Chapter 35: The chaperone
"Cake?" He seemed to angle his body and his head to overtake her, in order to appeal physically, his tongue craftily poked out of the corner of his mouth. "Pastry?..I know you have a sweet tooth."
She cleared her throat. "No thank you, my lord." It was an utterance of great difficulty. "I'm trying to watch my figure." And the awkward silence was a blessing in her ears, and since he cast his eye outward, it made it look like he was embarrassed to survey her figure. And what possible comment could he pass?
Sansa had been manoeuvred behind Sam and Gilly at the stall, whom turned to greet them both with feigned surprise. Her legs bowed and snapped beneath her dress, like a cat's, that was being heavily petted. After their sorry attempt at containing their delight of seeing Jon and herself being together, well, in close vicinity- they were not together, they were offered a chance to merge with them. She was surprised Jon actually rebuffed them, and there was she thinking he was going to parade her around like a new doublet...dragnet more like. Perhaps it was her hair?...The hair was too silly for him.
"You should know...this isn't a twosome twosome thing, Sam, Lord Harding has been doing the rounds."
She felt somehow betrayed, there were many levels to this. Sansa turned to Jon incredulous, and he suddenly patted her hand, which was less heartfelt because he had gloves on...and he wasn't looking at her. Patronizing much? "Please explain it better, my lord." Her eyes were wild, and Gilly chuckled nearby, reaching forward to also brush her hand to soothe.
"It's alright, we heard about his antics...Lord Tully told us, my lady."
This did not make things better mentally, she was mortified having people know she was second fiddle, and worried for Jeyne. "Doing the rounds sounds like he's taken a few, including me...I'm not a slice, my lady, I wish he had been a bit more circumspect..." She stared daggers at Jon, and he scoffed. "And I meant you in your conversations, not Harry." And she tugged at his arm, accidently clapping it against her bodice.
"They knew what I meant!" Jon's voice was boyish and jovial, and he added a little too late. "-My lady."
"For the sake of the party involved, I expect you to keep hush, my lord, all of you..." She cast her eyes to their company. "Whether you know all or not, don't spread or seek more information." Sansa squared her jaw, she wanted to move away from the cakes and the temptations of gossip, but Jon was rooted to the spot, and clearly amused by her hoitiness.
"Are you hoping for a proposal?" Jon commented very quickly.
She shiftily caught Sam and Gilly game to listen to her response, she rolled her eyes. "I'm not dropping any names, but that is the only way he can redeem himself, my lord, for the lady and his sake."
"How many wives are legal for a man to have?" It was an unwelcome input of Sam's, and he burst out laughing, and she heard the rasping next to her of the leaner gent, her chaperone.
Gilly must of sensed everyone was about to be told off. "Lord Harding has unfortunately shot his mouth off, an ale confession, your lady mother found out about Lady Westerling, Lord Stark chanced upon him with the new steward's daughter, not to mention heard some drunk ramblings on a bastard he sired back at the vale. It is unfortunately old news...and Jeyne's sorrow."
Sansa felt like she had been punched in the gut, she clutched at her bodice, and she felt another hand join it.
"Are you alright, my lady?"
His mirth had been eradicated, but she hated his smouldering softness, and the audience of their intimacy. "No! I'm not alright!" The hand retracted quickly. "I need to speak with Jeyne, I need to console her." She was almost pleading with them.
Sam was unmoved. "Why? She fucked up...well got fu-" Jon threw his hand up and clipped Lord Tarly's ear. "Ouch the ear, no!"
"Watch your mouth, Sam." Jon's finger was deadly straight, and her friend actually put herself between the two men. A testament of Tarly love.
"Forgive him, my lord, we have been drinking all morning."
Sansa wasn't going to be petty and point out she had noticed, or acknowledge the red eyes and giddiness. "I'll find Jeyne." When her arm slipped from the loop, once again her cousin caught it at the elbow and she scrutinised it. "Alone."
"No, my lady...anywhere you go I shall chaperone."
Gilly made a squeaking noise, and upon Sansa shooting her an annoyed look, she found Gilly had been stifled by her pink cheeked fiancé. "Good idea."
"Indeed." She heard Jon add.
