creamytinydays

He thought she had understood. No. He was certain Katniss had understood. She had no wish to marry immediately but would welcome a proposal from a good man she could respect, one who could provide her with security and stability, she had told him. Who would help her see Primrose educated and launched into society at the appropriate age. A man who would be a dutiful father to her children and a willing caretaker to her mother, should Mrs. Everdeen live to see her elderly years. Gale had been certain she meant him. Who else could she have meant? 

He had left home, confident that Katniss would wait for him to secure his status in the army. They would marry as soon as he returned home. That was his understanding of the matter. His mother must be mistaken. 

Still, to be certain, he had dispatched a letter to Katniss, laughingly commenting on the preposterous rumors about her marital status. While he waited for her reply, he dispatched his military duties with alacrity, even with enjoyment at times. And if he occasionally spent a small, token amount of his earnings on pleasurable company, no man in his right mind would chastise Gale for the weakness. 

The fact that the number of women whose bed he had warmed numbered too great for him to count did not signify. He consoled himself with the conviction that his knowledge of the carnal delights would only enhance his skill in the marriage bed. Katniss, he was certain, would have no recourse to complain if he could provide her with unparalleled ecstasy as well as a parcel of strong, healthy children.

A second letter from his mother reached him before any reply from Katniss. In this letter, Mrs. Hawthorne delivered the news that it was done. Katniss had been married a sennight previous to the penning of the missive he held in his hand. His mother had been in attendance at what she called a “lovely but rather hasty affair.” A quick calculation revealed to Gale the horrific possibility. The letter had clearly been waylaid. If indeed it were true, his darling Catnip had been wedded and bedded four months prior.

Gale denied it as long as possible. Until three days hence when at last a letter arrived from Katniss herself. No, not a letter. A mere note of five sentences. It too had been mislaid, likely due to the dampness that obscured some of Katniss’s already messy penmanship. Had she been in tears when she wrote this?

My dear friend,

I haven’t the time to give the news more than a few sentences, but indeed it is no jest. I write to you as a married woman and we depart this very morning for my husband’s estate. I have only time to provide you with my new direction. Write to me, Gale. I fear you would not understand our marriage and I could not bear it if it were the reason for the dissolution of our friendship.

Lady Katniss Mellark

Lady! So then, she had married a lord. Gale seethed at the indignation. She must have been induced into marriage for the sake of money. The security and stability she had claimed to desire for herself and her family was to blame. He had known that Katniss and her family existed constantly on the verge of gentile poverty, but had he known the situation to be so dire, he would have offered for her hand much sooner. Far better to be wed and separated for an untold number of months rather than see Katniss sell herself into marriage to a lord. No doubt an old, doddering fool of a lord, at that.

Such injustice! Gale raged for months, convinced of his righteous fury at the indignity Katniss must be suffering at the hands of her revolting spouse. To be forced to play nursemaid to an aging fool, and to then submit herself to his no doubt odious and lecherous advances in the marriage bed. No! It was not to be bourne.

It took days for the Colonel to untangle his affairs, both military and personal, enough for him to request a leave of absence. He wrote to Katniss at her new direction, providing a date she could expect him to visit. The journey required interminable weeks which he spent planning his strategies. How to convince Katniss to escape her horrific marriage, or encourage her to speed her husband’s journey to the grave. He would, of course, lend any assistance she might need in the matter.

At last, he arrived at the estate of Lord Peeta and Lady Katniss Mellark, Earl and Countess of Baecare. As he reined in his steed, his gaze swept the rather humble facade of the manor home. A place so quaint should prove no challenge for him to storm. A mere servant greeted him and as he gave his name, he was informed that Lady Katniss was currently indisposed.

“May I show you to your room? My lady will join you in the parlor after you’ve had a chance to freshen up and settle in your room.”

Gale agreed to the terms of engagement and dismounted. He had little enough in the way of luggage and carried it himself as he followed the maid inside.

