Chapter 14 – The Devil of Nandre #3
The skies opened up that afternoon in an icy, drenching downpour that effectively quenched the last of Duchess Andelin’s enthusiasm, and she lapsed into withdrawn silence, her head bent over her sewing.
Mionet could not even pretend to make conversation.
It was painful to see the sudden, wild hope in the duchess’s face at the sound of steps outside the door, followed by disappointment when Sir Justenin appeared with supper.
“Thank you,” she said, accepting the heavy hamper from him.
She was adamant that no one should approach His Grace’s food except herself, his knights, and the vulgar Wen.
There was more food inside than two ladies could have eaten in a week, stowed in earthenware containers and wrapped in thick blankets to keep it warm.
“Don’t worry yourself, my lady. They have camped out in far worse than this,” said Sir Justenin, as if this were any sort of consolation. Mionet gave him a flash of cutting gray eyes, but held her tongue .
“Emi, please set places for the duchess and myself,” she instructed, gathering up her sewing and setting the box aside. “Would you care to join us, Sir Justenin?”
“No, thank you,” he said wisely, and departed with a bow.
To be fair, this was no fault of Sir Justenin, nor even entirely the fault of the duke.
The signal from this morning might not have even been His Grace; there were two parties coming from the same direction.
And this was not like missing a dinner engagement.
The duke and his men were facing far greater hazards than Segoile market day traffic.
“The hardest part is waiting,” Mionet said as she nibbled at her own tasteless supper. “There are many things that might delay them. It might not even be something dangerous. A horse may throw a shoe. A wagon axle might break.”
Sometimes wagon axles broke twice in a week. Mionet closed her mouth firmly. There were an infinite number of excuses a man might offer when he was not where he promised he would be. But the Andelin Valley was a truly dangerous place.
The sight of the Meinhem refugees had shocked her as much as it had Duchess Andelin.
She had seen beggars in Segoile, but only from a distance and most often through the windows of a carriage.
Perhaps this was not a romance at all; maybe it was a morality play, or an epic from the Age of Heroes.
Knights and devils. Peril and self-sacrifice.
These things were quaint relics of a bygone age on the stages of Segoile, but here they were inescapable reality.
“But if they were close enough to signal, then the worst of the danger must be past,” Duchess Andelin said hopefully. “Even if they cannot come today.”
“I am sure that is so,” Mionet replied, jabbing her fork into a bit of roast pork and wishing the duchess would manage her face just a little.
There was a reason for the bored, bland society masks donned by the aristocrats of the capital.
When one lived in close quarters, constantly observed every moment of the day, it was both dangerous and rude to make a parade of one’s every emotion.
Night fell, and the genre transitioned to tragedy.
“They will come tomorrow, my lady,” Mionet told the duchess in the dressing room some hours later. Peri was putting the green gown and slippers away, and Emi was carefully removing the ribbons they had so artfully used to ornament the duchess’s hair, gown, and throat.
“I know.” The blank-faced doll was back again.
“But you should not count too heavily on such promises in future,” Mionet went on, brushing the curls from Duchess Andelin’s brown hair with sharp, angry jerks. “Men will say a great deal, but you will often find yourself hurt, if you set your heart upon it.”
And the duke had promised. Why did men never think before they said such things?
It was so easy, wasn’t it, to blithely say, I’ll be home in a month, with no thought at all for how their wife would feel when the month had passed and there was no sign of the delinquent.
Night after night, worrying and wondering, that cruelest curse upon women: to wait.
Mionet had seen this play dozens of times.
Sooner or later the husband would arrive, often clutching a bouquet of posies which would not undo any of the hurt he had caused.
When flowers failed to console, then there would be jewels.
And more apologies. And more lonely nights, and the stars forbid a lady should ever be ill-mannered enough to actually complain.
A cycle of escalating disappointment, culminating in the realization that it was better to have no expectations at all.
One’s wardrobe was a much more reliable source of satisfaction.
Many noblewomen drowned their unhappiness in society, or a string of lovers, and occasionally in a bottle.
But Mionet was not quite heartless enough to tell this to Duchess Andelin, who was unlikely to believe it in any case. It was a lesson that every woman had to learn for herself.
