he laid down the same bedroll he’d been using for more than a month, but she heard the rushes rustling under him as he stretched out. There was barely enough room for him to lie down in the small room.
“If you wake up and hear something outside, don’t be afraid.
” His voice rumbled from the dark. The coals in the hearth had burned down, and there was only the faintest glimmer of starlight through the cracks in the shutters.
“It’ll be one of the lads. There’s always a guard on this house, watching every window and door. ”
“All right.”
Despair would have been easy. And for a time, she indulged it, and let the tears streak her cheeks in silence, well-practiced after many years of soundless weeping.
But Ophele’s mind was a busy place, and her life had never been her own.
No matter how limited her options, no matter how cramped her prison, she had never been able to stop seeking a way out.
A pattern she might exploit. A solution to the problem.
The Will Immanent said there was a purpose to everything, especially in this imperfect creation.
Purpose was the gift of imperfection. The divine world was perfect, flawlessly ordered, but in a perfect world there was no purpose, no reason to learn, to work, to grow.
There might be debts owed in an imperfect world, but they could be paid.
An imperfect world was a work in progress. An imperfect world could be changed.
She could change it, if she was brave.