inconveniences ✘ each chair and table still must smart
Everything was quiet. Mira and Ninon were in town, doing some shopping. Valerius stayed home; he was not ill today, but he was a little tired, and the quiet had been nice. He’d forgotten just how much energy children took, and how much it could be worth it as they grew.
Today, he’s cataloging his books, making note of volumes he especially wants to replace that he had at the Manor, or new volumes he always meant to acquire. It’s a smallish collection, so far, but he’s begun to enjoy writing letters of inquiry to track books down, and even travelling now and then with Mira and Ninon to look for things in shops.
The nightmares still come and go, and he still feels much older than his years some days, but things are improving. Slowly but surely... he’s finding a new sort of normal. The Mark is gone, and that helps; and the boys have moved out, which also helps, as fiercely as he misses them both.
Quiet rarely lasts, and today is no exception much to the disappointment of one Cadfael Hussey, who’d been planning on spending his own quiet day with a good book and the neighbor’s cat (who insists on treating their house as his own). Of course, that was supposed to follow after he’d attended to the weapons cabinet, which is why there’s a slightly irritated man with a wax polishing cloth in one hand and a sword in the other knocking politely at the Fitzroys’ front door.
He doesn’t like elves answering the door for a variety of reasons, so Valerius sets down his list and goes to answer it himself.
Only to find, when he opens the door, a ghost standing there.
“Oh for the love of Merlin,” he says, after a moment.
“For fuck’s sake, not you,” Cadfael exhales, looking momentarily as though the fact he’s carrying a naked blade has not escaped him and may become extremely pertinent to the situation; it passes, mercifully. “Hello, Malfoy. Nexus mishap.”
He grimaces. “Yes, rather. Come in, then, since you’re here.” He steps back. “And it’s Fitzroy, if the neighbors can hear.”
“‘The king’s bastard’?” Of course he places the name’s origin and of course he finds it amusing, as he steps indoors with only a brief backwards glance. “Cadfael Hussey, while we’re trading aliases. You’re looking sprightly for a dead man.”
“I was about to say the same to you. Bloody nexus.” He shakes his head. “Is your wife alive, in yours?”
The long, slow look that Valerius receives for asking after Cadfael’s wife is...telling, in its way, but he answers easily enough. “Rumours of her death were slightly exaggerated.”
He nods. “It seems that... has often been the case. If we’re going to do this, I think perhaps I’ll have a drink. Would you like one?”
“I may as well. Do you mind if I smoke?” Cadfael may not like him, may not want to be here, and may not even slightly give a damn about what Valerius does or does not mind, but he was raised correctly and he still has basic courtesy. He is, even if it’s extremely galling, presently a guest.
“Let’s go out back if you want to. We try not to smoke around our little one.” There are, in fact, enough toys around that Cadfael would have been able to guess a child lives with them, even if Valerius hadn’t mentioned it.
For his part, Lucius grabs a bottle of Shiraz and two glasses. This is not a conversation he wants to have without a drink in hand.
“Of course.” Lucius is too old to be referring to Graitian or Amara, but Cadfael refrains from (immediately) asking which child (and perhaps more importantly, whose) as he follows him through the house out to the patio and pool. He pockets his cloth and fishes out his cigarettes on the way; he and Mira smoke the same brand (Gauloises).
It’s probably because it was Caradoc’s brand first.
Out on the deck, Valerius pours them each a glass. “Well. She could be back any time, so we should probably have some idea of our footing by then.” He doesn’t specify who, but he doesn’t think he needs to. “I know neither of us will be terribly thrilled for you to stay here, but on the other hand, we can hardly just let you go into the wilds.” With a sigh, he adds, “And even if she weren’t here, I’d owe you a place to stay for her sake regardless.”
Translating that in his head only takes a moment, after which he very deliberately sets the sword down (and slightly out of easy reach) before picking up the bottle and filling his glass a little higher. “I would’ve waited until I’d already done that,” he says, bone dry, nodding towards the blade. “If it were me.”
Wearily, Valerius says, “You could have just picked it up again. I’ve no doubt you’re faster than I am, at this point.” He would never be much of a duelist again, even if he was looking less skeletal these days. “Besides, I thought I’d get it out of the way first, so there aren’t many dramatic surprises left.”
Shaking his head, Cadfael sits down and taps out a cigarette, lighting it as he makes himself as close to comfortable as he’s likely to get (‘not very’). “I must say, when I consider what I’m owed from the man who spent the early years of my marriage fucking my wife, ‘his company’ isn’t what springs to mind.”
