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Sansa had fled from her husband’s solar in a fury. A child! she thought furiously. How dare he call me a child! As she walked as quickly as she could toward the nursery without actually running and alarming the servants, she berated herself for believing that the man had developed any respect for her, let alone any affection.
“A child,” she muttered under her breath. “A child with a claim to Winterfell. That’s all he’s ever seen and now I do not even have that.”
She took several deep breaths to calm herself before opening the door to the nursery. Ada sat beside her son’s cradle and looked up in surprise when Sansa entered.
“Milady!” the nursemaid exclaimed softly. “The babe still sleeps. I did not expect you.”
“I will sit with him until he wakes, Ada,” she said, marveling at how calm her voice sounded. “You may go.”
“Yes, milady,” Ada said, bobbing into a curtsy before leaving the room.
Alone with her sleeping son, Sansa let out a great breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She gazed into the cradle and smiled at the sight of her sleeping babe. His hair seemed to grow thicker every day and she gently touched her hand to the soft auburn curls. She knew he needed his sleep, but she almost wished he would open his eyes. Those grey eyes which could have been Father’s. Could have been Arya’s. They’d shocked her when she’d first seen the color when they’d handed him to her and she’d reached her exhausted arms out to pull him to her. Two turns of the moon had passed since then and the grey showed no sign of changing into a golden-brown as her goodsister had said might happen. Sansa saw no sign of his father in him.
And I am glad of it! she thought angrily. He is all Stark and Tully. And he is mine.
When he had first been born, she had searched for her husband in his tiny face. She feared he would be displeased with a babe who bore no evidence of his Tyrell lineage being named the heir to Highgarden. She’d comforted herself with memories of her brother Robb, whose coloring was even more like Mother’s than her own and of the pride her father had always had in him. Of course, memories of Father and Robb, like those of all her family brought only cold comfort at best. What she wouldn’t give to have them with her now! At least to have Mother. She still wasn’t certain she knew how to be a mother, and while Leonette was kind, and even Lady Alerie was civil enough, she would not go to them with her fears and worries. They were not her family. They were his. Like everything else, here, they belonged to Willas.
“But you are mine,” she whispered to her son. “Even if I belong to Willas Tyrell like everything else in Highgarden, you belong to me.”
She stroked his hair softly. It was darker than hers. Darker even than Mother’s and Robb’s, more like her younger brothers’ had been.
Like my youngest brother’s still is, she thought, trembling slightly. Rickon is alive.
She’d barely had time to wrap her mind around that incredible thought before her husband had made her too angry to remain in the room with him, and now she sank into the chair the nursemaid had vacated as her knees threatened to give way. Her wild little brother—he’d not quite reached his fourth name day when she’d last seen him the day she left Winterfell. He’d be nearly eight now, and Sansa wondered what he would be like. It seemed he had escaped the destruction of Winterfell and been hidden away somewhere by a wilding woman. Lord Manderly had somehow discovered his whereabouts and recovered him along with Shaggydog who was by report an enormous and very fierce beast.
Willas had handed her Jon’s letter to read. She wouldn’t have believed it from anyone other than her brother. My cousin, she corrected herself automatically. She’d been so joyful to learn that Jon still lived, that she had one brother left to her at least, that she had not been pleased to learn it was not so after the dragons arrived. Once Aegon had come with his armies and Daenerys with her dragons, a Northern lord she’d never met emerged from his swamps to offer proofs to the new King and Queen that Jon was not her brother at all, but another dragon—one gotten on Father’s sister by Rhaegar Targaryen.
Sansa’s husband had been pleased by that news, especially once the King and Queen acknowledged her brother (cousin) as a prince. “He will speak for you,” he’d told her. “He’ll push for lenience toward the remaining members of our House for your sake, and of course he’ll support your claim to Winterfell as he has made it clear he intends to remain on the Wall.”
Yes, her husband had been pleased. Sansa had simply been left without any brothers at all.
Now, she had a brother again. She thought Ed might look a lot like Rickon as he grew. She wanted to run to Winterfell now, to find her little brother and hold him to her although Jon’s letter said Rickon didn’t remember any of them. She could help him remember if she could only go to him. She knew she could.
