III

The days that followed were long ones: during the day Theoden lay in State, as the people of Rohan filed into the Golden Hall to pay their respects; in the evening were talks long into the night amongst the leaders of Men, about how to best put the West back on its feet again. Faramir was kept busy with discussions and meetings and only saw Eowyn from afar as she sat attendance beside her uncle's bier and assisted her brother in the funeral proceedings.

Until at last, Theoden, King of Rohan, was laid in his tomb among the barrows of his ancestors, alongside his son. The tomb was sealed, the ceremonial Riders departed, and the mourners filed away.

Faramir looked across the gathering to Eowyn, her clothes somber, her golden hair bound in a neat coil at her neck, tears of grief streaming down her cheeks. And though he knew it probably wasn't his place, he went to her. She came into his arms silently as she wept against his chest.

They stayed there, clinging together, until they were the only ones left at the tomb. Slowly, she straightened from the embrace. "Thank you," she whispered.

He didn't reply, merely pressed a tender kiss to her forehead, his fingers gently wiping away the tears on her cheeks.

"He was like a father to me," she said, her voice choked with emotion. She had told him this tale before, spoken of it over and over. But he let her tell it again, for she needed to speak of her uncle just then.

"He raised me and loved me and spoilt me terribly," she went on. "He let me train with swords along with my brother and my cousin. Everything I am, I owe to him." Her eyes closed again and tears seeped between her lashes.

"Hush now," Faramir whispered, stroking her cheek. "He would not want you to be so sad."

She sniffed and wiped away the tears again. "I thought I was done grieving long ago, after he died in my arms. But it seems I still have grief left."

"Grief goes on until it becomes a part of us," he said. "But eventually, the sadness fades and we can remember and be happy." He hadn't gotten there himself yet; he still grieved for Boromir and still felt pain for his father. But the pain and grief were lessened, day by day. And both were made easier to bear by knowing Eowyn was at his side.

She nodded shakily and sniffed away the last of her tears.

"Come," he said, taking her hand and tucking it in the crook of his arm, "your brother is waiting for you."

They walked up the rocky path to the gate of Edoras. "Thank you," she said, "for being here for me."

"That is where I will always be," he answered, "here, at your side."

She leaned her head against his shoulder, sighing, and they made the rest of the walk in silence, the silence that exists between two people completely at ease with each other.

At the doorway to the Golden Hall, they stopped, and he smoothed her hair, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Go. There will be time for us later."

"Amin mela lle," she whispered.

"I mela lle ‘a," he replied, and with a smile, she was gone, back to her brother, back to her duties as the first lady of Rohan.

He found his way through the crowd to a place next to his uncle, Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth.

"Is everything all right?" the older man asked.

Faramir merely nodded. His private moments with Eowyn were so rare and special, he wanted to keep them just that: private.

King Eomer was speaking, and a herald recited a list of all the kings of Rohan, ending with Theoden, son of Thengel. A toast was raised to the fallen king, and finally a second cup was raised, to the new King, Eomer, son of Eomund, eighteenth king of Rohan. Faramir raised his glass with the others, wishing his future brother-in-law a long and happy rule.

"And now," Eomer went on, "I wish to share some joyful news, for although this is a solemn occasion, I am certain my uncle would not mind, as my sister was like a daughter to him, and he loved her dearly. Faramir, Steward of Gondor and Prince of Ithilien has asked to marry the Lady Eowyn of Rohan, and she has fully consented. Tonight they will be trothplighted before you all."

The hall erupted in cheers, and Faramir was frozen to the spot, stunned that his betrothal, so recently confirmed, would be announced this night. Imrahil clapped him on the shoulder and propelled him to his feet.

Eowyn stood in front of him, her eyes ablaze with happiness, and he took her hand, kissing it, and led her onto the dais to face the gathering and accept their applause and approbation. And a toast was raised to them as well.

"You are the most generous of men, Eomer," King Elessar said, "to give to Gondor the fairest gem in your kingdom."

