Chapter 6: Your Terms, Wife

On my sixth night at Harrowgate I could not sleep, because the prince's postscript had sat on my chest for five days.

Lady Garrow especially.

Thirty days to the wedding, less the six we had spent here, and a chapel full of Wardens where he meant to look at me.

At midnight I gave up, took a candle down to the kitchen for warm milk, and found my husband bleeding on the table.

He sat on the scrubbed board with his coat off and his shirt sleeve torn to the elbow.

A long cut ran down the inside of his forearm.

"Don't scream," Cade said.

"I never scream." I set my candle down. "What did this?"

"A poacher's trap on the north ridge. The sergeant wanted to fetch the surgeon, and I told him to let the man sleep."

"You told him to let the surgeon sleep, and you walked in here to bleed on the bread table."

"It's a good table."

"The prince wants us in his chapel, and you are out walking into traps."

"The prince can wait until I'm sewn."

I looked at the cut.

It was deep, and clean, and dirty at the edges.

"Sit still," I said. "I'm going to sew it."

"You?"

"I did it for a prince."

He went quiet.

I fetched hot water from the hearth, a clean cloth and the spirits the cook used for pickling, and I washed his arm.

He did not flinch when the spirits went in.

He watched my hands.

I took a needle from my sewing basket and threaded it with the only silk I had left, which was green.

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