Ed made a small sound in his cradle, but he did not wake. Sansa would have liked to call him Ned, but Lady Alerie had frowned at the suggestion, and Willas had suggested Ed instead. Lady Alerie had wanted him named for her father, Lord Leyton. Sansa had wanted Eddard for her own father, but Lady Alerie had insisted that was no name of a Lord of the Reach.
Willas had looked rather distressed during that argument, and Sansa recalled feeling almost sorry for him at the time. He rarely went against his mother—not that he was weak. No, whatever she might say of her husband, she would not say that, for all he could barely walk upon the one leg. But since Loras had died long ago of wounds received at Dragonstone, and Lord Mace and Margaery had both been killed when Daenerys Targaryen took King’s Landing, he worried about his mother’s grief and tried never to upset her. Sansa had more or less followed his example in that until the issue of her son’s name arose. Lady Alerie was not the only person who’d lost family. And this child was Sansa’s, not Alerie Hightower’s.
“Lymond,” Willas had finally suggested, seeking a compromise when he saw that Sansa was not going to back down easily. “For King Lymond Hightower. A great man, and the first Lord of Oldtown.”
Lady Alerie had nodded grudgingly.
“Edmond,” Sansa had said after a moment. “To honor both our Houses.”
Her goodmother had made a sound of protest, but Willas had simply smiled at her. “So be it, my lady,” he’d said. “Edmond is a fine name. Lord Edmond Tyrell—I like the sound of it.”
He did seem to love Ed. She had to give him that. And he’d been so kind to her all the time she carried him inside her. He’d not stopped coming to her bedchamber, a fact which had surprised Sansa, but in truth had not upset her. While things were often uneasy between her husband and herself (and how could they not be when they were strangers and she’d been nearly kidnapped from King’s Landing to give this man heirs and a claim to the North), he was gentle with her in her bed. After the first few awkward and terrible times, she’d been forced to admit, if only to herself, that it wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, she rather enjoyed the way he touched her body, even if she was shocked both by some of his actions and by her responses to them. And when Ed had been growing inside her, he’d sworn to her it made her all the more beautiful.
That’s when she’d lowered her guard. That’s when she’d dared to hope that this man might come to care as much for her as for the immense acreage of the North and the ancient stones of Winterfell. And after Edmond’s birth . . . the tender looks he gave the babe did seem to extend to her at times, and she found her heart softening more toward her husband. He’d suffered in the wars, too, after all. Mayhap they could truly comfort each other. Mayhap, she could forget how the Tyrells had all but stolen her from the city to clear Margaery’s path to Joffrey and to give Winterfell to themselves. They had rescued her from the Lannisters after all, and even if Highgarden were in some ways merely another prison, it was at least a far more benevolent one. And mayhap, if both Willas and she loved Edmond so very much, it could one day become a true home for her as well as her son.
But that was before today. Before he had called her to his solar and given her Jon’s letter. Before she’d read it with her hands trembling so terribly she could barely see the words on the page, her heart aching with hope that the words were true, but fearing yet another cruel disappointment.
“Is it true, Willas?” she’d said, in a voice no more than a whisper. “Does my brother truly live?”
“He does,” her husband had replied. “The Lord Commander’s letter is not the only one I’ve received, but I thought it the one you would prefer to read. The King and Queen have accepted the boy is who he claims to be, and the Northern lords are swearing fealty to him. Your cousin the prince, has consented to leave his position as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch at least long enough to act as young Lord Rickon’s Lord Protector until he comes of age.”
“I . . . I can scarcely believe it,” she’d breathed.
“And yet it appears to be true. I am afraid you have lost your claim to Winterfell, my lady.”
His words had taken a moment to sink in. “My . . . what?” she’d asked him incredulously.
“Your claim. I know we had hoped to give Winterfell to our second son should we be blessed enough to have one, but now any children your brother has will . . .”
“Is that all you care about?” she’d hissed at him. “I know well enough why you wed me, my lord, but isn’t it enough for you that your heirs will rule Highgarden?”
“Sansa, I only meant that . . .”