The younger Lady Stark now believed her companion was both protecting her from Harry, which she should consider sweet, but also preventing her spreading certain information, which was...frightening. Though realistically he could be more frightened than her. But he needn't worry, Jeyne wouldn't be her first port of call for a secret like that. Gods, Jeyne might shag Jon next! She suddenly laughed nervously, and everybody stared at her. "I think Jeyne would be embarrassed, right now."
"And you think she would be less embarrassed around you, the other woman...whom has still got her virtue?" His voice cracked, and she screwed her eyes up at him, she couldn't believe he had defied her, and was speaking of Jeyne in front of their friends. "Look, if it were me..." He looked dizzy, as if getting his head around the metaphor. "If my friend...was in love with a woman, and then I came along and...gave her one." He made a lewd fist gesture. "And I tried to elope with her unsuccessfully, then I'm not gonner' want to show my face to my friend." He expressed the ludicrousness of the situation. "I'd be humiliated, sick to the stomach, and he would certainly blacken my eye."
Sansa had her hand on her hip, weighing the analogy in her mind, another voice joined the story.
"Is this friend...Robb...or Eddard?" Sam had been quiet, and Jon heard and looked very annoyed, well he should be, it was nothing to do with the Starks. Her look was very snooty, even for her, and all she could do was look to Gilly, and subliminally tell her to 'control her man.'
"It's an analogy, it's not a real scenario, Sam, eat something for the love of the gods! Sop it up." It was a command, and his eyes maintained that stance as he looked to his companion.
"Very well, come." She sighed, and grudgingly allowed him to fall into step with her. "Only girls should be allowed to have such discussions." Her walk wavered between a march and a stagger.
"To decide a man's fate, my lady? Yer' could do with a man's opinion in these talks, and someone to foresee and implement the sentence." He was very broody.
Sansa remained quiet, she didn't know what she actually was going to say to her friend, so she didn't know how Jon intended to assist. Air escaped her fast again, she was shaking her head at the task she had set herself. "I can't get into the nitty gritty with an outside party present, my lord." She was rushing, as if to overtake and leave him, but to nowhere, she didn't know where Jeyne was.
"You're after closure, Sansa. Yer' going to feel ill afterwards, and yer' going to need that outside party to pick you up, my lady." His voice was like a smothering blanket on a fire, that soothed and smouldered.
She trudged up the wooden stair that had been erected at the side of the curtain wall, to get a vantage point, and she surveyed the parameter of the festivities. Jon stood below her, she caught sight of him looking very intense and regimental at her. A sight to behold, at a distance and in small doses. "You wish to nanny me?"
Jon smirked, and it...did strange things to her. He sombred though, soon afterward to give a very serious answer. "You might find an angry woman, a scorned woman, who isn't sorry, or a false woman who will feign an apology. Nothing can be really done on your part."
It was a warning that fell on tentative ears. "It's possible...but I just want them to know, I'm not stupid." She admitted, feeling like something had opened up inside of her. "I'm disappointed, they may not care...but it should be clarified." She swallowed at her own resolve.
Jon gained a step. "This is the closure part of it. Approaching Jeyne about this will be a confrontation...and I don't want it to get ugly around you. Just accept the inevitable of the mistake and see how it pans out on it's own. It can't get any bigger...I mean, yer' father and mother know and...well look, nothing much...not a peep." He gestured at the normal surroundings, devoid of people demanding penance. "They're hiding."
Sansa did a single chortle, gently enough not to crack her face. "So I should reassure my parents, I know too...that I'm not stupid." She joined him on his step, and his face slackened as if his stance had changed, or something had interrupted his thoughts.
"I think you're dealing with it quite well, the impression is, that you find it a bit salacious. People know you and understand you."
She felt slightly better, but was still aware her friend was out there. "I still want to know if she regrets it." She said almost out of the side of her mouth.
Jon gave her a pained look. "What can you do if she does? And if she doesn't...well...that'll hurt yer'." He seemed to resist the urge to touch her arm, for that was what she had come to expect from him. "We don't know what she is willing to admit...be cautious."
He seemed to be hitting the nail on the head, and it was tenacious. She wobbled on the stair, wavering between staring into his eyes and seeking Jeyne. "I hope they marry."
Her cousin nodded, grimacing with a click. "Yeeeaaah, but...at least you can put Harry behind yer'. And yer' vaguely aware of what your friend is capable of..." His look was haunted, and he seemed to incline away for a moment, she thought. "I think we knew right from the beginning, something like this would happen. She is very free, and loves...to experiment." His brows came up to allow a ridiculous stare out into the distance. "That friend of yours."
