Part Two: A New Leaf
He never so much tells her he's staying, as simply doesn't leave. It all happens seamlessly. They move him out of the guest quarters and into a permanent room, which he realises with a jolt is even closer to hers than he was before. Edric adds him to the guards' roster and he finds himself on her personal detail.
After he left King's Landing, he thought he was done with his old life. With being a hired sword for Lannisters and Baratheons, and other people with more money than they know what to do with. Now he wonders if his old life wasn't just preparing him for this. For knowing all the right ways to protect someone, so he can do it for her.
When he's standing behind her shoulder at dinner instead of seated beside her, she glances over at him. Her eyes take him in with a slight crease which he thinks is a smile, but she doesn't say anything. Just turns back to her meal and every so often, flicks the slightest glance back at him.
It probably means he's not doing a good job. If he was, she wouldn't even notice him there, but he doesn't care. He just likes the feel of her eyes on him every so often, even though he doesn't understand why she bothers to look.
The crisp weather returns after Tormund leaves. Snow flurries patter against his window. She's nowhere to be found when he rises reluctantly from his warm bed and goes to break his fast.
"Gone to the godswood, my lord," one of the guards tells him when he asks.
He follows her out there, even though it's snowing and he doesn't know what he's trying to find.
She's sitting beneath a branch of the twisted weirwood, staring at nothing.
"You're not meant to be out here alone."
Her eyes slide onto him slowly, like she knew he was there all along. "It's as safe here as anywhere else," she says, which he supposes means it's not safe at all.
"Still praying to your gods then, girl?"
Sansa glances at the tree. Her voice is flat. She had been screaming worse than normal last night. He wonders if that's what's driven the already meagre traces of happiness from her eyes. "There are no gods; just men and stronger men who kill them."
It strikes him again how different she is. Like one by one, these men have broken down the old Sansa into little pieces, and built her back up into something that looks the same but isn't.
"You told me that. Do you remember?" She rises to her feet, stepping towards him. "You were right."
Sandor shakes his head, but it's a lie. He remembers telling her any number of things like that in the red heat of King's Landing. He had been a different person then, so intent on only seeing the cruelest parts of the world. He sees those parts still but sometimes, like here looking at her, he sees more.
"It turns out you've been right about a great many things." She's still a few feet away, but he can feel her presence like a weight on him.
"I wish I hadn't been," he says. The words sound gruffer than he means them to, but he doesn't think he's ever meant something more. He wishes the world had been better to her. That Joffrey and the Bolton bastard and Littlefinger had never got their teeth into her and ripped his little bird to shreds. That he had done more to shield her from all the cruelty. "I should've protected you."
She shakes her head. "The world is cruel. No one can really protect anyone from it."
He shakes his head right back, staring deep into her blue eyes. Just like his journey into the Godswood, he doesn't know what he's hoping to find. Some spark of hope perhaps? A sign that she doesn't mean what she says, because it's not true: he could protect her.
He's old, and years too late. So much damage already done, but they're both here now and it's all he has to offer her.
Sandor kneels in the ankle-deep snow. It's cold and wet through his breeches but he barely notices. The ring of steel echoes through the empty wood as he draws his sword and lays it on the ground in front of her.
"I don't know the bloody knights' vows, but my sword and my life is yours, if you'll have me. I'll die before I let anyone hurt you again. I swear it to you, and if any of the damn gods are listening, I swear it to them, too."
He doesn't want to look up now. Afraid he might see disapproval in her eyes. He couldn't blame her if she didn't want him. Gods knew he had enough chances to protect her in King's Landing and failed miserably. Why should she trust him now?
He forces himself to raise his eyes back to hers. Despite the snow, the breeze catches her hair and whips it around her face like flames, dancing through the ice. He's transfixed by her, just like he is every time he looks.
"Stand, my lord," she says softly. "This is the part where I offer you a place at my hearth. Do you want that?"
He swallows. Nods. "Aye."
A smile flickers over her lips, pink and fleeting and gone just as quickly as it appears.
"I got married here," she says. It's not what he's expecting. "Right where I'm standing now, Theon Greyjoy gave me to Ramsay Bolton. I hadn't expected that I would want another man making vows to me under this same tree."
His heart seems to beat off rhythm at that.
"You know I don't need to be protected?" She asks him. "Not anymore."
He takes a slow breath. He knows alright, but he wants to do it anyway. He can't find the words to explain it to her, though.