Eomer smiled at that and opened his mouth to reply, when Eowyn interrupted him.

"Wish me joy, my Liege?" she asked Aragorn, and her eyes, when she looked at him, held something infinitely sad. Faramir felt that familiar fist tighten around his heart.

The King looked kindly on her and took her hand. "I have wished you joy ever since I first met you, Lady. I am delighted to see you so happy."

She smiled at him, then her gaze turned to Faramir and the fist around his heart slid up to choke his throat instead. For whatever sadness he'd seen in her eyes before, it was gone now, replaced by a love for him so deep that it took his breath away.

Then Aragorn clasped his arm and clapped him on the back, pulling him close. "Congratulations, my brother," he said softly, "may you ever be happy."

"Thank you, my Lord," Faramir replied. "I am."

Queen Arwen, meanwhile, was hugging Eowyn, and then turned to give him his own embrace. "May your marriage be blessed," she murmured in Quenya, then looked to see if he understood. He did. "Thank you, my Lady," he said. "And yours also."

And then there were others who wished to congratulate the new couple. Imrahil kissed Eowyn's cheek and welcomed her to the family, then gave Faramir a great hug, giving to him the approbation his father never could. Mithrandir clasped his arm and smiled broadly, obviously delighted. The hobbits were overjoyed, and Merry gave Eowyn the biggest of hobbit-sized hugs, while Pippin, Frodo and Sam surrounded Faramir with their congratulations.

Things degenerated after that, into a merry throng with much well-wishing, back-thumping and hugs. Food and wine continued to flow, as the solemn funeral feast had become instead a celebration of life.

Faramir and Eowyn separated, she in a throng of women of Rohan, wanting to know everything about her handsome hero from the south, he in a crowd of men: those of his own people, who had accompanied Theoden's body from Gondor, and those of the Mark, the men of Rohan he would soon call kin. And though he tried to moderate his drinking, it seemed that every time he turned around, someone was topping up his goblet.

So it was quite some time later, feeling flushed and at peace with the world, that Faramir looked around the hall and found he could not see Eowyn. He frowned. For all the joy of these past hours, today had still been a trying one for her. She had buried a man who had been like a father to her only a few short hours ago; he'd held her as she'd wept bitterly against the loss.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," he apologized, passing his still-full cup to the Rider nearest him. "I must–"

"Ah, that's the curse of good mead," the soldier said, laughing. "Feels so good sliding down, except it keeps sliding on through."

The gathered crowd laughed, and Faramir with them. If they wanted to think he was leaving them to go relieve himself, so much the better. "Yes, well...." he shrugged and looked sheepish, and they clapped him on the back and pushed him toward the door.

As he went, he scanned the crowd, but nowhere did he see his lady love, so he hurried out, unsure where to look for her.

He saw her as soon as he stepped onto the terrace. She was standing at the edge of the parapet, the night wind streaming her gown, tugging her hair free of its coil. For a long moment he stood there, simply watching her, drinking in her slender shape, the gold of her hair turned to silver sapphire in the moonlight, and thinking himself the most fortunate of men. But the wild wind of Rohan had quite a bite to it, even in midsummer, and if he could feel its cold, in his surcoat of leather, how must she feel in her thin gown

"Eowyn," he called softly. She raised her head but didn't turn around, so he went up behind her, putting his arms around her, pleased when she leaned back against him. He kissed her temple. "What troubles you?" he murmured.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I just...." She turned in his embrace. "Please don't think that I... It's not that I don't...." She sighed and tried again. "I just couldn't stand the crush any longer. And the chatter. I had to get away."

He smiled gently at her and brushed strands away from her face in a futile effort to keep her hair from blowing in the wind. "I understand. That's why I left, too. Why I came looking for you."

"I'm glad so many of our friends and loved ones want to share our joy, but–"

"But you buried your uncle today," he completed in perfect understanding. "Sometimes, in spite of best intentions, it is too difficult to keep up the pretense of happiness."

