Disclaimer: The SKKS-verse belongs to the creators of Sungkyunkwan Scandal.

Technical Notes: I'm a city kid myself and don't know what a cow in labor sounds like, so let's just say that in my universe, they make a lot of noise.

Author's Notes: Thank you again to jinx XD for the review! :)

Chapter Nine

Fortunately for Jae-shin, he secured the truce before the night that the Jalgeum Quartet came for dinner. He trusted that his wife wouldn't conveniently "forget" that his friends were coming, poison the guests or otherwise do anything to shame him, but he knew by now that she was a little on the unpredictable side, so he approached the evening with caution.

As it turned out, she didn't forget that they were having company to dinner, and if she was bent on killing their guests, she was going to do it through a surfeit of good things to eat and drink. Moreover, she dressed prettily (Jae-shin noticed this time), laughed at the professors' funny anecdotes about their students, and gamely knocked back a shot of the fiery Chin liquor that Yong-ha had brought.

"Ugh!" Ka-hai sputtered. "It tastes like liniment!"

Her husband laughed even though he, too, was still recovering from the effects of the drink. "You've drunk that stuff?"

She coughed and nodded. "My brothers couldn't sit down for a week."

Yong-ha gallantly offered her his crimson silk handkerchief so that she could wipe her streaming eyes. "Have a care for your skirt, my dear," he advised. "You don't want to end up looking like my newest customer, who must have been dressed by a depressed dressmaker with ten thumbs before she came to me."

Jae-shin smiled as his friend launched into a story about the unfortunate customer. There was something deeply satisfying about entertaining his friends tonight. It was the first time he and Ka-hai had guests over since they were married — Dong-wook definitely did not count — and he couldn't help feeling a certain measure of pride as his wife kept the evening flowing smoothly with the ease of a seasoned hostess.

With nothing more than a nod, she summoned servants to bring more wine. Moving with silent efficiency, they replaced the depleted bottles at the table with fresh ones, and to Jae-shin's surprise, they put another bottle on the table, right at his elbow.

At his inquiring glance, Ka-hai leaned over to murmur, "That one's all yours."

He arched an eyebrow. "Are you trying to get me drunk?" he asked. The idea tightened the strange tension that had been building in his gut ever since that afternoon on the hill.

Her heart skipped a beat and warmth rushed to her cheeks at the teasing note in his voice, but she raised her chin and met his eyes squarely. "Of course not," she retorted. "I just happen to know that it's only a matter of time before you start drinking straight out of the bottle, and I'd rather that it isn't the same one that the guests are using, that's all."

Ka-hai was glad that their guests seemed to be having a good time. She enjoyed watching the camaraderie among the long-time friends, but it was also touching how they made the effort to include her in the conversations as well.

"How is your reading going?" Yoon-hee asked her as the men started debating politics. "Are you finding the books useful?"

"I've finished a couple," she replied, glancing furtively at Jae-shin to check whether he had heard, "but I have to admit that some of the rest are still too advanced for me. I should probably give those back."

"You may need to do a bit more background reading," the other woman suggested. "There's a bookseller in town who might be able to supply the books you need. I can always borrow the advanced ones for you again when you're ready for them."

She smiled. "That would be nice. Thank you so much."

"You're very welcome," Yoon-hee replied with a warm smile of her own. "It's so nice to have another woman around. The others have always been nice to me, but I feel outnumbered sometimes."

"I know the feeling," Ka-hai confided. "This is a house of men. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to pretend that I don't call the shots around here?"

The ladies laughed, leading the men to look at them curiously. "Hey, what are you two whispering about over there?" Yong-ha wanted to know.

"Nothing, sa-hyung," Yoon-hee told him sweetly, even as she winked at the other woman. "I was just telling Ka-hai here that she and her husband must come and visit us sometime."

"That's not nothing," Sun-joon pointed out, logical as always.

"You're inviting just those two?" Yong-ha demanded, sounding hurt. "Am I excluded because I'm still footloose and fancy-free?"