“You only meant that I am now worth less to you than I was, my lord! I am sorry to be such a disappointment. Mayhap I should consult that old herb woman about how to bring forth a girl child next. Then when the dragons have a male heir, we can offer her up to them. Your grandmother would like that, seeing as how her plans for Margaery didn’t work out so well!” She had been raving—saying terrible things and she knew it, but she’d been unable to stop herself. Her brother lived. He lived! And her husband prattled on about her lost claim to Winterfell as if that somehow mattered.
His face had lost all color when she’d mentioned his sister. “Hold your tongue!” he’d shouted at her. “You are the Lady of HIghgarden! Stop behaving like an angry child!”
“I am not a child!” She’d flung at him. “And I am not a castle, either!” she’d flung at him before fleeing the room.
“I am not a child,” she whispered to Edmond now. “But you are, and I will do right by you whatever that requires of me. Highgarden is yours, sweetling. But you are as much wolf as rose, and I will raise you to be as brave as my lord father and all the Starks of Winterfell.”
The knock on the nursery door made her jump, but it did not disturb Ed. She made no answer, but the door opened anyway to reveal her husband standing there slightly out of breath and leaning on the doorframe. There was a flight of stairs between his solar and the nursery, and he did not take stairs easily.
“My lord,” she said coolly.
“I thought I might find you here, my lady,” he replied in a similar tone. “Is the babe well?”
She nodded. “He’s asleep. But he is due to eat soon, so I thought to remain here with him until he wakes.”
He smiled slightly at that. It had surprised him when she’d insisted upon feeding Edmond herself. It seemed that Ladies of Highgarden did not feed their own infants, relying upon the services of wetnurses for that. But her mother had fed all of them, and Sansa had every intention of feeding her son the same way. Willas had supported her in this, and even old Lady Olenna had held her tongue about it after a few biting remarks. Leonette had even admitted to her shyly that she might consider doing the same for her next babe if Garlan were ever permitted to come home from King’s Landing and give her another.
“My lady,” Willas said rather stiffly now. “I fear you misunderstood me when . . .”
“Oh? You didn’t accuse me of behaving childishly?”
“I . . . you said a very cruel thing,” he said.
“So did you,” she responded.
“I merely stated the truth, Sansa,” he said in an infuriatingly reasonable voice. “Since the beginning of our marriage, we have planned for the eventuality that one of our children would rule Winterfell. Rickon Stark’s return from the dead means that no longer is a concern of ours.”
“Rickon Stark’s return from the dead means that I have a brother!” she threw at him, her voice louder than it should be in a room with a sleeping babe. “I have a living, breathing brother, Willas, and all I want is to go to him! To see him and touch him and know that I am not the last Stark! I am not the only child of Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn who still draws breath!” Her voice broke. “I want my brother, my lord,” she said softly. “And you want his castle.”
“I don’t,” her husband said quietly. “That isn’t what I meant at all.”
“Tell me you didn’t marry me for Winterfell!” she flung at him. This time her raised voice did wake her son, and before Willas could respond, Edmond’s wail pierced the air.
She bent to retrieve him from his cradle and held him against her chest, bouncing up and down and cooing to him while angry tears still threatened to fall from her eyes. Willas stood silently watching her and made no move toward her or away as she then seated herself back in her chair and undid the front laces of her gown to put the babe to her breast. Edmond latched onto her nipple and his wails ceased immediately as he began to suckle greedily. Sansa kept her head bent over her son, steadfastly ignoring the man whose eyes she could still feel upon them.
“I did marry you for Winterfell,” Willas said softly after a moment. “And because you were alone. And because I needed a wife and heirs, and my sister assured me you were a great beauty with a surprising amount of courage hidden beneath your perfect manners.”
“You never wanted me for myself,” she said, remembering Ser Dontos’s words to her not long before the Tyrell men had taken her from the Red Keep.
“I had never seen you until the day I wed you,” he told her. “And I had to wed you at once. If all our plans were to come to fruition, for your sake as well as ours, we could leave no room for the Lannisters to demand you back.” He shrugged slightly. “Although the arrival of the dragons ended my father’s grand plans, along with his life.”
