Page 100 of Bound

This was a structure. With a roof and a floor, and she had no idea what she needed with such a space. It was excessive to the extreme, and she told him so with greater frequency every time she took him a meal. Not inside. Not when a blanket had migrated out beneath the tree for them to sit upon and look at this... this porch, he was concocting.

“You are not building yourself a room are you?” she asked one afternoon, full of suspicion and nervous dread that she’d finally uncovered his true motivation.

He’d laughed at her, the sound so abrupt and good-humoured that it was easier to believe his adamant denials. “I’m waiting,” he added, a small smile at his mouth even as hers twisted and she grew uncomfortable. It was one thing to enjoy him being about. It was another entirely to allow herself to imagine him here permanently.

It would feel crowded. Intrusive. She’d felt both, after all, in her home and with her person and...

A cad and a brute had been in her home.

Not a mate.

The reminder was quicker in coming than it had been before. It didn’t put her at ease, didn’t allow her insides to stop twisting about themselves, but she could breathe. Didn’t cry. Which was something.

He was waiting.

For her to invite him in. To stay. For this to be his home. For her room to be shared.

He’d be waiting a very long time if the thought even now could leave her so flustered, made her want to hide away in the stable-loft. Until there were only animals to think about, gardens and lozenges and nothing about men and relations.

There was a new dread that filled her. Each morning he came, his days eking into the afternoons. She did not know how to explain him to her father when next he came. She lacked the words, and her emotions were too tangled to say anything properly.

And she thought of Firen. Of the last time she’d introduced him. How wretched that whole thing had become. The last market had been cancelled by a span of bad weather, Braum’s project covered by tarps that he’d meticulously tied down.

Then promptly untied again, worried he’d locked her in the house with no way to tend her chores.

She’d a back door, she reminded him. The access to the privy and the breezeway in between.

He’d grumbled something, then went back to tying on the waxed fabrics, her porch dry despite the fierce winds and ample rain.

It had cancelled her arrangement with her father as well. To see his home, if only from the outside. Not cancelled. Postponed.

She hadn’t seen Braum during the storm. Hadn’t expected to, as he couldn’t work so there was pretence for his visits. He couldn’t barter for her time and attention.

It should have been a relief, and perhaps it was on the first day. When she’d finished with Temperance and Calliope in the stable, stripped out of her soaked clothes and tucked in with Merryweather for a quiet, lazy day with no one to see and judge if her tasks went undone until the morrow.

The next day, she’d almost missed him.

The third, she was antsy and cross, unsettled in her own skin in ways that were unfamiliar.

So she cleaned. From top to bottom, as Merryweather looked on with one eye open, lounging in the bed rather than making the drizzly trek to the stable for her usual afternoon.

By the fourth day, the rains had gone. And she felt a stirring anticipation as she glanced out the window. Surely it was too wet to work still, the ground too soggy. He wouldn’t come, not for a few days more.

Except he had.

Not for long. Just to check on things, he said, untying tarps and spending an absurdly long time looking over each board and plank.

She’d put the kettle before she’d even been aware of her own intention. Asked him in and watched him smile at her as he settled at her table.

They hadn’t talked of anything serious. She hadn’t broached the subject of her father; he didn’t pester about mates.

It was quiet, and peaceful, and felt...

Nice.

Then it was work again. While she worried and fretted in between bouts of enjoying it all too much. The newness of the extension, the slow, yet steady progress.

That wasn’t a room. But was the size of one when she balanced on the frame, Braum staring at her with full intention of catching her if she wobbled on the board. She might call her wings useless, but they were more than capable of holding her balance on just such an occasion.