The interior of the house impressed him even less than the exterior. He could not be terribly wealthy, this Lord Mellark, Gale thought as he examined the house. So simple and lacking in ostentation. Katniss could not be happy to have sold herself for so little. How exactly was this Lord Mellark meant to support Katniss, her sister, and her mother if he could so ill afford the luxuries of a wealthy home? 

He found his chambers serviceable but unimpressive. He had shared a bed with a courtesan whose chambers put this one to shame in terms of wealth and opulence. This house was no more than a country farm. To think that her husband claimed nobility with this shabby residence!

Gale freshened his appearance, and satisfied that Katniss, although he had never known her to be given to flights of romanticism, might in fact be swept off her feet by his dashing appearance, Gale made his way to the parlor to wait.

A footman offered him a drink and poured a glass of Scotch for him, then left him in silence to contemplate the room. He found more of the same. Serviceable but falling short of his expectations for the home of an earl.

“Forgive my intrusion,” a voice broke Gale’s strategic concentration and he turned about to find a man entering the room, one arm working a gleaming wooden crutch as he limped closer, an affable smile on his face. A young man, dressed in simple but fine clothes. A dark blue coat over an intricately embroidered, pale green waistcoat. His shirt and cravat crisp white and his breeches a soft, almost buttery shade of tan. Despite the man’s obviously deformed leg and limp, he wore gleaming riding boots. 

“You must be Colonel Hawthorne. Welcome to our home. Katniss has spoken so warmly of you that I feel I know you already,” the stranger said and stopped far enough away to execute a polite bow. “Please, allow me to refresh your drink.”

Gale stood there as the stranger claimed his glass and refilled it.

“I hope your journey was swift and untroubled?”

“A little longer than I had hoped, but no challenges I could not handle.” The stranger chuckled and offered the refilled glass to Gale. He accepted it and attempted to puzzle out who this young, cheerful man could possibly be in relation to Katniss. Surely this was not the Lord of the Manor… or perhaps it was.

“Indeed. My lady has spoken at length about how capable her dear friend Gale Hawthorne is in all matters,” the man spoke the words and yet Gale could not absorb them fully. His lady. Of course servants address their mistress with the honorific, but this man did not dress like a servant. Perhaps the lord’s son and heir, then? A cripple, how embarrassing. Perhaps then the aging Lord Mellark had offered comfort and wealth to Katniss in the form of a dowager title in the hopes of producing a different, younger heir…

“Peeta. You are not teasing our guest already, I hope.”

Gale found himself paralyzed at the sound of her voice. Months now he had dreamt of her and her lovely voice. Now to hear it addressing this man, so familiarly, he could hardly bear it. Of course she must act as required. Still, it stung.

The pain only alleviated a little as he turned at last and noticed an unprecedented pallor to her skin. 

“Lady Mellark,” he managed to say as she came forward and clasped his hands, presenting her cheek for him to rest his against. An old family greeting. He could hardly stand to feel the meager brush of her skin against his when he longed to pull her fully into his arms. But then she was gone, removing her hands even from his grasp. “It has been too long.”

“Far too long, and you are a wretched correspondent,” she declared.

“No worse than you,” he retorted and the other man laughed. 

“She does seem to demand far more in words than she is willing to return,” he said. Katniss turned her face enough to scowl slightly at the man, but he seemed unashamed and unaware of her expression. “But no matter. My lady finds her own means of conveying her thoughts.”

The only advantage to her ire was the flush that rose to Katniss’s cheeks, chasing away the frightening pallor. Perhaps then the man was not so oblivious, Gale considered, but had no chance to delve into deeper strategic observations.

“You must forgive my husband, Gale. He believes himself to be an unparalleled wit,” Katniss declared with a saucy lift to her chin. So then this was in fact Lord Mellark. Young and crippled. Not much better a match than old and crippled. Still, perhaps Gale’s plans could still work. He sensed indeed that Katniss would need them to work.