“And you were stuck with me. But at least you got Winterfell, and a surprise Targaryen relative by marriage,” Sansa said, looking up at him finally. “At least you get to keep Jon, my lord. He’s still my cousin, even if I’m no longer the Lady of Winterfell by rights.”
Her husband regarded her a long time before replying. “You are not a child, my lady,” he said finally, “And I was wrong to berate you as I did. But you are young. For all you have suffered, you are still very young—mayhap too young to understand that almost all of a man’s actions have more than one reason. And that reasons do not remain fixed over time. I quite liked the idea of sons of ours ruling both the North and the Reach one day. I will not deny that. But your joy in your brother’s survival gives me joy, Sansa. And if you cannot see that . . . I do not know how to show it to you.”
She didn’t know what to say to that so she only held his eyes for a moment more before bending her head again to look at Edmond. After a bit, she heard his uneven step and the thud of his cane on the floor as he left.
Sitting there with her son, she found herself thinking upon her mother. She could recall Mother feeding Rickon very well. She’d been eight years old when he was born. She allowed her mind to drift back to those days, sitting at her mother’s feet, fascinated by the sight of her newborn brother suckling at her breast. With her eyes closed, and the warm, sweet sensation of her own son at her breast, she found herself recalling one of those afternoons with perfect clarity.
“Does it hurt, Mother? What he’s doing?”
Mother laughed. “No, sweetling. It feels rather nice, actually. Now, when you babes got your teeth, it was another matter!”
Sansa’s eyes got big. “Did we bite you?” she asked, horrified.
“Only until I taught you not to,” her mother assured you. “But it wasn’t much fun for me while you were learning that lesson.”
Sansa thought of her own small nipples on her flat chest. “I don’t want anybody ever to bite me there! Arya used to bite my hands when she was mad at me and that hurt bad enough!”
“You’ll think differently when it’s your babe,” Mother assured her. “A woman can accept a great deal of pain for the sake of a babe.”
“What about men?” Sansa blurted out suddenly, thinking of something she’d heard Theon tell her older brothers.
“What do you mean, sweetling?” her mother had asked, puzzlement furrowing her brow.
“I mean I heard Theon tell Robb and Jon that he put his mouth on a chambermaid’s teat and he sucked it until she was moaning and do men really do that because I don’t think I would like a man to do it to me,” Sansa said very fast, feeling her cheeks color as she spoke.
“Gods be good,” she heard her mother say in a sighing sort of voice that Mother often used when speaking of Theon. “Theon Greyjoy needs to hold his tongue.” She pursed her lips. “And keep his tongue off the chambermaids,” she added darkly.
“So you think he really did that?” Sansa asked, too curious now to let embarrassment keep her from getting an answer.
Her mother sighed deeply. “Probably. The boy has little honor when it comes to women, I’m afraid. Your father tries to teach him better, but . . .” She shook her head.
“So, it’s a bad thing, then? What Theon told them he did.”
Her mother had put Rickon up to her shoulder a few moments before and now he let out a loud belch that caused both Mother and Sansa to laugh. Then Mother stood to put him in the little cradle with the direwolves on it. Sansa knew she had slept in the same one as a new babe. So had Arya and Bran, but not Robb. He wasn’t even at Winterfell when he was a new babe.
“Come sit by me, Sansa,” Mother said, sitting on her bed after Rickon was settled. Sansa hurried to sit beside her. She loved to sit close to Mother and lean her head against her, but rarely got the chance because when she didn’t have Rickon in her arms, Arya or Bran were usually trying to climb into her lap. And Arya was too big for that, in Sansa’s opinion.
“What Theon spoke of was wrong because Theon is not wed to the chambermaid. When two people are wed, their bodies belong to each other. That is how the gods have made us, sweetling. You remember how I told you of how babes are made.”
Sansa swallowed hard and nodded. She still didn’t like to think about that. After Mother and Father had told the children that Mother carried Rickon in her belly, Theon had started teasing Sansa and Arya about how that baby got in there. He’d said all sorts of vile things that had Sansa feeling ill and Arya throwing rocks at him and calling him a filthy liar. They’d gone to Mother, and she’d gathered them to her and tried to reassure them. She’d actually confirmed some of the more unbelievable things Theon had said, but had promised it was nothing like he made it sound. Sansa still felt a little queasy thinking about it, though. And to think of her father doing that to her mother . . .
