Dream of Me/Believe in Me

about the best way to smelt steel.”
    Cymbra eyed her husband skeptically. “Didn't you ever …” she paused, mimicking Dragon, “… relax?”
    “My brother exaggerates,” Wolf said with a chiding look at that worthy. The smile he turned on his wife was purely, breathtakingly male. “And I think you already know the answer to that.”
    Her cheeks flared. She looked away hastily, resuming her pretense of interest in her food. Indeed, she knew the answer too well, having been the recipient of skills he could not possibly have acquired examining fortifications or talking with blacksmiths.
    “You really should eat,” he said pleasantly. “Especially after going to so much trouble to prepare such a magnificent meal.”
    Recalling on what terms they had parted when he
ordered
her to see to supper, she replied tartly, “I assure you, my lord, I went to no trouble at all.”
    “Oh, but you must have. There's no reason to deny it.”
    “It is as easy to prepare good food as poor,” she insisted, “provided just a little thought is given.”
    “You are too modest. Surely only a great effort could produce such a feast.” He gestured to the array of rich dishes on the table.
    “Not at all,” she assured him. “Indeed, hardly any effort was required.”
    “I cannot believe that. The servants alone could never have managed this. You must have stood over them for hours, guiding their every movement, attending to every detail, and—”
    “I did no such thing!” Cymbra burst out. She caught herself but too late and now she had to face his look of blatant amusement. Truly, he had baited the hook well, playing to her barely suppressed anger and her pride. She had to admit, he'd done it awfully well.
    Dragon clearly thought so, although he was being very careful not to look at either of them. Nor was anyone else, as it seemed that every man, woman, and child in the great hall was suddenly intensely occupied with their own matters. Yet she knew they were full well aware of the tension between their jarl and his Saxon bride.
    Tension that suddenly weighed down on her unbearably. She longed for a return of the accord they had so briefly known and dreaded the thought that such strife might instead be the pattern of their days together.
    “Wolf—” she said tentatively.
    “I thought you'd taken to referring to me as
husband.”
    He said it in exactly the tone she had used, at once disdainful and challenging.
    Cymbra flinched and looked at him swiftly but he was smiling and there was a look in his eyes that took her aback. “My lord—”
    He leaned closer, so close that the breadth of his shoulders and chest blotted out the light. She felt the warmth of his breath, its touch sending tremors through her. “I prefer my own name on your lips,” he said, so softly only she could hear him. He leaned closer still. “I especially prefer it when you say it in certain ways … at certain times.”
    Her face flamed. She felt confused, uncertain … and excited. The cool restrain she had tried so hard to maintain was melting away as though it had never been.
    Beneath it, and vastly more important, the walls she had built around her emotions from earliest childhood seemed to be dissolving. She had an image of them in her mind as no longer solid and strong but fading in and out, almost transparent.
    The thought terrified her, for she knew too well the devastating pain that could lie beyond them. And yet the idea of being without those walls that were as much prison as protection … To be truly free …
    “What is it?” Wolf's eyes had gone dark as he watched her. He raised a hand, lightly touching the backs of his fingers to her cheek. “Are you all right?”
    His obvious concern touched her deeply at that moment when she was so intensely vulnerable. She tried to tell him she was fine but her throat was suddenly very tight and a glimmer of tears clung starlike to her thick lashes.
    Wolf cursed under his breath. He stood and lifted her out of her seat in one fluid motion. Instantly, all conversation—and all pretext of disinterest—vanished. Every eye turned on them.
    “Lady Cymbra is weary,” he said in a tone thatbrooked no disagreement from her or anyone else. Holding her high against his chest, her silky hair spilling over his arms and down his legs, he strode from the hall.
    Before he had gotten very far, Cymbra recovered sufficiently to protest, if halfheartedly. On a note of self-disgust, she said, “They