The scent of water heavy in the air, that particular clinging of mist to skin, every scented herb bursting with wet fragrance: all should have been clues to the Lord Baelish as to what transpired in yonder hall before he ventured too far inward. Perhaps they were. Perhaps he knew and continued on in spite of it. Because of it. What had he hoped to espy? A thousand girls before her had been watched, in the same manner, through corked hole, yet never before had he felt the heavy heat pooling in his abdomen. It was illicit. Not in the same way the women who accepted coin to unknot their silks and spread their legs were. Sansa Stark was pure, twice wed, never bed, never gazed upon but once by would-be husbands, never touched, never worshiped, never claimed in the way a man yearns to claim a woman.
Petyr Baelish was not her husband. A man, certainly, and even a man who had been granted certain liberties, but never a man who would be given the sort of freedom to look upon her, partake of her, know of her.
Beneath the water his red siren sunk, ripples of water sloshing against the edges of the metal basin, wisps of steam curling up from mirrored surface. It was a cape of wet, red hair that trailed down her back when she emerged. Petyr thought back to those days in which deep brown had hidden her true shade, and how, at times, he would massage his fingers over her scalp, scrub through her hair, evenly spreading the color. Even then she had given him liberties, though perhaps they were not offered so much as he had taken them, manipulated them away from her grasp; there had been no other to fill those roles for her, so dependent on him she had been for everything. How possibly could she have denied him? Oh, but she had tried, hadn’t she? Baelish was not so fooled by his own distractions that he was unaware of that.
Poor girl. Just a girl. Lost in the mire of winter.
* * * * *
“I had thought to call upon you earlier,” he said, absently, from across the table, a knife speared through a piece of roasted meat. Too dry for the Lord’s liking, yet hardly in a position to complain. No matter the size of the purse he threw at the hunters, there were no hordes of wild boar roaming the countrysides, nor fresh vegetables to be plucked from loamy soil. It was hard, boiled roots, salted meats, and stews. An innumerable amount of stews. An amalgamation of random foods thrown together in a pot to boil and simmer for hours or days until everything inside was a mouthful of poorly-seasoned mush. The Lord grew sour in disposition.
Nearby, a girl lingered with a carafe of wine. No matter the shortage of fine-tasting foods, there never seemed to be a shortage of wine. Petyr ushered her over with a twitch of two fingers. “I should like to discuss with you some matters.” Names, rather, of potential suitors, and Sansa would already know this. It needed no explanation. When the girl overfilled Baelish’s cup and red droplets slithered down the etched pewter of his goblet there was a great huff of disappointment from the Lord. Predictably, the girl stammered out apologies, immediately seeking to fetch a linen to remedy her mistake, but the damage, evidently, was already done. Away with you, Lord Baelish hissed, with a wave of his hand, before fingers touched to his brow in some semblance of exasperation.
“We are surrounded by fools and leeches,” he lamented. The girl would be sent away, back down the mountain to fend for herself, in whatever manner that amounted to. So many of the Eyrie’s staff had been dismissed already, leaving only a skeleton crew of cooks and chambermaids. A still-sizable guard remained to protect empty rooms and iced-over roads. It would be a grave error indeed to leave such a rubied prize without defense. It might have been any man who had earlier crept into her chambers to behold her in waters most private. Some other fiend, who would have done a great deal more than watch, a great deal more than slip his hand beneath the flaps of his doublet to rub indulgently at the bulge in his breeches. That was unacceptable. That would not do. There had already been an encounter far too close to Baelish’s liking; Sansa would need to be well-watched, smothered, if need be.
Disdainfully, a droplet of wine which had caught his index finger was flung away from him, away from the table, where it settled like blood to the stone beneath their feet. “Have you given any thought to whom you would entertain?” The Lord sounded irritable, bored, so unguarded it might seem uncomfortable to the girl who had only ever traded with the Mockingbird currency of masks.
No mention was made of the skittering, warm and prickling like a colony of ants, along snowy white shoulders and back as she bathed. Someone watched. Perhaps Petyr, perhaps a guard or maid. Regardless, the audience stood uninvited and inappropriate, encroaching upon so private an affair. Even Lord Baelish, who had laid claim to more of her intimate confidences — of the body and of the mind — than either husband who twined satin around Sansa Stark’s wrists, promising she would find comfort in such bondage, possessed no rightful claim to the sight of an auburn slick along her spine, the dew gathering in hairs along both arms, the faint swell of a breast just past her ribs.
By the time Sansa finished her washing the sensation, and its conveyor, had passed. Stepping out with a confidence unfelt, she dared cast one glance towards the expanse of wall at her back whilst bathing. Light grey stones, weeping with steam from cooling water, betrayed nothing.
* * * * *
Meals, like the walls and skies and moods which surrounded them, turned dun. Were it not for the lord’s rankled disposition, Sansa might have made her own dissatisfaction known; complaining to one already mired in dark thoughts of what they lacked, however, would provide little relief. For surely Baelish, never having posed as bastard girl or kept dangling from the purse-strings of a vicious queen, had not experienced means so thinly spread in a long while. A mark of his lowered guard in her company, perhaps, that the man would ever speak so plainly on the grim necessities of passing through a long Winter alive. Both souls seated at a barren table remained well-practiced in dual arts of discretion and silence, skills rarely relaxed even before one another.
Their cutlery, however, maintained a regality lacking in paltry foodstuffs. Silver spoon, polished to blinding sheen by a servant insufficiently occupied, scraped at the remnants of her much-maligned stew, bits of limp carrot and stringy muscle clinging to the bowl’s sides. “There is much to occupy you at present,” Sansa offered, words bland as the nourishment on her tongue, ever cautious of inquisitive ears. Stark blood revealed, she knew every word or twitch or glance carried with it a hefty purse of dragons, glittering gold, when shared with interested parties. Matters. Men. Another young lord or knight to promise Winterfell and her womb to. A grand kingdom and pretty, fertile wife, all the trappings of a game well played, luck parlayed into lasting glory.
Such a fate had the auburn wolf sorely wished to sidestep, condemning one virile suitor to his death so that it might be so. Knowing better than to protest while an audience lingered, Sansa expressed displeasure in the infinitesimal coiling of her shoulders, a faint whitening of the knuckles where they curled around her utensil. Inside the cheek hidden from Petyr’s view, teeth worried over flesh until the thin, coppery taste of blood seeped through. A maid’s ineptness thankfully rescued her from further exhibition. Sansa made no gesture of intervention, cast no sympathetic glance as the girl slunk away. The coming months and years would try them all, a sieve by which wheat and chaff would shake apart; she could change it no more than melt the rising drifts of snow.
“Less so than the capitol.” By virtue of so few occupants. Lips twitched with the beginnings of a smile, pleased at her own wit. Amusement, regrettably, came upon them in rare fashion now. Then matters pressed back upon Sansa, tightening throat and veins as she fought an urge to shout. No one! How could I ever wish for anyone! “No.” Honest, if not stripped of customary flourish. Her fidgeting with the uncleared dishes ceased, hands folded in her lap. Of the North, of the Vale, even of the Reach or the Stormlands, no man could hope to earn the trust, the desire, the tolerance of Winterfell’s heir. Too much lay shattered within for that.
“Mayhaps Lady Olenna would still see me married to her grandson,” the girl added archly, disinterested, blue glancing sidelong to where Dornish vintage slowly seeped into the castle’s foundations, then to the light smear of pink on Baelish’s finger resting in its place.