Chapter Text
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They're relaxing in bed after dinner when Ada asks the question that makes Chrom pause.
"Could I peg you?"
He puts on an expression something like confusion, but he definitely knows what she’s talking about. Maybe it's the surprise of it: one minute they're lounging and reading, the next his wife is asking if she can peg him.
Could she peg him?
He just laughs, not quite meeting her eyes.
"Isn't it supposed to be 'May I?'" he asks, teasing. "I think I've heard you correct people with that about a million times now…”
Ada smiles.
“You’re dodging the question," she replies. She fishes her bookmark out of its old page, places it fresh, and then closes her book in her lap. She watches him for a reaction, amused. “You can say no, you know. I just thought it'd be fun."
Chrom shifts down in bed, stretching out on his back, side of his head against her bare hip. She reaches to comb her fingers through his hair, tousling his bangs back, and he gives a comfortable hum from the back of his throat.
"Maybe," he says, finally. "It doesn't sound good, to be honest, but if you'd like it, maybe we could try it."
Ada laughs.
"I have a finger up your ass just about every time I go down on you," she says. "You don't like that?"
Chrom makes a scoffing noise, though it's fairly lighthearted.
“That’s not true,” he says.
“It is true,” she says.
“Well, fine, but that’s different," he says, looping an arm under her knee and placing a hand on the inside of her thigh, which he lazily runs up and down. "And it sounds weird when you say it like that.”
"You also had a good time when I rimmed you," Ada points out. “That once.”
“Don’t say ‘rimmed’," he says. He’s a little flushed around the cheeks suddenly. “It also sounds weird."
“Rimmed?" she repeats back to him, deliberately.
Chrom makes an odd expression, and his hand stills on her knee when he looks up at her.
"It just sounds... I don't know. Don't you have words that just make your stomach turn a bit? Like 'moist.'"
Ada looks down at him with a raised eyebrow, and he chuckles, despite himself. Funny that a man so enthusiastic in bed could be so awkward in frank discussion of the same, but that's Chrom in a nutshell. He's always been more himself on the battlefield than in council, and all. Whatever: whether he likes the word aloud or not, Ada knows how Chrom really feels about rimming, and that's all that really matters.
"Well, good thing there are plenty of other words I could use," Ada says, still fingering his hair. "But think about it?"
"I'll think about it," he says. He pauses, and then adds, "Where do you even get this from?”
“I read,” Ada says, but Chrom knew that part. “And there’s talk amongst the women at the bathhouse and whatnot. Comparing notes.”
“That part doesn’t surprise me,” Chrom says. “The men don’t talk about it like that, though… we don’t compare notes, or go into detail. It’s more bragging. Mostly it’s just making fun of each other.”
“Uh huh,” Ada says. She’s not surprised, either.
“Where did you get this specifically, though?” Chrom asks. “The… pegging thing.”
Ada pauses, considering.
“Miriel,” she says. “We had lunch and got to talking. You know she has Vaike trying everything under the sun.” Ada does little air quotes with her fingers. She adds: “For science.”
Chrom snorts.
“There’s a mental image I could live without,” he says.
“Well, it’s just an idea,” she reminds him.
“If I think about it and decide to,” he reminds her.
Ada chuckles, and she sets her book aside to scoot down next to him. He shifts onto his side and hooks an arm around her waist, pulling her in close, her back to his chest. She fits just under his chin.
“If you think about it,” she agrees. His breath his warm on her scalp. “I think you’d like it, though.”
Chrom chuckles into her hair, somewhat disbelieving, and he slides a hand under the hem of her nightshirt just to span his fingers over bare flesh.
“We’ll see.”
Both of them spend most of the next day in and out of council meetings and various consultations. Times of peace are far more boring than times of war, in some selfish, personal way: Chrom’s days are timed practically to the minute, and without battles to strategize, Ada’s presence in meetings is somewhat unnecessary. Instead, she is busy with matters of the estate, boring work with tolls and tenants, which is a job that she oversees largely because she is married to him rather than because she cares much for it. Chrom concerns himself largely with the affairs of the realm, with the ministers and treasurers and sometimes representatives of his subjects. Ada prefers not to be involved as much in those things: they have a good marriage, but their politics aren’t so compatible all the time.
In the time before dinner, they see each other exactly twice: once by chance when Ada steps out from a meeting early and they pass each other in the hall, and again when they meet for a stroll in the gardens.