Somehow, she seems to know it without him needing to say it, gently proffering her arm to be taken back to the keep.
Everything is different after that. In some strange way, it feels like he's been journeying towards this point ever since he took that first step out of the gates of King's Landing. Maybe even before that. Like he's always been meant to be here, over her shoulder.
He's probably just flattering himself, but she seems to like it too. She speaks to him more than he's come to expect, which is likely just a sign there isn't enough good company around the castle, but much to his surprise he likes it anyway.
"What was it like seeing the Queen's dragons fight in the war?" she asks one day. Terrifying.
The next, it's "is it nice in the Westerlands?" Probably nicer now that Gregor's dead.
"Did you think you would marry?" Never thought much about it...
Most of the time she still reminds him of Cersei more than he'd like. Her eyes take everything in quickly and coldly and with a calculating grimace. She's still beautiful, but in the chilliest way he could've imagined.
But then sometimes, if he catches her at just the right moment, the way she looks at him reminds him not of the girl she was back in King's Landing, but of the girl she might have been if things would've been different. If Joffrey hadn't taken his time meticulously destroying her expectations of men. When her eyes are bright, and her cheeks are flushed, and a smile plays lightly over her lips, just teasing at the edges.
Late at night, when he's alone in his chambers, he wonders what he'd have to do to get that smile to stretch the whole way across her lips. He lets himself slip down that rabbit hole, mind drawing the curves of her body from what he's glimpsed under her dress and letting his imagination fill in the rest.
The fantasies only last a minute, though, before he remembers that men like him don't make women like her smile. Before he realises she'd be disgusted if she knew he was stroking himself while thinking of her.
He used to think women like Sansa Stark were made for men like Loras Tyrell and Jaime Lannister, not men like him. These days, when he sees her standing on the ramparts with the wind whipping through her hair, he realises Lady Stark was made for herself. Not him, or the Kingslayer, or anyone else for that matter. Just her.
He's standing guard outside her room the first time it happens. He knows later it's the first time because the next day he reports it to Ser Edric and the knight just looks at him like it's the strangest thing he's ever heard.
It's late and dark, and he's let himself down into a seated position on the ground, head lolling against the cold stone wall. Her door creaks open and she's standing there in a nightgown.
He climbs back to his feet, trying to look grudging so he doesn't look caught off-guard.
"I wanted water," she says. The gown is thin. So thin he can see the moonlight shining through her window through the fabric. So thin he can see parts of her he needs to not see if he's going to retain his sanity.
"You've got water," he says gruffly. He wants her to go back inside so he doesn't have to focus so hard on not looking at her. Instead he's fixed his gaze on a spot just over her shoulder.
She smiles apologetically. "I spilled it."
Her hand proffers the empty jug.
"I'll get more." He moves to take it and she pulls back slightly, hand keeping its grasp on the handle.
"I'll come," she says, stepping out into the hall. "I can't sleep."
Her feet are only clad in delicate fur slippers. He can see the curve of her thigh through the fabric of her gown. Probably more if he cared to look. He looks down at the ground.
"Fine." He starts walking to put some space between her body and his mind. Soft pattering feet race to catch up with him.
They walk in silence for a few feet, and then he feels her hand slip through the crook of his elbow. Fingertips, warm and gentle, brush his forearm and stop there, barely touching the skin. There's a feeling in his stomach which he hates, because it only shows up when she's around.
He looks at her. She's looking back, with a look in her eyes like there's nothing strange at all about her touching him. Perhaps for her it's not strange. Most of her life would be being escorted around the castle by lords and knights and men at arms. Perhaps she's so used to men offering their arms to her she doesn't even think about it, even when it is the Hound.
He reminds himself of that over and over again as they walk, when her fingers gently trace over his skin as they move. When his mind begins to wonder what that hand might feel like on other parts of him and he feels a feeling that's too low to be in his stomach this time. Seven hells, he hates that he turns into some ridiculous green boy around her.
He ignores it all the way to the kitchen. On the way back, he's silently glad her hands are full with the water jug and she has to stop touching him.
When they get back to her room, she lingers in the doorway before going inside. The way he imagines a maid might do with a handsome knight who escorted her home. Like she's waiting for something.
But she's not a maid and he's not a knight, and he doesn't know what she's waiting for, so he just turns around and faces back out to the other wall so he doesn't have to try and work out what Sansa Stark expects from him.
Eventually, he hears the door close behind him.
"Have you eaten?" she asks one night, while he's standing by the fire as she pours over letters.
