Chapter 3 – A Lamb’s Tale #7
“I guess,” said Legeriot, into a mutinous silence.
“And then one day I’ll watch you fight like Sir Leonin and Mr. Gosse did yesterday,” she added encouragingly. “You’ll have to work hard if you want to be as good as they are. ”
The boys exchanged glances.
“Does that mean we’ll have to fight His Grace, too?” asked Gavrel uneasily, and their collective dismay at the prospect made Ophele bite her lip to keep from laughing.
“Why don’t you work up to that,” she suggested, and set them back to their lessons.
* * *
Thoughts of lambs and wolves kept Remin up late that night.
When all was said and done, he was a practical man.
Though some took their oaths of marriage lightly, he was not among them.
His marriage to Ophele was an irrevocable fact, an oath he would keep beyond death.
It could not be undone. The fact that he had come to love her was a blessing and a curse; that she loved him back was nothing less than a miracle. He wouldn’t undo it even if he could.
But it was also a fact that he had forced Ophele to marry him. And then nearly repeated the error with her hallows, without ever realizing what he had done.
Political marriages were far more common than love matches, but Remin knew his own had been highly irregular.
Usually, they would have had ample time to get to know each other, often from childhood.
They would at least have had a chance to correspond.
It was true that Remin had extracted a promise from the Emperor that made the endless negotiations of a political marriage unnecessary, but the Emperor had hidden Ophele until the last possible moment, then offered her up without the slightest interest in what became of her.
The Hurrells had only been interested in manipulating her.
And threatening her, Remin recalled, with a flash of anger.
He hadn’t forgotten that Lady Hurrell had tried to make Ophele frightened of him.
Yes, Ophele had been a lamb, of the sacrificial variety.
No one had tried to protect her, including her new husband.
Remin was honest enough to admit that when he married her, protecting her had not even entered his mind, except in the strictest accordance with his marital oaths.
He had been every bit the wolf when he snapped her up.
“You’re still awake?” Ophele murmured sleepily, as if she could feel the churning of his thoughts. It was well after midnight .
“Just thinking,” he said, low, and pressed his lips to her forehead. It felt so natural now to sleep with her soft warmth in his arms, he couldn’t imagine sleeping any other way.
“…talk about it?” Her eyes were still very much closed.
“I would just say I’m sorry again.” His arms tightened around her.
“Love you,” she mumbled, a reassurance so familiar she could literally say it in her sleep. Ophele was incapable of holding a grudge.
Maybe he should talk to Miche. He wasn’t sure what to do, or if he should do anything at all.
Destroying their happiness with his guilt seemed foolish, but it also didn’t seem right to just accept that he had benefited so richly from wronging her.
Even after he married her, there had been a few precious months when the valley was closed and filled with people he trusted, when she might have enjoyed real freedom.
And he had squandered it because he was afraid of her.
He had always hated the thought that he had taken her from one prison to another, and now he had just put guards on her.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked her the next day as he lifted her into the saddle. It was a beautiful clear morning, with lingering coolness from yesterday’s rain. “We’re not due anywhere in particular.”
“Outside the wall?” she asked eagerly.
“If that’s what you want.” He clicked his tongue to urge his horse along, wrapping his arm around her waist. It was cool enough that she was wearing another of her wool gowns, this one pale blue with pink ribbons, fresh as a periwinkle.
“Abner.” Ophele settled into the crook of his shoulder and looked up at him expectantly. The black stallion’s ears flattened.
“That sounds like a donkey’s name.” Remin did not need to ask. Ever since Ophele learned that he hadn’t named his horse, she had been attempting to remedy the oversight.
“Stormcloud.”
He couldn’t imagine saying that out loud.
“I don’t know,” he said dubiously.
“Sooty?”
“No,” he said, suppressing a smile.
She chewed her lip. “Nightshade?”
“That’s a good one,” he said, impressed. “It sounds like a mare’s name, though. ”
“How is that a mare’s name? Henbane,” she suggested vengefully, and gripped his arm as he gave her a deliberate bounce.
“He’s a warhorse, wife, spare his dignity.”
“Paprika.”
This was so unexpected that he nearly laughed aloud, especially with the naughty expression she gave him. But alert as always for watching eyes, Remin throttled it.
“No,” he said, his black eyes glinting with humor, and endured a series of increasingly bizarre suggestions as they rode out the north gate.
The fact that she so often asked to go riding outside the walls seemed to echo his own feelings.
It felt freer there, as if adventure waited just beyond the horizon, and he wanted nothing more than to let her gambol like a kitten, and explore to her heart’s content.
“We’ll start harvesting next week,” he said, looking out at the golden fields rolling northward, rippling in the morning breeze. “It’ll be rough on Wen’s boys; they’re going to be hand-milling the wheat all winter.”
“Are the winters really so terrible?” she asked. “Everyone keeps talking about the snow.”
“You never had snow in Aldeburke?”
“Not much. I remember once it snowed enough to cover the grass, and Tam showed me how to make a snowman. A very small one,” she added.
“You’ll have enough for an army of snowmen here,” he replied. “The clouds hit the mountains and then stay for days. I hope that tailor from Abory gets here before the cold.”
“There’s a tailor coming?”
“I thought I told you,” he said, surprised. “A man named Tiffen.”
The man was supposed to be practical and creative, though at this point Remin was mostly concerned about keeping the Duchess of Andelin from freezing to death this winter.
“Oh, the one Lady Belleme recommended?” She brightened. “I liked what he said, about how the first test of a lady’s clothing should be whether the lady can move in it.”
The road formed the outer perimeter of Tresingale, a pleasant ride on the edge of the forest to the northeast, with glimpses of loggers shouting at each other as they cleared the land before the palisade.
The forest curved away by itself on the east side of time, baring gentle green slopes perfect for grazing.
It was there that they found Juste, dressed in a simple jerkin and breeches and looking very much like any other herdsman.
“Well enough, my lord,” he said when Remin inquired after the sheep. “Though there’s a break in the pasture wall somewhere, we keep finding sheep amongst the goats. Your rams are starting fights.”
“We could go look for it,” Ophele offered, looking up at Remin. “Couldn’t we?”
Looking into those golden eyes, glowing with the gentle light of morning, Remin couldn’t think of anything he’d like more.
The eastern hills were beautiful. Vivid green from frequent rain, the grass was cropped to a smooth carpet by grazing herd beasts and solitary trees crowned the hilltops.
Though Remin knew his usual coterie of guards was nearby, there was still the tempting illusion that they were alone.
Sometimes it was as if Ophele’s touch lingered on his skin, and it was easy to imagine taking her to one of those solitary trees so she could touch him again, and he could watch leaf shadows dance over her skin.
“I promised Elodie she could start attending me tomorrow,” she said as they walked together. They had left Remin’s horse back at the herder’s croft, glaring at the herdsmen. “She came to the cookhouse to ask while I was having lessons. Though I’m still not sure what to do with a pagegirl, exactly.”
“My mother had one that carried her embroidery box for her,” Remin remembered. “She would have been ten or eleven, I think. Whenever she was sitting down, my mother was embroidering.”
“I think my mother did too, but I don’t remember it much,” Ophele replied. “She liked to dance with me and read together. She always said you can never be too lonely if you have books.”