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Chapter Text

Winterfell Castle, Scottish Lowlands
January 1918

He heard her footsteps, surprisingly light for someone of her size, just before her hulking figure appeared in the doorway. 

“Good morning, Captain Lannister.”

“Ah, there you are.” Jaime stretched languidly on the feather mattress, ignoring the dull ache in his muscles. He’d been off his feet for too damned long. “The Honorable Giantess. Punctual as ever.” 

She gave him a queer look as she crossed the threshold, absent her usual exasperation at the nickname, and Jaime realized it sounded as though he’d been waiting for her.

But then, if he were honest with himself, he had.

He’d missed the sight of her, bustling efficiently up and down the main ward, ever since Major Martell had been discharged and Jaime inherited his quarters—one of the few private rooms at Winterfell reserved for officers. The large bed and soft pillows were infinitely preferable to the miserable cot he’d been confined to for the previous three weeks, but it was awfully boring being so sequestered. 

After several days of staring at nothing but four walls and the small patch of snow-dusted grounds he could see from the window, Jaime had started wondering whether Lady Stark had stuffed him up there more out of punishment than privilege. Her disdain for him had been obvious enough whenever she emerged from the family quarters to make her imperious little rounds.  

Not that he cared. Jaime certainly didn’t want the countess’s company, and her good opinion mattered to him even less than most. Nor was he sorry to be parted from his fellow soldiers and the snide, suspicious whispers they hardly bothered to conceal. 

But the giantess—Brienne—well, she was different. Jaime had grown accustomed to her surly, near-constant presence and, to his profound annoyance, he felt the lack of it keenly. It made him peculiarly eager to engage her when she came to check on him, to invent new methods of drawing out the time. To coax that absurdly serious frown out of her, or, on rare occasions, a begrudging little smile. 

“How are you feeling today?” she asked, decorous as ever, as she set her basket of supplies down on his bedside table.

“Like I nearly died of infection,” he replied, smirking, “but someone wouldn’t let me.”

It was the sixth straight day he’d given that response, and Brienne greeted it with the same subtle roll of her eyes she did each time he said it. 

Jaime had hoped, initially, that making light of it would loosen the knot that formed in his chest whenever he remembered her face, creased with concern as it swam above his own, or the sound of her voice, deep and warm and earnest, urging him to stay with her. To keep fighting. To live.  

It had not.

“I meant your hand, Captain.”  

Brienne sat down in the wooden chair at his bedside and reached for his injured appendage, inspecting the exposed tips of his fingers. 

“It itches like the devil, actually.”

She hummed, shifting her gaze to the skin of his upper forearm, just above the edge of the bandage. “That’s an encouraging sign.” 

“Is it?” he quipped. “And here I was thinking the rot had finally set in.” 

“It’s healing,” she chastened, but the corner of her mouth was twitching. Jaime had to bite back an irrationally triumphant smile. “Your bandages could use a change, though.” 

“Then change them.” 

With a huff, Brienne released his hand and leaned over to press her palm to his brow. It should have felt more perfunctory than it did, but she was always so bloody gentle.

“I haven’t had a fever in days, you know.” 

It had broken, in fact, the morning after he’d told her the truth about Aerys Targaryen. 

“I’m aware of that,” she said dryly, turning away to fish a pair of scissors out of her basket. “And as you know, it’s my job to see that it remains that way.” 

“Oh, it wouldn’t dare return. Not under the threat of that menacing scowl of yours.” 

Brienne gave him a brief, withering look before snipping through the tidy knot in his bandage. “If only it worked as well on the rest of you.” 

A startled bark of laughter burst from his lips. “I don’t know, giantess. One of these days the power of your disapproval may just stun me into silence.” 

This time, her huff was more of a snort, that almost-smile pulling at her mouth again. “Hope springs eternal.”

Jaime grinned, deliberately remaining quiet as her long, sure fingers unwound his bandages, peeling back the layers until his hand was bare. He thought it might earn him an amused glance or another roll of her eyes, but Brienne was too absorbed by her task to humor him. 

Even so, Jaime found he didn’t mind the silence. It gave him the opportunity to study her—the furrow of concentration in her forehead, the dark smudges beneath her eyes, the slight sag in her shoulders, normally so square.

The giantess was working too hard, no doubt. She really was far too diligent for her own good. 

How long it had been, he wondered, since she’d had a good night’s rest in a bed as comfortable as the one he was lying in? How long since she’d taken a day off from her duties? Since she’d unwrapped that ridiculous white kerchief from her head and worn something other than that drab blue uniform that covered every inch of her, and poorly? 

When was the last time she’d relaxed? When she’d laughed? 

Jaime frowned. He had never heard her laugh.

A sudden warmth enveloped his hand, drawing him out of his thoughts, and Jaime looked down to find Brienne wiping it carefully with a damp cloth. Even he could see the difference in the wounds that ran from his knuckles to just above his wrist, pink and scabbed rather than angry red and seeping. 

She was right. It was healing.

Brienne released him to retrieve a jar of salve, then lightly rubbed the cream into his damaged skin. 

“That should help with the itching,” she explained, fumbling with the lid as she replaced it. 

He frowned again. Brienne never fumbled. 

And yet, she nearly dropped the fresh roll of cotton bandage twice as she picked up his hand and struggled to begin rewrapping it. 

“Are you all right?” he asked with more concern than he’d intended.

Brienne must have heard it, too, because her hands stilled and her big blue eyes darted up to his. “What?” 

Jaime shrugged. “You look exhausted. Long night?” 

“Yes, I suppose it was.” 

Now that she was looking directly at him, he could see her weariness more clearly. He recognized that dull pallor, the puffiness around her eyes; she’d looked exactly the same after spending an entire night hovering at his bedside, trying to bring his fever down. 

“You haven’t slept, have you?” he asked.

“No.” Her chest swelled and fell as she sighed. “We have a new patient, a man who lost most of his leg at Cambrai. He’s out of danger, but the nights are… difficult for him.” 

Jaime couldn’t help but shake his head. She took her work so seriously, and she cared, perhaps more fervently than anyone else he’d ever met. He admired it about her, when it wasn’t annoying him—maybe even envied it a little. 

Not enough, however, to quell his unreasonable irritation at the idea of her sitting vigil for another man. 

“That’s very noble of you, giantess, but we can’t have you overexerting yourself,” Jaime said lightly, but his smirk felt sharp as a trench knife on his lips. “You’ve worked quite hard to see that I keep this,” he paused, jiggling his hand in her grasp, “and we wouldn’t want your care of me slipping now.” 

Her eyes narrowed. “I am not slipping—”

“I could budge over, I suppose,” he cut across her, gesturing to the ample space on the other side of his bed. “There’s plenty of room right here, if you fancy a rest.” 

Her blush started, as it always did, high in her freckled cheeks, before spreading down to stain the thick column of her throat. Jaime waited for her to snap back, to warn him off making such salacious remarks, but she merely murmured, “That’s not funny, Captain.”

There was a hurt in her voice Jaime hadn’t expected, and it made a primal and obviously unhinged part of him want to insist that it wasn’t supposed to be. That he could imagine many less pleasant ways to pass an hour or two than with her stretched out beside him, smelling of soap and stale sweat and the sea.

His cock twitched at the thought, and Jaime nearly jerked back in surprise. He had Cersei waiting for him, for God’s sake; he didn’t want Brienne Tarth, with her broad body and ludicrously long limbs and—

A further stiffening in his groin sent a simultaneous rush of blood to his face. What in the holy fucking hell was going on? 

“My apologies, Nurse Tarth,” he said quietly, hoping he sounded less unsettled than he felt. “I meant no offense.” 

Brienne’s eyebrows jumped high on her forehead, and Jaime wondered whether her name or his contrition had startled her more. Regardless, she recovered quickly, giving him only a single crisp nod before returning her attention to his hand.

If she noticed the flush in his face or the new bulge beneath the blankets, she didn’t say a word. 

Chapter Text

Three Years and Seven Months Later

Jaime jolted awake to the gentle rocking of the train and the cool press of the window against his forehead. Beyond the faintly fogged glass, a cloudless blue sky stretched over the moorland, a mottled expanse of purple and green.

He knew those hills, even though he’d only passed through them twice before. If memory served him, and it usually did, they would arrive at Winter’s Town station within the half hour. And from there, it was only a short drive to Winterfell. 

To her.

He blinked his eyes shut for a long moment, lingering over the sensations that had assaulted him so vividly in sleep. The distant sound of creaking doors all along the castle’s guest corridor. The smell of freshly laundered linen and antiseptic, not quite concealing the sour tang of body odor and blood. The sight of Brienne, sitting at his bedside, her hair pulled back tight beneath her kerchief and a red cross emblazoned on her chest. The feeling of her warm, capable fingers gingerly cradling his flesh.

She never touched him like that now. 

Jaime blew out a disgruntled sigh. He hadn’t expected to sleep on the journey, let alone deeply enough to dream, though it was no surprise it had been of her. He’d been dreaming of her for years. 

Sometimes they were like this one, more memory than dream—fragments of moments they had actually lived that some unwitting corner of his mind had stored away. The dinner party at his Aunt Genna’s when he’d persuaded her to dance with him, or their last pheasant shoot at Highgarden, when an unexpected snowfall had gathered in her hair as they trudged across the fields. 

His time spent at Winterfell, however, hadn’t haunted his sleep in ages. Not since that endless stretch at the end of the war, when his dreams and her neatly written letters were all he’d had of her for nearly fourteen months. 

These days, Jaime mostly dreamed of her in places she had never been. On the Somme, sometimes, her fingers twined with his as they stood over Targaryen’s mud-spattered body, watching crimson blossom around the ragged hole in his chest. Or, on less grim occasions, beside him on the clifftops near the Rock, windswept and laughing, or dark-eyed and ardent in his bedroom at Casterly House. In his bed. 

Even those, though, much as Jaime enjoyed them, would never match the madness or the magic of the very first. The one he’d had in the same hospital bed he’d just been dreaming of.

He had been naked in nameless darkness, her sturdy form at his side, driving back the doom and refusing to let him die. Even in sleep, he hadn’t been able to tear his gaze away from the pale, luminous expanse of her skin, the impossible blue of her eyes.

It had seemed fanciful, at the time—a product of his fever-ravaged mind—but now he knew it was the first time he had seen her as she truly was. Not a nurse, but a warrior. His protector. His. 

Jaime frowned at his reflection in the window. 

Except Brienne wasn’t his, not in the way he wanted—not that he had anyone to blame for that besides himself. He could end his miserable uncertainty in that regard with just one little question. 

A question he’d asked another, once before. Another who had said no. 

It was different this time, he knew. The foolish passion he once harbored for Cersei paled in comparison to what he felt for Brienne, like a guttering match trying to compete with the blaze of the sun. 

Unfortunately, that only made things harder. 

“I hope you’re planning to do something with that, since you took the trouble of bringing it with you.”

Jaime’s gaze snapped to the seat across from his, where Tyrion’s shrewd green eyes were studying him over the top of his newspaper. 

“Do something with what?”

“You know very well what.” Tyrion looked pointedly toward where Jaime’s hand was resting protectively over a small, square bulge in the pocket of his jacket. 

Jaime yanked his fingers back and curled them into a loose fist. He hadn’t even realized he’d been touching it. 

Tyrion’s lips quirked. “I thought you were going to propose before she left London.” 

Jaime glanced at Tysha, dozing in the seat beside his brother, her head swaying lightly against the velvet backrest in time with the motion of the train. He should never have told Tyrion about his intentions in the first place. The last thing he needed was his wife knowing about them, too. 

Tysha would hound him much more kindly than his brother, but she adored Brienne too much for him to trust that she would keep the secret. It shocked him that Sansa Stark hadn’t yet let it slip, and he had no desire to press his luck. 

“I was,” Jaime said, keeping his voice low. 

“But you didn’t.”  

“Clearly not.” 

Tyrion sighed. “I have no idea what you’re waiting for.” 

“I’m not waiting for anything.” 

Tyrion arched his eyebrows. “If that were true, my dear brother, it would be on her finger instead of in your pocket.” 

Half a dozen quips crossed Jaime’s mind, but he held them back. Excuses, the lot of them, and paltry ones at that. 

In truth, he should have done it by now. He had been wanting to for nearly a year by the time he’d bought the damn ring the previous November. The sapphire at its center didn’t quite match her eyes, but it was the closest shade of blue Jaime had ever seen. A meager imitation, still, but it had felt like fate. Like a sign that he was meant to ask her. 

But he hadn’t. 

When Jaime offered no response, Tyrion folded his paper and stared at him incisively. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you believe there is somehow a chance the woman will refuse you.”

“She might.”

“She won’t.” 

“She might.” His throat tightened painfully as he swallowed. “She should.” 

“Jaime,” Tyrion said, too softly. “You—”

“Don’t.” 

Tyrion shook his head. “If you really believed that, you would have left her alone years ago. Otherwise you’re just a selfish bastard.”

“Runs in the family,” Jaime bit back, but his skin prickled uncomfortably. Was he a selfish bastard? 

He had been monopolizing Brienne’s time for years, long before he realized why he was doing it. Jaime couldn’t deny that. He also knew with bone-deep certainty that a woman as unfailingly good as she was deserved more than a man like him. A man with a ruined reputation that would drag her down, too, when all she deserved was to be lifted up. He couldn’t spare her what she already endured at the hands of idiots who treated her poorly, who were too blind to see how bloody remarkable she was, but he didn’t have to make it worse. 

Besides, she would hate being a marquess’s wife.

Were he a better man, that alone would have been enough to stop him. Alas, he was not, and it wouldn’t have stood in his way for a second, not if he’d been certain of her affections.  

She cared for him, of course. He never doubted that. If nothing else, they were each other’s closest friend. There were moments, though, when Brienne’s cheeks turned pink at his compliments or when he leaned in too close to whisper in his ear, that Jaime suspected they could be more. And the way she looked at him, sometimes, those eyes of hers shining with something warm and soft and unbearably fond, made him almost ache with hope. 

He had also, however, been doing his level best to court the damned woman for nearly two years, and Brienne hadn’t so much as acknowledged his attempt. Either Jaime had well and truly botched it, or she was deliberately ignoring him.

