"Girl, have servants bring our meals; and then tell the nurse to bring the children before they're put to bed."
"Does milady need attending, milord?"
Sansa's maid is outside the oak-and-iron door of their chamber and the Greatjon will not let her pass. He stands blocking the doorway with his big body dressed in an old fur-trimmed brown wool robe as Sansa watches sheepishly from their bed with the furs pulled up high to her chin, even though the girl cannot possibly see her.
"Your lady needs her evening meal, and I need mine, so get to the kitchens and tell them we're starving up here!"
He slams the heavy door and turns back to Sansa.
"Blast!" He swears suddenly, "I forgot to tell her to bring you lemon cakes-"
Sansa blushes and shakes her head. "There have not been lemons at Last Hearth for well over two years, my lord; and so there will be no lemon cakes." The Stark words held true and winter had come to the North.
He sits on the bed next to her in his robe now and the mattress dips and the great wooden bedframe groans, much as it did when they had lain together for the last few hours. "No lemons and no Arbor wines: that will not do! I'll send to the Reach and to Dorne. What my Sansa wants, she shall have," he boasts and leans to kiss her shoulder and down her arm to her wrist before biting the heel of her hand and making Sansa jump and give a high-pitched yelp like a puppy. The Greatjon chuckles and smiles.
"Did I not say I was hungry? I've worked myself an appetite," he jests to her.
Sansa blushes even harder so that she is certain she is as dark as a beetroot and drops her eyes modestly. Her husband puts a finger under her chin and lifts her face back to his. He is patient but firm.
"What is it, Sansa?" he asks gently. "Have I hurt you?" She thinks that he must know the answer for he does not look concerned.
She looks fondly on him and shakes her head. "Oh no," she tells him feelingly, "no. I- I…"
"Tell me."
She swallows. "It's just…I don't…I…what has changed, my lord? I feel that somehow, something has- has changed."
He sighs and takes her face between his hands so that she shifts to turn to him and the furs she was clutching fall to her waist and her hair falls around her shoulders and over her breasts as he pulls her toward him to kiss her forehead.
"You're more woman than girl now, Sansa; and high time I treated you like one, hm?" He kisses her lips now: a full, gentle kiss that draws her closer to him as she returns it lingeringly. He leans his forehead to hers.
"Did you….like it, then?"
She cannot but smile gently, and her eyelids flutter and she nods timidly. He had taken her three times; each time had been slow and gentle but his touch had been firm when he ran his hands over her body and his kisses had been sure as they covered her skin and he pushed onward steadily the more she yielded and responded to him. He had churned his hips and rocked her body as he moved over her so that she moved with him and she churned back and arched and strained and softly cried out when they reached their completion together. The last time he had pulled her on top of him and guided her wordlessly to ride his large, hard member; and she's had to feign hesitancy and awkwardness but he had groaned and panted to see her bite her lower lip when she had sank onto him fully and to sway over him naked. Finally he had invoked the gods and shouted her name when he peaked with a burst of powerful throbbing and spurting seed.
She looks him in the eye now and answers softly and without blushing, like a woman: "I felt very close to you, my lord."
There is a knock at their door before he can reply and so instead he tells her to put on her robe and rises to open it. Servants carry trays or food and a flagon of wine and a pitcher of ale and set it all down on a table and draw up two chairs. The candles have burned down and need to be replaced and their bed is a tangle of linens and furs and the servants all see and stare and then avert their eyes and leave bowing when the Greatjon closes the door. He laughs loudly then like the man she knows. He rolls his eyes towards the disheveled bed.
"They love their talk; and we have given them cause. It will be all over the castle before we even finish our meal," he observes almost proudly.
Sansa's smile falters now for the first time since he returned to their chamber from the village, and she stands momentarily frozen with her hands clasped before her as he pulls out her chair for her to sit.
"Come eat," he orders, "you needs feed the both of you."
She sits across from him and before she can reach to serve him as is proper, he piles slabs of meat on her plate and begins to push roasted vegetables from a platter after the meat and Sansa protests.
"I cannot possibly eat so much, my lord; not even when with child."
"Well…try," he blusters, "you always eat so dainty…like a little bird," he observes. "Why do you call Serena that? Did your father call you that, or was it your mother?"
It always hurts her so to think of her father but she shakes her head faintly and near-whispers: "She likes to hear me sing, my lord." I wanted her to fly away, as I wished to fly away.
"She does," he agrees, "but then so do I; and you have never likened me to a little bird…but no one would liken me to anything little," he laughs his great laugh again.
"…unless they wished to lose their life by your sword, my lord," she parries teasingly, "as surely as a capon under the cook's axe."
He grunts as he chews. "Killing in battle is a good thing, and necessary; but taking a man's head is not the same. Thank the gods I haven't had to execute anyone this past year, not even a single wildling or deserter from the Nights Watch. Nasty business, taking a man's head; some die well but others weep like women and piss themselves. Though it puts fear in the hearts of men; your father knew that and so does the king, though example is better than fear. A good man generally has a good people: they will follow him and his laws if they know and respect him, and he's a good king, your brother."