In the privacy of the garden, Chrom glances around them to be sure there isn’t even so much as an errant bumblebee in earshot, and only when he’s sure the coast is clear does he ask: “What do you even do about the…” Chrom looks for the word. “Lack of… armaments…”
Ada laughs.
“I’m starting to seriously wonder about your education,” she says. “What do you think happens? There’s a dildo.”
“You don’t even remember your education, and you know more than I do,” he sighs. “And I KNOW but… I just don’t understand how it works.”
“I don’t know more than you, really,” Ada says, “I think that one’s just common sense.”
He doesn’t seem so sure.
“Have you ever seen one?” Chrom asks. “A… toy?”
“A dildo?” Ada clarifies, just to see his reaction, and Chrom glances over his shoulder again.
“Please stop saying it,” he repeats, in more hushed tones. “It’s a toy.”
“I have seen a dildo,” Ada says.
“Where?” He’s surprised. So surprised that he doesn’t even stop to be exasperated with her language, which she thinks is funny.
“Uh, we know a lot of women who have them.”
“Who?” Chrom asks, almost incredulous, largely without thinking. It’s funny to watch the antics of his face: eyebrows lifted, eyes round with surprise, wonder. Women he knows and fights alongside own toys. It seems like a revelation to him. He is obviously far too coddled by a life of royalty, Ada figures.
She wonders what ridiculousness she has to look forward to with her looming pregnancy.
“I’m not telling you that,” Ada says. “It was in confidence!”
Chrom still looks surprised.
“Really?” he says, still more trapped on the thought that he apparently knows women who own toys. And then he grows somewhat serious, maybe even seriously concerned: “Do you have one?”
Ada snorts.
“No,” Ada says. And she adds, speculatively: “Yet.”
His concern is palpable. He reaches to touch a nearby flowering bush, as if he’s suddenly taken up an interest in botany and his concern is more for the blossoms’ perfection than the prospect of his wife railing him with a toy. Gods, he’s always such an easy read.
“Well,” he says, and he sounds apologetic already. “Maybe not, because I… well, I don’t think I want to do it.”
“That’s okay,” Ada says.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
He’s so genuine about it that she almost coos at him, but she stifles a laugh instead, and she reaches up to cup his cheek in her hand.
“It was just an idea, love,” she says. “What did you think I’d say?”
He laughs a little, putting his hand over hers and leaning in close, and then he shifts her hand so he can kiss her palm.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “But I couldn’t stop thinking about it all this morning, to the point where I was worried I’d blurt out something about it at the council meeting.”
Ada laughs again, and Chrom does, too.
“Hey,” he says, still laughing. “I’m serious.”
And then Frederick calls them from the doors to the garden, beckoning them in for lunch. Chrom laces his fingers with hers and together they head in, and Frederick sighs when the two of them need a moment to compose themselves.
In bed that night, while settling down to sleep, Chrom brings it up again.
“Where would you even get something like that?” he asks.
“Like what?”
He looks at her so plainly that she can’t help but smirk.
“I’m not going to say it,” he says. “You know.”
Of course she knows. She sits up a little more against the headboard, book in-hand, as always.
“From a shop, I guess. Or a merchant who specializes in them.”
Chrom snorts.
“What kind of shop would sell those? Do you just walk in and ask for one the way you’d ask for a lance?”
“I guess,” she says, with a grin, “You go in, and you give the shopkeep a little wink, and you say ‘I’d like a Shockstick, if you know what I mean.’”
Chrom laughs loudly, and she does too.
“That was bad,” he teases. “That’s practically Vaike-level humor.”
“Oh, shut up,” she says, pushing him by the shoulder. He resists the gesture, pushing back, and she squeals when he tweaks her breast in return, so she pinches his side, and just like that they’re tussling in bed like teenagers.
They carry on that way for a few minutes, and then when he’s managed to get a thigh between her legs and pinned her in place, she distracts him with a new question.
“Have you ever seen one?”
“Uhh,” he stalls, leaning up over her on one elbow. She feels every breath he takes through the swell of his chest. “I’ve seen one in person once. Just once.”
“Really!” Ada laughs, too. “Do tell.”
Chrom drops his eyes, a laugh still on his breath, and his ears are a little red. They stand out like beacons against the cooler tones of his hair.
“When we were maybe sixteen or seventeen, a bunch of us went to the countryside, to visit one of our cottages for a few weeks -- just for the pleasure of it, I guess. Sully, Maribelle, Vaike, Stahl, Lissa and I, with Frederick and a few servants as chaperones. It was going well but then a bear got into the cottage when we were out on a hack. And…”
He laughs suddenly.