Tyrion, with his typical indifference to Jaime’s ego, always insisted it was the first.  

It was one of the few times in his life he wanted his brother to be right. 

And perhaps he was. Jaime had never properly courted Cersei, after all, nor had he been even mildly interested in any other woman in the whole of his life. Not until Brienne.

Still, Jaime couldn’t fathom that his efforts—appalling though they might have been—were not also painfully obvious. His feelings beat so loudly inside his chest it seemed impossible that Brienne hadn’t heard them.

It would be just her kind of honorable to pretend she hadn’t, if she didn’t want them. She would probably think it a kindness, to avoid causing him pain—to prevent their friendship from crumbling into something unrecognizable and strained. The possibility that it might, if he pressed her, was utterly intolerable. 

Because Jaime shared something with Brienne he’d never had with anyone else, something precious he couldn’t even name. She saw parts of him that Cersei hadn’t bothered to look at, that even his brother didn’t see. She always had. And even after everything he’d faced—the Germans in the trenches, the disdain of the British Army and half the aristocracy, the cold disapproval of his father—Jaime couldn’t face losing that. Losing her. 

Maybe that did make him selfish. It probably also made him a coward. 

“Of course it does.” Tyrion tipped his head in acknowledgement. “We are Lannisters, after all. But you always were the best of us.” 

Jaime held in a derisive snort. “That’s not nearly as impressive as it sounds, you know.” 

“Fair point.” Tyrion grinned. “Still, she’s been tolerating you so far. You must be doing something right.” 

“Just because she tolerates me doesn’t mean she wants to be my wife, Tyrion.” 

“How many times must we go over this?” Tyrion asked, feigning a weariness Jaime knew perfectly well he didn’t feel. Nothing pleased his little brother more than the opportunity to bestow his opinion, repeatedly and at length. “She isn’t even aware being your wife is an option. You know I think Miss Tarth is delightful, if a bit dour, but she seems genuinely oblivious to your overtures. And really, you can hardly blame her. It certainly took you long enough to work it out.”

“As you are quite fond of reminding me.” 

Not that he faulted him for it, in this case. Jaime could still remember the night he’d confessed, after too much wine, that he thought he might be in love with Brienne. Tyrion had gaped at him like he’d sprouted a spare head, then broken into such a raucous fit of laughter he had nearly fallen off his chair. 

“And yet, my point hasn’t managed to penetrate that stubborn skull of yours.”

“Which point is that, exactly?” 

“You can’t just keep hoping she notices, Jaime. Miss Tarth needs words, not gestures. You’re going to have to spell it out for her.” Tyrion stroked his chin with exaggerated thoughtfulness. “Though I suppose showing her the deed to your house might just do the trick.” 

Jaime narrowed his eyes. “How the hell did you know about that?”

He hadn’t breathed a word to anyone about Greenstone Manor. Jaime had brokered the deal with the Estermonts himself when they’d liquidated their estate. 

“I make it my business to know things, brother.” Tyrion flashed him a wry smile. “I hear you got it at quite the steal.” 

He had, as a matter of fact, though Jaime would have paid whatever price they named. It was light-filled and much more modest than the Rock, a short walk to the sea, and just two villages over from the one that bore her family name.

“So, now that you have yourself a ring and a house,” Tyrion continued, raising one short finger and then another, “there’s just one thing left.”

“What’s that?”

“The girl, you fool. You could have her, too, if you would just go and get her.” 

Jaime huffed, glancing out the window as he felt the train begin to slow. “Perhaps I will.” 

~*~*~*~*~*~

When their hired car reached the end of Winterfell’s long gravel drive, Jaime was the first to unfold himself from the back seat. He removed his fedora as his feet drew him slowly forward, a few steps closer to the stone bridge leading over the dry moat, and gazed up at the gray walls and stout round towers before him.

He hadn’t set eyes on the castle since the day he’d walked out of it more than three-and-a-half years before, uniformed and fully recovered—and not nearly as happy to be leaving as he should have been. 

It was strange to see it looking exactly the same, when so much else had changed.

Jaime still had no idea why Brienne had procured the invitation for them to join the party this year—or how, for that matter. The Starks’ broody cousin was friendly with Tyrion, but aside from that, there was certainly no love lost between their families.

Perhaps he had just sulked more obnoxiously than usual this year. He expected it, by now, but he still resented that the Starks stole her away for the grouse each season. If not for Olenna Tyrell’s insistence that they come and shoot her pheasants every January, Jaime would have passed each fall and winter without her company entirely. 

Not that he shot much of anything himself anymore—the reflexes in his hand weren’t what they used to be—but he always enjoyed the hell out of watching her, striding about in her tweeds and picking bird after bird out of the sky. He had, to his great misfortune, not yet seen her stalk a deer, though he’d heard plenty of stories from the Stark boys and Lady Arya. 

Perhaps, now that he was here, he would finally get his chance. 

“It’s stately enough, I’ll grant them that,” Tyrion said, as he and Tysha came to stand beside him. “Though perhaps not as idyllic as your descriptions led me to believe.”

“Nonsense.” Tysha smiled kindly at Jaime over her husband’s head. “I think it’s beautiful.” 

“You’re quite right, my dear, as always.” Tyrion patted his wife’s arm. “I only meant that my brother’s warm accounting of it might have been influenced by…other factors.” 

Jaime set his teeth, waiting for Tysha’s inevitable question. He was saved from it, however, by the appearance of Lady Stark and her eldest daughter, sweeping out of the castle’s glass double doors and across the bridge to meet them.  

“Lord Lannister, Lord Tyrion, Lady Tysha.” Lady Stark looked at each of them in turn as she and Lady Sansa came to a stop in front of their party. “Welcome to Winterfell.”

More brightly, Lady Sansa added, “It’s wonderful to see you all again.”

“Thank you, Lady Stark, Lady Sansa,” Tyrion replied, sweeping the hat from his head. “We’re pleased to be here.”

Jaime could hardly say he was glad to be back, but he managed to murmur a polite greeting of his own. A few more niceties were exchanged—something about the weather and their journey and Lady Tysha’s “delicate condition”—but he was only half listening, peering past the Starks toward the castle, hoping to glimpse a certain tall figure and the familiar flash of striking blue eyes.

He had no right to be disappointed that she hadn’t come rushing out to meet them. But he was.

“We’re a small welcome party today, I’m afraid,” Lady Stark said suddenly, as though she’d noticed his distraction. 

Reluctantly, Jaime returned his attention to the countess, fiddling with the brim of his fedora as she went on. 

“We had not expected your arrival for several hours,” she explained, a touch of censure in her voice, “and Lord Stark and the others are out at present. They’ve gone to speak with Mr. Clegane about the shoot.” 

“That’s quite all right, Lady Stark,” Tyrion jovially replied. “And we do apologize for failing to inform you of our change in plans. I hope we haven’t inconvenienced you.”

Lady Stark inclined her head. “Not at all.” 

“Excellent. Then I look forward to hearing Lord Stark’s assessment of the birds upon his return.” Tyrion glanced casually around the grounds. “I presume Miss Tarth has gone with them?”

“No.” Lady Stark frowned, looking straight at him instead of his brother. It was far from the first time Jaime had been on the receiving end of that expression, but the sharp turn of her mouth seemed even more severe than usual. “Miss Tarth is…” 

“She went for a walk,” Lady Sansa supplied, smiling. 

“Ah." Tyrion squinted up at the sunny sky. “It’s a lovely day for it.”  

“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind some company,” Lady Sansa said, a hint of mischief dancing in her bright blue eyes.

Jaime misliked it even more than her mother’s frown. 

“What a marvelous idea, my lady.” Tyrion poked his elbow into Jaime’s hip while the countess cast a reproachful look at Lady Sansa. “Go and fetch her for us, will you, Jaime?” 

He could see precisely what his brother was doing, but Jaime didn’t care. He’d only come all the way to Scotland for one reason, and it wasn’t to make blasted small talk with the Starks. 

“Gladly.” He dipped his chin to Lady Stark and her daughter. “Ladies, if you’ll excuse me.” 

Before Lady Stark or her impressive scowl could intervene, Jaime replaced his hat, turned on his heel, and walked swiftly down the drive, aiming for the nearest path that split off toward the west.  

“I think she went toward the west moors,” Lady Sansa called after him.

Jaime lifted his hand in acknowledgement, but he didn’t need to be told where to go. He knew exactly which hillside he would find her on.

Chapter Text

The sun beat down on him as he traversed the hills, covered with swaths of heather in more shades of purple than Jaime had ever seen. It had been decidedly more brown—and much less sunny—the last time he’d walked this way. 

When sweat began beading on his brow, Jaime stripped off his jacket, careful not to dislodge the box still tucked in its pocket, and removed his hat, carrying it loosely in his good hand. He had to squint into the light without it, but it was worth it for the soft breeze blowing through his hair. 

Not long after, he crested a familiar rise, and there she was—cross-legged in the grass, her hatless head shining like a beacon of pale gold amidst the green. 

She’d led him out to these moors nearly every day near the end of his convalescence, when he was once again able to walk that far without leaning on her arm—though he recalled having to complain at length about being confined to the gardens before she had. Brienne had carried on about the rules that first time, glancing furtively over her shoulder as though Lady Stark herself would appear in pursuit, shaking her finger at their unchaperoned stroll, but it hadn’t prevented her from doing it again. And again. And again. 

They had always stopped to rest just there, on the downward slope where the grass was soft and thick and the whole world seemed spread out in front of them. Exactly where she was sitting now, staring directly at him with her hand perched above her eyes and a great golden dog pressed against her thigh. 

Something about her looked different than it had in those days, though, and it wasn’t just the trousers or tweed coat. 

“You cut your hair,” Jaime said as soon as he reached her. He let his hat and coat fall to the grass and dropped down beside her, never once taking his eyes from it.

Instead of being tucked up into her usual plain little bun, it was loose and smooth and short, curving down around her face and ending at her chin. It looked shiny and somehow thicker than it had before, and when Brienne brushed her hand against the side of her head, Jaime wondered what it would feel like to run his fingers through it. 

“I did.”  

His gaze drifted away from her hair, across the strangely troubled creases in her brow, and finally locked with hers.

“It suits you,” he said, and he meant it. He’d seen a few women in London sporting the new style, but none of them wore it as well as she did.

“Thank you,” Brienne murmured, blushing, and Jaime couldn’t keep a smirk from tugging at his mouth. He hadn’t even been trying to cause it, this time, but he wasn’t the slightest bit sorry he had. Especially if it helped chase away the shadows from her eyes. 

A flash of annoyance lit them instead, and he had to keep his smile from spreading as she added, more sharply, “You’re here awfully early.” 

Jaime casually twitched a shoulder. “We caught the early train.” 

He saw no need to mention that he had been the one to suggest they do so, precisely so he could have a few hours of her company before more of the party arrived. 

“From Lannisport?” Brienne asked. 

“We never went back to the Rock. We stayed in London after you left.” 

“Oh.”

In the ensuing silence, Jaime studied her face. He hadn’t anticipated any great excitement at his arrival—Brienne’s joy was always quiet, even when she felt it deeply, and it had only been a few weeks since he’d seen her last. Still, he had hoped to be greeted by something other than this obvious dismay.

Regardless of the cause, it didn’t exactly bode well for his prospects. 

Something cool and wet bumped against his hand, and Jaime looked down to see the dog shoving her nose beneath his palm. Lady Sansa’s beloved companion, he suddenly remembered, though her name escaped him. She nudged him again, harder, and he laughed. Just as persistent as her owner, then.  

“At least someone’s happy to see me,” he said, scratching the dog behind the ears. 

Brienne frowned so deeply that her chin puckered with it. “I’m happy to see you.”

“You don’t look happy,” he drawled. “And if I’m not to blame for that formidable scowl, what is? Have the hills done something to offend you? Or is it the sunshine? I hadn’t thought to see it this far north, but—”

“Jaime,” she said, a little desperately, and his fingers froze in the dog’s fur. She only sounded like that when something was actually wrong. 

“What is it?” he asked. “Has something happened?”

“Yes.”

Jaime held in a frustrated huff at her brevity, widening his eyes to implore her for more.

Brienne stiffened her shoulders. “My father is coming for the shoot.”

“Yes, I know,” he said lightly, though he couldn’t stop his eyebrows from slowly sliding together. Surely she didn’t think he’d forgotten. “You told me that before you left London. I’ve been looking forward to meeting the mysterious Viscount Tarth for weeks.”

Truthfully, he had been trying not to think too much about it. He wished he’d met the man years ago—or didn’t have to meet him at all. What if Lord Tarth hated him? What if he thought Jaime was a selfish bastard and would much prefer him to leave his daughter the hell alone? 

Brienne didn’t talk much about her father, and Jaime knew the two of them were not especially close. He had always suspected, however, that the man’s approval mattered more to her than she let on. 

“He’s not mysterious,” she said. “He just doesn’t like going up to town.”

“But he doesn’t mind a two-day train trip to Scotland?”

Brienne sighed, gazing at Jaime’s chest rather than his face. “He probably does mind. But he’s bringing someone with him.” She raised her eyes to his. “Someone he clearly intends for me.”

“Oh?” He didn’t like the biting edge to his voice, but it was preferable to the cold terror bubbling beneath it. “Aren’t you a little old to be paraded in front of a suitor like a debutante?”

Hurt flickered on her face, and a wave of self-loathing engulfed him. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut when the wrong thing wanted to come out of it, so why were the right words so fucking hard to say? 

“That’s not the worst of it,” she said quietly.

“Really?” Jaime doubted it could get much worse. “Dare I ask?”

“Sansa intends for me to use you as a shield.”

The tale she told next—about the Stark women and a fabricated forthcoming proposal and a favor for a friend—might have amused him, if it had pertained to someone else. If there wasn’t an engagement ring in his pocket that Sansa Stark had held in her own goddamned hands when she helped him get it sized to fit Brienne’s finger. 

If she hadn’t been sitting there staring at him with those wide, vulnerable eyes, looking so sorry for it all.  

He should have told her the truth of it, right then, or grabbed a hold of her crimson necktie and tugged her close enough to kiss her. Had his brain been functioning properly, perhaps he would have.

But it wasn’t, and Jaime found himself feeling wrong-footed and as shell-shocked as though she’d fired an entire barrage of artillery at his face. 