"But I am happy," she protested. "Sometimes I feel so happy I want to weep from it. But then I remember my uncle, and I feel like...like I'm dishonoring him, being happy when I should still mourn him."

"Guilty," he confirmed. "What right do we have to be happy, to feel joy?"

"To be alive," she added.

He cupped her face in his hands. "I know your feelings, for I feel them, too. You feel happiness, and you want to share your happiness with those you love best. But they are gone and you will never be able to tell them...they will never know your joy. And then you feel sorrow, not only because you can never share this with them, but also because you realize that missing them doesn't lessen your happiness. And then you feel guilty."

She gazed at him for a long while, her bright eyes sparkling in the silver moonlight. "That is why I love you so," she whispered. "No one has ever understood me the way you do."

He leaned in, pressing a kiss to her forehead, then let his hands slide down her arms to capture her hands in his own.

"Your hands are like ice, love," he said, holding them between his palms. "Let's go in." He stepped back to lead her inside, but she pulled away.

"I... I can't go back in there. I think if I had to listen to the din again I would scream."

"I agree, but surely there is somewhere else we can go that isn't quite so...exposed."

She laughed softly. "The wind at Edoras often has teeth."

"Yes, and this thin-blooded southerner yearns for a fire somewhere, and your hands are freezing."

She moved to him again, pressing her body against him. "Will you warm me?"

He chuckled and wrapped his arms around her, leaning down to kiss her mouth. "Yes, but only if I'm not a block of ice myself." He took her arm again, leading her out of the wind.

"This is your home," he said, once they'd achieved the shelter of the great building, "where can we go?"

"There's the portico on the other side," she suggested. "Where we talked with my brother the day you arrived from Gondor. It's sheltered from the wind."

He nodded and let her lead him to that other great porch.

But when they got there, there were several small knots of revelers, talking, drinking and laughing.

"The stables?" she suggested.

But there was a group of Riders there, playing at cards while their squires tended their mounts.

"Surely in a place like this there must be some place for some privacy," he muttered.

She seemed to think for a moment, then looked at him. "I know of one," she said finally. "With a warm fire and no one else around. I am sure we can even manage a flask of wine to take with us."

"It sounds perfect," he nodded fervently. "Lead on."

She led him past the kitchens, where she put several sweetmeats and bits of fruit in a covered dish and found a small flagon of sweet wine. Then she handed him the wine, took his free hand, and led him out again, circling away from the main hall so as not to be spotted.

Finally, she led him down a long corridor, tiptoed past the serving boy who was dozing in the hall, and opened a door.

He stepped into the room and looked around. As she'd promised, the room was deserted. There was a low fire burning on the hearth, with stools and thick fur rugs spread out in front of it. And opposite the hearth was a bed.

Her bed.

"Eowyn, I–"

"Shhh," she cautioned, then closed the door, shutting out the rest of Edoras.

"There," she said. "Warmth, and comfort, and best of all, privacy." She smiled at him.

"Eowyn, I cannot stay here," he protested.

"Why not?"

"Surely you know why not. I am your betrothed, not your husband. It is not appropriate for me to be in your chamber."

She snorted indelicately. "You Gondorians and your prudishness. You are not in my bed, only in my bedroom. We both wanted a place of peace and quiet and here it is."

"Can you honestly tell me that your brother would not care that I was in his sister's bedroom?"

"Eomer will not know, unless you tell him," she said.

"Courts have big ears," he answered.

"If Eomer finds out, I'll tell him it was my idea. Which it is." She moved to the hearth, setting the dish on the small stool. "Now, will you join me, or shall we go back to the feast?"

Faramir sighed. "Will you spend our entire married life bossing me around?" he asked, going to her and taking her in his arms again.

She chuckled and stroked his cheek. "You'll soon learn how to handle me."

"Like your brother does? He is besotted with you and would happily cater to your every whim."

"If that were true, my love, he would not have interrogated you so thoroughly when you first arrived."

"That is because he is protective of you," he said.

"And I of him. You don't know of a nice, marriagable Gondorian girl for him, do you?"