“Are you going to kill me, while you’re here? I feel I should at least stand up, if you really do want satisfaction.” He seems sincere, just very tired.
“I don’t need satisfaction.” He breathes the answer out with smoke, letting his gaze wander over their surroundings; partly out of casual interest, partly out of a habitual desire to familiarize himself with all potential exit routes. “If I were any more the bigger man about it at this point, I’d be Rubeus Hagrid. I’m merely making conversation.”
“Well, I gather you at least have the satisfaction of knowing the Lucius in your world is dead, so I suppose that’s something.” Hussey, while familiar, is bothering him; he can’t quite place it.
“It’s going to be quite a shock,” he adds, however. “You’ve been gone more than 20 years.”
“He’s dead and he owes his children’s safety to me.” It’s more grimly matter of fact than anything else; he did it because it seemed right to do it, not so he could imagine holding it over a dead man’s head. The subject of his own death is different, more difficult- imagining Addie here, without him.
After a moment, he says, “So I assume it was Lestrange.”
“The female one, yes.” He’s quiet a moment, then says, “Everyone thought you were both dead, but it was really just you. You got her out, but it cost you your life. I didn’t know until years and years later.”
“That’s different,” Cadfael says, almost dispassionately. “It was closer to the other way around when I lived it. My injuries were bad, granted, but she was focused on her sister. We were in Russia before Addie was coherent.”
Lucius looks down, nodding. “Bellatrix bragged as if she’d killed you both. Not together though. There was... your body was there, and Narcissa’s wasn’t, but it was Bellatrix, so no one really doubted that she had killed her. Who knows, perhaps Bella thought she had.”
“Probably.” Because Bella is insane. “We’re still dead, as far as England is concerned. Severus knows we aren’t; Malfoy found out by accident, but he’s died since.” Graitian and Amara - Sergei and Anzhelika, more accurately - no longer precisely count, being where they are.
“It’s just as well. Narcissa’s still dead as far as anyone’s concerned, and I’ve been missing for years.”
Cadfael doesn’t say ‘and nothing of value was lost’, but it’s a near thing. “Out here having children.” With his wife.
“Yes. No. It’s... it’s complicated.” He sets his wine glass down. “She saved my children, when I was in Azkaban. My wife was killed, during that year. If she hadn’t been, things wouldn’t have happened after, the way they did.”
“Malfoy was already dead when we got his family out of Russia,” Cadfael notes, instead of directly responding to that, but his grip is awfully tight on his wine glass for all his diffident manner. “Addie tells me the boy - Sergei - went sniffing around Alastor Moody for answers.”
“...Aderyn?” The surname clicks and he looks away for a moment, covering his mouth with his hand.
“The madwoman’s reputation precedes her,” he deduces, taking a drink.
It may become evident, after a moment, that he’s trying not to laugh. “The universe,” he says, finally, “has an incredibly odd sense of humor, I feel. Mira - Narcissa - she’s been to yours. Your world.”
Cadfael’s eyebrow rises. “Really.”
He nods, controlled again. “In the past - between the wars, I believe.”
“What year would that have been, then?” Just so he can place it in his own mental timeline.
“Late 1995 or early 1996 - I can’t remember which month she said offhand.”
“And she saw Malfoy,” he surmises, estimating where that’d put them between the incident in Russia and Lucius Malfoy’s inglorious death.
“She did, yes.” He leans back in his chair. “And we had Sergei visit us here, once.”
“I think ‘odd’ was too mild a word, Fitzroy.”
“Probably,” he allows. “It was a week of a man who looked like my son glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, as if he were sure I was going to disappear.”
“I’ve never met Sergei,” Cadfael admits, tapping ash into what’s probably Mira’s ashtray. “My wife made the executive decision that I would be ‘too intimidating’ while she was doing her level best to essentially kidnap your family.”
Valerius smiles faintly. “He did occasionally look at Mira like he was surprised she wasn’t ordering him around.”
“She deliberately stripped your wife of all defenses she had left to ensure that she’d be desperate enough to take your mistress’s help,” he says, in that very, very dusty-dry way he sometimes has. “If he’s not slightly afraid of her, he hasn’t been paying attention, and I gather he’s a quick lad.”
“He is that,” Valerius says, voice a little warmer. “Always has been.”
He wonders how Silvanus - Sergei - managed with his mother alive but without a father. All the little ways in which the two boys were different.