For a moment, his awareness narrowed to the stunned hum vibrating through his veins. Then, in its place, he felt a startling thrum of anger. 

Anger at Brienne, for not even considering that her friend’s words might be true, for dismissing the possibility of his interest in her as absurd when it was by far the most reasonable thing in his life. Anger at Tyrion, for being so insufferably right about it all, even though he’d wanted him to be. Most of all, though, Jaime was angry with himself for behaving like such a spectacular idiot for so long.  

Because Brienne had not been quietly rejecting him. It was now abundantly clear that she truly hadn’t known what he had been trying to do—hadn’t even noticed. If she had, she would never have asked such a thing of him. He could hardly believe she was asking it of him anyway.

“I knew it was a terrible idea,” she said in a rush, long after he should have made some kind of reply. “Forget I said anything.”

“That’s not likely, I’m afraid.” Jaime grinned, aiming for wry but landing closer to bitter. “It’s not every day the honorable Brienne Tarth asks me to lie.” 

“I—I’m not.” Brienne shook her head. “You wouldn’t even need to say anything about it, really. Just…” 

Jaime tipped forward, peering at her in anticipation. 

“I suppose you would…” Brienne paused briefly, and when she began again, the words came out slow and uncertain. “Talk with me, I guess, when we’re all together. Escort me to dinner.”

He huffed. “I’d do that anyway.”

He’d been doing that, for years now. How in the devil had she managed not to see it? 

Her mouth dipped into a pensive frown. “Stay near me on the drives, then. Ask me to go for a walk in the garden. Just pretend to…” 

“Pretend to what?” 

“Jaime,” she said, reproachful and beseeching all at once, and he tried to ignore the twinge it triggered beneath his sternum. 

He couldn’t explain why, but he wanted to hear her say it. 

“I need to know what you would have me do, Brienne. You can hardly expect me to agree without understanding the terms.” 

Brienne scowled at him. Then, so quickly her words were nearly indecipherable, she muttered, “Pretend to court me.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

From his bedroom window, Jaime watched the sun drop low in the western sky, bathing the world in a rich, amber light and casting long shadows across the castle lawn. 

It had been several hours, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the warm clasp of Brienne’s palm against his own, couldn’t stop her words from playing over and over again in his head. 

Lady Sansa’s scheme and Lord Tarth’s meddling. Hyle fucking Hunt and three other men before.

Her distress. Her shame. Her defiance. 

Pretend, she had said. Pretend to court me.

Jaime huffed at the glowing sky and turned away, fiddling needlessly with a silver cufflink.

God, he’d been a fool. A stupendous fool. For far too long. 

He was being one still, for agreeing to this ridiculous plot. Jaime had known that even as he pronounced himself at her service. But she had needed him—had trusted him with something that must have been torturous for her to ask. And Brienne never asked for anything. 

What else could he have done?

Asked her to marry you and been done with it, whispered a small voice in his head. It sounded annoyingly like his brother. Put an end to the charade before it began.

Frowning, Jaime slipped on his dinner jacket and moved in front of the mirror to straighten his tie. He couldn’t have, though. He had been too stunned by the bomb she’d dropped in his lap to peel open his chest and lay his heart bare before her. Brienne would never have believed him, anyway, not in that moment. She would have assumed he was jesting and been wounded by it, and everything would have been immeasurably worse. 

Besides, when she had told him it was Hunt he would be shielding her from, well... Jaime had waited this long. His feelings would keep for another few days if it meant avenging hers. 

The opportunity to cause that wretch even a fraction of the suffering he’d inflicted on Brienne was an unexpected upside of the whole debacle. So, too, was the blanket permission to be as obvious as he wanted in his attentions—perhaps as obvious as he should have been all along. She had, after all, agreed to those terms; he might as well make the most of them. 

Because while Brienne had seemingly dismissed the possibility of his interest in her as absurd, nothing she said had indicated it would be unwelcome. 

Neither had her eyes.

In fact, they had practically blazed with fervency as she pronounced, with such resolve, that she didn’t care about his reputation, about Cersei. And the sudden softness in her gaze when she had echoed his words from so long ago—there are no men like you—had sparked a dangerous hope in Jaime’s chest, hot and bright and licking at his ribs like a flame.

Oddly, it had only burned more fiercely when she’d gone on to add, all sadness and resignation, that she was not made to be a wife.

Yes, she bloody well was. His wife. 

It was high time he told her so. 

Brienne needed words, Tyrion had said. Jaime was usually good with them, although the quick, cutting variety had always come more easily than the tender and sincere. For her, though, he would try. 

He supposed, in that respect, this mad plan might turn out to be a stroke of luck in disguise. Maybe, when it was all behind them, he could just tell her he hadn’t been pretending at all. 

Chapter Text

It was half seven by the time Jaime opened his bedroom door and stepped out into the corridor, having lost himself in thought for far too long. 

The car bearing Lord Tarth and his contemptible companion had only arrived about twenty minutes before—Jaime heard the doors slam in the driveway well after the dressing gong had rung—but the last thing he wanted was for either of them to find their way to the drawing room before he did. He had no intention of leaving Brienne to face that alone.

Jaime strode immediately toward the stairs, hoping he wasn’t too late, but a closed door halfway down the gallery brought him up short. Brienne’s door. 

She hadn’t yet gone down.

Lingering in front of the dark, paneled wood, Jaime tugged on the bottom of his waistcoat. If he waited for her, he could almost certainly coax her into taking his arm so they could descend together. 

Brienne would demur at first, to be sure, but she could hardly fight him about it in the middle of the guest wing. And he suspected she wouldn’t, anyway, at least not after he reminded her that she’d given her word to play along with him. 

Of course, if her father were to come by and find him lurking there…

No. That wouldn’t do at all. 

Jaime curled his fingers into a loose fist, intending to knock and put an end to it. The impropriety of the act would likely earn him a grievous scowl for his trouble, but it would be well worth it. Especially if Hunt had somehow beaten them downstairs.

Just as he began to raise his arm, the door opposite Brienne’s opened with a groan, and Jaime wheeled around in time to see his brother totter out of it. 

Smirking, Tyrion looked from Jaime to Brienne’s door and back again. “Fancy meeting you here, brother.” He tipped forward, lowering his voice to a mischievous near-whisper. “Though I’d suggest you postpone sneaking into the lady’s room until after dinner. That is the way these things are usually done, in my experience.” 

“Oh, piss off. I was just on my way down, same as you.”

“Of course you were.” 

Jaime rolled his eyes at his brother’s obnoxious tone, then quickly redirected the conversation. He’d learned long ago that the only way to change the subject with Tyrion was to do it himself. “Did you and Tysha have a decent rest?” 

According to Lady Stark, Tysha had gone upstairs to lie down shortly after Jaime left them all standing in the driveway. By the time he and Brienne returned to the castle, Tyrion had joined her. 

“Sadly, no. Unfortunately for my poor wife, the baby kicks like mad whenever she tries to sleep.” 

“A feisty little lady, then,” Jaime said, smiling. “How fitting.”

Tyrion grinned back. “I certainly hope so.”

The last time they’d seen her, Aunt Genna had proclaimed that Tysha’s rounded stomach heralded a girl in some mysterious way. Jaime had expected the prediction to disappoint his brother, but Tyrion had seemed surprisingly delighted by the prospect of a daughter.  

“Speaking of feisty ladies,” Tyrion went on, fluttering his short fingers toward Brienne’s door, “did you have a nice stroll with yours?” 

Jaime vaguely inclined his head. “It was fine.” 

“Fine?”

“Yes,” he said lightly. “Sunny. Warm. Quite pleasant.”

“Oh, come off it,” Tyrion protested, loudly enough that Jaime nearly winced. Winterfell’s doors were thick, but they weren’t goddamn soundproof. “Did you do it or not?”

“Not, I’m afraid.”  

Tyrion heaved a dramatic sigh. “I thought I told you to go and get her.”

“Yes, well, it wasn’t that simple.” 

“Wasn’t it?” His brother arched a dubious eyebrow. “Stop overthinking this, Jaime. You’re making it more difficult than it needs to be.”

Before Jaime could argue, Tysha swished into the corridor at Tyrion’s side. 

“Making what more difficult?” she asked, her blue eyes darting curiously between them. 

Tyrion turned, gazing up at his wife with a naked affection that sent an ache clawing through Jaime’s chest. He would never wish away his brother’s happiness, but he sure as hell envied it. 

“Everything, my darling, as he always does.” Tyrion, still beaming up at her, held out his arm. “Shall we?”

Tysha linked her arm with his, and the two of them began walking down the hall. Jaime hesitated, looking once more toward Brienne’s room.

“You can hardly lie in wait outside her door,” Tyrion called back to him, not even bothering to glance over his shoulder.

Jaime opened his mouth to inform his brother he could do whatever he damn well pleased, then snapped it shut again when he spied two figures—one short and dark, one tall and crowned with fiery red—heading toward them from the far end of the gallery.

Silently cursing them all, Jaime frowned and trudged forward, catching up with Tyrion and Tysha just as they met the Stark sisters at the top of the stairs.

“Good evening, ladies,” Tyrion said. “You’re looking especially lovely tonight.”

Jaime suspected that Lady Arya, who gave an apathetic dip of her head at the compliment, would actually have preferred to swap her gray evening dress for Brienne’s trousers. Her sister, in contrast, smiled brightly and smoothed her gloved hands over her pale green dress. 

“Thank you, my lord,” Lady Sansa said. “You gentlemen look very dapper in your white tie. And that gown suits you so well, Lady Tysha. It’s such a beautiful shade of purple.” 

Although she had included Jaime in her nicety, Lady Sansa studiously refused to look at him—just as she had all afternoon. 

She had steered well clear of him ever since he and Brienne joined them in the library after coming in from the moors. He had thought, perhaps, that she regretted what she’d done and was simply afraid to face him, and his initial ire at her recklessness had begun to fade. Technically speaking, she hadn’t broken her promise to keep his secret—not so long as Brienne believed it to be a lie—and he knew she wouldn’t have said anything at all if not for that arrogant blighter weaseling his way into the party. 

“I’m glad we meet with your approval,” he said as kindly as he could manage. The thing was done, and it would do him no good to make an enemy of her now. 

At his words, Lady Sansa finally raised her gaze to meet his. As Jaime took in the sparkle of amusement in her eyes, the barely repressed smile pursing her lips, he immediately realized he’d been wrong. She wasn’t the least bit sorry. On the contrary, she looked downright pleased with herself. The devious little—

“Well, shall we go down?” Tyrion asked, cutting through Jaime’s thoughts. “I’m quite eager to greet the rest of the party, at long last.” 

Lady Arya muttered her assent and made a beeline for the far side of the curving double staircase. Tyrion and Tysha, meanwhile, headed toward the nearer one.  

As soon as their backs were turned, Jaime narrowed his eyes at Lady Sansa, whose attention was still fixed on his face. One corner of her mouth crept slowly upward, and Jaime had to swallow a laugh when she winked at him before turning to follow her sister. 

Vexed as he was, he couldn’t help but admire the young woman’s gall—and her guile. She was much craftier than he had given her credit for. 

Feeling a fraction lighter, Jaime began shuffling quickly down the stairs. Just as he caught up to the others, his brother looked briefly back at him, then over at Lady Sansa. 

“Your mother tells me Lord Tarth has brought a guest with him,” Tyrion said to her, more loudly than he needed to, and Jaime nearly tripped over a step. 

“He has,” Lady Sansa said simply. 

Jaime glanced at her across the void between them. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw her nose wrinkle. 

“A Mr. Hunt?” his brother pressed.

“I believe that’s his name, yes.” 

“Is he a good friend of Lord Tarth?” Tysha asked with seemingly genuine interest. 

Lady Sansa shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.” 

Lady Arya, already standing in the small hall at the foot of the stairs, turned to look up at them. “Mother said Brienne knows him, though.”

Jaime watched his brother’s head quirk to one side. “Does she now?” 

“They met in Brighton, I think,” Lady Arya said. “Before she came to Winterfell.” 

“How interesting,” Tyrion lilted, pivoting to peer up at Jaime as soon as they all reached the landing. 

He forced his features into an expression of bland indifference before meeting Tyrion’s stare. His brother’s eyebrows lifted curiously, and Jaime blithely twitched his own in reply. 

Tyrion hummed. “Speaking of Miss Tarth, I believe my brother has his heart set on a word with her.”

“Oh, well, if you wait here, you ought to be able to catch her,” Lady Sansa offered, her polite tone revealing nothing of the machinations that lay beneath. She really was unnervingly good at this. “I asked my maid to check on her in a few minutes, so she shouldn’t be long.”

“Thank you, my lady,” Jaime said. “I think I’ll do that.” 

“Don’t keep us waiting too long,” Tyrion warned him, moving in the direction of the drawing room with his wife still on his arm. “Or you’ll force me to come and collect you.” 

“I make no promises,” Jaime muttered, too quietly for anyone to hear. Judging by the look Tyrion tossed back at him, however, his brother had sensed the sentiment, nonetheless.

After they all disappeared through the doorway at the far end of the hall, Jaime leaned against one of the tall white columns opposite the foot of the stairs. He only waited a minute or two before he heard the distant creak of a door, and he hopefully craned his neck. The voice that soon floated down from the gallery, however, was far too deep to be Brienne’s. 

A moment later, confirming his suspicions, two men strolled out of the guest corridor and into his line of sight. 

The older gentleman was so tall and broad and stoic he could only be her father, and the much shorter chap beside him had a languid gait and a glib smile that Jaime already wanted to wipe from his unremarkable face—preferably with the back of his own hand. 

The pair of them were too absorbed in their own conversation to notice him standing there until they had nearly reached the bottom of the stairs. When they did, the older man’s gaze slid over him, and Jaime’s stomach clenched. 

“You must be Lord Lannister,” he said in an unexpectedly amiable baritone.  

“That I am.” Jaime stepped forward to clasp the large hand the man held out to him. “Lord Tarth, I presume.” 

“Indeed.” The viscount’s face was stern, but not unkind, and his intensely blue eyes were almost as extraordinary as his daughter’s. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“And you, my lord.”