It's such an odd question that he doesn't answer for a while, until she glances up from her papers to fix her blue gaze on him.
"Not yet?" It's more of a question than an answer. Why would she care? He wants to laugh at the thought of Joffrey or Cersei having asked him that when he was standing guard over them.
"I'll have them bring something up for you. You can eat with me."
He frowns at her. She sees it, but ignores him.
"Seven hells, you are bloody lonely, if you're looking to share your meals with an old dog. Maybe you need a husband more than you think."
But she has the servants bring him food up anyway, and he sits down without any real protest. Gods, he's all bark and no bite these days. What's happened to him?
"Are you planning to sleep tonight, or stay up all night reading those letters like you usually do?" he asks her around a mouthful of bread.
She takes a slow sip of wine. "If I didn't know better I'd think you were worried about me."
He just looks at her. He is worried about her and they both know it. There doesn't even seem a point in denying it, like she's probably expecting him to.
"Didn't swear my sword to you to have you reading yourself to death."
Her lips curve into a soft smile. Wine has stained them ever so slightly red.
His mind flicks back to the whore he visited the week before. A plump red headed woman, who wore a jarring red paint on her lips. It had grated on him so much he'd fucked her from behind just to avoid looking at her face. Leastways he told himself that was why, and not because then all he could see was a cloud of red hair spilling over her shoulders.
He tears his mind away from that, clearing his throat as if she might know what he was thinking about. Sandor takes a long drink of his wine.
"Why did you swear your sword to me, then?" There's a teasing in her eyes that he doesn't like.
"You know why," he grunts and roughly shoves more food into his mouth.
A foot brushes his leg under the table and he almost jumps out of his seat. It lingers just long enough that he thinks it wasn't an accident, and then it's gone.
His eyes flick to hers. She's looking at him with that look that he loves. The one where the icy layer has melted off her just enough and he can see Sansa Stark peeking through.
The foot brushes him again, slower and more deliberately. He wants to tell her to stop, but he's not enough of a masochist to do that. He just stares at her smile and some crazy part of him wants to smile back, if his face wasn't so fucking ugly when he did.
"Meet me tomorrow morning?" she asks. Her voice is uncharacteristically soft. "I'll be in the stables just after dawn. You'll have to saddle Stranger, the stable boys value their hands too much to touch him."
Sandor snorts. He should ask her what for, what's happening at the stables, who else is coming. But he doesn't really care about any of that, so he just nods and mutters, "Fine."
He finds her in the kitchen bright and early the next morning, fingers delving through baskets along one side of the room, searching for something. She's bent over, skirt following the curve of her hip and other parts of her down to the ground.
She looks over her shoulder at him and a smile spreads over her face. It lights up her eyes in a way he hasn't see since he arrived.
"The maesters say spring has come."
"So you're raiding the kitchens? I didn't know ladies needed to do that in their own castles."
Her hands light on whatever she was looking for, and she straightens. A bright red apple is clutched in her grasp. With her no longer bent over, he finds it a bit easier to focus.
"I was getting an apple for Stranger. I had thought a treat might cheer him up before we go riding today."
"Before we do what?" At least it makes sense why she wanted to meet at the stables.
"Riding." She smiles again, the beautiful shine of it rippling right the way across her face. "Don't say no. It's only the first day of spring once."
She walks over to him, stopping closer than she should, between him and the long wooden table. There's only a few feet between them and she holds the apple up in her hand, offering it to him. He just needs to reach out to grab it, and then he could step away. He doesn't move, though.
He can smell her hair. See the curve of her lips as she smiles almost… nervously? But that's ridiculous, she has no reason to be nervous.
"Are you going to take it?" Her voice seems huskier than usual. Her eyes are pools so deep he's sure he'd drown in them if he let himself.
By the gods, she's close to him. How did she get that close so quickly without him realising? Much fucking good he is as a sworn shield if he can't even keep track of this girl.
The smell of flowers and apples washes over him. He could reach out and touch her face. Her beautiful, soft face.
As if thinking it sends out some kind of signal to her, Sansa reaches her empty hand up and runs it through his hair, gently tucking it behind his ear. He can't remember the last time someone's done that to him. Maybe they never have.
Her hand holding the apple gently puts it down on the table behind her, before coming back to fist in his shirt. Is she pulling him closer? Is he losing his mind? The second seems more likely, but he swears she's reeling him in by the second.