Sansa thinks of her father's greatsword, Ice, which King Renly returned to Robb with her after he had it used to take the heads of Joffrey, Cersei and Lancel Lannister and even Ilyn Payne; the surviving members of the Kingsguard who had beaten her had been hanged like common criminals, a shameful end for any anointed knight.
"H-has the king needed to behead anyone, my lord?" She could not imagine her brother Robb as she had known him at such a task but he is a king now and has a king's responsibilities, her mother had said; and her father had needed to do it as well. That was his duty. He never liked it. It reassures her that her fierce husband does not like it either.
He grunts again, an affirmation. He has kept eating all the while he has been talking and only now looks up at Sansa.
"Forgive me, Sansa: I tell you to eat and then ruin your appetite with grisly talk of beheadings." He reaches across the table to pat her hand comfortingly though he looks pained to have caused her grief.
"I…forgive me, my lord; but I cannot but think of the fate of my lord father," she whispers shakily.
He shakes his great shaggy head ruefully at his mistake and pats her hand again. "All in the North feels his loss. I'm very sorry, Sansa."
My fault. She takes a quavering breath now. "So am I."
Later Sansa cannot resist tidying their bed before the servants return and the nurse brings their children.
"Sing, Mother, please," young Eddard looks up to her and asks courteously; and his father laughs.
"Young Eddard is a bird too now; though not a capon. Show me how you draw your sword, boy; and your mother will sing for us."
Sansa holds her daughter and sings for her family and wishes in her heart that it could stay like this, that it could have always been like this; almost like her family in Winterfell. But now she is not only an unloved exile from her own family but an adulteress carrying a bastard child. How have I let myself come to this? All because I wanted love? With a dull shock she realizes that Cersei's ugly words from the day of her first flowering had come to pass:
Do you want to be loved, Sansa? The Queen had asked.
Everyone wants to be loved, she had replied because that is what she had truly believed.
The Queen had scoffed in her cold manner: I see flowering hasn't made you any brighter…Sansa permit me to share a bit of womanly wisdom with you on this very special day. Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same.
She had wanted to be loved and so she had dishonored her lord, her family and his and even her children and mostly herself; just as Cersei had done. Cersei, who she hated.
I never wanted to be like her, not after she betrayed me and killed my father. She had no love in her; how could she possibly know what love would do to a person? How could I have behaved the same way when I believed completely different?
Mayhaps the gods were punishing her for her pride. When King Renly had told the court that she was a princess of the North, the many nobles and even soldiers and servants who had shunned her now bowed and curtsied as she passed, and those who had stood by and let her father stand condemned for treason now praised him for his bravery and his honor. Those who had sentenced her father to die had died in turn. Sansa remembers the throne room that day: how Cersei had coldly denied that her children were bastards born of incest and that she had plotted to kill King Robert, and claimed that she was being sent to the block an innocent woman. Joffrey had sobbed, and blamed his mother for his cruel and short rule and pleaded to the new king for mercy, calling him uncle. The court had jeered and laughed at him. It was Lancel's words that had condemned Cersei: he admitted to adultery with the queen and to offering drugged wine to King Robert on his fatal boar hunt. He had wanted to die with a clear conscience and expressed his remorse before the king and the gods, and King Renly had acknowledged his honesty and told him that he would have the mercy of dying first. Queen Cersei had gone last, and had watched her craven son die; as had Sansa who had stood with the King and his pretty young queen, Margaery Tyrell throughout the executions. Janos Slynt had died by the sword during the battle for Kings Landing. Grand Maester Pycelle had swallowed a vial of sweetsleep; and Littlefinger had escaped his cell in the Red Keep by bribing a guard but then had been beaten and kicked to death by his own whores when trying to flee the city with a strongbox of gold and gems and promise notes from the Iron Bank of Braavos that he had retrieved from his brothel. Only the spider Varys and the Imp, Tyrion Lannister, had escaped. Sansa had watched and heard it all with dignified composure but had felt a deep satisfaction, and trusted that she would now have a happy life after her suffering at the hands of cruel people. The gods are just, she had thought then and believed that her prayers had been answered and her father and his honor avenged.
My father would be ashamed of me now for I have not his honor, and that hurt most of all; but then she thought that her father had also taken a lover, or even just a wench, and brought home a bastard and the world did not condemn him for betraying his wife and family. Only her mother had suffered for it and she had needed to do so silently, without complaining. Her father had still been considered an honorable man. Sansa could do the same though secretly; she could raise her bastard with her true family and be devoted to her true lord as her father had been to his lady wife and she could try to restore honor to herself, at least in her own heart. She may no longer be a true lady; but she could be a true Stark. Then mayhaps no one would be hurt by her actions and no one would ever know.
Almost no one.