“I am entirely to blame for it being so long overdue, of course. As I’m sure Brienne has mentioned, I’m not overly fond of London. I don’t tend to linger for social engagements when business takes me there.”

Brienne had, in fact, told him far more than that: how her mother had died there, after a prolonged illness that even the best doctors in Harley Street failed to cure, and how Lord Tarth had sold their London residence almost immediately afterward. She had barely set foot in the city again until the Starks invited her after the war. 

It struck him as a somewhat drastic response on her father’s part, but Jaime recognized it all the same. His father had all but walled off his mother’s room at the Rock, and he still treated Tyrion like a pariah for daring to live through his own birth when she had not. 

Hell, compared to that, Lord Tarth had coped remarkably well.

“She has indeed,” Jaime said. “And it’s like they say, my lord, better late than never.” 

Lord Tarth tilted his head in agreement. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.” 

Hunt, apparently tired of being left out of the conversation, took advantage of its momentary lull to gracelessly clear his throat. 

“Ah, yes, my apologies, Mr. Hunt.” Lord Tarth turned to look down at the man hovering beside him. “This is Lord Jaime Lannister, a friend of my daughter’s. Lord Lannister, this is Mr. Hyle Hunt.”

They exchanged perfunctory words of greeting, and Jaime shook Hunt’s proffered hand. It took everything he had not to smirk at the man’s overly aggressive grip.

“So,” Hunt said casually, shifting back, “you know Miss Tarth?” 

“Quite well,” Jaime replied, every bit as light. “She nursed me back to health in this very castle.”

“Did she?”

“Likely saved my life, as a matter of fact,” Jaime explained, more for her father’s benefit than Hunt’s. “She certainly saved my hand. The Army doctors weren’t half so diligent as she was.”

Recognition dawned on Hunt’s face. “Hang on. You’re not...Captain Jaime Lannister?” He swept his muddy gaze across Jaime’s shoulders, as though he expected to find a rank insignia pinned to the arm of his tailcoat.

“The one and only.” 

Hunt’s eyebrows shot up, their cant more sly than startled. “In that case, you have quite the reputation, my lord. I met a man in a field hospital who served with you on the Somme.” He flashed Jaime an insolent, knowing grin. “He certainly had some tales to tell.” 

“I’m sure he did,” Jaime said dryly.

It didn’t surprise him that Hunt had heard about Targaryen—he doubted there was a soldier in England who hadn’t—nor that the man lacked the tact to keep silent about it in such company. Hunt was more brash than most, however, for alluding to it straight to Jaime’s face. 

He had given up disabusing people of their misassumptions about him long ago, but when he caught sight of Lord Tarth’s puzzled frown, Jaime had half a mind to remark upon the tales he had heard about Hunt’s behavior.

Instead, he snapped his teeth together. Much as Hunt deserved a public flogging for his mistreatment of Brienne, it wasn’t worth betraying her trust. Especially not in front of her father.  

“I admit I didn’t know you had been wounded,” Hunt added, pointing at Jaime’s scarred right hand. “France?”

“No. Ypres.” 

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Lord Tarth said, solemn and sympathetic. “Awful business, that, and at such cost.”

“Yes.” Jaime nodded. “We lost a lot of good men there.”

“Leave it to the British Army to wage war in a swamp,” Hunt remarked. “I heard the mud was deep enough to drown in.” 

Jaime’s jaw twitched at his flippancy. “It was.” 

He’d seen it swallow horses and men and machinery in the blink of an eye. Even now, he remembered the icy terror of slogging through it himself, hip deep and nearly sucking the boots off his feet. 

“Fortunately, I was well out of it by then.” Hunt slapped an open hand against his thigh. “Germans caught me in the leg at Arras, and they shipped me home. Funnily enough, Miss Tarth nursed me as well, though she was stationed at a hospital in Brighton in those days. I didn’t know she’d come up here after that.” His hazel eyes flickered around the room, then returned to Jaime’s face. “Or that she made a habit of staying in touch with old patients.”

At last, Jaime allowed himself a slow smile. “She didn’t.”

Chapter Text

Jaime never expected to find himself genuinely happy to see Ned Stark, but when the earl strode in suddenly from the armory hall and swept Lord Tarth and Hunt away to the drawing room, he damn well was. 

He’d had more than enough of Hunt already, and while Lord Tarth seemed a decent man, Jaime was annoyed that he seemed so blind to the truth of his companion’s character. Even without knowing what had transpired at Brighton, how could the viscount possibly think that oily, cocksure little man was worthy of his daughter? 

That he would bring Hunt here, offering his tacit blessing for the bastard to pursue her, was so insulting to Brienne that Jaime wondered if her father even knew her at all—or if he was so eager to see her married off that he simply didn’t care. Neither made Jaime think particularly highly of him. 

Brienne was the best person he had ever met, and Hunt wasn’t fit to lick her boots. Hell, being ground to dust beneath them would take more attention than he deserved. Jaime intended to make that abundantly clear before the party dispersed—to make sure she never had to endure the vile idiot’s presence again.

Frowning, Jaime stationed himself once more against the column across from the stairs, trying to ignore the unpleasant timbre of Hunt’s voice rising and falling with the others in the distant hum from the drawing room. 

He was the reason for Brienne’s present delay, Jaime thought. Nothing else could have possibly been keeping her, especially not after Sansa’s maid finally traipsed across the gallery and disappeared down the guest corridor. Not that he believed she’d actually been waiting for the girl or her assistance, anyway. Jaime had only seen Brienne wear a handful of evening dresses in the whole of their acquaintance, and she never took half this long to dress in any of them, no matter who else was among the company.

Jaime drummed his fingers on his thigh as the clock set against the far wall ticked past seven forty-five, and she still failed to appear. The butler would be announcing dinner in less than fifteen minutes; if she tarried much longer, he would be forced to mount the stairs and fetch her himself. 

He crossed and uncrossed his arms as he waited a scant few more moments. Then, just as he was about to push off from his perch, Brienne strode silently into view, glittering above him in a deep blue dress that made her eyes shine like starbursts. When she spotted him, she went briefly still at the top of the stairs, haloed by the yellow glow of the chandelier, and Jaime’s heart slammed into his ribs so hard it felt like a mortar shell had exploded inside his chest. 

The force of it might have knocked him on his arse if not for the column at his back—if it hadn’t, the appreciative way her eyes slid over him surely would have. As it was, she made his throat go dry, and Jaime swallowed roughly, trying to steady himself as he watched her descend.

Her dress alone made it impossible. 

The blue beaded fabric skimmed loosely over the endless length of her, rippling with every step like swells on a dark and enticing sea. Its neckline dove into a modest vee on her chest, leaving the pale, freckled expanse of her collarbones distractingly bare, and its narrow straps showed off the sculpted stretch of her arms between shoulder and elbow. 

And lower, the gloves tightly encasing her hands and forearms were no better. They only made Jaime wonder what it would feel like to trail his fingers up the ivory silk and curl them around the curve of her biceps, whether the skin there would be as soft as her hand had been. Whether her muscles would bunch beneath his grip as he buried his nose or lips or tongue in the dappled hollow of her throat. 

He didn’t know when he’d started grinning—or when his cock had gone half hard in his trousers—but he felt the taut fullness of both as he moved toward her, scanning her once more from head to toe as she reached the landing. 

She was, in a word, astonishing. 

Not a delicate, graceful beauty, to be sure—her features would never submit to such a description, and it was beneath her, anyway. Those paltry words could never do justice to the sight of her, tall and strong and striking as a goddess, or to how bloody magnificent she looked in that dress.

Would she believe him, he wondered, if he told her now how bewitching she was? How much he wanted her? That he’d wanted her ever since they had last been together under this roof, when she had bent over him in her dull, ill-fitting nurse’s frock and touched him more tenderly than he could ever remember being touched before? 

He intended to search her face for any inkling of the answer, but when his gaze snagged on the wide sweep of her mouth, Jaime was tempted to forgo words entirely. If he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, right there at the bottom of the stairs, would she understand him then? 

Perhaps she would, he realized with a start, seeing that her eyes had drifted down to his mouth. It took every ounce of restraint in his body not to lick his lips and find out. 

“New dress?” he asked instead, stepping as close as he dared, close enough to touch her.

Brienne hummed in assent. 

“I quite like it.” So much, in fact, that he didn’t risk glancing down at it again. “It brings out your eyes.”

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” she said, looking quickly around the hall. “No one else can hear you.” 

The low rasp in her voice sent heat snaking through his limbs, and Jaime stared hard into her eyes as he took her hand, willing her to feel his full meaning. “No one else needs to.” 

He bent his head to kiss the back of her fingers, lingering longer than he should have—but not as long as he would have liked. 

When he looked up, Jaime nearly flinched at the sudden crumple in her chin, the sadness pooling in her eyes. He squeezed her hand tighter, at a loss for how he’d managed to bungle things already. Even if she hadn’t understood him, he couldn’t fathom how what he’d said had brought her to the brink of tears. 

Before he could ask her what was wrong—if only so he could make it right—a voice echoed suddenly across the hall.

“Ah, there you are.” 

Reluctantly, Jaime released Brienne’s hand and spun to face his brother, who was surveying them from the doorway to the drawing room. 

“As always, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” 

“Why thank you, brother,” Jaime said tightly. Would two or three more minutes really have been too much to ask? “But you did just see me a few moments ago.” 

“Not you, you fool,” Tyrion quipped, walking over to join them. “I meant your inimitable companion, of course.” 

Brienne, looking much less forlorn than she had only seconds before, rewarded him with a smile. “It’s good to see you, too, Lord Tyrion.”

Tyrion flashed her his most charming grin. “I refuse to begin the evening by indulging my brother’s selfish tendency to monopolize you. He had you all to himself this afternoon.”

Jaime bit back the urge to suggest, once more, that his brother piss off. He had no idea what Tyrion was trying to achieve, but Jaime wished he would keep himself out of it.

Oblivious to his irritation, Tyrion hooked his hand around Brienne’s elbow. “Now, Miss Tarth, be so kind as to accompany me into the drawing room. Your father is dying to see you, but I promised my wife I’d snag you first.” 

Without even a peek in Jaime’s direction, Tyrion proceeded to steer her toward the drawing room. He followed on their heels, torn between vexation at having Brienne’s arm snatched out from under him and gratitude for the view it afforded him of the exposed crescent of skin at the base of her neck. 

Jaime had far less time than he wished to study the dusting of freckles there before Brienne’s footsteps stuttered and he nearly plowed into her as they crossed the threshold. He didn’t need to see where she was looking to know the cause, and he reached out to lay his palm against her back in reassurance. 

She moved forward again before he could, however, and his hand met only air.

He tried not to scowl as he dropped it back to his side and followed her, still in Tyrion’s grip, to the nearby sofa where Tysha sat sandwiched between Lady Sansa and the countess. Jaime stood at a respectable distance while Brienne exchanged a friendly greeting with his brother’s wife, keeping one eye on Hunt where he stood across the room. The man’s easy, jocular smile didn’t slip an inch when he stole a glance at his quarry, his gaze dipping quickly from her head to her feet before flicking away again.

When she finally moved back a few steps, Jaime sidled closer.

The motion earned him a sour look from Lady Stark, followed swiftly by another when he chimed in with a brief but satisfied “see?” after Tyrion complimented Brienne’s newly shortened hair.

Her disapproval didn’t make him sorry, nor did it stop him from moving nearer still, a short while later, when Brienne limply agreed with the countess’s suggestion that she go and speak with her father.

This time, when he reached for her, his hand landed gently on the small of her back. Leaning in close to her ear, he asked, “Shall I come with you?” 

Brienne went rigid. “No, I—it’s better if I go alone.”  

It absolutely was not, but Jaime wasn’t going to argue with her. Not with so many people watching. 

“As you wish.” 

She turned toward him, clearly expecting him to move. He didn’t. 

The tip of her nose nearly touched his own before she flinched back a little, pink darkening her cheeks. “Give me a minute, and then come and join us,” she said, just a shade above a whisper. “I can introduce you once I get this over with.” 

Her breath puffed warm against his lips, and Jaime pressed his weight into his heels to avoid surging forward. Even he didn’t want their first kiss to be in the middle of the drawing room.

“There’s no need for that,” he said lightly. “I met them earlier, while you were dallying upstairs.”

“You did?” Her eyes sprang wide. “Both of them?” 

He couldn’t keep the fondness out of his smile. “They came down the stairs before you did. Should I have ignored them?” 

“I… No, I suppose not.” 

Jaime sensed something else hovering on her lips; he could see it in her half-held breath, the uncertain wrinkle in her brow. But before she could voice it, his goddamned brother interrupted them again with a clamorous clearing of his throat.

Brienne practically leapt away from him, and Jaime struggled to keep his expression impassive when he spied Tyrion’s cheeky smirk. If this was his absurd idea of helping, he could shove his assistance up his—

“I could go in your stead,” Tyrion said to Brienne, “if you’d rather keep chatting.” 

“That won’t be necessary,” she brusquely replied. Her whole face had gone scarlet, and Jaime wanted to throttle his brother when the little imp winked at her. “Please excuse me.” 

She left abruptly, and Jaime watched her walk away, fully aware that several of the others were watching him. Lady Stark was mostly likely regarding him coolly, and he expected Lady Sansa’s smirk was at least as smarmy as his brother’s. Jaime, however, couldn’t bring himself to look away from Brienne long enough to find out. 

Even when, at Brienne’s approach, Lord Stark drew his eldest son away from the cluster at the hearth and joined their group around the sofa instead, Jaime had difficulty focusing on the conversation. Vaguely, he registered Tyrion inquiring about the arrival of the rest of the party and Lady Stark saying something about the Tullys, but Jaime was too busy straining for the low thrum of Brienne’s voice to pay much mind to anyone else’s words. He couldn’t really hear her, not from the other side of the room, but the set of her shoulders and the rigid tower of her neck told him all he needed to know.

And if it hadn’t, Hunt’s infuriating grin and Lord Tarth’s disquieting hope certainly would have. 

A fresh anger sparked inside him at Hunt’s lazy confidence, his utter absence of contrition. The fool didn’t care for her at all, that was abundantly clear—didn’t want her as anything more than a convenient rung on the ladder of his social climb. For God’s sake, Hunt didn’t even see her. If he had, he would have been on his knees, begging for her forgiveness.