They sat then, and conversed, covering Gale’s journey and the other required topics. All of it quite banal as tea was served and sipped. Katniss ate but one biscuit, a little surprising given how healthy her appetite had always been, at least to Gale’s knowledge.

He hoped for some time alone with Katniss, to pry further into the particulars of their marriage, so that he might fine tune his strategies for extricating her from what was clearly an unfortunate marriage. He became only more convinced of the need to free Katniss from the odious union when she suggested that she show Gale about the estate, and Lord Mellark intervened.

“My dear, the Colonel has ridden a long way on his journey. Perhaps he might prefer rest. Or perhaps a walk in the gardens.”

“I can manage a ride quite well enough. I am used to long days of difficult work,” Gale countermanded, but Katniss demurred.

“No, my husband is quite right. You should rest before dinner. We shall ride out in the morning instead,” she declared, and Gale could not argue without seeming rude. He bowed in acquiescence but rather than accepting their invitation to walk with them both in the gardens, he declined and retired to his chambers.

Yet he did not rest. Instead, he paced his rooms. At one point, he lingered at his window long enough to catch sight of them returning to the house. Katniss’s dress, he noted, seemed to be stained in several places and her hat trailed by the ribbons behind her. Lord Mellark seemed oblivious to her shocking state and even laughed as she gripped the balustrade before slowly making her way into the house.

Manners be damned, Gale was ready to charge to her room when a servant appeared to inform him that dinner would be served in a half hour.

Thwarted, Gale fumed as he dressed for dinner. He silently fumed as Katniss made awkward attempts to draw him into conversation over dinner and ate little again. Was she ill? What had the bastard husband done to her? Gale wondered as he ate what he would otherwise deem an exquisite meal. The table seemed populated with all his favourite foods, a detail that he noted as a plea from Katniss. A silent reminder that this should have been their marriage table. Not Lord Mellark’s.

She retired early, leaving Gale alone to converse with Lord Mellark in the study. He used the opportunity to study the man as best he could. What little he gleaned only further convinced Gale of the man’s unsuitability to act as Katniss’s husband.

A third born son, not even intended for the title, who had lost his entire family in a tragic fire at one of their older estates while he had been away. 

Third born sons, Gale mentally scoffed, so needless and undesired as to inevitably fall into the dissolute lives of gamblers, wastrels, amoral spendthrifts, and seducers of innocent maidens and opera singers. Gale wondered then if Katniss’s clearly declining health were due to the obvious unhappiness of her marriage or to something more sinister. Perhaps Mellark had infected her with some terrible venereal disease!

The idea gave him pause, but no. His love for Katniss transcended such petty matters. He would not punish her for her husband’s cruelty in inflicting such a disease on her. Gale would love her regardless, passionately even, and in every sense of the word. As soon as they were free of her husband.

Even if a venereal disease were not the culprit, Katniss could not be happy saddled with a crippled husband. Gale knew how she disliked dealing with injuries, suffering from queasiness at the mere discussion of her mother’s skills as a healer. Perhaps this was it then! Of course Katniss was constantly ill around her husband. He was permanently injured and she required to face such an injury each time he demanded his marital rights in her bed.

Gale continued to fume and build a case against her husband. When he spotted Katniss fingering a faintly tarnished trinket hanging on a chain around her neck, he formed the theory that Lord Mellark, as a third son, was ill equipped to handle the fortune entrusted to him. Yes, that must be the reason for the modesty of their home, and the gold locket perhaps the only bit of finery left to Katniss that had not yet been sold to pay for her husband’s debts. 

No matter. Gale would shower her with jewels, if she would have them, once they were free of her husband. If she would accept them, of course. Katniss had always hated the pompousness that came with wealth and the ostentation that seemed to flow from every thread of the lives of the wealthy, and even from their pores.

