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“Well,” Aimee responded, feeling nettled. “You certainly could not get away from me fast enough this morning!”

“Not true,” he contradicted her flatly.

“It certainly seemed that way!”

“I was in a bad mood,” he said pulling his tunic over his head. “Because I did not want to climb out of bed with you. The feeling was an unaccustomed one, living as I always have for the battlefield. I was not quite sure how to deal with it. But now I know.” While Aimee reeled from this revelation, he flung his tunic on the floor and started unlacing his chausses.

“Why are you undressing in my room?” Aimee asked with a sudden frown.

“This is no longer your room,” he answered coolly, glancing around it like he had never really seen it before. “It is our dressing room.”

“D-dressing room?” Aimee stammered in confusion. She found she, too, was looking about the room like a simpleton. She had better snap out of this. “Then where, pray, is my bedchamber to be?” she asked, in an attempt to rally.

“You no longer require one,” he stated calmly. “As you, Aimee Bartree, belong with me in mine.”

She stared at him a moment, unable to draw breath. “Well, but Lady Wycliffe said that married nobles do not share bedchambers,” she managed to croak at last.

“I care little for what the Wycliffes think. Or anyone, for that matter. No,” he acknowledged with a sudden frown. “That is not true. I care what you think.” His gaze softened a moment. “I need to start saying these things out loud,” he muttered, and Aimee was not sure if he was speaking to her or himself.

The knock on the door startled them both, and Konrad moved away from it as Matthews entered carrying two large pails of steaming water.

“Here you are, milord,” he said jovially as he carried them across the room with his heavy tread. He set them down on the floor and turned back around. “Is this enough for now or ‍… ‍?”

“Quite sufficient, thank you, Matthews,” Aimee answered. After all, she was to have a bath in two hours’ time. Though, why two hours she could not fathom! As soon as the door closed after the retreating Matthews, Aimee started loosening her cuff. Konrad moved toward her and helped her remove her pearls, the love heart brooch, her gold hair net, and finally her gown, so she stood in just shift and stockings before the basin.

She sighed as she pressed a hot cloth to her face.

“Sore?” came Konrad’s voice behind her.

“A little,” she admitted cautiously. “It has been a long day.” She turned her head to look over her shoulder as he moved about the room. What was he doing? To her surprise, he seemed to be collecting up an armful of things from the table where she kept her trinkets. As she watched, he gave a shrug and then carried them out of the room, disappearing up the passage.

Was he moving her possessions into his bedchamber? When he returned, she watched him surreptitiously in the looking glass. He stood before the bridal chest decorated with the wedding procession a moment, his hands on his hips, a thoughtful look in his eye.

“What do you keep in here?” he asked, meeting her eye in the glass.

Aimee shrugged. “A medley of things. Take a look, if it pleases you.”

It was only when he lifted the lid that Aimee remembered she had thrown the two bags of cheap tokens in there after buying them at the market. The breath caught in her throat, her eyes widening with horror. Pray the gods she had resecured the ties on the opened bag!

As he lifted his scorching eye to hers, Aimee knew she had not. In fact, her last memory of them was haphazardly flinging them in there as she hurried off to place the tin hedgehog on his pillow bearer. Some of them had definitely spilled out. Curses.

He cleared his throat. “You owe me some more of these, by my reckoning, wife,” he said in a gravelly voice.

Aimee’s color mounted. “I suppose I do,” she agreed in strangled tones.

Before Aimee’s astonished gaze, he stooped suddenly down and picked up the whole chest, bearing it out of the room as though it weighed no more than a cushion.

Aimee stood frozen, immobile before the basin for a full moment before giving herself a slight shake and dunking her cloth back into the water. He was acting oddly to be sure, but regardless, she needed to get clean.

She was still flustered but had completed her wash by the time he returned. Emptying the basin out of the window, she refilled it for him with clean water as he stripped down efficiently to his waist. Then she retreated to her cabinet wondering what to dress her damp, shivering body in while she waited for her bath.

After a moment’s deliberation, Aimee selected a peach-colored robe decorated with gold thread which she had not even worn before. Her shift was so damp after her wash that she dispensed with it altogether and drew the silk robe on without an undergarment. The fabric felt so soft and decadent against her skin that Aimee wondered why she had never tried it before. Of course, it would not do outside of one’s own bedchamber, but all the same. Inside it, one could indulge oneself in privacy.

Turning around, Aimee met Konrad’s eyes once more in the mirror. His seeing eye blazed so bright, Aimee was forced to lower her own. Of course, if they were to share a bedchamber from now on, she thought breathlessly, then any indulgences would be shared. Her husband unlaced his crotch and peeled down his chausses.

Aimee coughed and forced her eyes away, busying herself by first selecting a pair of embroidered slippers and then by picking up a comb and tidying her hair. For some reason, speech seemed beyond her right now, though her tiredness seemed to have slipped away like a mantle from her shoulders.

“Are you finished?” he asked, turning from the basin and starting toward her. Before she had even made her reply, he was scooping her up and bearing her along the corridor to his bedchamber. Their bedchamber, she reminded herself as the door closed behind them. He had lit candles already, and she noted he had placed the second wedding chest at the foot of the bed.