Page 98 of Traitor Son

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’treallythought 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 thereall 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 downscrub 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 evenshedidn’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 takehoursto 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 windowsat 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.

She fancied that the way he wrote was aggressive, the quill slashing rapidly away. After a little while, the fingers of his left hand began to drum a soft accompaniment against the table. Ophele watched through her eyelashes as he read, paused, drummed, and then wrote, and eventually she found herself craning her neck and counting the beats of his fingers, wondering if there was a pattern.

“Are you well, wife?” he asked, without looking up.

“Yes,” she said, retiring at once behind her book. But Ophele had grown up with all of Aldeburke to wander and a vast library of books to read, and in a few minutes she was ready to throw the book off the side of the bed and kick her feet like a five year-old. She wanted up. She wantedout.It was hot. She was tired of being in bed. And the scritch-scratch-scritch-scratch of his quill was going to drive her crazy.

“Are you sure?” he asked, reaching for another page.

Setting her book in her lap, she looked at him, wondering if he really wanted to know. Was he just being polite? She hesitated, gathering her courage to lodge her first timid complaint.

“I’m bored.”

He glanced at her, one eyebrow lifting. “Bored?”

She nodded nervously. It was a child’s complaint and she wouldn’t blame him for telling her to go to sleep, or read another book, or anything else that boiled down tobe quiet.And if he had, it likely would have been the last complaint she ever uttered in his presence. But instead, he glared at her forbiddingly.

“Would you like to see what I’m working on?”

“Could I?”

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