Faramir laughed out loud. "It is not enough that our houses are joined through us, now you wish to join them through your brother as well?"

She shrugged and knelt before the fire, bringing him with her. "Help me get this fire going," she said, deftly changing the subject.

He added logs to the hearth, stoking the flame until the dying fire sprang to life again. "As a matter of fact," he said, "I have a cousin, Prince Imrahil's daughter, and she is very fair. And of noble birth. But I cannot say whether she has already been promised to another."

"And perhaps she would not be interested in a coarse horseman from the north," Eowyn added, spreading her skirts around her as she settled on the thick rugs.

"Who just happens to be King of the Mark," Faramir said wryly, sitting next to her. "But knowing my uncle, he will have already considered this match. Especially once he learned that your brother is yet unmarried. Perhaps when Eomer comes to Gondor for the wedding, they...." He stopped abruptly. "I'm sorry, Eowyn."

She looked up from the wine she was pouring. "Sorry?"

"We haven't spoken at all about our wedding and here I go making assumptions."

She set down the flagon and passed him a cup. "What assumptions?"

"That we would wed in Gondor."

She frowned. "If you made those assumptions, then so had I. Where else would we marry?"

"Here, in the land of your people."

"My people are celebrating my marriage now, with us here. And I am sure they will give us a royal parting. But you are Steward of Gondor and Prince of Ithilien, and I am merely the sister of a king in a small kingdom."

"There is no merely about it, Eowyn. Your people love you and honor you. I would not deny them the happiness of a royal wedding."

"But you will deny your people of the same thing?"

He shrugged. "They have just had a royal wedding. And I am not a king; I am a steward, a title that shouldn't even be mine, except that the King refused to let me surrender it. I am prince of a province that doesn't have any people living in it anymore, a title that didn't even exist until the King created it."

"You wish these titles were not yours?"

"Yes. No. I...." He took a sip of his wine and dragged a hand through his hair. "I am no politician, Eowyn. Nor a bureaucrat. Nor even much of a soldier, it seems."

She slid closer to him. "But you are a leader. I have seen the way people look at you, look up to you. I have seen the respect they give you."

"It should have been Boromir," he said miserably.

"But it is not." Her tone was harsh and he looked up, startled. "It is not Boromir, for he is dead, and all the wishing in the world cannot bring him back. It is you who carries the staff of the Steward now, you who must fulfill that office.

"The King believes you are capable of carrying out those duties. Is he so very much mistaken in you?"

She gazed at him so intently that he could not answer. He sighed and reached to cup her cheek. "And that is why I love you," he murmured. "When I doubt myself and all seems gray around me, you are the light that shows me the way."

"Then it is good we are well-matched," she whispered and leaned in, tilting her face toward him. He kissed her, gently at first, then the kiss deepened and wine got set aside, his arms coming to surround her, pulling her close against him. Her fingers tangled in his hair.

When the kiss broke, he continued to hold her tightly, his face buried against her neck as he breathed in her sweet scent, content to simply hold and be held by her. Her hands rubbed his back and he sighed.

Eventually, he raised his head. She gazed at him, her fair skin glowing in the firelight, her eyes full of such love for him that it made his breath catch. He felt a swelling in his soul, a feeling of love so all-encompassing he felt he could soar on its great wings. He wanted to tell her all the things that were in his heart, but the words had utterly vanished. He shook his head, laughing softly to himself.

"What is it?" she asked, the smallest of frowns crossing her smooth brow.

"I always fancied myself something a poet," he explained. "Now I am so in love I could explode from it...and I have no words to tell you how I feel."

Now it was her turn to laugh, but it was a soft sound, sweet and musical. "I need no poems, my love," she said. "And we need no words to tell each other what is in our hearts." She kissed him again, the kiss deepening immediately.

His hands drifted to her hair, tugging at the pins that held it coiled, until he released her hair to tumble down her back. Her fingers slid beneath his collar and stroked the warm skin at his throat.