"Of course not, Yeo-rim sa-hyung," Yoon-hee's husband assured him. "You know you're always welcome at our home."

"Yeo-rim?" Ka-hai repeated, arching a quizzical eyebrow at Yong-ha.

"That was sa-hyung's nickname at Sungkyunkwan," Yoon-hee explained.

"It fits me, doesn't it?" he asked brightly. "We all received nicknames at school. I'm Yeo-rim and Sun-joon is Ga-rang. And does our Ga-rang live up to his nickname, my dear Lady Kim?"

"Most of the time," his wife laughed, with a mischievous glance at the man in question.

"What was your nickname, Yoon-hee?" Ka-hai asked.

The other woman grinned. "They called me Dae-mul."

She laughed and nodded approvingly. "I love that the woman got the most impressive nickname."

"They didn't know I was a woman at the time," Yoon-hee informed her.

"Really?" Ka-hai's eyes widened in surprise at the revelation, but she recovered quickly. "Well, it doesn't matter," she went on. "I'm sure you deserved that nickname more than anyone else."

"She did," Sun-joon confirmed, smiling at his wife.

"Uh-oh." Yong-ha reached over to poke Jae-shin's arm with his fan. "Did you know that Ka-hai is one of those feminists?"

"Right from the day we met," he replied with a crooked smile, glancing at the woman in question. She didn't notice, so he let his gaze linger a little, taking in the elegant line of Ka-hai's throat and the starry sparkle in her eyes as she bantered animatedly with Yoon-hee.

There was a twinkle in Yong-ha's eye as well when Jae-shin turned back to him. "And yet you married her anyway?"

He shrugged. "It was something to do."

Presently, Ka-hai turned to him, one eyebrow raised in a graceful arch. "And what did people call Jae-shin at school?" she asked.

"They called him Geol-oh," Sun-joon supplied, looking startled when she started to laugh.

"What's so funny?" Jae-shin wanted to know. He hadn't really cared about the nickname while at school, but hearing an outsider laugh at it was something else. (It didn't matter that the outsider was his wife, and her laughter was doing funny things to his heartbeat.)

"It used to strike terror into the hearts of our classmates," Yoon-hee said.

"I'm sure it was very intimidating to them," Ka-hai acknowledged, but a smile still lingered in the corners of her generous mouth. "But my father always said that I never met a horse I couldn't train."

"Oh, really?" Jae-shin asked, pinning her with the penetrating stare that he had used to great effect during his days as a scholar. He smiled faintly to show the others that he was jesting, but there was genuine challenge in his eyes.

Instead of quailing as many others before her had done, Ka-hai's eyes narrowed in a glare of her own. "Yes, really," she replied evenly, with a purse of her lips that had him catching his breath and suppressing a hiccup at the same time.

The others burst into laughter when Jae-shin started to cough. "I suppose it means that Geol-oh sa-hyung and the lady Ka-hai are well-matched," Sun-joon chuckled.

"I'll drink to that!" Yong-ha declared, holding out his cup for a refill.

The gathering ran well into the night, until Yong-ha said that it was time to adjourn. "I'm intercepting so many smoldering looks in this room," he complained, fanning himself violently, "that I'm scared I'll burst into flames at any moment."

Sun-joon, presumably responsible for most of those smoldering looks, readily agreed that it was time for him and Yoon-hee to head home; and despite Ka-hai's entreaties to stay a little longer, the guests took their leave not long afterwards amid a flurry of thank-yous and promises to get together again soon.

A heavy silence descended as they rode out of the courtyard, broken only by the occasional shuffle of feet courtesy of the handful of guards on night duty. With everyone else in the house already abed due to the late hour, and without his friends to serve as a buffer, Jae-shin felt as though he and his wife were completely alone.

His heart began to pound and he hiccuped, then felt driven to further break the silence by trying to make conversation. "That went well."