As the days passed, Gale only became more convinced of the need to free Katniss from her marriage. Because despite all the mounting evidence that Lorn Mellark must be the worst sort of husband for Katniss, and that she must be genuinely miserable in her marriage, Gale could not help but like the man.

Damn his eyes! Lord Mellark projected a character so opposite to what Gale knew he must truly be. The devious man made it nearly impossible to hate him. Until Gale recalled the privileges Lord Mellark enjoyed beneath Katniss’s skirts.

He had his strategy prepared, even allowing for the fact that they would need to make haste to retrieve her sister and mother, in order to protect them from Lord Mellark’s wrath and retribution once he realized Gale had spirited away his wife.

Finally, Katniss’s health seemed to improve, and on a night when she declared herself to be famished and then consumed a prodigious amount of food, Gale decided it was time to enact his plan. He suffered through the after dinner pleasantries, although he did fully enjoy the delights of Katniss’s singing. He’d never known her to have such a sweet, melodious singing voice, and he realized that he had never heard her sing before this night. 

Her voice seemed to take wing and soar about the room, and he was awash in emotion, so overcome that he hardly noticed her husband’s clumsy playing of the pianoforte in accompaniment to her song, nor did he countenance the small gesture of Lord Mellark grasping her hand and lifting it to his mouth for a soft kiss after the song had ended.

Katniss shivered in revulsion, and begged leave to retire shortly afterwards. That was all that mattered to Gale. Tonight, he would go to her and declare himself and his intentions. A sneak attack in her chambers, although he fully expected her to fall weeping into his arms in gratitude.

Perhaps not weeping, he amended as he grimaced and dismissed the servant. He packed his belongings then and waited, tracking the moon’s progress across the sky until the hour when he could be certain Lord Mellark slumbered in his bed.

***

Katniss sat at her vanity, brushing her hair. Her eyes fixed unwaveringly on the reflection in the mirror. On the open door behind her that led to her husband’s rooms. She despised this concession to wealth and nobility in their house. She had in fact been meaning to remedy the odious arrangements of their rooms since they first arrived. But the excitement and anticipation of waiting for him each night had provided a thrilling and diverting distraction for far longer than she had expected. And then the baby. The one she had lost.

She nearly began weeping again thinking of the babe, but no. She lifted her chin and forced herself to appear serene. It would not do to have Peeta see her in tears. He had been delaying this night far longer than she desired, far longer than the doctor had recommended, at first out of concern for her health, and then out of concern for her broken heart.

Tonight, she would wait no more. Peeta would return to her bed or she would march to his room and seduce him. But he would not ignore her summons. Of that she was certain. She had sent him a note. His precious words he always begged from her lips, although he wielded them far better than she ever hoped to do.

Come to my bed, husband, or suffer my wrath come the morning. Love me again.

With all my heart, body, and soul,

Katniss

Perhaps a bit pathetic, but she was desperate. Having Gale in the house only increased her frustration since Peeta seemed overly conscious of setting her childhood friend at ease. He had barely touched her this past fortnight and she was half starved and out of her mind with need for all the small intimacies she’d grown accustomed to receiving from him. That was why she’d nearly combusted and simultaneously melted into a puddle at his feet when he kissed her hand after she sang tonight.

Damn him and his sense of hospitality. She would have him tonight and have him fully. If she moaned loud enough to bring the rafters down on Gale’s head in the guest room down the hall, then so be it.

At last, she saw him filling the doorway, leaning against the frame as he gazed on her, a familiar and achingly welcome heat and longing burning in his blue eyes. She controlled her breathing as best she could, but her heart she could not command. It raced with excitement. With love.

It had taken her far too long to admit it to herself, but once she had, her heart seemed intent on making up for her slow awareness of her emotions, inundating her entire being with passion and love for this man. Even now after months of marriage, she yearned for him.

“You commanded my presence, my lady,” he murmured and Katniss shivered again, this time at the dark intimacy in his voice. The velvety promise in his tone. Her knees shook as she stood and she strode across the room, uncertain she would make it to the bed before she collapsed.