The kiss broke and they stared at each other a moment, breathlessly. She reached up and removed her circlet, setting it aside. Her golden hair flowed freely about her in a glorious tumble of waves. Then she got to her knees, moving to him again.

His body stirred. "Eowyn–"

"Shh." Her fingers touched his lips, then she held his face in her hands and kissed him, a kiss so tender and gentle that he moaned at the beauty of it. His hands cupped her head as he returned her kisses. He was dizzy from the onslaught and knew that they should slow down, but just now that seemed rather an impossibility. Her fingers had returned to his tunic, which already had three buttons and the top two clasps of his leather surcoat unfastened, thanks to the warmth of the hall earlier. Now she unfastened two more small buttons and worked the third clasp free of the leather. Her fingers stroked a line down his breastbone from the base of his throat, and he moaned again, deepening the kiss and letting his own fingers work the fastenings on the back of her dress.

"Yes," she murmured against his neck, kissing him there. Her hands stroked from chest to neck, fingers caressing that sensitive spot behind his ear, making him shiver. He captured her face in his hands again and plundered her mouth, and she opened to him willingly.

And then somehow, impossibly, he gentled the kiss and withdrew.

For a long moment they held each other, waiting for their breathing to steady, and then he let her go.

"I think I'd better go," he said, not surprised to hear the roughness in his voice.

"Why?" Her voice was equally passion-laced.

"Because if I stay, things will happen that shouldn't happen, not yet." The ache in his loins was acute, but so was the knowledge that this was the right thing to do.

"Do you not want me?" she asked, her voice soft and uncertain.

He smiled and stroked her cheek. "I want you so much I burn with it," he confessed. "But my desires, or yours, are not the issue."

"Perhaps they should be," she said.

He just shook his head ruefully. "I love you; never doubt that, never. But Eowyn, we are only just betrothed. Until two days ago, I did not know if you would ever be mine. And passions are powerful things. We must make sure that in the heat of passion we don't do something we'll later...regret."

She frowned. "You regret this?"

"No," he insisted, "but–"

"Then what? I do not understand."

He sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I don't know, maybe your people have different customs. Among your people, is it usual for betrothed couples to share a bed?"

"No. But we're not on a bed."

"Eowyn!" He wasn't sure if she was deliberately goading him, or if she was really so oblivious to the mores in question.

"I know what you mean, but.... But I thought you and I.... I thought...." She sighed and turned away. "I'm sorry, my lord, I misunderstood."

"Oh, Eowyn, love, don't–" he begged, putting a hand on her shoulder, "don't shut me out, please. I couldn't bear it."

"But you pushed me away."

"No, not ever," he insisted. "I'm sorry, that wasn't what I meant." He put a finger beneath her chin and raised her head. "Look at me." She gazed at him, her eyes laced with pain and confusion. "I love you. Do you believe me?"

"Yes."

"Then believe that I will always want you, in every way. But we should not do this, not tonight. Not when things are still so new and the day so difficult."

For a long moment she aid nothing. Then she sighed and closed her eyes. "You are right, I suppose. Though I cannot imagine ever regretting anything to do with you, no matter what, no matter when. It's just...." She sighed again and her hands rested in her lap where she stared at them, unseeing. "I did not wish to be alone tonight." She looked up at him. "This evening, being with you, has been wonderful. I have felt more...alive...than I've felt in...longer than I can remember. When I am with you, I am happy and at peace. When I'm by myself, my thoughts stray and my heart becomes heavy again. I know that eventually I will be able to think on him and not weep, but not today. You have made a difficult day a happy one, and I don't want that to fade and sorrow take its place. You keep the nightmares at bay," she said softly, "and I don't want that to go away."

He was so moved he was very nearly breathless. And he knew that if she asked it of him, he would throw propriety to the winds and stay with her. "Oh, Eowyn," he murmured and leaned in to kiss her once again.

There was a knock on the door.

"Eowyn? Sister, are you there?"

Faramir shut his eyes with a groan. "I'm a dead man."

Chapter 4
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