"It did, didn't it?" she agreed, apparently unaware of the direction that her husband's thoughts were taking.

Ka-hai sounded so pleased that despite his nervousness, he couldn't help but smile. "Thank you for everything," he told her, holding out a (barely trembling) hand to escort her back into the house. "I think they had a very nice time."

She beamed and put her hand in his. "I was happy to do it."

They passed the dining room and paused to thank the couple of servants who had thoughtfully stayed up to clear the remains of the party. The servants smiled back, pleased to have their efforts recognized, and exchanged wildly speculative looks as they watched the couple proceed hand-in-hand down the corridor, chatting amiably about how well the evening had gone. Master Jeung had been right when he told them that they were finally reconciled; and judging from the look on the young lord's face, he intended to make sure that the peace was going to last.

"I really like your friends," Ka-hai said expansively as she and Jae-shin entered their bedroom.

"They're your friends, too," he reminded her, shrugging off his overcoat.

"I suppose they are," she agreed, taking it from him and going to the wardrobe to hang it up. The faint scent of herbs and something warm and clean drifted towards him as she walked past. "And I'm glad. It's nice to have a female friend like Yoon-hee around, and Yong-ha has been very helpful."

"Helpful?" he repeated as his feet carried him to where she stood, smoothing out the garment.

She looked at him and laughed. "Who else could have convinced me to get new clothes that I didn't really need?"

"I should have known he had something to do with that." Jae-shin looked her over. "You're wearing them right now, aren't you?"

He must have looked a bit too interested, because Ka-hai blushed and glanced away, mumbling, "Yong-ha would have been insulted if I didn't wear some of them tonight."

Although she'd had a fair amount to drink that night, she wasn't so tipsy that she missed the glances her husband sent her way that had fairly set her skin on fire, or the way he was now crowding her like a stallion stalking a mare in heat. She swallowed hard as she backed into the open wardrobe; the realization filled her not with fear, but with an unsettling anticipation.

"He told me that my old clothes were so unfashionable that it was practically a civic duty to undress me," Ka-hai babbled on, trying to keep her voice even despite the racing of her heart. The best mares, she reminded herself, were the difficult ones; and while leading her husband on a merry chase was currently impossible because her feet felt rooted to the floor, there were other ways to make him earn the privilege of mating with her. "Not that he ever did, of course," she added quickly. "He just likes to shock people by talking that way."

"Luckily for him, I know that," Jae-shin said as he drew the jeweled pin out of her hair, sending her braid tumbling down her back, and deliberately set the trinket aside. "Otherwise, my oldest friend would have been in very serious trouble."

"I-I'm glad there's no such misunderstanding, then."

"So rather than killing him," he went on, "I guess I should be thanking him. You look beautiful."

"Thank you."

Sometimes, mares bit stallions, too. Perhaps she should bite him. Later, she thought, the idea sending a dark thrill shivering through her.

Jae-shin wished he could tell what his wife was thinking. By now, she seemed to know what was on his mind, but she also knew that they didn't have to do anything tonight if she didn't feel that she was ready. Perhaps the fact that Ka-hai hadn't run from him yet meant that, like him, she was finally ready for the physical side of marriage. On the other hand, he thought, his heart sinking, she could just be waiting for a good time to say no.

Mustering a smile, he reached up to toy with the ties on her jeogori. "So... you're wearing them for me, right?" he asked, the backs of his fingers brushing against her high-waisted skirt and, he imagined, the warm, taut body underneath.

She nodded, her eyes wide and dark.

"I think they make you look like a very special present." Steeling his resolve, Jae-shin tugged gently, and the knot holding the jacket closed came undone. "I suppose that means I should unwrap you."

He drew in a shaky breath when she squared her shoulders and twined her arms around his neck. "Yes," Ka-hai agreed softly as his hands sought her waist. "I suppose you should."

He hiccuped only three times.

Much, much later, Ka-hai was startled awake by a hand roaming over the bare skin of her back. She stiffened instinctively, her eyes flying open to find herself snuggled up against her husband, and he looked just as surprised as she felt.

