He shrugged, feeling reckless. “They’re already talking. I survived the unsurvivable. I lost my wings. I married a human and took another as a resident mistress. At this point, living on the ground in the palace quarter will hardly register as deviant.”
A laugh escaped, warm and brief. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth, and above them, her eyes were bright. “You’re not joking. You really don’t mind?”
“I famously have no sense of humor,” he returned dryly.
Rikard hired a crew of human laborers recommended by the Head Keeper. Plasterers, carpenters, a glazier for the cracked windows, a bricklayer to repair the chimneys and garden walls. A butler and head housekeeper to staff the estate with maids and footmen and kitchen help. Gardeners.
The dead vines came down first, hauled from the walls in great black tangles that the laborers carted away in barrows, revealing the pale stone facade beneath. The house slowly emerged. Hannalinde directed the work from the eyrie, choosing the paint for the walls, the fabric for the new draperies, the pattern for the china. She arranged for a roost to be built in the largest bedchamber.
She drew the garden plan, too, the rows and beds sketched with the same precision she applied to embroidery patterns, and watched through a spyglass from the window as her instructions were followed to the letter. The soil was amended, the paths re-graveled, and the trellises repaired. Then new roses were planted, two dozen new bushes from a nursery outside the city walls, selected by Hannalinde from a list the nurseryman had provided.
He did not tell her the extravagant cost. The garden fund was bottomless as far as he was concerned.
For her part, Carlijn giddily supervised the installation of the interior furnishings, visiting each day to direct the workmen since Hanna couldn’t make the climb, telling them where to place the rugs and furniture. She also conspired with Rikardto decorate the new nursery, as Hanna had shown a marked disinterest in the task, filling it with toys and other things a baby of either species would need.
The house was ready in just a few weeks. The three of them moved out of the eyrie on a late autumn evening. Hired gargoyles ferried the chests of clothes and sewing baskets and a few other indispensable possessions to their new house, and then Cléa said her tearful goodbyes, although Rikard suspected she would be quite happy to entertain more in their absence, once she got used to it.
Roul kindly flew Hanna all the way to their new doorstep, where he waited with her in the parlor while Rikard and Carlijn made the journey on foot. After a house tour of the main floor, he departed, leaving them alone with their new, rather nervous household staff.
“We need to choose a name,” Rikard decided.
“For the child? That is your responsibility,” Hannalinde said, frowning at the floor.
“For the house.”
Her face brightened, and she glanced up at him. “True. It isn’t Lamont House any longer.”
“Hanna’s House,” Carlijn suggested.
Hanna shook her head, looking appalled. “Not very dignified.”
Rikard grinned. “Does it need to be dignified?”
She stared at him in astonishment. “Of course it does. It will be our son’s one day and his son’s and his son’s. It should be something they can be proud of.”
“I would think they’d be very proud of their mother or grandmother,” he said quietly, for her ears only even if Carlijn and the new servants could hear. His fingers curved around the back of her arm, the lightest touch as he leaned close. “They’d be lucky to inherit her strength and fortitude. Her way with people. They will prosper because of the seeds she’s planted.”
Her cheeks pinkened as she exhaled, clearing her throat. “Rose House, then. I think, in a few years, it will be quite covered with them.”
“Pretty!” Carlijn exclaimed, clapping.
“Rose House it is. I will have a new nameplate carved for the cornerstone.”
“Th—” Hanna began, but heeded his warning look and stopped before thanking him. Why should she be grateful when the house was stolen from her to begin with? “That would be wonderful,” she amended, much to his satisfaction.
“Would the ladies like to retire?” Cyril, their new butler stepped forward solicitously from his discreet position by the parlor door. It was quite late for humans, nearing midnight. “I can summon a maid to help them dress for bed.”
“Don’t wake anyone,” Carlijn said, yawning into the back of her hand. “I can manage on my own, and Hanna has her husband to help her.”
The butler’s eyes popped at the impropriety, but he bowed to Rikard. “Indeed she does. Good night, sir. Ladies.”
Hannalinde took Rikard’s proffered arm, and they followed Carlijn up the stairs, parting from her at the top. She’d taken the chamber on the other side of the nursery from the lord and lady’s chambers, the room that had once belonged to Hanna. He wondered whether Hanna would sleep in his chamber or her own freshly decorated one, the one that had been her mother’s. His, he hoped, as she had in the eyrie, even though it was no longer strictly necessary, given that they had more rooms now.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Hanna asked.
His attention snapped to her. “Mind what?”
“Helping me undress. Carlijn volunteered you, but you don’t have to. I can ring the bell in my dressing room and call a maid.”