"Curiosity is going to kill her one of these days, my lord." She was whispering now, as if they were in a chapel during prayers, she felt Jon's hand descend her arm in a stroke, and there was a flicker of a sad smile that would haunt her forever.
"Unfortunately her behaviour escalated to the point of no return prior to this event." He blinked and stared into her. Their souls were doomed.
She gulped, her face blanching, as opposed to it reddening. "I...wasn't going to mention it, since my memory is very poor." She was surprised she had broached it, instead of playing ignorant.
Jon's eyes were probing. "Yes well, a very..." It appeared he had lost his thread. "-I was referring to something else..."
Oh? How would he know or remember this stuff? She merely nodded along. "A traumatic time for us both, I think...I suppose you don't want to dwell on it either?" Sansa was about to flick her hair, but she remembered it was all knotted and pinned up, she settled on hugging herself. "But children can be forgiven."
His look only grew in intensity, it lasted for an age, and he bumped his back against the curtain wall as if about to slide down it. "Depends on..." He sighed, and it rattled through her. "What you know...and what you remember?"
Gods. "It was a blur...until the fortune teller tranced it out of me." She held herself as if she were cold, but it was merely her mental discomfort.
"They do that?" Jon quirked a brow, and she nodded, embarrassed. "Oh?" He squirmed against the stones. "Has that impacted your life so drastically?" Why was there defeat in his voice?
She reposed, and idly stepped down to a lower stair. "You know me, I take things like that very seriously." That was the worse way to brush something under a carpet.
"Me too." It was a drawn out husk. And his gaze looked hooded, though...it was abright day. But the overall look of him made her feel like falling into the mud beneath her, to sever the band that was coiling around the pair of them. Dear Gods, there was more. "I hope we are talking about the same thing, because other wise...this could get very awkward." He was mirroring the way she was holding herself, with folded arms, and she broke her own stance to break the pattern.
Her hands clasped behind her back. "The greenhouse?" She wasn't going to drag this out or play stupid any longer. "Jeyne's game."
Jon weighed it by tipping his head from side to side, and sniffed. "Your game."
"No." She was afraid of this.
"I want to know..." He drawled airily, and she knew it was an impersonation. "Kiss him like you would kiss a man." He repeated to her discomfort, and she balked, stumbling on the stair, and his hand shot out to steady her. "Whoops!"
She did not thank him, she had a score to settle. "I hope you jest, I wasn't expecting things to escalate, surely if you heard my ramblings, you heard Jeyne's too?"
Jon looked down with an air of defeat. "Yes, my lady, she needed no encouragement. She had been gagging against her feminine restraint." He gazed down at her and she tried to impart a smile. "-But." Her smile left her. "There was another occasion that warrants my attention and discomfort, which until this day...I have never spoken about."
Sansa felt ill, it wasn't to do with her was it? "What did...Jeyne do?"
Jon cleared his throat. "When, and who did you think actually took Jeyne's virginity?" There was an open stare, as if the question and verdict was still out.
But it was obviously apparent. She heard herself gasp sharply, it could have easily been a sob, because inside she felt herself crumple into hysterical sadness, and she swung her hand and slapped him hard across the face. It drew onlookers with the racket, people stopped by the stairs and around the vicinity to gaze up at them, she supposed to judge this lapse in decorum of her. Jon jarred with surprise, but didn't tend to his face like she would have expected, he was very resilient, and just before he could turn to her with his burnt looking face, she fled, more so away from the onlookers, than her wounded cousin. "Sansa!" She was not frightened of him. But when she had made a rapid turn onto the battlements after leaving the stairs, she heard and sensed Jon tearing after her, and she ran with a yelp, clattering over the boards in her velvet heels. "Come here, come here...My lady!" He appealed with a growl. Well, she was a little afraid. She was half-way down the inside stairs, when she felt him paw at her arm. "Please listen will yer!-"
"-No, no! I don't care!"
"Listen will yer'!" He tugged her into a turn that she couldn't shake from, and he caught her other arm so he could steer her back against the wall, she hiccupped at the sight of his immediate face drawing level with hers. There was a mixture of anger, and surprise etched onto his face, and she tried her best not to cower from it. So she squared up, put her hands to his own shoulders and pushed. "Sansa, it wasn't me!" He actually shook her by the shoulders as he said this, and she hiccupped again, staring red-eyed at his appealing face. "Sansa I wouldn't." He crooned, his grip turning into a caress, and a sob left her and she wilted.