The heady smell of her fills every inch of his senses as she presses herself back against the table, and brings her face up closer to his. Her lips stop, so close to his he can't breathe.
"Will you kiss me?" And he can't see her face, because he's shut his eyes in panic, but he can hear the smile in her voice.
Her nose brushes against the tangle of scarred flesh on his cheek, and he can feel her breath against his mouth, hot and sweet and begging him to lean in.
He can't even think straight. Couldn't find his way to her lips if he wanted to, and fuck it, does he want to. Everything is a blur of heat, and the sweet smell of her, and the delicate feel of her closer than she should be. Why is she doing this?
He tries to breathe in. Her fingers trace over his scarred cheek, where he can barely even feel it, but something in the movement snaps him out of it. Maybe it's some kind of test. She's looking to see if he's just another Littlefinger, or another Joffrey. If everything he's done has been some clever ploy to get him closer to her bed. Even if it's not a test, he's not going to let her kiss a dog. She deserves something better than that; the knight she's always dreamed about, ever since she was a girl. Not a tired old hound who's not good for anything but killing.
He shakes his head, looking away. "No."
Sandor steps back and she's let him go without holding on. Just like it should be.
They don't go riding that day, in the end. She makes some half-hearted excuse and then he doesn't see her again until the evening meal when she won't look at him.
He doesn't blame her. Reminds himself through the haze of self-pity that it's right. This is how things should be. She shouldn't be looking at him over her shoulder as she eats, or letting her foot brush his ankle under the table. Gods, he wants her to do it, but she shouldn't.
The hardest part is that she's painfully polite. It would be easier to take if she was rude, but her manners are just as impeccable as always. All he can see that's different is an air of disappointment. A resigned disappointment; the worst kind.
He hasn't realised how close he'd gotten to her until she starts backing away. No appearing in her doorway for late night walks, no invitations to sit with her for dinner. She walks five feet in front of him as they walk the halls, like she's meant to do, and when she does look at him it's with tight, serious eyes.
It's the hardest at nights. When the northern air slips in under the blanket and he wonders whether, if he'd said yes that day, maybe he wouldn't be alone in his bed. He curses himself for having a mind that's equal parts sure he should leave her be, and unable to stop thinking of her.
Then one night, she does appear in the doorway when he's standing outside. He's never stood so straight in his life, at a loss as to what's about to happen. Maybe she'll try and kiss him again. Would he be stupid enough to say no twice?
"If you'd like me to release you from my service, I will," she says. Her voice is sure of itself, even while she stands there in a fur blanket and silk slippers.
"What are you talking about?" he snaps. It's the last thing he expected her to say.
"I would understand, if you'd prefer to go north to Castle Black. Or south, to Clegane Keep, or King's Landing, or wherever you might like to go. Rather than stay here."
He doesn't know what to make of her like this. How can any one person be as much a lady and a girl at the same time?
"I don't want to go anywhere." His voice is a low growl, and even though he desperately doesn't want to ask it, he asks anyway. "Do you want me to go?"
She takes him in slowly, considerately. Eyes raking over his scars and the smooth side of his face equally. He isn't sure she even knows what she's going to say until she opens her mouth.
"No." Once she's said it, she looks sure of it.
Relief crashes through him unexpectedly.
"Well if that's settled, go back to bed." His voice sounds surer than he thought it might, and he's glad of it.
She nods and the door closes behind her, but it doesn't sound as final as it might.
It's not long before they start falling back into their old routine. He enjoys it too much to even try and stop it from happening.
Everything is the same, but slightly different. She still smiles the same way, when only he can see it, still makes the same inane chatter with him, but her fingers don't trace circles on his arm when they walk. Her foot doesn't drag over his calf when they sit next to one another. Her eyes break away more quickly when their gazes meet.
With her back at arms' length, it's easier for him to focus. To do his job. He tries not to dwell on how he misses those things, and when he doesn't think about it, it's easy to push it away.
The one indulgence he allows himself is the occasional visit to the whore in the city, when he thinks he can't forget about it anymore.
He's worked out just the way he can fuck her that he can almost trick himself into thinking it's Sansa, and he makes the mistake of mumbling Sansa's name into her hair one night as he's finishing.
"Why didn't you tell me?" the girl laughs. "Could've done my proper Lady Stark act for you, if I'd known that's what you were after. Not like you're the first man coming here wanting to fuck the Lady of Winterfell." She winks at him.
The thought of it makes him sick, other men thinking about her like that. It draws up a rage in him that he hasn't felt in years now; not since he trudged home from the war, too battle weary to think he could ever really feel that rage again.