“Emi, please make another compress,” she said briskly. “Peri, fetch the cold cream. We’ll give your face a light scrub and tend to your skin tonight, my lady, so you will look all the lovelier tomorrow. There was a fragrant steam one of my ma—”
Distantly, there was a noise.
The doors of the dressing room and hallway were thick and muffling, but it grew louder as it approached, a rapid thudding of footsteps that were not the quick footsteps of Jaose or the staccato tread of Sim, and a man’s voice called.
“Ophele?”
The sight of Duchess Andelin in the mirror was like a flower bursting into bloom .
“Remin?!”
His Grace was coming quickly up the stairs and into the hallway, and Mionet turned just in time to see the white blur of the duchess in her chemise, racing out of the dressing room and flinging herself into the tall man’s arms, nearly sobbing with joy.
“Oh, Remin, Remin!”
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said as he caught her, lifting her off her feet altogether and burying his face in her hair. “Oh, wife, how I missed you…”
It was only polite to look away. Such an excess of emotion was unseemly. And a moment later, the door to the bedchamber banged shut and locked with a definitive click.
That was how a Segoile stage romance ended. Mionet pressed her lips together and went to clean up the dressing table.
* * *
“You’re all right? You’re really all right?” Ophele asked between kisses as Remin carried her across the room, pushing back against his chest to verify the lack of blood. She had been imagining all manner of horrors ever since nightfall.
“I will prove it.” Remin sat her on the bed and bent to give her a kiss so deep and searing that it burned every thought from her mind. Distantly, she was aware that he was disrobing, breaking the kiss just long enough to pull his shirt over his head.
“I didn’t…see,” she said against his lips, and gasped as he tore her chemise from hem to neck. “Remin!”
“I want you,” he breathed, dragging her back onto the mattress with a sinuous roll of his big body. His skin was like ice, his hair plastered to his head from the rain outside, but his tongue was warm when he bent his head to lick up her belly. Ophele shuddered.
“You’re so cold,” she said, pulling him to her, urging him above her. “We have to get you warm…”
It was hot inside her. She couldn’t tear her eyes from his as he pressed urgently against her, already hard, his hips rolling up to slide himself back and forth against the slim saddle between her legs, coaxing slippery desire from her.
Once, twice, and a third time, a teasing preparation, and she was looking straight into his black gaze when he pushed, caught, and slid inside her .
“I’m home,” he said hoarsely, and his mouth covered hers.
He was home. Ophele wrapped her arms around him, wrapped her legs around him, and held him to her.
It was all so familiar, his scent, the way he moved, she even knew the feel of him under her fingers, the roll of his muscles and the flat gouges and slices of scar tissue that patterned his body.
She knew him in the dark, she would have known him anywhere, even from just the sound of his deep voice as he gasped his pleasure.
With every sense, she drew him in and felt as if her world was whole again.
“Ahhh…haaa…” he panted and bent his head, crushing her mouth under his. “You’re taking me… so deep…”
“I missed you.” There were tears on her cheeks. She shook them away impatiently, her voice quavering between octaves as his hips smacked into hers. “Ohhhhh, harder, harder!”
This was a feast after a long famine, and Remin devoured her.
She felt his teeth, she felt his tongue, she felt the hungry grip of his hands as they rocked together, feeding something worse than hunger.
The rolling motion of his body was like a kiss between their skins.
Further he drove into her, straining into her depths, his long thighs stroking ceaselessly against hers.
His breath was hot now. It burned her throat as he panted, faster and faster, pounding her cries of pleasure from her until at last he filled her with that rushing white heat that made her mind haze, and her body sing with completion.
And then they lay together in a tangle of limbs, and Ophele laid her head on his chest to hear the deep, regular thumping of his heart.
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” she said, almost purring as his big hand slid lazily up and down her naked back.
Remin’s caresses made her feel as contented as a cat.
In the afterglow, she examined his body and found it whole, except for a massive purple bruise on his left forearm.
Appalled, she lifted it and turned it over to find a matching bruise on the other side.
If it hurt him, he gave no sign. “Oh, Remin. Was it…very bad?”
“It wasn’t easy.” He nuzzled the top of her head and gently withdrew his arm. “I will tell you about it tomorrow, wife. Did you keep yourself well?”