He wondered what else he could do to put her at ease. For the first time in his life, Alexander Wulfbane wished he were half as skilled in wooing a woman as he was in swordplay.
“Who taught you to speak our tongue?” he asked.
Praise might help. Yrenna always warmed to compliments, even if it was just about a new hairstyle or a particularly good plum tart. “You speak it beautifully.”
She ducked her head. “My lord is too generous. Once the betrothal was arranged, my father provided a language tutor. I had a month to learn rudimentary Tremesi and practiced further on the voyage.” She paused. “With your permission, I would like to keep studying at Parandor.”
His lips twitched. “You need no permission, but you have it anyway, along with my admiration.”
He wasn’t a bookish man himself. He preferred sword drills to sonnets, a good hunt over a library shelf. But he appreciated a sharp mind and the thirst for knowledge. Perhaps he could commission a proper library for her—a real one, filled with leather-bound tomes and rare texts from across the Nine Kingdoms. He could already imagine her sitting near the hearth in the women’s solar, a blanket draped over her knees, fingers moving between pages as she read in peace.
Maybe that, too, would earn him a little of her trust.
“You speak Tremesi better than most emissaries I know. It’s not a small feat.”
If anything, her head dipped lower. “The emperor said I have a penchant for books, but not much else.”
His fingers clenched around the reins. He wanted to say something to undo those words, to offer her the praise her father had withheld. Even his own father, despite his sins, had doted on Yrenna. Proud of every little thing she did as a small child.
But the moment passed. When she didn’t speak again, he didn’t press her.
It astonished him how the same woman who’d taken command last night sat before him now, silent and unsure. If he hadn’t seen her eyes—those dark, lucid eyes flashing with guarded brilliance—he might’ve thought a forest spirit had taken her place.
On their way to the lake, she’d confessed her leg ached. Her openness, too, pleased him, though the injury worried him. Shemight limp on their wedding day, but even if she did, he’d walk her up the temple steps himself.
Hell, he’d carry her if it came to that.
A dance during the feast afterward might be out of the question, though it hardly mattered. He’d sit beside her through it and hold her hand if she let him. When she recovered, they could throw another fete just for the joy of it.
The thought made him nearly groan aloud.
Fete? Dancing? Hand-holding?
By Solthar’s grace, when was the last time he’d even invited his neighbours to his hall? They’d all turned their backs on his family after his father’s disgrace, ignored his late mother’s letters, refused to visit. Treated House Wulfbane like a leper in court.
And now here he was—planning a celebration, imagining how fine his bride would look beside him, how their union might silence every cruel whisper.
She was quiet for a long time. He was about to say something, anything, to break the silence when her voice came softly.
“My lord,” she murmured. “May I ask a question?”
“Anything.”
She hesitated, just long enough that he sensed her weighing the words. “Do you think . . . I will be welcomed in Parandor?”
He wasn’t expecting that. For all her grace and composure, a thread of uncertainty wove through her voice now. Tentative, almost afraid.
Leaning down, he whispered in her ear, “You are my bride. My household will honour that. Anyone who fails to treat you with respect will answer to me.”
Her fingers flexed slightly against the saddle, but she said nothing.
“Parandor is not a palace,” he continued. “It is not filled with gold or polished marble. It is a fortress of dark wood and older ways, but what we lack in grandeur, we make up for in loyalty.”
She turned her head just enough that he could see a sliver of her profile through the veil—just the curve of her right cheek, the outline of her lips.
“I don’t need gold or grandeur,” she said. “Only a place to breathe.”
It was a simple confession, but it struck him with the force of a revelation.A place to breathe.The words implied a lifetime of air that was thin, rationed, or laced with poison. What kind of a gilded cage had she lived in, that breathing was a luxury she longed for? His chest squeezed with a fierce, protective urge to tear down any wall that had ever stifled her.