He doesn't go back to the brothel after that. Can't stand the thought of men traipsing through there fucking the same girl and whispering the same name into her hair.
"I'd like to restart my training. If you're willing to keep teaching me?" Sansa tells him one evening.
"Only if you're willing to go back to being knocked on your arse again."
"Maybe I've improved," she says drily. Her eyes crinkle at the corners. Did she smile this much when he first arrived? He doesn't remember her doing so.
So their lessons resume. She hasn't improved.
If anything she's gotten worse in her time away, but with the ground drying out at least there's less mud for her to contend with. And slowly, morning after morning, she does start to get better.
When she lands a particularly good hit on his shoulder he raises an eyebrow.
She gasps in surprise. "I'm sorry," she says.
"Not very threatening if you hit someone and then say sorry."
"I'll bear that in mind."
"What are we practicing for anyway? You want to be able to slice the Umber boy's ear off if he tries to marry you?"
"I haven't decided yet." Those words are a surprise, after her repeated assurances that she didn't intend to marry anyone. They set off a painful and unfamiliar feeling twisting in his gut, until she adds, "Maybe it would be his nose."
Unearned and foolish relief crashes over him, and he nods back to her sword to change the subject. "You want to try and hit me with that again, or just keep talking?"
As if by mentioning it, he's summoned them up, the Umbers write to propose a return visit only a few months after the last. He's standing over her shoulder when Sansa receives the letter. She doesn't even attempt to hide her grimace.
"I suspect this is it," she says wearily.
"What's that?"
"When the young Lord Umber will propose a union of our two great houses. No other reason for them to be returning so soon."
He shrugs. "So say no."
She glances at him. "That's why you're not a diplomat."
"Plenty of reasons I'm not a diplomat," he chuckles, and it's almost enough to tweak a smile onto her lips. Not quite though.
Maybe on its own, that letter wouldn't have been enough to change anything. But it's the second letter, the one she receives only a few days later, that tips the scales.
They're walking through the courtyard when the Maester hands it to her, the royal seal clearly visible as she cracks it open. Sansa's eyes skim quickly down over the words, growing colder by the second until the ice radiating of her could freeze a man. He has to resist the urge to step closer. To put a hand on her arm and make sure she isn't frozen in place.
"What is it?"
She doesn't answer, handing him the letter and then turning and striding off inside without a word. He recognizes Jon's messily scrawled hand covering the page. Skims his own eyes over the words until he finds it.
It is vital for the North to stand with the Crown at this time and the Queen and I are agreed that a marriage between you and Ser Jorah is the best way to solidify this bond. He is a good man, sister, and there is no doubt that in time you will grow to love one another as your parents did-
He stops reading. Shoves the scroll in his pocket and turns to follow her inside. But her door is locked when he gets up to her rooms and even when he bangs on the door, she doesn't come to answer it. Sandor wonders if he's imagining the muffled sound of crying through the stone.
The first time she mentions it is as he's handing her a sword to begin their sparring practice. He had assumed she might want the morning off after the unpleasant news the day before, but she had insisted on proceeding. Sandor thought that it was so she could hit him to work out some of her frustrations at Snow. He should've known that with her it was always more complex than that.
"They can't force me to marry someone if I'm already married."
"Not sure even the red priests could help reinstate your last marriage, after what you did to him." He wishes sometimes he'd seen that boy being ripped to shreds by dogs. Imagines it with a grim satisfaction and a twinge of unjustified pride.
"No. But I could marry someone else." She pauses, spinning the sword round in her hand with surprisingly nimble fingers. She'd be no match for the little wolf bitch, but she's improved, nonetheless.
The words have made that all too familiar jealousy rear up in his chest, and the words he spits out come out harsher than he means them too. "What's the fucking difference? Marry the Umber boy so you don't have to marry Mormont, or marry the old bear so you don't have to marry the boy. Still marrying someone you don't want to marry."
"What about you?"
"You want me to marry Mormont so you don't have to? You'd have been off with the Tarth bitch as your sworn sword if you wanted to make requests like that."
She doesn't laugh. "I could marry you." When he only stares at her, struck dumb by the words, she continues. "It's the only option I've been able to think of that makes any sense."
But what she's saying makes no sense at all and he laughs for want of a better response. He doesn't remember seeing her drinking the night before, but mayhaps the little bird downed a few skins of Dornish red in her solar before coming down to meet him. It would be the only logical explanation for why she's speaking this way now.