"Sorry." He withdrew his hand quickly and rolled away onto his back, taking a good part of the blanket with him. "It was an accident. I was just trying to figure out where I was and how I wound up—" he gestured vaguely at the bed at large "—like this."

She couldn't help smiling even as she tugged on the other end of the blanket to cover herself. Even though the sun hadn't quite risen yet, she could tell that he was blushing. "Don't tell me you don't remember, Moon Jae-shin...!"

That got an chuckle out of him. "I remember," he assured her; then his gaze turned uncertain and he reached out shyly to smooth some of her hair, which was now loose and quite tangled, back from her face. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm all right," Ka-hai said. There was a definite ache in places she had never thought about before, but all in all it wasn't much worse than the way she felt after a long day of riding. (Maybe I shouldn't be thinking of riding at a time like this...) "How about you?"

"Just fine, but then I'm not the one who had to—never mind."

She blushed. "Speaking of that," she said with a little giggle, "I was wondering... did your friends call you 'Geol-oh' only because you were crazy?"

"I'm crazy?" Jae-shin retorted, grinning and nudging her foot with his own. "You bit a piece out of my shoulder."

"I did not!"

"Well, you definitely bit me," he insisted, "when you weren't making so much noise that I was afraid that the whole house would know what we were doing."

"I was making noise?" She poked his arm. "What about you? I've heard cows in labor that were quieter."

"I don't know what a cow in labor sounds like, so I guess that's one for you."

"City boy," she snorted derisively.

Rather than say something in reply to that, he decided to take advantage of certain things he had learned last night, and tickle her. That triggered an impromptu wrestling match that tangled them in their blankets and would have become serious if they hadn't heard footsteps outside their door, signaling the start of a new day. Now that the servants were up and about, it was only just a matter of time before Kwan-sook appeared to help her mistress wash up and get dressed.

Ka-hai, who had just gained the upper hand in the tussle, buried her face in his chest with a groan. "Maybe I'll just stay in bed today."

"That sounds like a good idea," Jae-shin agreed, carefully moving his arm to cradle her close. Although he didn't know much about how a woman's body worked, and he had tried hard not to hurt her, he figured that she might need time to recover from her first time with a man.

"But there's so much that needs to be done around the house," she said plaintively.

"So? Haven't you taught the servants how to do it all properly by now?"

"I also need to bring Abeonim his breakfast. I don't want him to think that I'm not a dutiful daughter-in-law."

"He'll think you're being a dutiful daughter-in-law if you tell him that I won't let you get out of bed."

He felt her face grow warm against his skin. "I am not saying anything like that to your father!" she told him. "Besides, you have to get out of bed to go to work, don't you? There's no point in my staying in bed if you're not here, too."

He grinned. "If it's that important to you, then I can also tell my commander that my wife refused to let me get out of bed."

Jae-shin was still grinning when he eventually got out of bed and reported for work that morning.

He and In-soo were on desk duty that day, which he supposed was a good thing considering that, like his wife, he was short on sleep due to last night's party and subsequent events. At the same time, however, he felt more than awake, his senses extra keen. That probably would have been very useful out on patrol, but instead it was wasted on catching up on paperwork and revisiting every shred of evidence in the Blue Messenger case.

On the bright side, the slow-paced routine work gave him plenty of opportunities to relive the events of the night before.

It hadn't been perfect. They had both been shy in the beginning and, according to Sun-joon's little red book, certain things were supposed to happen and not all of them had. Nevertheless, judging from the noises that Ka-hai had made, which sounded encouraging to his inexperienced ears, and the way she later clung to him, things hadn't gone too badly for a first attempt. He was confident that they would get better with practice. Lots of practice.

"Did you find anything new in the Blue Messenger case?" In-soo asked as he returned from filing the latest batch of reports.

Jae-shin shook his head. "No."

The other man was mystified. "Then why are you smiling?"