"What's going on here?!"
Jon's hands stiffened on her sleeves, and he withdrew as fast as he came upon her moments before. "Lady Stark."
Her mother was at the bottom of the stairs, charging up fisting her skirts. "What are you doing? Now I know roughhousing and quarrels, but a man never holds a lady like that, you were brought up better!" She loomed, and Sansa quelled her need to cry and snap, all she could do was hold onto her chest, again trying to fumble with a phantom necklace. Why am I out of breath? Her mother softened at the sight of her, and pawed at her arm, almost in a manner Jon had.
The desperation riddled his voice. "I'm sorry, Lady Stark, I didn't mean- I shouldn't have been so rough, I was just trying to deliver some difficult-"
"-Ah...you mean the honourable Harry Harding business, I expect?" Though her mother hadn't fully recovered from her minor exertion, her face wasn't as hard, which meant Jon was going to be let off with a warning. But now she had to contend with a lecture herself. "I'm as shocked and as frustrated as you, Sansa, but were you so reluctant to hear the news from your own cousin?"
"I'm afraid to say, she was, my lady." Jon added, a sad and almost patronising look passing between both of them. "And once again, I'm sorry I grabbed your arm."
"And you shook her...what was that about?" Her mother turned on him again, and he didn't have time to reflect, she could see, and Sansa found this amusing.
He did a hard blink. "She didn't want to hear about her friend...in that manner." And rubbed at his eye, as if to hide his guilt at half-lying. Well, they were having a discussion about said individual...but it was not about Harry. She had made her peace with that...She did not love Harry.
She tried to regain some more of her decorum. "I was informed..." She drew a blank. "Erm, the discussion was certainly unwarranted..."She felt like she was digging with her bare hands in dirt. "Since I'd already concluded Harry was...bad." She was definitely vouching for Jon at this moment, but that would be short-lived- "But, I agree...his manner." And she indicated to Jon. "Has room for improvement."
Mother bowed her head solely in concurrence. "Yes, lord Snow, you may roughhouse and horseplay with my sons, and Arya, but Sansa is a lot more refined...and delicate."
Oh my gods. She restrained the urge to roll her eyes.
Jon stepped in. "Refined, comely, and gentle-hearted." Jon vouched for...somebody, with a misty eyed look, that she could have mistook for patronizing, again. "I should not have drilled and grilled her like that, even if her ladyship is stubborn." Careful, my lord."I should have been the gent I was brought up to be, lady Stark." He was talking to her mother, but was looking at her. Well, the apology she supposed was meant for her.
Sansa rocked her jaw. "How is Robb, my dear brother fairing?"
Her cousin hadn't been expecting this sudden change in conversation, and looked to her mother for confirmation.
"Well he's a Stark." She instilled. "He's still in the joust." Her mother clasped her hand. "Hopefully he hasn't been put off his game." Catelyn shuddered in annoyance, and composed herself for her next utterance. "Now please...you two make up...I don't need another squabbling pair."
Sansa and Jon looked cagily at one another, than back at their guardian. Um? As in...kiss and make up? Her cousin made the first move and she nearly inclined, but another look from her mother and she awkwardly reciprocated, this was definitely a hug. Her arms came up, and so did Jon's, and they realised immediately, one would have to go under to achieve the ideal hug, but thought the same, and both sets of arms comically drew level in the under arm position.
"Alright, you on top, me under." Jon rumbled, and she tried to ignore how it sounded, and they achieved their hug. The embrace was a warm press, that lingered before they withdrew awkwardly and chuckled at the ceremony. Her mother stared on at the pair of them, nodded and glided off out of the yard.
"I may have been a bit rough with yer', sorry." He fired a look of despair at her that disarmed her. "I didn't want...I really didn't want another setback." Jon offered his hand in earnest. "We've built a good rapport you and I, a good tussle may be good for some, but I don't wish for you to ever think ill of me for a second." The hand was still out for the taking, he was also after concurrence.
She took his hand and squeezed against his glove. However her mouth was a straight line of severity. "Then who, my lord." She posed, still very much caught in her conundrum of earlier. It felt silly how distressed she got, fretting over an image of her friend and Jon, all over each other. Though the notion had been dispersed, Jeyne's character hadn't changed in her eyes, her evolution appeared to be more advanced and earlier set.
