The Winter Queen (RH/Why Choose, MM, MF, MFM, FF) ✅

Chapter Seven

Marielle

Brides were supposed to be nervous on their wedding days.

I had even been told so by the servants at my old home, women who had known me my whole life, and felt they needed to take it upon themselves to teach me, well, the ways of wifely duties and such.

"You have no mother to explain all of this to you," they had said, reaching to pat my hand as they told me, well, the ways of men and women.

I had not been utterly naive.

We did, after all, have many animals around my old home. And animals, well, they did animalistic things.

I always figured with men and women, it would be much the same.

Bodies inserted in bodies.

Movement.

Then it was all over.

I had not anticipated all the talk about pain and needing to endure the first several times before it became comfortable for me.

"It never got comfortable for me, not really. But my man was always done quickly enough. I just thought about the morning's chores to get me through."

I was understandably horrified at the idea of pain or discomfort in the marriage bed from now until, well, forever.

"For some women, for some couples, there can even be pleasure for the women," one of the maids had insisted.

"Oh, hush, do not get her hopes up. Not many of us get to experience all that."

I left that household perhaps just as confused as I had been before the discussion.

Maybe there would be pain. Maybe there would be pleasure. All I could truly hope for was that it was over quickly.

Those were thoughts that had kept me up the nights after my illness subsided, unable to sleep, barely able to eat.

I simply wanted it done. Whatever it was. Whatever it might be like. I wanted it over.

The pain of not knowing was surely worse than the experience of going through it.

"Lady," Gwen said, her door creaking open in the early morning hours of my wedding day, likely just to check on my fire, since she was merely in her nightgown, not even with her dressing gown on.

It was the first time I had seen her with her hair free of the braid. It flowed over her shoulders and down her back in a dark waterfall, thick and shiny, and I had the strange urge to reach out and run my fingers through it.

"You need your rest," Gwen insisted, adding some logs to the fire, then coming back to my side of the bed. "Are you not feeling well?" she asked, reaching out to feel my forehead.

"I think I am just nervous," I admitted to her, since we shared that sort of comfortable informality when we had discussions.

"I believe that is the curse of a bride," she said, exhaling hard as she moved to sit down beside my legs.

I do not know why, but my gaze dipped to her chest as she sat, watching the swells bounce a bit as she moved.

She was much fuller than I was, and I realized suddenly that while many women had seen me without my clothes in my life, I had yet to see another woman without hers.

"What is wrong?" Gwen asked when my gaze shot back up.

"Nothing," I insisted.

"Lad—Marielle," she said, giving me a sweet smile as she made the correction. "We can discuss anything. There is no need to be shy with me."