The boat was smaller than Sigrid had imagined.
She stood at the edge of the pier and looked down at it — white painted wood, two narrow benches, a pair of oars resting in their locks — and felt, for the first time today, something close to apprehension.
It was not the water. She had no particular fear of water.
It was the smallness of it. The way it rocked gently against the pier, as if it couldn't quite decide where it wanted to be.
"It moves a great deal," she observed.
"That's what boats do."
Beramund stepped in first, then turned and extended his hand. Sigrid looked at his hand, then at the boat, then at the gap between the pier and the hull.
"The dress is going to be a problem."
"I'll hold the boat steady. Step in with your right foot first."
She handed him the fan — Marie-Chez's fan, which she had somehow kept intact through horseback riding and soup — and stepped in. The boat lurched. She caught the side instinctively, and Beramund caught her elbow, and for a brief, undignified moment they were both simply trying not to fall into a half-frozen lake in their best clothes.
Then it steadied.
Sigrid sat down carefully on the forward bench and exhaled.
"Well," she said.
"Well," Beramund agreed, settling across from her with considerably more ease. He picked up the oars and fitted them into place. "Ready?"
"Yes."
He pushed off from the pier.
The boat moved out onto the water smoothly, the oars cutting quiet arcs through the surface. Sigrid gripped the sides for a moment, then slowly released them as the motion settled into something predictable. Rocking, but gently. Like breathing.
She looked down into the water.
Dark and clear, just as it had appeared from shore. She could see her own reflection — the unfamiliar silhouette of her upswept hair, the pale dress, the white gloves. For a disorienting moment she almost didn't recognize herself.
"What are you thinking?"
She looked up. Beramund was watching her as he rowed, his differently colored eyes calm.
"That I look strange," she said honestly.
"Strange how?"
"Like someone else." She glanced back at the water. "I keep seeing myself and not quite believing it."
"Is that unpleasant?"
Sigrid considered.
"No," she said slowly. "Just unfamiliar." She looked at him again. "Do you ever feel that way? As if you're watching yourself from the outside?"
Beramund was quiet for a stroke of the oars.
"More often than you might think," he said.
She wanted to ask what he meant. There was something in the way he said it — understated, the way he always was when he meant something precisely — that made her think the answer would be long and complicated and true.
But she didn't know yet how to ask for that kind of truth. So she filed it away.
"Where are we going?" she asked instead.
"Nowhere in particular. We'll circle the lake and come back."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
Sigrid looked around. The park had receded to a thin green line on the shore. Out here the wind was different — cleaner, with an edge to it that the bare trees on land had softened. A few ducks regarded them with suspicion from a nearby cluster of reeds.
"It's quiet," she said.
"Is that alright?"
"Yes." She let go of the side of the boat entirely and straightened her back. "I like quiet."
"I know."
She looked at him.
"You know a great deal about what I like," she said. Not accusatory. Observational.
"I pay attention," he said simply.
"Why?"
The oars moved. The boat rocked slightly as a small wave passed underneath.
"Because you're worth paying attention to," Beramund said. "And because you rarely say what you want directly, so if I don't pay attention, I'll miss it entirely."
Sigrid opened her mouth, then closed it.
She was not sure whether to be embarrassed or grateful. She settled on neither and looked out at the water instead.
"I say things directly," she said, somewhat stiffly.
"You say things factually," he corrected. "That's different."
"...How so?"
"You'll tell me exactly what you think about Utulu Mihas's defensive stance. You'll tell me the soup was good or not good. You'll tell me you don't dislike something." He paused. "But you won't tell me what you actually want. Not without being asked first. And sometimes not even then."
Sigrid was quiet.
He wasn't wrong. She knew he wasn't wrong. Wanting things — openly, without justification — was a habit she had never been permitted to develop. In the Order, want was irrelevant. You did what was required. What you wanted was a distraction at best and a liability at worst.
She had believed that, once. Genuinely believed it.
She was less certain now.
"Beramund," she said.
"Yes?"
"What if I don't know what I want?"
He looked at her steadily.
"Then we find out," he said. "There's no rush."
A duck called from somewhere behind them. The boat moved on.
Sigrid looked at her hands in her lap — white gloves, the fan resting across her knees — and thought about the feel of his hand on hers at the restaurant. Light. Brief. Enough.
She thought about what she had said.
With someone who doesn't find me strange.
She had meant it as a small thing. A simple observation. But sitting here now, on a boat in the middle of a half-thawed lake in a dress she couldn't breathe in, she thought that perhaps it wasn't small at all. Perhaps it was, in fact, everything.
"Beramund."
"Yes?"
She looked up.
"I want to try rowing."
He blinked. Then a slow smile spread across his face.
"The gloves will get wet."
"Marie-Chez didn't say anything about the gloves."
"She said don't lose the fan."
"I won't lose the fan." Sigrid held it up briefly as evidence. "Let me row."
Beramund laughed — that real laugh again, the one she had decided she liked — and shipped the oars.
"Come here then."
Moving in a small boat while wearing a corset and a full skirt was, Sigrid discovered, an exercise in humility. There was a great deal of grabbing the sides. A great deal of the boat lurching in ways it should not. At one point Beramund caught her around the waist to stop her pitching sideways, and she sat very still for a moment, acutely aware of the proximity.
"Steady," he said, very close to her ear.
"I know," she said, somewhat breathlessly.
Eventually she was seated on the middle bench with an oar in each hand. Beramund sat behind her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him at her back, close enough that when she pulled the right oar too hard and the boat spun, his hands closed over hers to correct the angle.
"Even strokes," he said. "Feel the resistance before you pull."
She tried again. The boat moved — slightly crookedly, but forward.
"There," he said.
Sigrid felt something shift in her chest. Small and warm and difficult to name.
She rowed.
The far bank came closer, then fell away as she turned them. The ducks scattered. The winter light lay flat and gold on the water. Behind her, Beramund said nothing, just kept his hands loosely over hers, ready but not directing, and she thought that this was perhaps what trust felt like when it was offered freely.
Not demanded. Not assumed.
Simply given.
"Beramund," she said, watching the water.
"Mm?"
"This counts as one of life's pleasures, doesn't it."
It wasn't quite a question.
"Yes," he said. "I think it does."
Sigrid nodded once, satisfied, and kept rowing.