As Jaime began imagining several ways he might put Hunt there himself, a slight cough from behind him dragged his attention away. He glanced over his shoulder to find the butler offering Lady Stark a polite nod, and when the countess inclined her head in reply, Jaime sprang to action before the man could open his mouth. 

He was halfway to the hearth by the time the butler’s voice rang out, beckoning them all to dinner, and he managed to slip in front of Brienne just as Hunt stepped toward her and began to lift his arm.

“Miss Tarth,” he said, all propriety and charm, “would you do me the honor?” 

“Gladly,” she murmured, taking his proffered elbow. 

Her relief was as palpable as Hunt’s disappointment, and it made Jaime almost as happy as the warmth of her hand tucked in the crook of his arm.

Not happy enough, however, to forget what he’d just witnessed.

“Brazen bastard,” he muttered as he moved them toward the door. “He should be groveling at your feet, not offering you his arm.” 

“It’s fine,” Brienne told him, but her face assured him it was not. “The worst of it is over.” 

“For you, maybe,” Jaime replied, baleful and low. “Not for Mr. Hunt. Not even close.” 

~*~*~*~*~*~

As it turned out, it didn’t take Jaime very long to begin making good on his words. Only until the middle of the fourth course, in fact. 

He hadn’t planned it that way, but when the impudent man unwittingly strolled to the edge of a cliff, Jaime only had to nudge him over. And once he had, well—for once in his bloody life, someone else was getting more disapproving stares from the Starks than he was. 

Even though his exchange with Hunt had put a damper on the mood for the second half of the meal, Jaime didn’t regret it. He thought he’d restrained himself rather well, actually, all things considered. 

Brienne had clearly disagreed. His shin still smarted where she’d kicked him by the time they rose to adjourn, but she didn’t balk when he moved to her side as they made their way out of the dining room. Jaime knew better than to reach out and take her arm, but he did allow his own to brush against it as they crossed into the armory hall. 

She didn’t jerk away. 

Perhaps it was worth trying for her arm after all, Jaime mused. He might have, too, if Tyrion hadn’t been standing squarely in their path in the middle of the hall. 

Apparently his brother had dedicated himself to becoming a master of ill-timed interference. 

“Might I have a word, brother?” Tyrion asked, quickly turning an apologetic look on Brienne. “My apologies for depriving you of your escort, Miss Tarth.” 

Jaime’s jaw went tight. He didn’t mind speaking to his brother, but he did not want Brienne going alone into that room. Hunt might have been taken down a peg at dinner, but Jaime knew he wouldn’t be cowed. Not that easily. 

“Not at all, Lord Tyrion,” Brienne said. Then, looking over at Jaime, she added, “I’ll manage just fine.”

He knew she would, but that wasn’t the point. “I won’t be long.” 

She nodded, then walked off toward the small hall, and Jaime glowered down at Tyrion.

“What is it?” he demanded. 

Tyrion peered briefly over his shoulder before turning back to Jaime with what might have been exasperation or amusement. Or, knowing his brother, both at once. “Are you trying to get us thrown out of Winterfell?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the little display you just made at Catelyn Stark’s dinner table.” Tyrion flapped his hand at him. “You’ve always been hot-blooded, but I never thought I’d see you get so green over another man showing interest in Miss Tarth.” 

“I’m not green,” he snapped.

Tyrion stared up at him, one brow low and the other stretched high. 

“I mean it,” Jaime insisted. “I am most certainly not jealous of that idiot.” 

“No?”

“No.”

“Then what exactly was that all about?” Tyrion pointed back at the dining room, then up at the weapons arrayed around them on the yellow walls of the hall. “You couldn’t have been less subtle if you had used one of these pikes to run him through.”  

“He’s earned it.” Jaime had seen more than enough blood and death in his life, but if ever someone could tempt him into further violence, it would have been Hunt. “He hurt her, and I won’t have him doing it again.”

His brother’s eyes widened. “Oh?” 

“Brienne treated him at her first hospital, and he…” Jaime trailed off, wary of betraying her confidence, even to his brother. “He was the reason she came here.” 

“In that case, perhaps he’s come to make amends.” Tyrion’s mouth bowed in a thoughtful frown, but his eyes were anything but serious. “After all, she seems to have a habit of saving unfortunate men who can’t help but fall in love with her.”

“Goddamn it, Tyrion,” Jaime growled. “He isn’t in love with her. He wouldn’t deserve her even if he was.” 

“But you are. And you do.” 

Jaime flinched, fighting a reflexive urge to shake his head.

Tyrion sighed. “I know you, brother. It’s past time for you to let that go.”

“Save your lectures,” Jaime said, irked when the words came out hoarse instead of sharp. “This is about Hunt, not—”

“Like hell it is,” Tyrion cut across him, his voice startlingly stern. “We both know that this,” he paused, waving his short arms at everything and nothing, “nonsense between you and Miss Tarth has gone on long enough. I don’t care how complicated you’ve convinced yourself it is. If you wait any longer, someone else might come along before you finally pluck up the courage to tell her what the rest of us already know.”

Jaime huffed, ignoring the unpleasant roil in his gut. “She doesn’t want anything to do with Hunt, I promise you.”

“I’m not talking about Mr. Hunt.” Tyrion made a dismissive face. “That miscreant obviously doesn’t see what a treasure Miss Tarth truly is, but the next man might.” 

A bitter, tingling chill swept through Jaime’s limbs.

The next man. 

There would be one, someday; only a fool would think otherwise. Her own father had thrust three other men in her path before Jaime had even met her, and he would almost certainly find another after Hunt slithered away. Or perhaps Brienne would meet someone else on her own, someone who was better than the lot of them.

Someone who would tell her everything Jaime had spent years being too craven to just come out and say. 

“You’re right.”

Tyrion blinked. “Am I?” 

“Yes. This has gone on long enough. Too long. And I fully intend to put an end to it as soon as this blasted party is over.”

“That just sounds like more waiting to me, Jaime. You could put an end to it now.” 

“No,” Jaime said. “I can’t.”

He would, however, like to put an end to this conversation. God only knew what that cretin was getting up to in the drawing room. 

“Why not, pray tell?”

“I’ve already told you, it’s not that simple.”

Tyrion rolled his bright green eyes toward the ceiling. “Didn’t we just go over this? You’re not fooling anyone with that excu—”

“It’s not an excuse,” Jaime barked before Tyrion could finish. “Brienne asked me to fend Hunt off by pretending to court her.” 

His brother froze, his lips pressed together so tightly the dimples in his chin went white. Then, to Jaime’s annoyance, he began to shake—just a tremble at first, then great wracking waves that had him nearly bent double. 

“Oh for God’s sake,” Jaime hissed. “It’s not that funny.”

“I beg to differ,” Tyrion said, finally managing to collect himself. “I’m sorry, Jaime, but even you must admit that it’s, well…Christ.” He wiped a tear from the rim of his eye. “Coincidence doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

Jaime scowled. “I don’t think you can call it a coincidence when Sansa Stark put the idea in her head.”

“Did she?” Tyrion laid a hand across his chest. “I always suspected she was a lady after my own heart. I only wish I’d thought of it myself.”

“I’m sure you do. You always did like to meddle.” 

“If by meddle, you mean help, then you’re correct, my dear brother. Still, all my efforts haven’t persuaded you to do a damn thing. And it seems this has.” 

“It has,” he confirmed, and it was true. No matter the circumstances that had brought it about, Jaime knew if he didn’t take this chance, he might not get another.

Tyrion considered him thoughtfully. “I hope you mean that.” 

“I do.” 

“In that case, might I offer one last word of advice?”

“Can I stop you?”

“No,” Tyrion said dryly. “But only because it’s for your own good.”

Jaime lifted his brow. “Is that so?”

“Yes. Whatever Mr. Hunt has done, and I don’t doubt for a minute that it was egregious, it isn’t worth making a fool of yourself in front of the Starks.” He nodded in the general direction of the drawing room. “I know you don’t value their good opinion, but Miss Tarth does.”

“Of the two of us, I don’t think I’m the one who looks foolish at the moment, but—”

“I’m serious, Jaime. How difficult can it be to bring things down to your normal level of hostility?” 

“More difficult than you think,” Jaime fired back, but he had to admit that Tyrion had a point. If, for Brienne’s sake, he wanted the countess to detest him less rather than more, he should make an attempt to be decent. At least where she could hear him. “But I’ll try.”

“Not very hard, I suspect.”

Jaime shrugged. “That all depends.”

“On what?”

“On Hunt.”

Tyrion’s mouth twisted wryly. “In that case, we’re doomed.”

Chapter Text

Everything Jaime had said to his brother drained abruptly out of his head when he walked through the door and saw that Hunt had Brienne alone in the far corner of the drawing room.

The underhanded, presumptuous swine. 

Jaime couldn’t see Brienne’s face, but he could read the discomfort in every line of her body—the way she was holding herself rigid and ready, prepared to flee or fight at a moment’s notice. God, how he wished she would opt for the latter. He would enjoy watching her flatten the man even more than doing it himself. 

But he would, Jaime realized. If Hunt kept this up for the next four days, if Jaime had to continue watching her endure it, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself. He doubted he would last two, in fact, before it came to blows. 

As he approached them, Jaime could hear the stream of nonsense Hunt was spouting. Things weren’t how they had seemed, he was telling her. He had gone along with it, but came to enjoy their time together. 

Hunt’s words, and the fawning look on his face as he said them, filled Jaime with rage. 

But it wasn’t only that. There was something else, too, starting high in his chest and clawing up the inside of his throat. Something fierce and wild and grasping that tasted unsettlingly green.

It was needless and absurd—no man on earth could offer advances that were less welcome—but Jaime couldn’t seem to swallow it away. He’d never thought much about what happened before the barbaric scheme at Brighton had come to an end, but now the image of them together at that hospital, sharing any kind of intimacy at all, burned intolerably bright behind his eyes.

Hunt was a worthless scoundrel, but if he hadn’t been… If he had been a good man who truly cared for her, Jaime might never have met Brienne at all. 

“You see,” Hunt was saying as Jaime drew up beside them, “I never had a chance to explain before you left the hospital, but—”

“Before you drove her away, you mean,” Jaime cut him off, sliding his hand into the modest dip of Brienne’s lower back. “I’m not sure there’s anything to explain.” 

Hunt’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly as he looked up at him. “It was just a misunderstanding.” 

“I’m sure it was.”

“Either way, it’s nothing to do with you, Lord Lannister,” Hunt bit back, but his expression flipped from disdainful to unctuous as soon as he returned his gaze to Brienne. Slimy bastard. “I was hoping Miss Tarth would grant me the chance to start fresh. I made mistakes, to be sure, but it would be unkind to hold them against me forever. It was a long time ago.”

“Not long enough,” Jaime scoffed. “And if you’re asking my fiancée for her forgiveness, surely that means you should actually apologize.”

The words tumbled out of his mouth before he had time to check them, but he couldn’t bring himself to be sorry, not even when Brienne stiffened beside him. Not when he saw the look on Hunt’s face. 

“I beg your pardon,” Hunt spat. “You? And her? You must be joking.”

Jaime smiled, wide and malicious. “I assure you, I am not.”

“But her father said she was—he never mentioned…”

“We only became engaged this very afternoon,” Jaime said. “Her father is not yet aware that Miss Tarth has agreed to be my wife.” 

“Your wife?” 

Brienne whirled around toward the new voice, dislodging his hand from her back. When Jaime followed, he found Lady Arya standing disturbingly close to them, staring up at him with round, incredulous eyes. 

Glancing away from her, Jaime swept his gaze over the others scattered throughout the room. Their eyes—brown and blue, gray and green—were fixed on him, too. All of them. 

Well, he’d done it now. There was nothing for it but to see it through. 

“Not just yet,” he said to Lady Arya. “But soon enough, if Lord Tarth will grant us his consent.”

The viscount’s eyebrows sprang high on his forehead as Jaime looked over at him, but he didn’t reply.

Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.

Jaime swallowed before he spoke again, tamping down his instinct to charm or deflect with a smooth smile and a wry remark. This, now, had nothing to do with Hunt, and Jaime didn’t want to perform for them. He didn’t want to pretend. 

He wanted them all to know—he wanted her to know—that he was sincere. 

“I apologize for asking this way, Lord Tarth,” he said, meeting the man’s steady blue gaze. “And to the rest of you as well, for the disruption of the party. I had absolutely no intention of doing this so publicly.” Jaime couldn’t help but grin at how true that was, and how profoundly they would never know it. “But now that the issue has arisen, my lord, I would like to humbly request your blessing to marry your daughter.”

Once again, Brienne went tense at his side, and a swell of regret rose within him. Jaime didn’t need to look at her to feel the faint pulse of her panic, to know she hated what was happening. He just hoped she wouldn’t hate him for doing it. 

Lord Tarth, meanwhile, squinted mutely at him for so long that the others began turning to stare at him. Finally, he nodded. “You have it.” 

A bright, pleased smile overtook the man’s stern face, changing it entirely, and Jaime gladly returned it. 

“I will do my utmost to ensure you don’t regret that, my lord.”

“I’m quite sure I won’t.” 

Someone—Lady Sansa, if he had to guess—started clapping, and modest applause quickly spread throughout the room. Lord Tarth himself joined in, and a bemused Lord Stark followed suit. Even glum Mr. Snow was smiling. Lady Stark was decidedly not, though she at least seemed stunned beyond her usual disapproval. 

Grinning despite himself, Jaime turned toward Brienne, red-faced and still and so distracted by her thoughts that she didn’t seem to register him moving closer.

Her cheek burned beneath his lips when Jaime leaned in to kiss her, bold and deliberate, very near the corner of her own. He grinned anew when she gave a little jump and looked at him at last, her eyes roving over his face. 

I meant it, he wanted to say, happiness and terror tangling tightly around his ribs. I meant it all. 

But he didn’t dare, not with Hunt and the sharp-eared Stark girl standing so damn close to them.

“Well,” Tyrion trumpeted from close behind them, “it’s about bloody time.” 

Brienne’s brow furrowed just as Tyrion clapped him on the arm, and Jaime had to work to keep the smile on his face. Leave it to his brother to push the envelope, even as he played along. 