Behind them, inside, the front door opens and closes and there’s the sound of little footsteps dashing up a flight of stairs and Mira’s muffled voice with leashed irritation. Cadfael is curiously still with the smoke curving around him, doesn’t move as she emerges from the house-
“Ninon has gone to her room,” she informs Valerius, pulling her gloves from her hands (she doesn’t need gloves half the time that she wears them) and stopping, abruptly, mid-explanation as she catches sight of Cadfael and her breath seizes.
Valerius stands, his expression faltering for just a moment, then he says, “I’ll go say hello to Ninon, and bring back another glass, if you like?” He doesn’t want to abandon her if she wants his support, but he does feel like this is a moment they might need without him there.
“All right,” she says, much quieter than she began. “She’s not to come down before supper, she’s been wicked.”
“Another large glass, then,” Cadfael murmurs, and rises before he turns. “Hello, inamorata.”
His expression twitches lightly, hard to read, but he nods and turns to go inside.
He does, indeed, go up to speak with Ninon, but only briefly.
By the time Valerius returns, Cadfael and Mira are sitting together and talking quietly- he seems to be doing most of the talking, explaining, while she listens and keeps her hands pressed tightly together in her lap, half unsure he’s properly real.
“...are sort of beautiful, now, like a spiderweb over her skin-” he gestures around Mira’s jaw, not touching her, just to indicate where the scarring begins, “-but,” and his hand falls, “when it happened, it was just blood, everywhere. When I fled with my wife, they believed she was already dead, but so did I. She made this very small noise when she was jostled and my heart about stopped.”
Valerius, though neither of them looks at him, looks stricken for just an instant, before he recovers. He comes out onto the deck quietly, bringing another wineglass with him, but he doesn’t say anything.
Cadfael glances up when he comes out, as Mira rises to take the glass (she feels an intense need to accompany this conversation with alcohol) and touch his wrist. “Caradoc was telling me about the end of their war,” she says, remarkably level, as she pours her own drink.
“It was 1981,” he clarifies, absently. “The war was over before Addie was on her feet again in Russia.”
They could’ve gone back, but it’s patently obvious that they didn’t.
“I mentioned to him that you’d visited their world in 1996,” he says, touching her shoulder lightly before moving to resume his seat.
“To London,” Mira recalls, sitting down by Valerius as Cadfael lights another cigarette. “It was a week.”
He shakes his match out, glancing at them - it looks wrong how easily they go together now, and he focuses on something else moments later. “You’ll forgive me if I hope this doesn’t take as long.” After a moment, half-entertained, “Must’ve been interesting for our Mr Malfoy,” he’s so very sardonic, “considering you have a much...softer temperament.”
Valerius relaxes a very little bit, for having Mira near. “I’ve no idea why universes keep getting crossed, but I think we could all stand less of it.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
“I don’t mind it,” Mira informs them both, reaching for her own glass.
Cadfael barks a short laugh. “You wouldn’t.”
Valerius nods. “Very true.” Glancing at Mira, he says, “She’s a little confused, by the way, about what exactly she’s being punished for. Or she’s too upset to explain it to me in a straight line.”
“She threw a tantrum in the store when she didn’t get her way, in the course of which she accidentally smashed a lamp,” she says, grimacing. “So I paid for it and we left early.”
“I see. In her version, she yelled and then a lamp somehow broke itself.” He’s not trying to be cruel; but he clings to these small domestic things, trying to make his life something like normal.
“It was a great deal more than shouting,” Mira informs him, crossly- more exasperated than anything else, in truth, but it’s been a long day and she came home to find it’ll only get longer. After a moment, catching sight of Cadfael’s gaze resting on her with a look she can’t quite decipher, she says, “What?” a touch self-consciously.
“Nothing,” he murmurs, waving it away with the hand he’s holding his cigarette in.
“If you two needed more time...” he begins.
“It’s fine, Fitzroy,” Cadfael says, not raising his voice any further but oddly, almost kindly firm. “I was just observing how well your wife wears motherhood.”
Mira’s lips press together, and he almost laughs. “It’s a compliment, Mira.”
“Well, you have a lot of nerve, Caradoc Dearborn,” she snaps, despite herself.
He winces, just slightly, but says, “She’s an excellent mother,” confirming something that didn’t need to be confirmed.
“I don’t doubt it.” Cadfael’s expression is almost curious when Mira makes an irritably disbelieving noise in answer to his (almost diffident) remark.
