Free The Shape-Changer's Wife by Sharon Shinn Page A

back in his chair with an air of triumph, as if waiting to be congratulated.
    Lilith looked over at him expressionlessly. “You ordered seven gowns for me?”
    â€œI did.”
    â€œWhat if I do not like them?”
    Glyrenden laughed merrily, as if she had said something amusing beyond reason. “Have I ever given you anything you did not like, my precious?”
    She seemed to consider. “One thing,” she said at last.
    He raised his wineglass again, this time in tribute to her. “And in time you shall come to value even that, my dear. Even that.”
    Aubrey had no idea what they were talking about, but it seemed an oddly intimate conversation for married people to conduct in the presence of a guest. He stood up hastily and excused himself. Glyrenden, still watching his wife, merely waved a careless hand in his direction; but Lilith looked over at Aubrey with an expression so heavy and so unfathomable that for a moment it stilled him where he stood. Then he muttered something inarticulate and left the room.
    Four days later the gowns were delivered while both Glyrenden and Aubrey were out of the house. Aubrey returned first, to find the dressmaker’s box sitting in the front hall, still corded with the carter’s ropes. He went back to the kitchen to find Lilith sitting at the table, doing nothing.
    â€œWhy, don’t you know that your gowns are here?” he exclaimed, laughing at her. “Aren’t you excited? Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to see what your husband ordered for you?”
    She looked up at him calmly. “All right,” she said. “We’ll have to get a knife to cut the ropes.”
    â€œThen get a knife!” he said gaily. Arachne, muttering under her breath, pushed him aside when he reached for the cutlery, and dug through the tray herself. The knife she handed him was dull from much usage and no whetting, but it would do, Aubrey supposed, to cut a rope. “My thanks,” he said with somewhat ironic courtesy, and waited for Lilith to precede him down the hall.
    Lilith’s gray dress swept up three inches of dust as she strolled to the front entry way; Aubrey’s boots sank into it up to his ankles. “Isn’t there a clean room anywhere in the house?” he demanded as they reached the trunk. “You can’t look at your new dresses here in the hallway. They’ll be filthy before you’ve even worn them.”
    â€œWe can take the box to my room,” she said. “It’s clean enough there.”
    Aubrey bent to test his strength against the weight of the trunk, cautiously lifting it by two of the crossed ropes. “Is it too heavy?” Lilith asked.
    Aubrey grunted and swung it to his shoulder. “Not quite,” he said, managing to smile at her. “Lead on.”
    The bedroom was upstairs, and the uneven surface of the stairway treads gave him a little trouble. The trunk itself was not heavy so much as cumbersome; he banged it against the wall, and then against his throat, more than once in the ascent, so that he was panting a little when they finally gained the upper story.
    â€œThis way,” she said, and led him down the hallway.
    Aubrey had never been in the bedroom Lilith shared with Glyrenden, and once he set the box down, he looked around with frank interest. It was an odd-shaped room, with five walls, and a high ceiling that stooped to a low point over an arched window. There was very little furniture—a bed covered with a burgundy velvet quilt, a washstand, a frayed chair, and a large oak armoire. An open window admitted cool air but very little light, as it was practically covered with a thick interweave of ivy. In fact, the vines had curled over the windowsill and crept into the room itself, snaking along the imperfect seams of the bricks to the place where the wide bed was pushed against the wall. A few tendrils had even dared to twine across the headboard and