“Is that what passes for congratulations these days?” he asked, squeezing Tyrion’s shoulder.

Tyrion smirked. “Hearty congratulations to the both of you, of course. Though I can confidently say my brother is getting the better end of the bargain, Miss Tarth.” 

Jaime’s gaze drifted briefly back to Brienne. “Believe me, I’m well aware of that.” 

“I’m sorry you wasted your trip, my friend,” Tyrion said, looking up at Hunt, “but you might as well join us for a drink in celebration of the happy couple. Lord Robb has sent for some champagne.” He pointed toward the distant sideboard with his thumb. “Come on, Jaime, let’s fetch your fiancée a drink.” 

Still smirking, Tyrion caught Jaime’s eye before trotting off, and Hunt followed wordlessly in his wake.  

“Don’t go anywhere,” Jaime said to Brienne, his hand drawn like a magnet to the small of her back. Now that he’d allowed himself to touch her so freely, he didn’t know how he would stop. God, he hoped she wouldn’t make him. “I’ll be right back.” 

Brienne’s blush had faded to a rosy pink, but her answering nod was still a bit shaky, and Jaime couldn’t resist darting in to kiss her cheek again before peeling himself away.  

Brushing past Hunt, he caught Tyrion just as his brother neared the sideboard, where two footmen were unloading a tray of glasses and half a case of champagne. Lord Robb and Mr. Snow lingered close by, appearing cheerfully eager to begin the celebration. 

Positioning himself a few feet back from the action, his brother gestured for Jaime to stand beside him. Only when he obliged did Tyrion finally tip his head back to give him a long-suffering look.

“What?” Jaime asked, nearly in time with the popping of a cork. 

“You really don’t listen to a single thing I say, do you?” 

“Of course I do. As a matter of fact, I distinctly recall you saying I should do something about it now,” he said, infusing his final words with mock severity.

Tyrion huffed. “I didn’t mean that literally, you dolt. Besides, you said something about needing to delay until the party was over. What happened to that?” 

Jaime shrugged. “I suppose I changed my mind.”

“He changed your mind, you mean.” Tyrion nodded to their right, where Hunt was sulkily watching Mr. Snow fill a coupe with champagne. “Or, should I say, he made you forget to use it entirely.”  

One side of Jaime’s mouth twitched upward. “Perhaps.”

“Don’t get me wrong, brother, I’m glad your silent pining days are at an end, but…” Tyrion shook his head. “I believe you may have made things worse for yourself.” 

“Oh?” he asked. “How’s that?”

“She doesn’t know it’s real, Jaime.” Tyrion glanced toward Brienne, and Jaime followed. She was standing right where he’d left her, but the viscount had gone over to join her. “She might be the only person in the room who doesn’t, but—”

“She will.” 

Jaime didn’t know how yet, but he intended to make sure of it. 

And he hoped, once he had, that Brienne wouldn’t resent the way it had happened. That it wouldn’t make it less, somehow. That it wouldn’t compel her to refuse him. 

The possibility was even more unbearable than it had been a few hours before. 

Jaime watched her as she spoke to her father, wondering what she was saying to him—what she was feeling. Then, suddenly, she looked straight at him, her eyes soft with emotion as they locked with his own across the room, and he knew the answer as sure as though she’d shouted it for all to hear.

It made the tightness in his chest unfurl, slow and inexorable as the smile that spread across his face. Because Tyrion was right. She didn’t know it was real. 

But she wanted it to be. 

The revelation of it buoyed him, a few minutes later, when Brienne wouldn’t meet his eyes as he handed her a glass of champagne—and again when Lord Stark led the party in a toast to the “happy couple” and another wave of scarlet crashed over her skin. It emboldened him to stand close to her, his hand nestled firmly in the cradle of her low back, as her father and his brother followed with toasts of their own. 

It allowed him to welcome Lord Tarth’s invitation to Evenfall, and to laugh when the viscount suggested Jaime would have no trouble finding it, since he’d written out the address plenty of times. It sweetened Tysha’s earnest joy, diminished his annoyance at Tyrion’s increasingly tipsy and indecorous remarks, and even had him returning Lady Sansa’s look of sly triumph with a broad, indulgent grin. 

All the while, it sharpened Jaime’s awareness of every small look Brienne gave him, the way she shifted beneath his touch but never moved away. It made him admire her efforts to smile and play along, ever resolute and true to her word, even though it was no more a game to her than it was to him. 

More than anything, it made him free to drink in the sight of her, as often and as openly as he wished—to let them all see how much he enjoyed being there beside her. 

It made him happy.

And, when the champagne was gone and the cascade of congratulations had finally reached its end, it made him follow when Brienne excused herself for the evening. He didn’t move quickly enough to catch her in the small hall, but he might have managed it in the guest wing corridor if Hunt hadn’t slipped out from between the columns at the bottom of the stairs.

Jaime hadn’t seen him since Lord Stark’s toast, when the man had tilted the contents of two consecutive champagne coupes down his throat and stormed out of the drawing room. He’d assumed Hunt had slunk off to his room for the night, but was utterly unsurprised to be proven wrong. 

In fact, it was perfectly in line with the way the entire damnable day had been going. 

Jaime stopped, giving Hunt his finest flat stare as he waited for the man to speak. Predictably, it didn’t take long.

“I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, Lannister.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t play at anything, Hunt.” 

“Sure you do.” Hunt took a step toward him, sneering. “You like to act the lofty lord, but you’re no better than the rest of us. Actually, I would say you’re even worse.”

“I probably am,” Jaime drawled, “though I’m afraid I fail to see how it’s relevant to you.” 

“Oh, but it is. Very relevant. To me and to your fiancée. She might not like me very much, but at least she knows who I am. You, on the other hand,” Hunt paused, angling his head, “I doubt she knows how just how dangerous you really are. If she were to find out, she might change her mind.” 

“She knows it all, I assure you,” Jaime said lightly. “The best and the worst.” He took a step of his own, leveraging his sizable superiority in height to peer down at the pathetic, angry little man. “Not that my relationship with Miss Tarth is any of your concern.” 

“It bloody well is. I came more than four hundred miles to court her, and suddenly you’re engaged?” Hunt flung his arm toward the stairs. “I don’t know what possessed you to toy with her this way, just when I was about to make her the only real offer she’s likely to receive, but it’s far crueler than anything I’ve ever done. At least I would have actually married her, if she had bothered to give me a chance.” 

Jaime had to force the muscles in his jaw to relax before asking, “And what, precisely, makes you think that I will not?”

Hunt looked up at him like he was the world’s biggest fool. “You don’t need her money or her father’s title. Why else would anyone want to marry such a lumbering beast of a wom—”

Jaime surged forward, grabbing Hunt by his lapels and forcing him back until he had him pinned against the nearest column.

“Her name is Miss Tarth, you sod,” he growled. “I suggest you speak of her as such, or it’ll be you finding out how dangerous I am.”

Hunt snorted and tried to yank himself free, but Jaime held him fast.

“On second thought, perhaps you two deserve each other.” Hunt bared his teeth in a savage smile. “Allow me to offer you my congratulations on winning her, my lord. She might be the ugliest prize in all of England, but—”

Jaime’s scarred fist slammed into Hunt’s face so hard that his head cracked back against the column. 

“How dare you?” Hunt barked, righting himself, but there was a glimmer of fear in his eyes as he lifted his hand to his face. “I think you broke my nose.” His fingers came away wet and red. 

“If you aren’t gone before breakfast, I’ll break more than that.” Jaime tightened the grip of his left hand, still clenched in Hunt’s jacket. “And if you ever bother Miss Tarth again, I’ll hold you down so she can do it herself.” 

Apparently undaunted, Hunt opened his mouth to reply, and Jaime flexed his fist in anticipation. 

“Gentlemen,” came a stern, feminine voice just to their left.

Jaime squeezed his eyes shut. Then, grimacing, he released Hunt’s lapel and slowly spun to face Lady Stark.

“My lady, I—” Jaime began, but she silenced him with a flick of her wrist. 

“It sounds as though you will be needing a car in the morning, Mr. Hunt,” she said evenly, and Jaime’s eyebrows jumped. 

Hunt let out a derisive noise, wiping his sleeve across his nose. “Will I, Lady Stark?”

The countess lifted her chin and regarded him icily. “I doubt you would make it to the station in time to catch the morning train without one.” 

“I see.” 

“Why don’t you return to the drawing room while I arrange it with Mr. Poole.” Lady Stark’s tone made it clear that it was not a suggestion he could refuse. “I’ll have my son find someone to see to the rest of you”—she gestured at his bloodied face—“while you wait.”

“I am most grateful for your hospitality, my lady.” Hunt gave a curt bow, making little effort to disguise his bitterness when he added, “I won’t soon forget it.”

“See that you don’t, Mr. Hunt. You won’t be enjoying it again.” 

Hunt gaped at her, his features distorted by a comical blend of scorn and surprise, and it took all of Jaime’s restraint not to laugh in the man’s face. It was unexpectedly satisfying watching the countess treat someone else that way. 

When Hunt remained rooted to the spot, Lady Stark lifted her hand, palm up, toward the drawing room, waiting in that pose until he skulked off with an indistinct grumble. As soon as he vanished through the door, she let her arm drop and swung her gaze back to Jaime. 

“That was...” she started, trailing off with a shake of her head.   

“I know,” he said, hoping to keep her from finishing. Disappointing, ill-bred, unacceptable. Exactly what she expected from him, no doubt. “You have my apologies for the disturbance, Lady Stark.” 

“Thank you, Lord Lannister.” The countess sighed. “And you have mine.” 

“Your—” he broke off, dumbstruck. “I do?” 

“Yes. Miss Tarth is…well, she is quite dear to me. I can see now that you will make her very happy, and I’m sorry I ever doubted it.” 

Jaime nearly reeled back from her. He didn’t care about her approval—he never had—so why was his throat so goddamn tight?

“Thank you, my lady,” he said huskily. “I certainly intend to try.”

“That I never doubted. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it seems I have some transport to arrange for Mr. Hunt.” 

“Of course. I wouldn’t want to keep you.” 

“Indeed.” Lady Stark’s mouth curled at the corner—barely perceptible, but it was there. “Before you retire, I would like to ask one favor of you.” 

“What’s that?” he asked, more dryly than he should have. But, Christ, a favor had gotten him into this mess.

“Whatever your reason for haring off after Miss Tarth, leave it until the morning.” Her eyes twinkled in a way that reminded Jaime strikingly of her eldest daughter. “Spilling that man’s blood on my floor is one thing, but I won’t have you knocking on the door of a lady’s quarters at this hour, engaged or not.” 

He flashed her a crooked, guilty smile. “Was I that obvious?”

“I’m afraid so.” 

Jaime hummed. The thought of Brienne remaining unaware of the truth for even one more minute pained him greatly. But she would almost certainly be changed by now, and barging in would only get her back up. He needed her to hear him, to believe him, and she wouldn’t if he accosted her in her pajamas. 

“I’ll go straight up to my own room,” he said. “You have my word.” 

He half expected her to say she didn’t trust it, but Lady Stark only inclined her head with a smile. It was small, but real—and the first he could ever recall receiving from her. 

“Goodnight, Lord Lannister.” 

He leaned forward in a slight bow. “Goodnight, Lady Stark.” 

She left him there, then, alone in the hall—a show of faith that he would honor his promise. And as Jaime turned to climb the stairs, he couldn’t help but think that out of every mad thing the day had held, that was by far the most astounding.

Chapter Text

He didn’t know what Lady Stark had said to them, but no one in the party greeted Jaime with anything other than “good morning” when he walked into the dining room for breakfast. 

That is, until he joined Tyrion and Tysha at the sideboard and a sharp ache in his hand had him fumbling as he grabbed for the spoon in the dish of eggs.

“Sore hand this morning?” his brother asked.

Jaime slanted him an annoyed glance. “Don’t start.”  

“What?” Tyrion innocently widened his eyes. “Am I not allowed to be concerned about my brother’s health?” 

He made a show of peering down at Jaime’s hand, but there wasn’t much to see. Aside from a faint smudge of purple on his middle knuckle, the appendage looked no worse than it usually did. 

“It’s fine,” Jaime muttered, scooping some eggs onto his plate. 

“Ah. I’m glad to hear it.” Tyrion speared himself a particularly charred-looking sausage. “I doubt Mr. Hunt can say the same for his face.”

“Tyrion,” Tysha hissed from her husband’s other side. “Now is not the time.” 

She peered over her shoulder, presumably searching the room for Brienne—there was certainly no one else to keep the news from. Only she and Lady Arya had departed the drawing room before the countess sent Hunt back into it, bleeding, and Jaime would bet all the gold and copper in his father’s mines that the Stark girl had already heard the tale from Mr. Snow. 

“There’s no need to fret, my dear,” Tyrion said. “Miss Tarth has not yet graced us with her presence. You can be sure Jaime would not be standing here with us if she had.” 

Jaime ignored him, helping himself to a hot slice of toast. Objecting would have been fruitless, mostly because—as vexingly as usual—his brother was right. 

He wouldn’t have been standing there at all if he hadn’t run into Lord Tarth in the upstairs corridor. It had pained Jaime to fall in step beside the man and walk silently by Brienne’s still-closed door, but he doubted her father would approve of him stopping to knock any more than the countess had, regardless of the time of day. And if Brienne had preceded him downstairs, as she almost always had when they’d stayed at Highgarden, he would have gone straight to her side and remained there. Not because he hoped for the opportunity to tell her the truth—Jaime had given that up until they ventured out to the grouse moors—but because he didn’t want to be anywhere else. 

Then again, as his brother seemed acutely well aware, he generally didn’t. 

“I do hope someone has informed her of Mr. Hunt’s departure, if not the impetus for it,” Tyrion mused, stabbing another sausage. “I imagine it will markedly improve her day.” 

“My sister was going to send her maid in,” said Lady Arya, slipping between them so unexpectedly that even Tyrion jumped. She mouthed a quick well done at Jaime before reaching for a pastry. “I’m certain Jeyne will tell her, if she hasn’t already.”

“Brilliant.” His brother grinned. “That ought to hasten her descent.”

But, for once, Tyrion was wrong. 

Brienne didn’t come down at all.