“The place was a disaster. It got all our food, but it also left our bags strewn everywhere, and when Frederick picked one of Maribelle’s bags up…”
Chrom’s almost choked speechless, the way he keeps trying to stifle a laugh.
“It rolled out…”
“Oh no,” Ada says. She’d clasp a hand to her mouth if she didn’t already have them both on his waistband, trapped between them.
“In front of everyone, too.”
“How did you even know what it was if you’d never seen one before?!” Ada asks.
“Oh, I didn’t at first, but the shape of it, and the look on her face… it was obvious. You couldn’t imagine how funny it was. Frederick was mortified, he probably jumped a mile out of his boots, he wouldn’t stop apologizing for days. We didn’t let her forget about it the entire summer.”
“Poor Maribelle, that’s so mean,” Ada says, though she can’t help but laugh, too. “For shame, she probably wanted your heads.”
“Oh, she gave us hell,” Chrom says. He manages to compose himself a little more. “I’ll never forget the look on her face, though I think I’ve burned the thing itself from my memory.”
“The dildo?” Ada asks, grinning.
Chrom gives her the best serious, disapproving look he can for the moment, but she can still see the traces of a smile around the corners of his mouth.
“I wonder if ‘dildo’ is considered crude in Ylisse,” Ada wonders aloud. “Is that why you don’t like it? I’ve also heard them called ‘slippers’ here. And even stranger, in Plegia, they call them pacifiers...”
“I’m not calling them anything,” he says, his smile coming back. He picks up a pillow and playfully puts it between their faces like a shield. “You’re corrupting me with this filthy talk.”
“Now, now, my Lord,” Ada laughs, batting the pillow away. “You don’t feel threatened by them, do you? It’s just a slipper, it won’t hurt you.”
“Filthy,” he insists, but he’s still laughing. He abandons the pillow in favour of reaching for her face and capturing her in a distracting kiss, and, well, that’s perfectly fine by her.
The next morning, Ada wakes up to him wrapped around her and lazily fingering her, so once she’s had her fun, she slides down the length of his body to return the favour.
Ada has never been with another man — to her recollection, anyway — but she likes to imagine that Chrom is probably more vocal than most, and maybe more prone to getting carried away. He moans and moans away, one hand raking through her hair before fisting at the base of her ponytail, his other hand always either balled in the sheets or his fingers in his own mouth. If they didn’t have such expansive quarters, she imagines the other residents of the castle would quickly tire of her and Chrom’s shenanigans…. but mostly Chrom’s.
You’d think you’d learn to keep it down after enough months on the war campaign, too, but Ada supposes that just isn’t Chrom’s style.
He likes it most in the mornings, too, stretched out on his back. He digs his heels against the mattress hard, and if she weren’t squarely between his thighs he would probably be lifting his knees high from the tension coursing through his lower body. Ada knows his every move in this way — when she bobs her head a little deeper, her lips meeting the hand she has wrapped around the base of his cock, he’ll pull her hair in a certain way and arch his back and then, with a complete lack of awareness, say her name out loud. It’s like clockwork.
He’s slow to orgasm, though, which is somewhat deliberate on her part; the longer she has him panting, the better the payoff is. The hand she keeps cupping his balls then starts to slide back, wet from both her mouth and his cock, running a few stripes up and down his ass crack. And then, only when he’s relaxed and pressing back against her hand, she gently touches the pad of her middle finger to his asshole.
And then Chrom stills for a second, and this particular morning, he seems far more aware than usual of specifics of what she’s doing.
“Ada,” he pants, and she slides her mouth from his cock.
“Okay?” she asks, with a deep breath.
“Y-yeah,” he replies, so she presses in slowly.
The initial resistance is natural, Chrom digging his heels a little harder, but then she’s in to the first knuckle. She shifts focus back to the blow job again, up and down, bringing him to the back of her throat and then all the way out again. By time she has him worked back up to the edge, she’s gently moving her finger back and forth, and he’s thrusting forward into her mouth and thrusting back against her hand.
When he tenses up to come, she slides her finger deeper and towards her. Come hither.
It’s only a little pressure, but when she does that, Chrom tightens like a coil. She glances up at him and he’s just lost, head thrown back into the pillows, chest heaving, abdomen tensing up. He has both hands in her hair, suddenly, practically clutching her head. Just looking at him like this makes her want to crawl back up and ride him, but no, she’s still got a finger up his ass and this is practically her best yet.