“And you were wise to heed my command, my lord.”

He smiled at her sassy retort and met her there, beside the bed. She stared at his chest, both of them breathing heavily, the air pulsing with anticipation. He leaned his crutch against the bed and cupped her cheeks in his warm, broad palms. She leaned into his touch letting his familiar, beloved scent wash over her.

“Katniss, my love,” he murmured, sounding almost in pain. It satisfied her to know he had felt the denial of their love as deeply as she had. It soothed her irritation at him enough to spur her into action. Katniss lifted her face to his, and rose onto her toes, opening her eyes only for a moment, so that she might see the hungry expression in his blue eyes before their lips met.

***

Gale paused outside the door and smiled to himself. His silent tread, developed through years of hunting beside his father -- a gamesman to a lord -- and then through years as a soldier, had come in useful tonight. He had arrived at Katniss’s chamber door undetected. He pressed his ear to the closed panel. No sounds within, but just as he reached for the door handle, a loud clatter sounded inside followed by a swift curse in a man’s voice and a feminine giggle.

A giggle?

Never in his life had Gale known Katniss to giggle. He pressed his ear more firmly to the seam between the double doors and listened. Silence again. Still, he waited. He could be patient. His quarry lay within and he would not be denied victory this night.

When the clock down the hall began to strike the hour, he used the sound to mask his knock. A mere light rap. Likely not enough to wake Katniss, but he must try the polite approach before he intruded. He reached again for the door handle, but when he pushed down, nothing happened. 

Locked!

Steeling himself, he curled his hand into a fist and prepared to knock again. A little louder this time, he thought, but then a new sound reached his ears. It sounded… yes it sounded like moaning. Was Katniss injured? He tried the handle again to no avail and dropped to his knees. He felt a little foolish using the keyhole to spy on his beloved, but he had little choice. He needed to ascertain the situation before he charged within.

With his ear to the opening, he could hear much more clearly. Katniss was indeed moaning, a desperate and inconsolate sound. But just as he prepared to stand, intending to kick down the door and storm inside, coherent words reached his ear.

“Peeta, my love! Oh!”

Gale froze. The sounds morphed and penetrated his brain at last as Katniss’s moans grew in intensity.

Colonel Gale Albert Hawthorne had warmed the beds of many women. Too numerous to count, in fact. And as he knelt before the locked bedchamber door of his beloved Katniss, the sounds within finally coalesced into something truly horrific. His brain knew that it was time for a strategic retreat as he listened to Katniss moan and whimper in ecstasy. But his body would not obey his commands. All he could manage was to turn his head and peer through the keyhole. To spy upon his love and watch in horror as she threw her head back on her pillows, her bosom heaving beneath her askew nightshift and her hands grasping at a head of blonde hair moving between her thighs. At a pair of pale, bare shoulders as he pleasured her with his mouth. The wooden crutch discarded on the floor would reveal her lover’s identity even if the sound of his name falling in sighs off her lips did not.

“Ung! Peeta, please,” she whimpered and writhed and then gasped as her body convulsed.

Still, Gale could not walk away. Not while Katniss smiled and hummed and petted his hair in the aftermath of her passion. Not while he could clearly hear the wet sounds of Lord Mellark dutifully worshipping between his wife’s thighs. Not when Katniss’s breathing evened out and she released a content thigh, opening her eyes as Lord Mellark rose up above her, and her smile widened.

“Now… now I steal your words, husband of mine,” she said and placed one hand on her husband’s chest, deftly pushing him over onto his back. She followed him, straddling his thighs and Gale nearly vomited as he caught sight of Lord Mellark’s disgustingly pleased and clearly besotted face as he gazed up at Katniss.

When she reached for her shift and began to lift it off her body, Gale finally broke himself free of the spell and stood. He stood there, blind but unfortunately not deaf as he stared at the door and attempted to refigure everything he had seen during his visit in this house.