Jon threaded a thumb into his belt, hissing as if deliberating a verdict. "Well, if I tell you, my lady." There was a cost. "The situation would not improve, in fact it may sour your opinion further of this individual, my lady." He was evaluating her, and she really didn't mind at all.
"Your consideration for my anguish is...very admirable. You know how wound up I get about matters of morale." She clasped her hands in front of her, and gestured for him to take a turn with her round the courtyard, he obliged, his hand seeking just behind her elbow. "Harry is too obvious, and you wouldn't have posed it as new information since it was already common knowledge...well...not too common, for Jeyne's sake."
Jon's small smile reached his eyes. "Your concern for Jeyne is admirable, but I wonder if it may be misplaced?..."
Sansa swished her petticoats, she felt like she was about to be defeated. "I just don't want ladies to pay the price for a man's vice."
She heard him sigh. "It's not always... solely the man's fault...these...moments of weakness. And Sansa..." He stalled and it certainly did get her attention. "It's not just up to you to improve or fix someone else's problem." They were dithering about the main door in the alcove. "Next time you have issue with something, just think...is it up to me to fix it? Is the problem...really a problem that will affect your life personally?" Jon leant on an opposing wall in the alcove. "It would have been easier if it were Harry Harding that had done the deed, and call it a lesson learnt...sometimes I think it would have been better if it had been me." He jested and thought twice when his companion's eyes flared with anger. "But I wouldn't have...she isn't my type, my lady, never has been."
"Hmm." Her back found a wall also. "Then why imply she was yesterday?..."
His eyes were gamely. "Did I?" He ventured, and he flexed his fingers to secure his gloves.
"You flirted with her, my lord."
"Did I?" He said in the same tone as before.
"You were keen for her to sit with you at the joust, you have foundations for a relationship." Her feet were slipping, so she shirked to the stone corner to give herself purchase.
"I banter and barter, I say the same things to Robb, my lady."
She shirked again. "Like 'am I ripe yet?'" Sansa was getting quite close to a frisky memory, and she schooled her features to that of someone disinterested, which was the polar opposite of Jon's.
"Memory comes and goes, doesn't it, my lady?" He was getting very squinty and snarky with her. "Or are yer' just selective?"
She knew half her face was cast in shadow from the wall she was on, any flicker of self-doubt would be partially masked. "What do you remember, my lord?" This was dangerous, and she knew it, he could say anything.
"What do you remember?" He was speculating, while flexing his gloves.
She scoffed. "I...I asked you first." And he just waited, being painfully stubborn and yet charismatic. She scoffed again and looked to the heavens for encouragement. "Jeyne...kissed you, and you kissed her back, then she made you kiss me, my lord." She fingered the grouting between the stonework to give her an interlude. "Memory fades from there...so I'm hoping...you were a gentleman?" She did not look to him for confirmation, but she heard the silence...and he fidgeted against his wall. Oh dear.
"You'd be right, my lady." He rumbled, and she finally settled on him cagily. Was she to believe that? "If I had kissed you...you would have remembered it. People always remember their first kisses...with the exception of you, forgetting about poor ole' Jeyne, being your first kiss." He thought about it, then laughed. "You ran from me like you were being pursued by a swarm of bees."
Oh. Sansa was embarrassed, and touched her own reddening cheek, but she laughed quietly into the side of her hand. "That does sound like me...sorry. Don't take it too personally, I would have run from everyone." She feebly tried to brush off her own humiliation, and she found Jon's eyes to be kind, if not still haunted, his chuckles ceased slowly.
"Nice to hear, my lady." And his teeth sunk into his bottom lip, as if contemplating something.
Would she run from him now? She could literally see it written in his own eyes. She gathered her wits. Anyhow... "You never told me whom Jeyne's first was."
Jon nodded, pushing off the wall. "You said you had lost your faith..." Oh dear. His hand still propped him up against the stone work, he looked out onto the courtyard, checking it was clear. "But you should know, he was drunk after celebrating his 15th nameday...and she was incorrigible."
She pressed her face against the cold stone, to cool her cheeks. "Go on, I can take it."
And he frowned, but his smile was contagious. "That's kind of what she said." He coughed and raised his hand. "Sorry, bad taste."