Jaime took a seat facing the door so he could watch for her arrival, but halfway through his breakfast, he witnessed that of Lady Sansa’s maid instead. The girl looked first to the stodgy old butler, looming at his post in the corner; at his nod, she made straight for Lady Stark. After a brief, hushed exchange, the maid departed as swiftly as she’d come, and the countess told them all that Brienne was unwell with a headache and wouldn’t be joining them for the first drive.

The others murmured words of sympathy and regret, seeming to believe it entirely, but Jaime knew her too well for that. 

Brienne loved shooting. A headache alone would not have stopped her. 

And since she was presumably aware that Hunt was no longer among them, there could only be one person she was hoping to avoid.

Jaime frowned down at the cold remnants of his eggs. They’d been fools, the both of them, for far too long. Bloody stubborn fools. 

That would end today, at least on his part, even if it meant he had to shout the truth through her goddamn door while the rest of the party stood around and watched.

Hoping it wouldn’t come to that, Jaime took advantage of the opportunity Brienne had unwittingly presented to him, waiting until breakfast had concluded before announcing that he, too, would be staying behind for the morning. To his surprise, not a single soul tried to argue with him. Even his brother mercifully refrained from commenting. 

So, less than an hour after Lady Sansa’s maid had come down to offer Brienne’s excuses, Jaime found himself standing in Winterfell’s entrance hall with no one but Lady Sansa’s golden dog to keep him company. He watched out the window as the last car trundled down the gravel drive, bound for the wagons that would take the party out to the butts on the north moors. 

When it passed out of sight, he turned for the doorway to the Armory Hall, forcing his feet to take him through to the library rather than left into the small hall and straight up the stairs. There would be too many servants about now, preparing for the rest of the party’s arrival, for him to knock on her door without the entire blasted household knowing about it. Besides, he doubted she would stay in there for long now that the coast was clear. She had always hated being confined just as much as he did. 

The dog padded along behind him as Jaime grabbed the day’s newspaper off the desk by the window, then curled up in the sun as he sat down to wait on one of the sofas flanking the hearth. He unfolded the paper and tried to read, but the letters blurred out of focus on the page as he thought about what he was going to say.

He had been so happy and determined when he’d gone after her the night before—so sure of her feelings, so impatient to let her know he returned them—that he would have just blurted it out and hoped for the best. Now, as the silence of the castle pooled heavy in his ears, he realized how absurd that was. If Brienne was willing to feign illness to avoid him, he’d have to do better than that. He would have to make her believe, as he had told Tyrion he would, that it was real. That it had been for years. 

There were so many words he needed to say—that she deserved to hear—and Jaime was still turning them over in his head when Brienne finally walked through the door, looking as sublime as she always did in his favorite tweed shooting suit. 

“Good morning at last,” he said as lightly as he could, folding the paper and tossing it onto the sofa beside him. “Are you feeling better?” 

“A bit.” Brienne continued her approach, stepping past the dog and stopping near the end of the sofa. “I thought I was—I thought you would have gone with them.”

“Well, I didn’t.” He attempted a casual shrug. “Why would I, when I intended to stand with you?”  

“Oh.” Her face fell. “I’m sorry you missed the morning on my account, then. But since you’re here…” Brienne moved to sit on the sofa across from his own. “I suppose we should talk before the others return.”

Jaime cocked an eyebrow at her even as his heartbeat tripped and sped. “Should we?” 

He had fully expected to be the one to insist upon a conversation. That she had beat him to it filled him with giddy apprehension and a wild, violent hope. Might she be the one to say it first, after all this time? 

“We have to, Jaime.” Brienne held his gaze with a steely determination. “What are we going to do about this?”

Ah, he thought, frowning. Apparently not, then.

“Do we have to do anything?” he asked. 

It was stupid and perverse and Jaime could have kicked himself for saying it, but Brienne just sighed. 

“I mean it. I appreciate what you did last night, but…”

“But what?”

“You asked my father for his blessing to marry me,” she said slowly. 

“Yes.”

“In front of everyone.”

“Yes,” he repeated, emphatic. 

Brienne threw her hands out to her sides. “And you don’t see the problem with that? When you were only meant to—”

“What?” Jaime bristled. “Pretend? What if I don’t want to pretend anymore?”

Brienne shut her eyes, and they swam with hurt when she opened them again. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” he asked, gentling his tone. For fuck’s sake, would he ever get things right? “I don’t want your apologies, Brienne.” 

Her pale throat bobbed. “I should never have asked you to do it in the first place. I wish I hadn’t. If I’d just told everyone the truth, then I wouldn’t...” 

“Wouldn’t what?” he rumbled. 

Brienne blinked rapidly as her gaze dropped to the floor. “I wouldn’t have to tell my father it was all a lie.”

The words sliced between Jaime’s ribs like a bayonet, and every muscle in his body bunched with an urgent need to go to her. To end this madness, once and for all. 

So he did.

The floor creaked when he rose, but Brienne didn’t look up until he sat down next to her, as close as he could on the cushion adjacent to her own. 

“It wasn’t a lie,” he said softly. Out loud. At last. 

“Of course it was. They think you want to marry me, Jaime.”

“Well, you see, that’s the thing. I do.”

Brienne flinched back, and her short hair danced around her chin. “What?” 

“I do want to marry you.” Jaime swiped his fingers roughly along his jaw. How could she still be so determined not to see? “I never meant for it to happen like this, but goddamn it, Brienne, I’ve been courting you for two years and you never even noticed. And then I came here and you… oh, to hell with it.”

Years of pent-up longing sprang loose inside him, propelling him forward until his lips collided with hers. 

Her mouth went briefly firm beneath his onslaught, but she relaxed again when he slid hands up to her face. And when Brienne swayed forward and began pressing faintly back against him, Jaime kissed her like he’d been waiting years to do it, because he had. 

If words wouldn’t suffice, perhaps this would make her understand. 

Her fingers curled around his elbow and Jaime threaded his hand into her hair—needing more, needing her closer—and he couldn’t spare more than half a thought for how soft and glorious it was because her lips were softer still, warm and welcoming and more wondrous than anything in even the very best of his dreams.

When he finally pulled himself back, it was only far enough to meet her eyes, bluer than the summer sky and twice as bright. 

“What did you do that for?” she asked, so breathlessly he nearly kissed her again. 

Instead, he huffed. “Because I love you, you daft woman.”

It was the truth—simple and unvarnished—and Jaime didn’t regret saying it, not even when Brienne went quiet and ungodly still for the most agonizing seconds of his life. 

He didn’t know what she was thinking, but he could see her thoughts working in the muscles around her eyes, in the tiny, thoughtful frown that settled at the corners of her mouth. Then she blinked, and her whole face melted into a tenderness so sweet and earnest it stole his breath. 

Even before she murmured his name, he could see in her eyes that she believed him. 

A heady rush of relief and certainty and love pulled his mouth into a slow, wide smile.

“Do you know the first time you called me that was in this very room?” he asked around his grin. He probably looked half mad, but he didn’t give a damn. 

Brienne leaned back a little and glanced around the room. “Was it?”

Jaime nodded. “It was always Captain Lannister before that, no matter how I goaded you about it. Then, one day, I said something smart and you scolded me for it, just like you always did, but you used my name.” 

He had insulted the Starks, in point of fact, but he didn’t intend to remind her of that. 

“You remember that?” 

“Of course I remember. I’d been wanting to hear you say it for a long time.” His smile dimmed, twisting with regret. “Though I’m not sure I could have said why.”

She looked touched, and a little sad. “You didn’t call me Brienne until the day you left.”

“I remember that, too.”

As though he could forget the sight of her, standing in the entrance hall in that godawful uniform, looking so different from the woman sitting beside him, and so much the same. He should have been thrilled at the prospect of returning to his life, but saying goodbye to her had felt like leaving it behind. 

“I remember a lot of things,” he went on. “How strong you were when I leaned on your arm in the garden, and how gentle you were when you changed my bandages. The little lines you’d get, just here”—he ran his index finger lightly between her eyebrows, and her skin jumped beneath his touch—“when you were trying not to smile. The way your freckles multiplied in sunlight.” He drew his finger across her cheek. “I didn’t know I loved you then, but I did.” 

Jaime had never admitted that to anyone before, not even to himself. But it was true. It had seeded and swelled inside him without him even knowing it, and he’d loved her for so long now it felt as innate and vital as the beat of his heart.

Brienne’s forehead crinkled, and the sudden shimmer in her eyes made him think she might cry.

Instead, she launched herself forward and kissed him, hard and eager. Jaime grunted, rocking back under the force of it, but as soon as he steadied himself, he wrapped his arms around her and crushed her against his chest. 

She was clumsy in her fervor, and Jaime relished every moment of it, even when the cold tip of her nose bashed into his. Too soon, she broke away to breathe, and he couldn’t help but surge after her, sucking air in through his nose rather than let her go. 

Brienne shivered when he swiped his tongue along her lower lip, and God, he wished they were standing so he could feel the full length of her against him. Then she licked his lip in return, making him groan, and it occurred to him that pressing her down into the cushions might work just as well. 

Almost as if she’d sensed his alluring but utterly improper intentions, Brienne eased away again, holding her palm against his chest. Jaime could feel his heart thundering beneath it and wondered if she could, too. 

He thought perhaps she might, judging by the softness in her gaze. It seeped into her voice, too, when she said the most glorious words he’d ever heard. 

“I love you, too, Jaime.”

His eyes fell shut. 

He had hoped she would say that, even been reasonably sure that she would, but it was nothing like hearing it aloud. It was as though he had been dragging an unbearable weight behind him and finally cut the cords to free it. Like he had emerged from a dungeon and could once again tilt his face toward the sun. 

When he opened his eyes, Jaime bridled his impulse to reach for her again, opting for his jacket pocket instead. “In that case, I have something for you.” He tipped back, extracting the small box he’d tucked inside again that morning. “Something I should have given you ages ago.” 

He flipped open the lid and held it out so Brienne could see the sapphire ring nestled inside it. 

“I’ve been carrying it with me everywhere for months,” he told her, when she lifted her gaze back to his face. “I bought the damn thing in a tiny shop in Lannisport last November. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was yours. Lady Sansa helped me get it sized.” 

Brienne gasped. “Sansa knew?” 

Jaime grinned. “I made her swear she wouldn’t give it away.” In spite of everything, he was sure the girl would maintain that she hadn’t. “I told her I planned to ask you to marry me the first time I saw you in London this spring.” 

And he wished he bloody had. He could have been kissing her for months now. Hell, they could have been married already, and he could have done far more. 

“Why didn’t you?” she asked. “You had to know that I—how I…” Her chin trembled. “How I felt.”

“I hoped I did, but I’ve been wrong before,” he said honestly, even if it seemed idiotic to him now. “And even if I wasn’t, I didn’t know if it would be enough.” He lifted his scarred hand to her cheek. “As you may recall, you seemed quite determined not to be a wife at all, and being mine means becoming Lady Lannister—Lady Castamere, someday. You were never all that pleased to be a viscount’s daughter, so how could I suppose you would want to be a marchioness?”

Brienne leaned her face more firmly against his hand, and his chest gave an odd, pleasant clench. It might have been enough to derail him, had he not been so determined to tell her the rest of it. The heart of it. 

He frowned, forcing himself to continue. “Besides, I’m not—and you’re…” There weren’t adequate words for what she was, so Jaime just stroked his thumb slowly along her jaw. “I’m not an easy man, Brienne. You know that better than anyone. Sometimes I’m not even sure I’m a good one.” 

“You are.” She gripped his wrist—the wrist he would have lost if not for her. “And I’d be proud to be your wife.”

A bright, hot joy trickled through him, raising goosebumps on the skin beneath his tweed. Once, it might have annoyed him to realize that he’d craved her pride almost as much as her love; now, knowing he had both, he was so fucking happy there wasn’t room to feel anything else. 

“I’ll spend my life striving to be worthy of that pride,” he said huskily, gently slipping his wrist from her fingers so he could take hold of her left hand. “I swear to you, I will.”

“You already are,” she insisted. “I wouldn’t love you if you weren’t, Jaime.” 

“You would,” he countered, eliciting a familiar frown. Jaime gave a hoarse laugh. “But I can see this is an argument I’m not going to win.” His damn hand was trembling so much he nearly dropped the ring as he plucked it from the box and slid it on her long finger. “Either way, there’s no going back now.” 

“I don’t want to go back,” she said, quiet and thick with awe. 

It was almost enough to silence the cruel, reflexive voice in his head insisting that she should. Almost, but not quite. 

“I know my family is…” 

“Your family is wonderful. I don’t relish the idea of living under your father’s roof, but—”

“We don’t have to,” Jaime cut in. That, at least, he could spare her. “Not if you don’t want to. At least not for now.” 

“Oh? What did you have in mind?” 

He tugged his lower lip between his teeth. “Well, I may have bought a little cottage not far from Tarth. Greenstone Manor.”

“The old Estermont estate? That’s hardly a cottage, Jaime.” Her brow puckered. “I thought they’d sold that months ago.” 

“They did. Last summer. And I bought it. God knows I’ll enjoy it much more with you there.” 

Brienne’s eyebrows shot up. “You’ve stayed there?”

Eight times, to be precise, though he had no plans to admit it. 

“Once or twice.” He winked at her. “Pining for you from two villages away.” 

She gave an exasperated shake of her head, but there was nothing but fondness in her gaze. “You should have told me. You could have come to Evenfall. Met my father.”

“I was never invited.”

“You are now.”

He grinned. “Yes, I am. No thanks to you.”

She was about to banter back—Jaime saw it in the flash of those magnificent eyes—but as much as he enjoyed it when she sparred with him, he craved something else even more. 

Brienne didn’t resist him when he pulled her close for another kiss, this one long and slow, with his good hand curled around her nape and the other hooked around her waist. His ability to maintain the languorous pace wouldn’t have lasted, not when her hand came to rest on his thigh, but he barely had a chance to revisit his enticing idea involving the cushions before a dull noise startled Brienne away. 

Her head snapped around as she surveyed the room, but there was no one there. Apparently, she did not find that reassuring. 

“We should have been more careful,” she muttered. “What if someone sees?” 

