Chapter 14 – Enduring Happiness #6
As the day heated up and he began to sweat, his back stung like fury, and halfway around the house he slid his shirt off and hung it over a handy shrub, shrugging his broad shoulders.
Between his size and his scars, he was used to being stared at, so he thought nothing of it when the men nearby kept giving him sidelong glances. Particularly at his back.
“My lord.” Juste leaned over to murmur while Remin was holding the latest section of the frame in position. “Did you run into a cat yesterday? It appears one might have been at you. Perhaps you should put your shirt back on.”
“No,” Remin replied, mystified.
“Perhaps you were tangling with a cat last night,” Juste said meaningfully. Remin blinked. His eyes automatically sought out the cat in question. Or rather, the owl.
The owl would never stand up under questioning. Ophele was staring at them in mortified horror, peering through her fingers and scarlet to the ears, shaking her head slowly. The guilt couldn’t have been more clear if she’d been wearing a Daitian punishment hat.
“Thank you,” Remin told Juste with great dignity, and went to retrieve his shirt.
So much for being discreet.
The rest of the framing was done by midafternoon, and Remin accepted a dipper of water and a small loaf of bread and cheese from Wen’s wagon and then went to go see how Ophele was faring.
It had been some time since he replaced his jerkin, but she moved to sit with him out of sight of the builders without meeting his eyes.
Silently, he broke his loaf of bread in half and extended it to her.
Tearing off a bite of his own, he waited.
“Everyone saw it,” she finally whispered, clutching her bread. “Remin, your whole back, it looks like you lost a fight with a bobcat.”
“It itches,” he agreed, twitching his shoulders as if the scratches bothered him. Honestly, he hadn’t known there was anything there. He had to fight to keep another foolish smile from escaping. “You scratched the devil out of me, wife. I don’t know how I can bear the shame.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose, why didn’t you—” she began, and then she finally looked up at him and stopped short. A giggle escaped, and she covered her mouth and looked away. “You’re horrible.”
“We’re married,” he told her, and since they were safely out of sight, he lifted her onto his knee and kissed her soundly to prove it. “Everyone already knows. Miche is always quoting that one philosopher, what’s his name. The hedonist.”
“Thiolas Laval.”
“The greatest blessing under heaven is a lusty wife. That one,” Remin agreed, and she burst out laughing.
“That is not what he said,” she said reprovingly, but settled against him comfortably to eat, her toes dangling above the grass.
Sheltered by the ancient oak, they watched the house coming together like a vast wooden puzzle.
The builders bawled orders, hammering and pegging, finishing the toe holds and driving huge wooden dowels into place to pin the massive timber frames together.
The wood would be protected by a facade of stone when it was done, and those timbers might stand forever, if the builders did their work well.
“That’s really going to be our house,” she said, watching with fascination. “It’s so big. I don’t know what we’ll put in it.”
“Books?” he offered, to see her smile, and laid a big hand on her flat belly. “And babes, in time.”
“I will,” she said firmly, placing her hand on his with the same air of resolve she had given the house. “I asked Mr. Hengest and he said I shouldn’t have any trouble, as long as I eat well and—”
“No,” he interrupted. “Not the noble children of House Andelin, scions of Ospret Agnephus. Our children. Yours and mine. I want children with you.”
“I—what—why?” she stammered, searching his face, and then looked quickly away, as if she had realized how much she had revealed with that question.
Remin looked at her steadily. He was not a stupid man.
After almost seven months of marriage, he had at least learned not to attempt a frontal assault on this shy, wary opponent. It would only make her retreat.
“It seems I have grown greedy,” he said instead, toying with her slender fingers and allowing her to avoid his eyes.
“The more I have, the more I want. I defeated Valleth, and won the war. I am made duke again, which was my birthright. I have the Andelin Valley for my duchy, which they call the jewel of the Empire. And I have married the daughter of the Emperor, so that my heirs will be protected by his sacred blood for all time. I thought that would be enough. It’s the foundation for a dynasty. ”
She was listening, watching his fingers caress her.
“But it wasn’t.” He pressed his lips to the back of her hand. “I needed my wife to love me. I want children with her, and no other. And I will love them better, because they are like their mother.”
As so often happened, words failed her. Ophele’s lips trembled and then firmed, her eyelashes veiling her splendid eyes, hiding all those thoughts.
How much did she think that she never said?
But he thought he understood her a little better now, and his hand drifted over her back, a caress to make the silence comfortable.
Really, they had only begun to know each other.
“I will be a good lady to you,” she said finally. “And to your people. I will learn.”
“We will both learn,” Remin agreed, and sealed it with a kiss.
There was time. This was only the beginning.
Before him spread the wide valley, the distant villages whose fate he still did not know, and the devils that lurked in the shadows, waiting for nightfall.
His own house was little more than a foundation and timber frame, but in time, it would shelter them all from wind and rain.
In time, he would make it a home, and a garden for all his people.
In time, it would hold the new family he would make with Ophele of Aldeburke, the woman that he loved.
In time, it would be a beauty and wonder.