She tutted at him. "I have a feeling..." And she swallowed. "You're going to say...my brother."
His look was pitiful, and he nodded. "Yes, it was him."
It felt like the curtain wall had fallen, she turned into the corner as if she was paying penance for a prank, and sighed into the stonework. "Damn damn damn." She tapped her forehead lightly on the wall in front. "Now I'm mad."
"It's their problem." She heard him say.
"He is the worst, Jeyne probably got worse from that moment on, and knowing my brother had a part in this...is horrid, he should have done the honourable thing." She was warming the stones, and she felt his hand fall on her back.
"He doesn't talk about it, it's not like anybody else knows...and she didn't fall pregnant, so for him he could brush it under the carpet, my lady, Jeyne isn't exactly devastated by this rebuff."
"Have you asked her, would she even admit it?" She turned and his hand fell, he was close, he was warming her air.
"No idea." He shrugged. "She doesn't seem to get embarrassed like normal people do, I mean, she made a play for me the same evening, didn't let her...and ended up in Robb's bed, while I was still in the room on the canvas bed."
Sansa gasped, clutching at her face. "You saw everything?!"
"No, I heard everything unfortunately." He breathed uncomfortably. "Hearing a couple of virgins go at it, lives with you, wish I could block it out, like you can." He chuckled, and he must have seen her look of uneasiness, and his hand settled on her shoulder. "Now you know the biggest secret in Winterfell."
"Second."
"Hm?" He frowned, and then it diminished with an open stare. "Hmm?"
For gods sake, Sansa, keep it shut! "I meant..." What...what?! "...The greenhouse thing." Goood.
"Sure." And he manipulated her shoulder to coax her to walk out of their alcove. "Shall we brave the public after our little display on the stairs?"
They were approaching the gate, Sansa felt the pressure on the small of her back. "I feel like I'm being frog marched to the gallows!"
Jon was huffing beside her as if he had exerted himself. "Yer' kidding right? Yer' weren't the one subjected to a direct assault in front of those people, I'm the one that's got to deal with the burden of people thinking ill of me, wondering what I'd done?"
"My assault?...Overstating aren't we?...And people will think ill of me for losing my composure." Sansa swished her skirts, eyeing him from the side of her.
"Because you 'assaulted' me!" Jon began to laugh, and he pulled her towards him, by clasping her opposite shoulder, so her hip bumped his. She had been jostled into an affectionate squeeze. "You agree, good, my lady."
She huffed at his lack of restraint. "Mother has warned you, I'm delicate!" She pushed her hand against his doublet to force a gap between them. "People will talk." Her hand slid from him then, in apologies, and they walked two abreast.
He had obliged her immediately her personal space. "People always talk, it's the sanctity of humanity, my lady." He tried. "What's the worst that could happen, huh? People saying things like 'they're close...how nice...they could be in love?'" Sansa shot a look in warning. "Oh the trivial stuff, my lady." He slowed in his walking, looking irked, but Sansa tried to proceed through the gate, he called after her. "Hang on." When she looked around he was dithering, as if to beckon her back.
She placed a hand on her hip. "What?"
Jon chuckled and looked away from her briefly. Briefly. "People make statements like that wouldn't be too bold, you either ignore it or dispute it, calmly." He thumbed his belt. "But disputing it is very...counter productive, you become vulnerable to taunts. And so, what if stuff is said, if anything gets...ousted, so be it. There's no scandal in that."
She rocked on her feet, her hand still resting at her waist. "When people talk about it, it takes away my agency."
"Riiight...And making a declaration yourself is...weak?"
What? Sansa scoffed. "I can't explain it!"
"Are you worried? Truly...or is it something else?"
A stillness became them, full of furtive gazes. "No." She walked on, and she felt him pursue.
"Let's meet up with the others then."
"I think I might meet up with my brother...and hit him." She was cool and collect.
He rushed in front of her. "Sansa, I was never supposed to mention it." He pleaded.
"Jeyne might be on the rebuff fling...his doing."
"Yeah well, everyone behaves different, she unfortunately is like this regardless, that's her problem...Have you considered Roslin might be doing the same?"
She gasped in revulsion. "Thank you for reminding me of another reason to loathe my brother!"
He seized her arm before she had the chance to fly off. "Robb's my friend, I can't forgive his mistake, but Jeyne..."
"How dare you?!" Sansa snatched her arm back.
