Chapter 11 – Try #5
The thought of going to another place filled with strangers was almost as daunting as devils.
But Ophele thought about it. It was the same question Sir Miche had asked more than a month ago.
She would never go back to Aldeburke, though she missed the library, and Azelma, and the familiar sights that still held a touch of her mother’s spirit.
She never wanted to see the Hurrells again.
She knew nothing about the Duke of Ereguil, except that he had been a close ally of Remin’s old House and had protected him after the deaths of his parents.
And therefore, he was no friend of the Emperor.
Knowing her father, Duke Ereguil and his lady wife had likely suffered their own misfortunes.
The thought of a whole new set of people to whom she would have to apologize because her father had tried repeatedly to have them killed made her quail inside. What if they hated her for it, too?
And what of her own resolve, to atone for the crimes of her parents?
She still hadn’t done anything to make up for what the duke had suffered.
But maybe she was just making things worse by being here.
Maybe she hadn’t helped at all. They had already found someone to replace her on the wall.
And she was troubling the duke even now, he had barely left the cottage in days and there was so much work to be done…
“Prin—wife?” The duke prodded.
“I don’t know,” she said, subdued. “I need to think.”
“All right. As long as you like.” He was silent for a moment, and then said, “You can talk to me. I can see you’re thinking. I am not good at talking, but I will try.”
“I don’t want to trouble you.” It was a modest goal, but she hadn’t even managed that much.
“Trouble me,” he said firmly. “I mean it, Ophele. If I ignore you, pitch a fit. Like Wen does.”
“No,” she said, her eyes widening at the image, but a small smile escaped her.
“Then hit me. Right here.” He took her hand and slapped it lightly against his cheek. “I’ll even bend down so you can reach.”
“I couldn’t,” she protested, and she covered her mouth, her eyes widening. Did he really mean it? “I can’t hit you.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” he agreed. Her hand was still pressed to his cheek and she wanted to pull it away, but she was afraid he might be angry if she did. Would he really be nice to her now? Or would he turn and snap at her again? Her stomach knotted with anxiety.
“I am sorry,” he said again, softly. “No matter what you decide, I will take care of you from now on. But I need you to tell me when something’s wrong. I don’t know anything about what you need. I wasn’t trying to learn, before. I was…there are reasons,” he hedged. “But it’s no excuse.”
“You can’t trust me,” Ophele replied softly. “I know.”
“I didn’t think I could.”
The words hung there, an admission of possibility.
She didn’t know what to think. Looking at his strong, tanned hand, all she could see was the contrast with her own, pale and ragged as a wraith’s.
It was not a capable hand. She didn’t know how to do anything useful.
What would he say when he found out that she wasn’t any kind of princess at all?
She had never learned any of the aristocratic arts, how to manage a house and maneuver through society, how to host a banquet or a ball or any of the numerous events that would forge crucial connections for her husband.
She wasn’t even strong enough to be useful as unskilled labor. Was this all she had to offer? To be sent away to a safe place until it was time to bear his children?
“Are you done with your food?” he asked, interrupting her thoughts.
Silently, she extended the bowl to him. He didn’t smile. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him smile. But he looked into the bowl and looked at her, and there was a warmth in his black eyes that made her wonder what it might be like if things really were different.
“That’s better than yesterday,” he observed, and set it aside.
* * *
Remin Grimjaw was a stubborn man.
This should not have surprised her. It took incredible persistence to endure what he had endured and achieve what he had achieved.
But pleasant as it was to hear his apologies—real ones, with all the necessary components—Ophele hadn’t really thought anything would come of it.
He had no choice but to take care of her; for the first few days she got dizzy as soon as she stood up.
She had no maid. There was no one else to whom he could delegate the task.
But once she was out of danger, she was sure he would go back to ignoring her.
Three endless days later, she realized he had meant every word.
He didn’t know how to talk to her.
He had no idea what she needed.
And he was going to sit there and wait until she told him, no matter how long it took.
It was strange just to have him in the cottage.
His presence was so enormous, as if the space was too small to contain him, impossible to ignore.
Even after he had returned from dealing with the bandits, he was home so rarely that she had gotten used to having the space to herself.
Until the devils had come, she hadn’t even really minded; she had never had a place of her own before, where she would be left in peace.
But now he was there all the time. If she so much as twitched, he glanced over at her, ever vigilant for the least hint that she needed something.
Every new task was grounds for a lengthy interrogation about what was needful, what was lacking, and how it should be done properly.
Her last bath had been preceded by forty minutes of discussion about how it had been done in Celderline, from the bath oils to the lotions to the nail files, because now nothing would do but for the Duchess of Andelin to be tended as carefully as if every day was her wedding day.
He made a list. The Duke of Andelin sat down with quill and paper and jotted down scrub brush, nail file, hand lotion, hair oil, towels, hair silk—she didn’t know what the silk they had rubbed on her hair was called, but the duke extracted the information from her as if he were about to tie her down and start pulling fingernails—and a dozen other articles, half of which even she didn’t know how to use.
“But I don’t know what they did with them,” she had protested, imagining the luxury toiletries overflowing their small washstand, only for him to scribble an additional note on his list.
…instructions for use.
Was he going to bathe her? Was Remin Grimjaw going to manicure her fingernails? Confined to her bed under doctor’s orders, Ophele didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Other times, he came up with new subjects for interrogation all by himself.
In the midst of working through his stack of papers, he would suddenly look up and stare into the middle distance, as if he had just had a divine revelation concerning his wife’s shoes.
One morning he stood abruptly and went over to her small trunk under the window to rummage rapidly through the dresses there, scowling ferociously.
“These are all wool,” he said, glaring at the mystified Ophele. “We didn’t buy any other dresses?”
“There are the silk ones in the storehouse…” She had a dreadful suspicion where this was going. It would take hours to explain dresses to him.
“No wonder you got sick.” He slammed the trunk shut.
“The men were going down like tenpins until we started dressing them in cotton during the summer campaigns. We’ll send to Mistress Courcy and have her make you something suitable for summer.
Will a dozen dresses be enough?” His jaw set grimly as he took his seat at the table, dipped his quill in the ink pot, and issued the horrifying command: “Tell me what to write, wife.”
At first, she was happy to be able to sleep as late as she liked and re-read her favorite books.
But as the days dragged on, Ophele began to try her strength every time the duke was out of the cottage, frustrated by how quickly she tired.
Flopping back onto the bed, she stared up at the thatched roof, trying to figure out how it had been made.
She examined the underside of her bookshelves.
She peered through the open windows at the blue sky and watched clouds drift by.
And, for lack of any other occupation, she stealthily observed her husband.
The duke spent most of his days at the table by the hearth, working through an ever-increasing pile of documents, and Ophele peeked over the top of her book, watching him.
He was the most interesting thing in the cottage, even though he was mostly reading, writing, and frowning.
Even at rest, he frowned, his heavy black brows drawing together.
She had all but forgotten how handsome he was.
In the months since they had arrived at Tresingale, her view of him had contracted to include only the signifiers of his displeasure: lowered eyebrows, narrowed eyes, his mouth pressed into a thin line.
But now she was learning his other expressions, particularly his stubborn face, which he wore when he was having opinions about the quality of her bath.
His face was a series of interesting angles: the high, arrogant line of his cheeks, the exotic tilt of his eyes, and the square set of his jaw.
A thousand years of careful breeding was evident in that rugged, aristocratic face, marred only by the scar on his right cheek.
She was staring. Ophele ordered her attention back to her book, a compilation of poetry from the old masters that she had already read six times. The only sound in the whole world was the sound of the duke’s quill against paper.