“Sansa? Are you listening to me?” her mother asked her, pulling her from that particularly uncomfortable memory.
She nodded again.
“You remember I told you that what a man and wife do to bring a babe is also a way of expressing their love for each other. Touching each other . . . in ways that no one else can touch either of you . . . that is a very powerful thing, Sansa. And there are many touches between a man and wife that are only for love and pleasure and not for the bringing of a babe. Do you understand?”
Sansa nodded, still mute.
“And those touches are not wrong between a man and his wife, sweetling. But they are not meant to be shared at random. That is why Theon is wrong and why I wish he would cease his prattling on about such things to your brother and to you girls.” She sighed. “Someday, you will be a wife, Sansa, and I do not wish you to be frightened, for I can name no greater joy than being your father’s wife and your and your siblings’ mother. But you needn’t think on any of these things now, for no one will ever treat you with the kind of discourtesy Theon describes. You are a daughter of Winterfell, and your father would never allow it.”
Sansa swallowed, thinking that she never wanted to be a wife if it meant doing all these strange things with a man. But her mother seemed happy enough. And Sansa knew her mother liked it when Father kissed her. They always thought no one saw them, but Robb and Theon had made sort of a game of catching her parents kissing, and now she and Arya played it, too, although Arya had a tendency to yell out and get them caught.
“Then . . . you . . . like it? I mean, does Father . . .”
“Sansa,” her mother said firmly, her own cheeks coloring red then. “I have no intention of speaking with you about what your father and I do in private. We are married, you know, and as much as we love you children, we are entitled to our privacy.”
Edmond’s sudden release of her nipple and squirming in her arms brought her back to the present, and Sansa put him to her shoulder to belch just as Mother had done with Rickon all those years ago. She knew well enough what it was to find pleasure in a man’s touch now, and the thought of how much she liked Willas’s mouth on her breasts made her cheeks color just as Mother’s had, but it made her feel sort of empty as well. Mother had loved Father deeply and had known he loved her in return. They had always shared that. Sansa had seen it between them when she was too tiny to know what it was, but she knew what it was now, and she didn’t have it.
Willas was not an evil man. Now that her anger had cooled, she could acknowledge that again. And there was nothing precisely dishonorable about his reasons for wedding her. Nor had he ever mistreated her. He had not yet started coming to her bed again after Edmond, but the maester had told her it was all right, so mayhap she should put her anger about his desire for Winterfell behind her and allow him to return to her bed. She could at least have the pleasure in that. And in time another babe. She would like to have many children. She recalled how she and her sister and brothers would all pile upon Mother’s bed or pull her into snowball fights or talk her into extra stories at bedtime, and Sansa wanted that. She wanted it so much. Maybe if she had children all around her to love as Mother had, she wouldn’t mind so terribly that she didn’t have the love of a husband the way Mother had.
But she couldn’t help but want it. Mother and Father hadn’t looked at each other and seen castles and lands. They had seen each other. They wanted each other and always loved each other.
Suddenly, Sansa gripped Edmond more tightly, causing him to jump a bit as she realized that was wrong. Her parents hadn’t always loved each other. They couldn’t have. What was it Willas had just said? I had never seen you until the day I wed you. Her parents had never seen each other until their wedding day, either. She knew that much of the story. Her mother had been betrothed to her uncle—Father’s older brother who was killed by the Mad King. She’d spoken to Sansa of him once. Sansa bit her lip now and tried to remember as Ed began to squirm in her arms. Having belched, he was ready to feed from the other side, so she put him to her other nipple and thought back.
When the king came. That was it. After her betrothal to Joffrey was announced. Mother was brushing her hair and helping her dress for dinner. Sansa closed her eyes and remembered.
“I love him so much already, Mother. I truly do.”
“Hold still, Sansa. And you cannot love a boy you have only just met.”
“But I do. He’s so handsome and charming and . . . he is a brave and noble man, I’m sure of it.”
Mother laughed softly, and Sansa twisted her head around to look at her. “It isn’t funny, Mother! Don’t laugh at me.”
