The last thing Rikka did while preparing for bed was
let down her hair. It neither tumbled nor cascaded, but dropped like weighted
silk to unfurl at her waist. She had just removed the last pin when she heard
crockery rattle behind her.
Osmo stood in the doorway with a tray in his hands.
“I’ve brought tea, my dear.”
Rikka smiled so rarely that folk remembered specific
occasions. Her twin brother could count on one hand how often she had done more
than scowl at him. Her six children fared little better, but for Osmo, she
smiled.
He set the tray on the table by the fire and raised
his bushy brows at her.
“May I?”
She sat and presented her back to him. After a moment,
she felt his hands in her hair, combing it through his fingers until it cloaked
her shoulders in dark honey splendour. Then he wove a plait from it, and
secured it with a ribbon pulled from the pocket of his robe. By the time he was
finished, she had relaxed so much that she was almost leaning against him.
His hands rested on her shoulders. “Tea?”
“I’ll pour.”
“Nonsense.” He held her in place, gently. “You’re
already seated.”
She stood up to look down at him. “Osmo, sit. I shall
pour.”
Osmo never relented. He obliged, this time by claiming
his customary chair. The ghost of his autumn cold rattled vaguely in his chest,
and Rikka wondered how long it would be until his winter cold manifested. She
was a fool to be afraid—no one ever died of a simple cold—but Osmo was prone to
them and fear had been Rikka’s most constant friend throughout her life.
“Honey?”
“I think not.”
Reassured, she passed him a cup of their mutual
favourite and poured one for herself. “How was your day?”
“The usual,” he replied, as usual. They did not speak
of his work except when it took him from home, and that wouldn’t happen for a
while now. Their middle son would accompany him on his next venture; Rikka had
protested at first, convinced that their eldest was better suited to apprentice
in his father’s field … and she had laughed when Osmo frankly observed that
their eldest was likelier to get himself killed in that field.
Occasions when Rikka laughed were even less frequent
than her smiles, yet Osmo could name more of them than everyone else combined.
She recounted, when he asked, the individual progress
of their collective brood, during which Osmo nodded and sipped his tea, and
bade her pause while he refilled their cups. Then he allayed each concern with
a mild, “She’s young,” or “He’ll outgrow it,” or “I was much the same at that
age.” Most amusing was a hapless, “Ye gods, he’s like your brother,” that
should have vexed her, but instead ignited a reluctant pride.
“And you, my love?” he inquired at last. “How is it
with my lioness?”
He never failed to reach the wounded part of her; the
fragile, vulnerable heart of her. His tenderness mystified her, but it had also
won the most elusive facet of what most folk considered a brittle and
domineering character.
She trusted him.
“You know how it is with me,” she said.
“So I do. Tell me something I don’t know.”
It was a game they played. Osmo had learned to see
what was on her mind, and to coax it from her when no one else cared to try.
She was consulted daily on practical matters but very little else; even the
children were more likely to confide in their father than in her, and while it
stung, she did not blame them for it. They were only following her example.
He waited patiently for her answer. When it came, she
directed it to the fireplace for fear of his face; his odd, owlish face with
its bulbous eyes and beaky nose. It was a comfortable face, familiar in a way
that defied her long ago wish for the envy of other girls. She had never lied
to Osmo, but she had not always told him the truth. Tonight, the time had come,
and she could not bear to watch while the weight of it struck. So she spoke to
the flames instead.
“I was thinking this morning how you were not the man
I would have wed …” the next words emerged in a frantic rush, “… but I am ever
so glad that I did.”
Osmo was silent for so long that she finally risked a
furtive glance and sat up straight at what she saw.
He was smiling. Round eyes and hooked nose aside, Osmo
had a lovely smile. Rikka warmed in spite of herself; had he wished to
retaliate and crush her, he would have met no resistance. But he smiled and
shook his head, his wispy hair floating like feathers above his ears, and gave
a little sigh that incited her to shame.
“Our marriage was arranged. Of course I was not the
man you wanted.”
She was about to protest that she had not wanted any
man, but that would have been a lie. She would have asked if he had wanted
another woman, but that would have been an insult. She was the woman, if not
the wife, Osmo had always wanted. Knowing so had made her own guilt more
burdensome over the years.
“Can you forgive me?”
“Can you forgive yourself?”
“I hoped you would say there is nothing to forgive.”
“There isn’t, in my eyes. Why is there in yours? Have
you been unfaithful to me?”
“Osmo!”
He chuckled and caught her hand to calm her. After a
token hesitation, she let him. His humour was as odd as his face; she often
missed the jest completely and she disliked being teased. He knew better, and
she let him see it in the stern set of her jaw.
“Forgive me,” he requested mildly.
She melted like a honey loll in the rain. “How can I
not?”
“Well then,” he said, setting aside his empty cup
while keeping hold of her hand, “shall we to bed?”
She rose with him, standing almost a head taller with
a good view of his shiny pink pate. They were a strange match, but an amiable
one. He had loved her from the start, and she …
The past made no matter.
She loved him now.
