Ophele lifted her hand to cover his teasing lips.
“Your Grace, I amreciting,”she said, exactly as Wen would have done, and Remin burst out laughing. But she did let him kiss her, a naughty smile curving her lips.
“Pretend you’re reading with me, next time you recite for Juste,” he said, tugging her onto his knee. “That’s what Victorin did with Huber. They used to recite together as fast as they could go, to see who’d stumble first. It seemed to help.”
“It makes me feel like everyone’s going to turn and stare, when I’m reciting,” she admitted. “It’s a silly thing to be afraid of.”
His arms squeezed her.
“Everyone’s afraid of something.”
“Even you?” she asked, a little plaintively.
“Of course.” He turned her around to go to work on the laces of her gown. “I never much liked heights.”
“But you’retall.”
“What, so you think I should be used to it?” he asked, pushing her backward over his knee, and set about doing the things that would make them very late for supper.
It wasn’t the first time he had confessed to being afraid of something, and she knew it must be true, on an intellectual level. He was human, mortal, and fallible in all the ways a man might be fallible. But as a practical exercise, what could possibly scare him? Ophele had seen him unhappy, she had seen him angry, but her imagination could not conjure a Remin that experienced the sort of suffocating, red-faced fear she felt every time Justenin asked her to recite. It was an equation for which she lacked the necessary variables.
With the colder weather, her rides with Remin around the valley moved to the afternoons, and only if it was not too bitter. December brought their first dusting of snow and Ophele’s first riding gown, a heavy satin-lined wool the color of moss with rusty silk and white lace as accents. Topaz studded her neckline, and the approval in Remin’s eyes when she emerged from her dressing room was everything she had hoped.
“You like it?” she asked, revolving when he made a circling motion with his fingers. “It is in the new Andelin style.”
“It’s comfortable?” he asked, pleased. “It…fits you exceedingly well, wife.”
His gaze was lingering on her neckline, where the curve of her breasts peeked between panels of modest lace. Lady Verr had explained that such artful concealment neatly straddled the line between good taste and appealing to one’s husband.
“It’s comfortable, and so warm. It’s meant to be a riding gown,” she hinted. Ophele was dying to get out of the manor for a few hours.
In Aldeburke, there was rarely more than two or three inches of snow on the ground at a time, so it was something, to see all the fields and forest buried under the white stuff, and deeply enough that only the tallest grass could be seen.
“When will we see a real blizzard?” she asked as they rode together toward the market, which looked positively picturesque with the snow coating the scrolling black iron of the lampposts. Her breath puffed white and her cheeks stung with cold, but in her new gown and mink cloak, she felt warm and graceful and maybe even a little bit pretty.
“Any day now,” Remin replied, with a glance at the lowering gray sky. “Last year we were already buried by now, and we stayed that way ‘til March. If we’d arrived a week or two earlier, I would’ve had to carry you to the cottage.”
“I wish I could have seen it.” She gave Brambles a little prod with her heels as the road widened, to draw abreast with Remin. “I suppose once it does, there won’t be much wo—”
Underneath her, Brambles gave a sudden lurch as his hooves slipped, and just like that, the saddle vanished under her and Ophele was falling backward with an undignified squawk of surprise. The snow was not deep enough to provide any sort of cushion. She hit the cobblestones and her breath burst from her lungs in a gasp and she only vaguely heard the sudden clatter of surprised hooves and the thud as Remin dismounted.
“Ophele!”
“I’m all right,” she said automatically, or tried to say, because she was winded and wasn’tentirelysure whether this was true. She’d taken bad falls out of trees in Aldeburke and knocked the wind out of herself, so she knew this sickening, breathless feeling would pass. But Remin knew only that she had fallen, and skidded to the ground beside her, his big hands moving to her head. His face was absolutely white.
“Don’t move,” he said, yanking his gloves off. “Look at me, let me see your eyes. Did you hit your head?”
“Don’t—think so,” she gasped. Honestly, between her hair and hood, that had been fairly well cushioned. “I’m all right.”
“Just…stay still,” he instructed, and Ophele was shocked to see his hands were shaking as he inspected her, prodding gently at her head, her neck, and then down her sides. His black eyes were very wide. Obediently, she lay still. She needed to get her breath back anyway.
“I’m really, not hurt,” she managed, as her lungs gradually resumed normal operations. “Remin, I’m fine. I think my dress, and my cloak, helped. And we weren’t going that fast at all.”
“I should have gotten you a proper sidesaddle.” He sat down, scrubbing his hand over his jaw. His face was set in hard, forbidding lines, so rigid it seemed those sharp edges should crack. “Let me see you move your hands and feet, wife.”
Obligingly, she moved them. She agreed there was no pain in her head or neck or anywhere else, and was allowed to sit up. There was a minor scare when Remin found blood on the back of her ear where one of her hairpins had jabbed her, but it didn’t hurt and Ophele stood by herself while Remin went to fetch the horses, though he still insisted on carrying her upstairs when they got home, and ordered Sim off to fetch Genon at a run.
“I am fine,” Ophele protested again as he laid her on the bed, as carefully as if she were made of glass. All this fuss was beginning to be embarrassing. “I promise.”