Mother bent and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I am not laughing at you, Sansa,” she assured her. “I am laughing at a girl who once was. And Joffrey is not a man, you know. He is but a boy still.” Mother sighed. “Hopefully, becoming a man will even his temper a bit. I have known selfish, careless boys that grow into good men.”
“Joffrey is already good, Mother!”
“Well,” Mother said. “He does at least seem to be taken with you. Although how could he not be!” She smiled at her. “There, sweetling. You look beautiful.”
Sansa surveyed her reflection in the looking glass. “Do you know how to do my hair up the way Queen Cersei wears hers? I think it’s very beautiful, and I know it would please my prince.”
Her mother frowned. “You are beautiful as you are, Sansa. You are a daughter of the North, and I would not have you forget it.” At Sansa’s pout, her mother relented just a bit. “I can style your hair more elaborately tomorrow night if you wish, similar to what I used to wear for dances at Riverrun for I suppose you are half a Tully, too. But, however your hair is styled, and wherever you go, you are a Stark of Winterfell, and I would have you remember that always.”
“I will,” Sansa promised easily. “What girl did you laugh at, Mother? A moment ago, I mean.”
“What? Oh. I meant myself, sweetling.” Mother smiled at her. “I was not always your mother, you know. Once I was a young girl, newly betrothed. And I said many of the same things about my handsome, charming young man as you are saying now.”
“Oh, tell me!” Sansa exclaimed, turning completely around to grab her mother’s hands. “Tell me everything you said about Father then!”
An odd sort of look passed across her mother’s face. “I wasn’t betrothed to your father, Sansa. I was promised to his older brother Brandon. Brandon was to be Lord of Winterfell and I was to be his Lady.”
That made Sansa feel very odd. She knew about her dead Uncle Brandon, of course. She even knew that he was supposed to have been Lord of Winterfell until he died. It just seemed wrong to think of Mother with anyone other than Father. “So . . . you loved him? Uncle Brandon, I mean?”
“No,” her mother said without hesitation.
“But you said . . .”
“I said that I said all the silly things you’re saying tonight, sweetling. Oh, don’t make that face at me. I’m not calling you silly, Sansa. Truly, I’m not. You’re excited and young, and Joffrey is a handsome boy.” She paused. “Brandon was handsome, too. And he said such charming things to me. And I thought myself very much in love.”
“But you weren’t? How do you know?”
“Because I didn’t know what love was. I didn’t learn that until years later. In Winterfell, with your father.”
“Well, I know I love Joffrey,” Sansa insisted.
“I hope you do come to love him, sweetling, and he you, if the two of you are wed. But first you must come to know the man he is and let him know you.” She smiled. “And I fear that before either of you can do that, you must grow up a bit first. Brandon and I were betrothed when I was twelve, and I was far too young to know what I felt then. You’re only eleven. Your father and I intend this to be a long betrothal, Sansa. You will have years to get to know both your future husband and how life works at court. You’ll find it very different from Winterfell.”
“I know! It will be so much more exciting!”
Her mother’s eyes filled with tears, and Sansa became alarmed. “What’s wrong, Mother? Everything is wonderful! Why do you cry?”
“I only wish I could come with you, sweetling. There is so much to learn and so much I would tell you as you as you find your way there,” Mother sighed. “I don’t want to leave Robb and Rickon, but I want to go with your father and you three.” She gave a half-hearted laugh. “I haven’t figured out how I can accomplish both.”
“I’ll miss you, Mother, but it will be wonderful. You’ll see!”
Sansa opened her eyes and discovered Edmond sound asleep in her arms. She put him upon her shoulder once more and patted his back. He didn’t wake even when the soft belch escaped him and she stood to lay him in the crib.
Her mother’s words came clearly back to her. I didn’t know what love was. I didn’t learn that until years later. In Winterfell, with your father. Her parents hadn’t wed at Winterfell. They’d wed at Riverrun.
Brandon Stark had been killed along with his father, and Sansa’s father had found himself suddenly the Lord of Winterfell. He’d wed her mother in the middle of the war, and the Tully forces had joined Robert’s Rebellion. They didn’t love each other then. They couldn’t have. They made Robb at Riverrun before Father went back to battle. They didn’t love each other then.
