Page 30 of Stardust Child

“Will you go to the bathhouse later?” she asked, all solemn eyes. “Hot baths used to help when my legs hurt.”

“When did your legs hurt?”

“When I was helping at the wall. I got used to it,” she added stoutly. This was probably an exaggeration at best. He looked down at her, softening.

“All right,” he agreed. “We’ll both go to the baths tonight.”

It was surprisingly pleasant to be fussed over. No one had fussed over him since his mother had died. Leaning forward with his elbows loose over his knees, he sighed as she gently washed his back, a new kind of intimacy. It had never much bothered him to be naked around her; his life hadn’t left him the luxury to worry about things like modesty, and she was his wife and had the right to see him naked if anyone did. But it made him happy that it didn’t embarrass her.

“No,” he repeated as she fussed some more, closing his eyes as her fingers scrubbed his wet hair. “It doesn’t hurt at all.”

* * *

Ophele woke the next morning to the soft sound of rain.

It was a cool and misty dawn, a preview of the coming autumn, and she nestled drowsily into Remin’s warmth, surprised that for once she had awakened before him. It was an important day, the day she would meet her hallows, and she wondered what she would wear, and if she should do something more with her hair. It was cool enough that she thought Remin wouldn’t grumble if she wore one of her wool gowns.

“It’s raining,” he rumbled sleepily against the top of her head, as if he sensed by some animal instinct that she was awake.

“Mmm-hmm,” she murmured, burrowing contentedly into him. The sound of rain made her want to stay in bed and doze all day.

It was raining hard enough that Remin decided to skip their morning ride and went out only to retrieve breakfast and the usual stack of papers, arriving with both just as Ophele was pulling the kettle off the fire. They had to be careful with food and drink in the cottage; the leastcrumb would attract mice, which Remin warned would attract snakes, and Ophele did not like to think of either scampering about the place where she slept.

But it was a nice change to have their breakfast at the table with steaming cups of fragrant tea, and the sounds of the rain muffled the noise of traffic on the road outside, the clatter of horses and wagons and the calls of men on their way to work.

Usually, the correspondence was organized first by importance and secondly by how interesting Sir Edemir’s secretaries thought it would be to Remin, and he was only a few pages down when he grunted and handed a letter to Ophele.

“The old man’s found you a lady,” he said, tearing into his seventh sausage roll. He had been eating like he was filling in a pit since supper the night before. “Fourth paragraph.”

Duke and Duchess Ereguil had taken charge of hiring Remin’s household staff, and there was already a valet on the way, along with several house maids, footmen, and a boot boy, which Sousten Didion declared was of paramount importance. Though it would be some time before the final finishes of the floors, walls, and windows were completed, the idea of a lot of rough men tracking mud into the house of the Duke of Andelin had provoked lengthy soliloquies about the proper maintenance of a ducal house.

But a lady-in-waiting was quite a different animal than these other servants. Ophele skimmed the relevant passage.

Mionet Verr, a twenty-seven year-old noblewoman from Perche,wrote Duke Ereguil.A lady of some accomplishment, apparently. Duchess Ereguil vouches for her skill and says she is a fine companion. I can assure you that her background is above reproach. Given the season, I have taken the liberty of sending her ahead, so she might arrive before the first snow. If she doesn’t suit the duchess, she might do for Genon, as she has some knowledge of healing…

“Lady Verr,” Ophele said, trying out the name. The thought of being waited on by a lady was oppressive.

“If you don’t like her, you don’t have to keep her,” Remin said, as if he had read the trouble in her face. “All the servants are on limited contracts for the first year. They’ll be taken care of, if it doesn’t work out. But you need ladies, wife. You’re the third woman in the Empire, after the Empress and the Crown Princess.”

“I know.” She was the bastard princess. Ophele bent her head to painstakingly write a note thanking Duke and Duchess Ereguil for their efforts on her behalf, shy and stilted sentences that revealed at the very least she was not a practiced correspondent. She would not reject anyone out of hand, especially someone who was already making the long journey to the valley, but the Lady Verr of her imagination bore a strong resemblance to Lady Hurrell, and it was making butterflies flutter in her belly. A lady was not the same as a maid. A lady would know her courtesies. A lady would realize exactly how much Ophele didn’t know.

The thought made her hands feel cold, and her quill stuttered to a stop. How long did she have until the lady arrived? Why hadn’t she just asked Sir Edemir for all the books she wanted weeks ago? Months ago. Would it really have been so bad? She could have suffered a little suspicion if the alternative was immediate confirmation of her many deficiencies.

“It’s so many new people,” she said, leading with the deficiency Remin already knew about. It was even true; the thought of meeting and commanding so many strangers made her mouth go dry. “The servants, and now Lady Verr, and the…my hallows. There were books about the early empire in Aldeburke, they had whole chapters about hallows. I wish I had read more of them.”

“I meant to talk to you about that,” Remin said, his quill scratching away at his own paper. He was surprisingly good at multitasking. “If you want to let Lord Hurrell continue administering Aldeburke, it’s your choice, but you should be collecting income from it. Edemir looked into it and there’s a walnut plantation and sawmill, both of which are profitable. Darri is leaving soon. I can have him look in on it and send you anything you’d like.”

“The library,” she said mournfully, a little joke to conceal her real troubles. But Remin took it completely seriously.

“I already told Sousten to build that next,” he said absently. “I’ll have Darri bring some men with him to pack up the books at Aldeburke. You can heap them in our bedroom until the library’s done, I don’t care as long as there’s room for the bed.”

He had already ordered one of those, too, a vengefully massive creation that could have slept ten Remin Grimjaws and withstood acavalry charge. Ophele stared. Transporting the entire library to Tresingale? It was a lunatic idea, and while she knew the Hurrells wouldn’t care about the books themselves, Lady Hurrell would furiously oppose allowing Ophele to remove so much as a handkerchief from the estate. Who knew what she might do in retaliation?

But she had Remin now, Ophele thought, looking sidelong at the fearsome specimen beside her. Nothing in the world could hurt her if he was there.

And it wasbooks.

“It would be so much work…” She wavered.

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