"Look, I don't hate Jeyne for her...sensuality and...freedom, we're all animals, except human beings are pervious to addiction and the needs for pleasure. Unfortunately Jeyne has the mentality of a man, that's addicted to pleasures of the flesh." She gasped again, and he continued. "So much so, she is willing to break vows and oaths to friends to satisfy her needs. She is just like Harry."
She shuddered before him. "That's very bold, my lord." She had nothing to add. But she was starting to believe.
"Yeah, it doesn't make her a bad person...just an unreliable friend."
She blinked, fighting tears, and she felt Jon approach delicately, as if to soothe. "I can't forgive Robb." She shook her head. "I just can't...but you certainly can." She felt wronged, and she cast her face away from the hand that loomed, no doubt about to caress.
He spoke quietly with compassion. "You have to someday, he's your family...and the future of Winterfell."
She huffed. "The future of the North, and I had high hopes. My dearest friends have been rejected by him, and I have to face them, all they could do is smile and curtsey at this...false lord. If only Jeyne had come to me, I could have spoken to Robb, and have done something."
Jon finally stroked her face. "You think a marriage between them, would have calmed them down?"
She met his eyes, and nearly floundered. "Y...yes."
He chuckled. "That's like saying if my mother had agreed to marry Lord Baratheon, he wouldn't have become a whoremonger. Bull!"
Sansa winced at the thought of her jovial beautiful Aunt, under that, belching lump of lard. "Is..." Careful. "Is that why she ran away?" She might have mispoke, and the longer Jon studied her, the more she regretted this entire conversation.
"Yeah, you could say that." He volunteered, glancing about them. "She didn't want to be tied to him, she knew a marriage was inevitable if she stayed..."
"Especially since...she fell pregnant?" She added gently.
He furtively glanced between her and the floor. "Yeah, yer know how lords and ladies are pressed, and Lord Baratheon would have been dismayed at the thought of her bearing a child out of wedlock..." He swallowed, and she reached for him. "Baratheon isn't my father...he didn't sire me, my lady."
That was further confirmation of the other, and his eyes probed her. "Obviously, Lyanna would have only touched him with a pitchfork."
Jon laughed. "He would have promptly married her despite it not being his child, it would have been his way to force a quick marriage, he was obsessed with her, but he would have mistreated that child."
He said 'that child' as if it weren't him. Sansa wanted to soothe without being too bold. "Well Lady Sansa is... appreciative of Aunt Lyanna's decision to avoid that brute, and bring up her child in the best possible way. He's turned out quite well."
His smile was wry, and contagious. "Go on."
"He's respectable, friendly, and humble...most of the time." Sansa turned to face forward, starting to get embarrassed with his tentative gaze.
"Did you find my mother beautiful, my lady?" His voice hadn't lost its sentiment, and she looked to him again, since he was talking like a son of her Aunt.
"From what I remember, she was, she had a wild beauty." She sensed he was building to something, or he was at least getting her to build to something. "You aren't as beautiful as her." She pressed with a smile.
Her cousin chuckled. "Shame."
"Not at all, would you want Robert Baratheon calling on you?" She was getting quicker.
"He would get a nasty shock if he did lift up my frock." A smile split his face, it had never been so luminous, but it grew when she had started laughing.
"Was she as funny and as crude as you, my lord?" She had managed to find some calm, but she put it to the soft petting on her back.
"Never crude around me, my lady, she saved that for her friends and..." Jon's face seemed to stagnate, well the smile part of it. He still glowed with sentiment, but something had darkened him.
And Sansa imagined what it was. Well...whom. "Further proof she brought you up well." She tried, bestowing him a half-smile. "I'm sorry I didn't know her better...sorry she wasn't here to see you now." She could feel her eyes burn upon his very ardent looking face, and she stared up at the heavens to dry her eyes. "Do you think it's noon?"
She heard a single sharp sniff, and sensed him crane his head. "No, not even close, my lady, we would've heard the trumpets long ago."
"Of course." She came back down to earth with a thought that made her stand to attention. Oh no. She kept it close, tucked away in her bodice. "I hear...Meera is doing an archery session for beginners, shall we go and watch?"
His toothless smile was endearing, as always. No no no. "Fancy a laugh?" He offered his arm, which she took with a different approach, and feeling...yes, this was different, she wished her thought had never whizzed through her conscience. She walked with him in silence through the markets.