Sansa looked down at her son. It seemed so impossible to contemplate a time when her parents did not love each other, and yet Robb’s parents had loved each other no more than Edmond’s when he was conceived. Possibly less. Her parents must have been near strangers, and Sansa thought back to the first days and weeks of her marriage. She and Willas definitely had more between them now than they had then. Even when they made Edmond, there had been some sense of . . . something more than strangers anyway.
Her mother had tried to tell her things she was too young to hear that day, Sansa realized. Too young to really hear anyway. And had she ended up wed to Joffrey Baratheon, none of her mother’s words could have helped her in any event. Joff had been a monster. Willas was not a monster. He was a man. He made mistakes, and he made her angry. But he was her husband. Mayhap, she needed to look past some of the things that upset her. Mayhap, she could even acknowledge that she did things to upset him.
Taking a deep breath to stiffen her resolve, Sansa kissed her sleeping son and went to find her husband. She found him sitting with his mother, grandmother, and Leonette. The three women were smiling at Leonette’s young daughter who was laughing loudly at the antics of one of the puppies from the newest litter. The little girl seemed to change every day, and it made Sansa marvel to think that Ed would grow so fast. It also made her sad to think that Garlan had never seen her. She needed to write Jon again about getting his aunt and brother to let Garlan come home.
Willas wasn’t smiling at his niece, however. He had a scowl on his face, and from the frosty reception Sansa got from the two older women, she knew they assumed she had put it there. “Might I speak with you, my lord?” she asked him with only a nod for others in the room.
He looked at her quizzically, but nodded and reached for his cane. “Excuse me, Mother. Grandmother. Leonette.” He nodded to each of them in turn, ever the soul of courtesy. He offered Sansa his arm as he reached her, and she took it.
She noticed he was limping even more than usual, and she wondered how much walking he had done when he left her. He tended to walk a lot when he was upset even though he really shouldn’t.
She led him into a small, empty room nearby.
“I would like us to do better,” she said simply.
“Better at what?” he asked her.
“Better at being married.”
He raised his brow in a half-mocking type of expression, and it made her angry. “Don’t do that,” she snapped. “Sit down.”
His expression became almost patronizing, but he did sit, still without saying anything. She sat as well. “Do not patronize me,” she said. “I know I am more than a decade younger than you, but as you said earlier, I am not a child.”
“You are not,” he acknowledged.
“I would have you treat me more as your wife and less as your ward.”
He smiled at her, but it did not reach his eyes. “I have never had a ward, my lady, but I assure you that if I had one, I would not be getting children on them. Pray tell, how do you believe I treat you as a ward?”
“Like that!” she said in exasperation. “You treat conversations as if you are instructing me. I don’t wish to be instructed, my lord. If I have a question I want answered, I promise I will ask. I would have you speak with me as your wife—someone worthy of your respect. Not a child. I am the mother of your child, my lord. Please do not refer to me as a child again.”
The mocking smile disappeared. “I do respect you, Sansa,” he said softly. “More than you know. But I will not call you a child again. You have my word.”
“Good,” she said. “And I will try very hard not to hold Winterfell against you.”
“You no longer hold Winterfell at all. How could you hold it against anyone?”
“Willas!” she said in exasperation, and he actually smiled.
He smiled widely, and it did reach his eyes. “You are quite beautiful when you get irritated with me, my lady. Your cheeks flush and your eyes emit sparks. I swear to the gods, they actually emit sparks.” When she continued to glare at him silently, he sighed. “I was teasing you. You don’t always know when I’m teasing, but I can’t seem to keep myself from doing it. I shall try to do better on that score as well. I understood what you meant, Sansa. You will try not to remain constantly angry with me over the fact that your claim on the largest of the Seven Kingdoms played a role in my wish to wed you.”
“Yes,” she said, relieved that he understood her even if she was still irritated with him. “That, exactly.”
“What brought this on, Sansa?”
She wasn’t certain precisely how to answer that. “You said that you found joy in my joy about Rickon,” she said instead.
“I do. I would take you to Winterfell to see the boy if I could, but winter is coming here and has already reached the North so . . .”