"Did you come here to practice or to make jokes, girl?"
A look that he hasn't seen in a long time flashes across her face, one that looks like hurt, but it's gone so fast he might have imagined it. She lets the conversation drop after that, in favour of swinging her sword at him with a startlingly strong arm.
He hopes that's the end of it, but Sansa brings it up again that night, dropping back a few steps to walk beside him as he follows her back up to her room after dinner.
"Have you thought any more on what we discussed this morning?"
"What was that?" He asks, like he doesn't know exactly what she means. Like he hasn't spent the whole day thinking about it and then chiding himself for thinking about it.
Sansa sighs, like he's a child who is exhausting her. "You read the letter from my brother. Even if I refuse Ser Jorah's offer of marriage, this won't stop. I have twenty years yet before I'm past childbearing age, and I'll spend every one of them fending off husbands. I will have no peace until I'm married."
"Some choice that is; peace or happiness."
"I'm happy now. Aren't you? If we married, nothing would have to change."
They're still in the hallway and Sandor looks around sharply to make sure there's no one lingering in an alcove that might have heard her words. He doesn't know why exactly he cares if someone hears her, only that he does. It can't be good for political stability if her men think she's gone mad, which is no doubt what they'd think if they heard her spewing ridiculous ideas like this to her old dog late at night.
He shepherds her quickly into her room when they get there, before she can say anything else, even though the hallways are deathly silent except for their own footsteps.
"What is this about, girl? You don't like the Dragon Queen telling you what to do, so you want to marry whoever's going to piss her and your bastard brother off the most?"
"I want to marry someone I trust, Sandor, and there are precious few men out there who meet that requirement."
There's a desperation in her tone that he doesn't like. He wishes there was something he could do to help her with this, but there's no one he can fight or kill or insult to fix this, because Sansa's right, same as she always is; nothing will convince men to leave her alone until she bears another man's name. But his name? It's too absurd for him to think it's anything but a cruel joke.
He's taken too long to reply, because Sansa carries on. "If I'm going to be forced to marry someone, the least I can do is have it be someone of my own choosing. Having it be you didn't seem so ridiculous to me as it clearly does to you."
"What, you thought because I pledged my sword to you, I'd be happy to pledge the rest too? Don't remember Joffrey ever expecting me to fucking marry him."
He doesn't know why he's angry. Not even sure if it is anger that's rising in him. It feels just as much like panic. Like the feeling he got when he saw green fire licking over the edges of the battlements at King's Landing all those years ago. Things had been much easier for him back then, when he was the one who scared her.
She softens a little at his words, reaching out as if she might place a hand on his arm. She doesn't, thank the Seven. He's not sure what he would do if she actually touched him. Maybe he'd run. Maybe he wouldn't. He doesn't know which is the worse idea.
"I didn't mean it like that. Things needn't even change so much between us, if you didn't want them to. You could stay in your own rooms, take your meals with the men, you could even keep visiting the brothel in the winter town if it pleased you. I wouldn't expect anything from you that you didn't want to give."
Just like that, all the confused fragments fall into place in his mind, forming a clear picture. She doesn't want to marry him, not really. She just wants someone to stand under a tree with her and say some vows, so she can write letters to all the other lords telling them to fuck off. And she's picked him because she knows he's the only one not fool enough to think she wants anything more from the arrangement.
But he does want more from the arrangement. The thought twists uncomfortably at the back of his skull. If she knew he thought about fucking her most nights, would she still be asking this of him? Does it even matter? He said he would protect her and now here she is asking him to do it. He's said yes to much more unpleasant requests in his time.
"I've asked too much." There's a sadness on her face that's quickly covered by her usual cool expression, as she gathers up her skirts and sits down at the table, preparing to return to her books and ledgers. "Forgive me, my lord. I had thought perhaps... Anyway - "
"Fine."
She stops shuffling her papers. Looks at him cautiously, the way one might look at a wounded animal they were considering approaching. "Fine?"
"You deaf now?" He doesn't know what to do with his hands, clasping them in front of himself only to decide seconds later they should be behind him. He pushes the words out quickly before he can change his mind. "When do you want to do it?"
"As soon as we can." She pauses, so many expressions flitting over her face in quick succession that he can't keep up. "If you're sure, that is." Giving him a chance to back out now, when it's already too late.
His laugh is grim. "Already swore my life to you, didn't I? Suppose it's no different."
