Ophele had never imagined she might wish that time back.
“Do Ihaveto do this here?” Standing in the middle of the storehouse office that afternoon, she stopped in the middle of another wretched tongue-twister, scarlet to the ears and gripping her book in her hands. Reciting this nonsensein the middle of the busy office made her feel so dreadfully conspicuous, she wanted to jump out the window.
“Yes, my lady,” said Justenin, without so much as the flicker of an eyelash. “The atmosphere of this office is the nearest you might come to the conditions of a social event in the capital. If you can speak confidently here, you will do well enough at a banquet.”
“But we talk all the time at supper, and no one complains,” she said plaintively. It was the nearest she had come to attempting to argue her way out of a lesson, but even the occasional curious glances of the nearby secretaries made her feel like she couldn’t breathe.
“That is because we are taking great pains to attempt to hear you, Your Grace,” Justenin replied. “They will not exert themselves, in Segoile. They will nod and smile, and then ignore you.”
Ophele was silent.
“It’s that bad?” she asked reluctantly.
“Yes, my lady.” He met her eyes straight on. “It is.”
Well, she could not argue once she understood why she was doing this. But it didn’t make her feel less foolish when she was practicing alone in her bedchamber, looking at herself in the mirror as she read and seeing nothing but a squeaking little mouse.
“What under the stars are you doing, wife?” asked Remin from the door.
“Nothing,” she said automatically, and then reconsidered. All the cats were well out of their bags now, and she thought for once she might tell him the truth about her troubles. “Oratory,” she confessed, showing him her book. He must have stopped by the baths on his way home; he was scrubbed and cleanshaven. “Justenin said I must practice.”
“Reciting?” he asked, holding out a hand for her book and skimming the page. “Oh, I remember these. Theophilus Thistler, the thistle sifter, in sifting a sieve of unsifted thistles, thrust three thousand…”
He said the whole thing in a single breath without stumbling once. Witchcraft.
“You know these?” she asked indignantly. Really, it felt almost unfair that he was a giant hero knightandhe could do tongue twisters.
“Mmm-hmm. Most lordlings do them to practice their speaking, projecting and enunciating and so on. But for knights, we want to be heard loud and clear across a battlefield. It’s bad when soldiers mishear their orders,” he said, sitting down to take off his boots. “What’s the trouble, little owl?”
“I don’t know,” she said reluctantly. “Justenin says I need to practice being louder, but saying these things in front of someone else…”
“Tell me one.”
“Do drop in at the Dewdrop Inn…” The second he looked at her, she felt the heat flush her face. “…but d-don’t drop in during the dewdrop drought—”
Her voice wobbled, faded, and died, and Ophele bit her tongue, furious with herself. Why was this so hard? She had made a speech for Remin’s birthday in front of half the town, though admittedly there had been a quantity of honey mead to soften the edges. It was completely irrational. There was nothing to be afraid of, why couldn’t shestopit?
“Huber used to get nervous, when he had to talk in front of people,” Remin said, holding out a hand to draw her to him. “The old man told him to pretend everyone was naked.”
“No,” she said instantly.
“It’s not what you want to picture when you’re trying to talk a lot of soldiers into a charge,” he conceded, as Ophele’simagination was briefly arrested by this image. “Come here and read them with me, slower. Which one is it?”
“This one.” Ophele allowed him to pull her between his knees, his arm around her waist and his chin resting comfortably on her shoulder. “Do drop in at the Dewdrop Inn…”
It was better. Of course it was better, how could it not be? Remin’s voice rolled forth strong and steady, measuring a careful pace as they went from one absurd phrase to the next.
“A little louder, wife,” he said, with a squeeze. “Once upon a barren moor, there dwelt a bear and dwelt a boar…”
“Lesser leather never weathered wetter weather…”
That one was hard; she stumbled, and saw the flash of his teeth as he grinned and said it again, slowing the pace by half a beat.
“There was a young fisher named Fischer…”
It was like a game, trying to match him. Gradually, he turned her so she was facing him, and sometimes he paused to let her lead, alternating lines with her, funny rhyming lines, nonsensical ones, and a few limericks that were quite clever. His fingers slid lightly up her spine.
“Some shun sunshine…” His black eyes were very warm, and Ophele realized she was watching the motions of his mouth, forming those tricky syllables. Her eyes lifted to his as his head bent nearer, and his lips tickled hers. “Do you shun sunshine?”