She laughed.
“What’s funny?” he asked her.
“The Stark words. They sound funny coming from you.”
“Oh,” he said, smiling again himself. “I didn’t actually realize . . . I mean I said them quite by accident.”
“I know I can’t go to Winterfell,” she said. “But I want to start writing letters to Rickon. Lots of letters. I want him to know that he has a sister and that she loves him. Even if he doesn’t remember me.”
“I’ll acquire more ravens if necessary,” Willas assured her. “But I asked you a question.”
“You said reasons do not remain fixed. And I know that . . . what people feel . . . that doesn’t have to remain fixed either.”
“No,” he said slowly.
“My parents didn’t love each other,” she blurted out.
“What?” He sounded utterly confused now.
“My parents,” she said. “They loved each other a great deal. Anyone could see it, and . . .”
“Sansa,” Willas interrupted. “You are contradicting yourself.”
“Let me finish,” she said, irritated again. “I don’t need instruction.”
He tried to maintain a serious expression, but his lips were trying to smile, and she didn’t know if that irritated her further or made her happy. “Go on.”
“By the time I was old enough to remember my parents, they loved each other. But they didn’t love each other when they wed. My mother was supposed to marry my uncle.”
“Yes, I know,” Willas said. “Lord Tully was quite adamant that his daughter become the Lady of Winterfell. When the first son died, he wanted her wed to the second. I doubt Lord Eddard had any say in it at all if he wanted old Hoster’s swords for his fight with Mad Aerys.”
She’d reached that conclusion herself, but to hear Willas state it so plainly made her angry on behalf of her mother. To think of her wonderful mother being parceled out as part of some sort of arms deal caused her blood to boil. She wondered if it had made Mother that angry. If it had, she’d found a way to overcome it. And if Mother could, so could Sansa. I can be as strong as my lady mother.
She swallowed. “That is how they started. But it isn’t how they stayed. I . . . I don’t want us to stay this way, Willas.”
He stood then and walked to her chair. When he reached it, he dropped his cane and pulled her to stand in front of him. “You shame me, Sansa,” he said softly.
“What? I don’t mean to . . . How do I shame you, my lord?”
“You have more courage than I do, my lady.” He swallowed. “You are more to me than your title or your lands. You are more even than your ability to bear the most perfect child who ever drew breath.” He smiled as he said that. “As I have come to know you, I find I think about you when I am not with you. You are lovely, certainly. But more than that, you . . . you fascinate me. But I know you had no wish to wed me, and that you would be free of me if you could. And so I hesitated to speak such things to you. I did not have the courage.”
“I do not wish to be free of you, my lord,” she whispered. “We have a child. I would give him two parents who care for him.” She swallowed. “And for each other, if it is possible.”
He still held her hands from where he’d pulled her to stand, and now he bent to press his lips to hers gently, almost chastely. “On my part, my lady,” he said when he pulled away, “It is very possible.”
“Good,” she whispered. “The maester tells me there is no reason for you to keep away from my chambers any longer, my lord. Mayhap you could come tonight.”
“I will come if you wish it.”
“I wish it.” She swallowed hard once more. “I . . . I honestly don’t know what I feel, Willas. But I know what I want. And I believe . . . that we can find it.”
He opened his mouth as if to speak, but then seemed unable to find words. Instead, he kissed her again, and this kiss was somewhat less chaste than the previous one.
“Ah, you’ve made up, I see. Good. Good. That face you make when she’s angry with you is not at all attractive, Willas.” Olenna Tyrell stood in the doorway, and the two of them looked at her, speechless.
“Don’t stand there gaping at me. It’s time for dinner. Sansa, grab his cane, dear. It appears the fool boy’s dropped it on the floor and he doesn’t need to be bending down.”
Unable to do anything else, Sansa bent down to retrieve the cane and hand it to her husband. Then he offered her his arm once more and they followed his grandmother from the room.
As she walked with her husband through the corridors of their home, the hope which had begun to grow with Edmond began to bloom again, stronger than it had been.
“Thank you, Mother,” Sansa whispered under her breath. She wasn’t certain Willas had heard her, but she saw him smile.