Valerius wasn’t quite sure how to proceed, in the conversation, so he refilled his wine glass and decided to see if Mira would take the lead. If not... he’d think of something.
“We didn’t have any children,” he says, in a tone so absently mild that he must be deliberately provoking her. Possibly, entirely possibly, just to see what’ll happen if he does.
“You are an absolute fucking coward,” she flares, right on cue, and it dawns on her precisely why at the exact moment that Cadfael puts his cigarette out and smiles at her.
“That’s better.” Because she’s stopped looking at him like a dead saint.
He shakes his head. “Milder temper,” he comments, lightly.
“Terrifying thought, isn’t it?” Cadfael remarks, with a fleeting smile.
“I never knew,” Mira says, slowly and carefully, “why you were so afraid. I think that I know what it is that you were afraid of, but I don’t know why.”
There is a pause, and his voice isn’t unkind when he says, “If any of your children were mine, then I’d owe you an explanation. I don’t.” And that’s all he’s going to say on the matter.
“Well.” He takes a sip of wine. “I don’t know where we’ll end up, if we get to who is owed what, between us three.”
“No where good,” Cadfael says, rolling his eyes and taking a drink. “I’ve had that conversation with my wife. I wouldn’t care to have it again.”
“I can’t blame you for that,” Valerius says, a bit quieter.
“She never told me,” he says, in a precise sort of a way, his gaze resting on Mira. “She confirmed what I suspected when we discussed killing Dolohov and getting the Malfoys out of Britain.”
“You killed Dolohov?” he asks, mildly. He certainly won’t shed any tears over the man who got his wife killed, even if it was oddly for the best, in some ways.
Cadfael smiles, very faintly. “No, Addie did.”
“...I see.”
“Why?” Mira asks, after a moment, reserved.
“She’d decided to help Mrs Malfoy,” he says, making an absent sort of illustrative gesture. “Assuming - probably rightly - that the woman wouldn’t take our assistance, hers in particular, if she had any other options, she took it upon herself to remove said alternative.”
“Sergei’s presence suggests that the strategy succeeded.”
“I got the three of them new identities in the states, and Aderyn got them there from Russia. It worked.” It was also one of the strangest things he’s ever taken part in, for a lot of different reasons. “To the best of my knowledge, both sides of the war thought the other one did it and that they were dead. Until the boy went bothering Moody, at any rate.”
“He was always sharp, but he never did let things lie very well, either.” Valerius sighs. “I feel I should thank you, on that Lucius’ behalf, but I suspect that would open the door to a host of oddness.”
“I never believed in the idea children should suffer the sins of their fathers,” he says, with a spare smile, “that’s all it was.”
“Gracious,” Mira murmurs, and Cadfael chokes on an inappropriate laugh.
Valerius looks down, with the ghost of a smile. “Well.”
“I believe,” dryly, “that that’s what I called myself after I told Addie that the better man already won.”
“...and what did she say?” Mira raises an eyebrow, almost despite herself.
“She called me a bastard.”
Valerius stands and moves to check the level of the bottle. “I think,” he comments, off-hand, “That we might need another few bottles, if you are stuck here for a week.”
“And a lot more cigarettes,” Cadfael agrees, considering the one in his hand. “Same brand, Mira?” he asks, offering her the pack.
“I quit with both my babies,” she says, primly.
He doesn’t move.
Mira mutters something under her breath and takes one, ignoring the amused glint in his eyes. “You’re a bad influence.”
“I know. It’s part of my charm.”
His charm was going to wear on Valerius’ nerves. But he’s still calm, for now. He says, “So. More cigarettes too, then.”
Cadfael likely doesn’t help matters by leaning forward and lighting Mira’s cigarette with a match, his hand cupped around the flame. “I’d have bought another pack if I knew I was going to wander out of Vienna. Actually, I’ve never bothered with Addie’s nexus; she tells me about it. I turn my back on that woman for five minutes and she’s adopted the Potter boy.”
“James and Lily’s boy?” Mira asks, exhaling.
“The very same.”
“She certainly collects the oddest assortment of people.” Harry bloody Potter.
“Moody, Snape, Potter.” Either of the two of them, Cadfael considers, but he doesn’t add ‘Dearborn and Malfoy’ however much he might be tempted to. “The good professor isn’t bad company for someone who can’t hold his liquor for the life of him, I’ll admit. Addie has a cold heart toward men with hangovers, though. And I’d always thought women liked pathetic animals.”