Her cheeks turned a delectable shade of red, and Jaime bent slowly closer. He had never cared less about propriety in his life. 

“Let them see. We’re an engaged couple, remember?” 

“I suppose we are.” 

Jaime smirked. “Perhaps I’ll write Mr. Hunt a letter, thanking him for bringing it about.”

Brienne let her forehead fall forward onto his shoulder, but he could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “You’re terrible.” 

“I am.” Jaime buried his nose in her hair, just behind her ear. “And yet, you love me.” 

She exhaled against his shoulder, and he swore he heard a smile in that, too. “Yes, Jaime. I do.” 

He hummed into her hair like the satisfied, lovestruck idiot he was, but his conscience prevented him from basking for too long. There was, after all, something she still needed to hear—and he wanted it to be from him. 

“Enough to withstand one more terrible confession, I hope,” he said lightly. “It would be a real shame if you changed your mind about it now.” 

Brienne raised her head, suddenly serious. “Nothing you say could ever make me do that.”

“You don’t know what it is yet.” 

“It doesn’t matter.” 

“It might,” he argued, even though he didn’t really believe it. Not anymore.

“Jaime,” she scolded, as she so often did, and he couldn’t help but smile. “Are you going to tell me or not?” 

“All right. Though I’ll warn you, it’s about Mr. Hunt.” 

She stiffened. “Oh?”

“You are aware that he departed Winterfell this morning, I presume?”

“Yes,” she said warily. “Jeyne told me he left at dawn.” 

“Did she tell you why?” 

“No.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why?” 

Jaime rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I had words with him last night. In the hall. After you went up.” 

“Words? What kind of words?” 

“None that bear repeating.” 

“Jaime,” she said again, insistent.

“Really, it was nothing terribly original. He mostly carried on about how I’d thwarted his grand plans to woo you. Questioned my intentions. Disparaged my character.” 

“Disparaged me, you mean,” she said, affecting stoicism, but Jaime could see the old woundedness rising in her eyes. 

“He might have done. And I might have broken his nose for his trouble.” 

“You broke his nose?” she squawked. 

“Probably.” Jaime suppressed a smirk at the memory of Hunt wiping the blood from his face. “If Lady Stark hadn’t interrupted us, he might have had much worse.”

He’d certainly deserved worse. 

“Lady Stark?” Brienne blanched. “I—what did she say? Did you tell her—?”

“I didn’t tell her anything. She didn’t even let me speak before she sent Hunt back into the drawing room and ordered his car for this morning.”

Her lips curled at the corners, defying her attempt to purse them. “She wouldn’t have done that without a good reason.”

“Oh, Hunt gave her plenty, I promise you. I suspect she overheard the very one that inspired my fist to become acquainted with his face.” He sighed. “And I know you don’t need me defending your honor, but I couldn’t help myself. The bastard has had it coming to him for—”

Brienne cut him off with a short, fierce kiss. 

“Thank you,” she murmured, warm against his lips. “No one has ever—” She broke off, shaking her head. 

Jaime blinked. He hadn’t thought she would be angry, precisely, but he definitely hadn’t expected that.

“They should have,” he said throatily. “But since they didn’t, I’ll gladly track down those other men, too. Just say the word.” 

“Tempting, but no.” A hint of a smile flitted across her lips, there and gone again. “What you did with Mr. Hunt is more than enough.” 

He smiled back at her. “Is that your way of saying my violent behavior didn’t change your mind?”

Brienne rolled her eyes. “I told you it wouldn’t.”

“That you did.” He touched his forehead lightly to hers. “Though I’m sure I can think of something else.”

“I won’t care about that, either.” 

“You might.” 

“I won’t.” 

“I believe you,” he finally said, and Brienne rewarded him with a radiant smile and a kiss so fervent it ended with him pressed back into the cushions.

As it turned out, Jaime didn’t mind at all. 

Chapter Text

The relentless, staccato crack of rifle reports echoed loudly down the line of butts, and the wind carried the tang of gunpowder and smoke across the heather.

Enough years had passed—and Jaime had forced himself through enough shoots during the course of them—that he no longer startled at the sound, his stomach no longer turned at the smell. Still, he wouldn’t have enjoyed it, not as he once had, if it hadn’t been for the vision in front of him. 

Steady and square-shouldered, Brienne moved with a formidable grace as she fired into the sky, exchanging guns with a lad from Winter’s Town as fast as he could load them. She hit more than she missed, to be sure, but Jaime was so entranced by her movements—the deft grip of her hands on the gun, the tight pull of her coat as she trained the barrel on her quarry, the tousled ends of her hair swinging with the faint recoil of every shot—that he had lost count of her take after the first dozen birds.

It was the fourth time in two days he had watched her shoot, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was, he reasoned, just as mesmerizing out here as she’d been in that tremendous blue dress a few nights before. Perhaps even more. 

Brienne, on the other hand, was so absorbed in her task that she seemed to have forgotten he was even standing there. Only when a distant blaring of horns from the beater line announced the conclusion of the drive did she finally lower her gun and turn toward him, towering and triumphant, like Artemis in tweeds. 

Before Jaime could say a word, the boy scrambled toward her, his arm outstretched for her gun. 

“Well done, miss,” he said, beaming up at her as she handed over the rifle. “That was four more than yesterday afternoon.”

He couldn’t have been more than fourteen—and small for his age, at that—and his voice was thick with admiration in a way that made Jaime smile. 

“Thank you, Podrick, but I wouldn’t have managed it without your help. You’re a champion loader.” Brienne gave him a kind smile, and the boy ducked his dark head, blushing. “You’ll accompany me again this afternoon, I hope?” 

“Of—of course, miss. Thank you, miss.” He practically bowed as he backed away from her, and Jaime stifled a laugh. 

In fairness, he could hardly fault the lad for being impressed by her. Everyone was. Sam Tarly had asked her for pointers almost as soon as he arrived, and she had reduced Lord Westerling to slack-jawed wonder. Even Lord Stark’s gamekeeper, a scarred, surly fellow who seemed to glower more than he spoke, had grunted his approval when he’d stopped to watch her shoot the day before.

None of them had mooned at her quite so obviously as young Podrick, though, and Jaime was almost sorry to interrupt it. But they had been lucky enough to wind up at the last in the line of the western butts, and Jaime didn’t intend to squander the opportunity. 

“I believe it’s time for luncheon,” he said brightly, squinting in the direction of the wagons. They were too far away to see from that position, down the line and over the slight rise to their rear, but he knew they were waiting to convey them all back to the road. “Podrick, why don’t you run along with the guns? I have something to discuss with Miss Tarth, but we’ll be along directly.” 

“Yes, milord.” Podrick’s good-natured smile was more knowing than Jaime would have expected. “I’ll tell them you’re just a few minutes behind me.”

Jaime winked. “Good lad.” 

With one more grin for Brienne, the boy slipped his bag of supplies over his shoulder, picked up the second gun, and trotted off up the narrow path. 

As soon as he passed out of sight, Jaime stepped forward, prowling slowly closer until he had backed Brienne up against the half-circle of the butt’s low stone wall. 

“Jaime,” she chastened, her cheeks already tinged a charming pink from the wind, “someone will see.” 

“Who?” He flicked his eyebrows toward the sky. “The birds? They’re welcome to watch, if they wish.” 

The nearest butt was twenty yards away, and Jaime highly doubted Edmure Tully was still in it. Unless Lady Arya had managed to conceal herself in a thatch of shrubbery, they had as much privacy as they were likely to get anywhere on the entire estate.

It had only been two days, but he’d already become quite adept at capitalizing on such rare moments.

Jaime removed his fedora and tossed it on the wall, then settled his hands in the slight dip of her waist. Brienne made a half-hearted noise of reproach, but when he quirked his head and pressed even closer, she rested her palms against his chest with an indulgent sigh. 

“You were a cracking good shot today, my lady,” he said, low and intent. “As always.”

Her forehead crinkled with his favorite exasperated frown. “I’m not a lady, Jaime.”

“You will be. My lady.” Jaime rubbed his thumbs in faint circles over the fabric of her coat, wishing they weren’t wearing so many damn layers. “Very soon, if I have my way about it.”

“Oh?” Her brow smoothed, and her mouth twitched in an almost-smile. “How soon would that be, exactly?”

“I thought the seventeenth of December might suit rather nicely.”

Brienne blinked in surprise. “That’s quite...specific.”

“It is.” 

“Would you care to tell me why?”

“It’s our anniversary, of sorts.” Jaime bent his head closer to hers, intending to tease but nearly giving in to the urge to kiss her instead. He had taken pains to get her alone expressly for that purpose, after all. “I’m a bit wounded you don’t remember.” 

“I’m sure I would, if we had one,” she argued, delighting him with her insistence. “We’ve only been engaged for two days, and it’s the twenty-se—”

“Of course we have one,” he cut in. “Surely our first meeting counts.”

“Our first…” She trailed off with a tiny shake of her head. “You can’t mean the day they wheeled you into Winterfell.”

“Indeed I do. What could be more romantic than wedding you four years to the day after you first loomed over me with that disapproving scowl on your face?” Jaime grinned at the indignant arch of her eyebrow. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m certain I deserved it. I was undoubtedly an ass.”

“You were,” Brienne affirmed, but her gaze had gone soft. “A quite insufferable one.”

“And yet, you love me,” he said, for what must have been the dozenth time in forty-eight hours. 

“Yes, Jaime. I believe you know I do.”  

He doubted he would ever tire of that answer—or the special smile that blossomed on her face when she gave it. 

Smiling back at her, Jaime bumped his nose against hers. “Then have mercy on me and agree to my excellent plan.” 

“A date alone hardly constitutes a plan.” 

“Oh, don’t you worry. I have more. Or at least I will have, once I’ve asked the Starks if we can get married here.” 

Brienne pulled her head back a little and peered at him with those wide blue eyes. “Here?”

“Here. If you don’t object, that is.”

“Here at Winterfell.” 

He laughed. “Well, I don’t mean here on this moor.”

“But…” she spluttered. “Why?”

“Why not?” Jaime slid his hands around her waist, lacing his fingers together across the small of her back. “We wouldn’t be standing here without it.” 

In truth, he couldn’t think of a more fitting place—a place that mattered more to both of them in entirely different ways. He knew Brienne wouldn’t want a large, grand affair any more than he did, and he sure as hell didn’t want to be married in town or at Casterly Rock. If she would prefer to have the wedding at Evenfall, Jaime would oblige her without complaint, but he saw a hint of something pleased beneath her shock that suggested she would not. 

“Do you think Lord and Lady Stark would mind?” she asked quietly. “It’s an unusual request.” 

“Of course they won’t mind. You’re practically a member of the family.”

Brienne dragged her teeth over her bottom lip in a way that made it very difficult not to kiss her. “They already have another wedding to plan. Robb and Miss Westerling—”

“You know Lady Westerling will have more to do with that than Lady Stark. And I thought they were getting married in the spring, anyway.” 

“Yes, they are, but I don’t want to interfere. And they might think we’re rushing things.”

“Rushing things?” he repeated, smirking. “Four months isn’t exactly a short engagement. Besides, I’m sure a number of them share my brother’s sentiment that it’s...how did he put it? ‘About bloody time?’” 

“Jaime.”

“I mean it, Brienne. I’ve waited long enough already. Far longer than I should have. I rather think they’ll be impressed I’m not dragging you to the altar before the week is out. Not that it isn’t an appealing option—”

“Absolutely not.” The color deepened in Brienne’s cheeks. “December is one thing, but if we got married now, people would think—” She shook her head. “They would assume it was only because something untoward had occurred.” 

“Something untoward would have occurred if anyone in this household knew how to oil a bloody hinge,” Jaime growled, tipping his mouth close to hers. He had lain awake the previous two nights contemplating little else. “Even so, I’d take my chances, if you would allow it.”

Brienne hitched up her chin. “I would not.”

Jaime grazed his lips along her neck, taking great enjoyment in the tremor that rippled through her at his touch. He was willing to bet that she would quite enthusiastically allow it, under the right circumstances, but he had no intention of pressing her.

A few more months wouldn’t kill him. Probably.  

“Hence my urgency to wed you,” he murmured into her skin. “You stubborn, honorable, exasperating woman.” 

“I suppose I am,” she said, leaning away from his wandering mouth. “And yet, you love me.”   

He looked up at her, grinning. “That I do. Most desperately. I would think all this begging might have made that clear.”

A soft smile curved her lips. “You’ve hardly begged.”

“I will.” 

“There’s no need.” She settled her right hand more firmly against his chest, just above his heart. “I’ve already decided. If Lord and Lady Stark agree, then my answer is yes. I—” She swallowed. “Thank you for thinking of it.”  

“You’re quite welcome, my lady,” he crooned, fighting an abrupt impulse to lift her off the ground. If he’d had more room, perhaps he would have—and swung her around, despite her assured objections, just to prove he could. As it was, he settled for tightening his arms around her waist to haul her closer. “And don’t worry about the Starks. I’ll enlist Lady Sansa’s help if I have to. She’s more than capable of browbeating them into it. Hell, she might even manage to convince them it was their idea in the first place, the sly little minx.”

Brienne laughed, sounding every bit as bright and happy as he felt, and Jaime couldn’t help but kiss her—sweet and deep and as intoxicating as the sunshine. 

They were both breathless by the time he finally pulled away, and he noted with some satisfaction that her hat had fallen off. 

Brienne didn’t seem to notice as she cast a regretful look at the path leading toward the wagons. “We should get going,” she said weakly, “or they might send Podrick back to collect us.” 

Jaime hummed, knowing she was right and still not unwinding his arms from around her. “Well, we wouldn’t want to traumatize the boy. I think he has a bit of a crush on you.” 

She frowned, but her ears had gone pink. “He does not.” 

“I beg to differ. Not that I blame him, of course. He has exceptional taste for one so young.”

“Jaime,” she chided, but there was laughter in her eyes.

“Yes, Brienne?”

“You’re…”

“Terrible, yes, I know,” he said, leaning in close. “So you’ve said.”

He kissed her again, intending it to be nothing more than a quick, warm press of his lips—promising another at the earliest available opportunity—but when Brienne’s fingers curled around his lapels, Jaime allowed himself to linger. 

He’d waited a long time for that privilege. The others could wait a little more.