Mira laughs, quietly.
“Women, on the whole,” he observes, wryly, “have a wide cruel streak.”
“On that point, I can only agree.”
“And men are self-pitying,” Mira returns, lightly arch, beginning to relax; she’s probably the only one presently capable of it, half-unaware of how much effort Cadfael is exerting to make sure that she does. She remembers how deeply and completely he loved her, when she was married to Caradoc, but his smooth ability to settle her nerves is something that came in years she never lived with him, for reasons she doesn’t know. It’s not something she sees immediately.
Valerius, for his part, notices it. And as much as he’d like to hate Cadfael, he can’t quite. Even if he dislikes him intensely. “Perhaps.”
“Not you, darling,” she says, judiciously, smiling up at him. The tension between them doesn’t escape her, but she seems to have decided to handle it by stepping around it; she’s not sure how else to. “You know, I- it’s so difficult to imagine ‘Caradoc after the war’.” This is more sudden, a divergent thought, and her gaze wanders away from either of them as she picks through it. “I couldn’t ever imagine him leaving England.”
Cadfael pauses, and exhales slowly. “I would have died for England,” he says, carefully, “and I would have died for Narcissa if I had to. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice her, and when I realized- when she made that noise-” he takes a breath, because this needs to be said, he believes Mira needs to know it, and he needs to say it steadily. “Well, my wife needed me a hell of a lot more than England did. The war ended for us. We’ve had nothing to do with it since bar the Malfoys.”
Valerius glances at Mira, gauging her reaction. He can’t quite tell what she needs him to do, and frankly she’s his main concern, at the moment.
Her expression is difficult - but not impossible - to read, as she accepts this quietly. Her elbow rests on the table and the cigarette burns down unattended, and after a moment she realizes and puts it out. “I’m going to- I think we need another bottle. Valerius, would you help me find something?”
“Of course.” He offers her his hand, without thought.
She takes it and rises, lacing their fingers together. Cadfael makes a ‘don’t mind me’ gesture when she glances at him, quite sincerely, and she walks a little closer to Valerius than is strictly necessary as she follows him inside.
He has been, in the last year or so, much steadier than before. Even if his ego has never truly recovered, he can be something for her to lean on again, if need be. “You’re alright?” he asks, once they’re both inside.
“No,” she admits, quietly. “I don’t know that I am.”
“I don’t blame you in the slightest.” He let go of her hand to slip an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry I couldn’t catch you and warn you first.”
“It’s so bizarre to look at him,” she says, closing the small distance between them and leaning against his chest. “He’s the same, but he isn’t. Some hollow place I remember that isn’t there, that filled up.”
“Damnable universe swapping,” he says again, softly. “It just makes messes.”
He thinks about the way Sergei looked at him, as if every kind word were a miracle.
“I don’t quite know what to do with it. I don’t...I never- that is, I-” Mira exhales, frustrated, and tries again. “I’ve always just tried not to think too much about him. I was such an awful wife to him and he did love me so much, and I did love him, I was...I don’t know. I couldn’t ever grieve without feeling as though I deserved to hurt.”
“It seems like he’s reserved his resentment for me, at any rate.” Softly, “He clearly loves you - her - a great deal.”
“I don’t know if it’s better or worse that he knows and seems to have- to have forgiven her. I don’t know if I can quite bear his kindness. After how long I have half hated myself for what I did-” her breath catches and she leans into him, shaking her head. “Thank Merlin for you.” It’s partly that here in private moments she can lean on him a little, now, and partly that after so long teaching herself to be all right for Valerius - it’s easier to find her composure when he’s near.
Cadfael sets her at her ease, handles her gently and correctly, but in a way that aches. He loves her (not her; who she was, who she might’ve been) so much, so plainly that she can’t decide whether she wants to keep smiling at his idea of wit, cling to his hands as long as he stays, or burst into tears and beg him to forgive her, beg him not to forgive her.
Valerius turns a little so he can embrace her properly. He doesn’t have any words that will help, so he just holds her for a moment, silent support.
“I’ll be all right,” she murmurs, resting her hands against him and taking a steadying breath. “I suppose one doesn’t expect to see the dead again, other worlds or not. There can’t really be much of a way to prepare for that.”
“No, I expect not.” He smiles a little. “It gave me quite a turn when you turned up on my doorstep in Normandy.”
Mira flushes and laughs, quietly, tightening her grip on him. “I’m still a little sorry about that.” Only a little, though, because she’s not going to deny it was sort of satisfying in the moment it happened.
...however, speaking of turning up on doorsteps, there’s a sharp (and possibly familiar) knock at the front door.
Valerius has a momentary fear that it’ll be Tanya, but says mildly, “I’ll go get it. Short of the children, I’ll make some excuses.”
Nodding, Mira disentangles from him to go and collect the bottle of wine that she’d said they were fetching and returns to where Cadfael has been smoking and gathering his own thoughts.
The woman on the doorstep is not any of the children. Aderyn has her back to the door when it’s opened, her coat hiding most of her but the black seams down the back of her stockings, her patent heels and the undoubtedly recognizable red hair she hasn’t tied back. Her hands rest on her hips and she’s considering the sky with a general air of frustration, but she spins on her heel when she realizes the door’s opened and- pauses.
His mouth opens, then closes again. “...I see. Well. ...good afternoon.”
His response garners a brief laugh, mostly mirthless, and Aderyn drops her hands as she comes back up the steps. “Lucius,” she greets him, crisply, holding herself steadily distant; he’s closer, much closer than ‘the little one’ to the man she remembers, and she’d rather not deal with that right now. Or ever, actually, so she focuses on the differences and the fact he’s really not why she’s here. “Is he here?”
“Yes. You must be Aderyn, then.” He looks tired, mainly, but steps back. “Come in. He’s out back.”
“Thank you.” She regards him for a moment without moving, unable to quite resist the impulse to memorize the way he looks now (the way Mira couldn’t quite not want Aderyn’s Lucius), but the moment passes and she steps past him, sliding her hand around the back of her neck under her hair.
A little part of him is shaken, to see her so distant from him - and so clearly marked by the war in ways Mira wasn’t, fragile in ways she isn’t, even if he can’t instantly put his finger on it. But she’s here for her husband, so he closes the door after she comes in.
...he’s not sure how Mira will react, but if Aderyn could come looking for her husband, maybe she could take them both back where they came from. And no one could argue that would be best for everyone involved.
Mira and Cadfael both rise as they emerge from the house - her expression is slightly difficult to decipher, other than startled, but he looks far from surprised. “Petite fleur,” he greets his wife, looking oddly a little amused. “I’ve only been gone a few hours, you realize.”
“Well, I don’t have a Potter to punch in the face while you’re gone a week,” she says, tartly, sparing barely a glance for her own alternate as she crosses to check him unnecessarily for anything wrong. “Are you bothering them? -did he bother you?”
“I don’t know if ‘bother,’ would be the word.” He certainly did something, but it wasn’t exactly to ‘bother’ them.
“You were an arsehole,” Addie translates this, giving her husband a hard look. “For fuck’s sake.”
Cadfael catches her hands and holds her wrists together, with a droll expression. “Addie.”
“What?”
“Breathe.”
Valerius, for his part, goes to Mira’s side, sensing she might be grateful for some support in the consummate bizarreness of this moment. He offers his hand, silently.
She takes it and holds on, leaning into him- it’s Aderyn more than Cadfael that she finds so difficult to look at and understand, so instantly familiar and alien. A life she didn’t live standing right there in front of her, so...she doesn’t have the words for it.
“Next door’s cat wants feeding,” Addie says, stepping back when Cadfael touches her face.
“And you can’t feed it?”
“It’s not our cat.”
“...but you want me to feed it.” Cadfael pauses at the look on her face and exhales, picking up his cigarettes and looking around for where he’d set the sword down. (Thank Merlin Ninon had had to stay upstairs.) “Right. Of course you do. Ah- we’re much obliged to you, Fitzroy, Mira.”
“Have a, uh, safe travel back, I suppose,” Valerius says, squeezing his wife’s hand lightly.
“Thanks,” Addie says, after a pause; there’s something obscurely vulnerable in her eyes when she looks at them, and while Mira can’t quite bring herself to look away- Addie can, and she does. She tips her head up to smile, faintly, at Cadfael. “Coming, then, if you’re quite done?”
“You know I’m not an unruly stray, don’t you, love?”
They step down off the deck to the grass, and Addie can be seen fishing around in her pocket for something with one hand, her other arm wrapped around her husband’s waist; they vanish between one beat and the next, right as Cadfael’s hand slides down over the curve of her backside.
Valerius hand tightens, just slightly, but then he says, “Well that was bloody odd,” softly.
After a moment of contemplative silence, Mira looks up at him. “I see what he meant about her temperament.”