“Ugh,” Chrom gasps. “Oh, gods.”
Even when he’s finished coming, Ada keeps working him until he’s a sloppy, panting mess, his now-flaccid cock oozing against his own belly. His bangs are slicked to his forehead, and he presses his ass back against her hand like he can’t get enough.
She realizes she’s panting, too.
When she finally withdraws her finger, he looks down at her with heavy-lidded eyes, lips parted. He shudders when she gently runs her hands along his thighs.
“Do you always do that?” he asks, breathily.
“Yes; how do you not know that?” Ada laughs, breathy too, and she crawls up alongside him. She kisses him, and given he still has a hand on the back of her head, he pulls her closer to deepen that kiss, which makes her laugh a little more when he lets her go. “That into it, huh?”
“Shh,” he tells her.
They laze for a few minutes to catch their breath, and then they slip off to bathe. By time Ada is ready and dressing for yet another day of bookkeeping and tax records, Chrom is still lounging in the tub with a satisfied look on his face and his feet up on the edge.
“Ada?” he asks.
She pokes her head back into their bath room. He looks up at her, and he takes so long to say anything that she leans against the doorway to watch him and wait. Whatever, she can spare another moment just to look at him, he’s handsome enough.
“Maybe we could get one anyway,” he says, finally, maybe a little too casually.
“A what?” Ada asks, just to be coy.
He snorts. She’ll never give him a break.
“A dildo,” he says.
Ada laughs.
“Sure,” she says.
They take their afternoon walk to the stables instead of in the gardens today. It’s a light afternoon, so there’s time for a ride.
“Where do we get one, seeing as we can’t really go to a store?” Chrom says. He’s got that cagey look in his eye and he’s still not going to say the word outside the bedroom any time soon; Ada isn’t sure why she expected otherwise.
(Maybe because he’s an adult and is about to become a father, but, well, Ada knows Chrom like the back of her hand. He’s not likely to change his ways that quickly.)
“Get a what?” Ada says, peering at him over her horse’s back. There isn’t much time to tease, as Frederick has only stepped away from them for a moment, but she doesn’t care.
“Where do we get one?” he repeats, shooting her a look.
Ada looks at him, and then pointedly looks at Frederick in the doorway. Chrom pales and ducks behind his horse as subtly as he can. Oh.
“What do you need, milord?” Frederick asks.
“His horse might have a loose shoe,” Ada says.
“Which one?” Frederick asks, striding over and running a hand alongside Chrom’s horse as he goes.
“Ask me again how well I know horses,” Ada replies, and Frederick gives her a wry look.
“Given how much time the Ylissean army spends in the saddle, it would behoove you to learn more, perhaps,” Frederick says. “We do not have many foot soldiers as Ferox does, and they use flying mounts in Plegia…”
Ada doesn’t care to remind him that she’s travelled with the army to Ferox and back, all around Ylisse and then to Plegia and back, so instead she lets him have his lecture. Frederick is very fond of his horses, and denying him an opportunity to prattle about war from horseback is almost cruelty.
Frederick checks each foot on Chrom’s horse, and he pauses at one to fuss at how a stableboy hasn’t cleaned the frog of the hoof well enough.
“It’s fine,” Chrom says, finally. “Let’s just ride.”
“Where to today, milord?” Frederick asks.
“West, maybe,” Chrom says. “We’ll see how far we get.”
Frederick will tell them precisely when to turn around, anyway.
So off they go, Ada and Chrom up ahead and Frederick lagging behind as a courtesy. Ada imagines she and her husband are more than capable of holding their own if they were to come across trouble, but Frederick’s presence is an easy formality, and it’s far less trouble to allow it. Besides, Frederick has picked the eldest of his several warhorses today, so Frederick is hardly alone on his slow old friend.
“It’ll be a shame when we can’t have afternoon rides like this anymore,” Chrom says as they reach the outskirts of the castle grounds and head into the woods.
Ada glances at him.
“Oh,” she says after a moment. “You mean when I’m too pregnant to ride.”
“Yeah,” Chrom nods. “I like this. It’s nice.”
“It’ll only be for a little while,” Ada says, and though she doesn’t have much love for the saddle, she knows she’ll miss it, too. “We’ll just have to take more garden walks for our afternoon dates.”
“But then those will have to stop, too,” he says. “Eventually.”
Ada laughs.
“Chrom,” she says, pointedly. “I am pregnant, not helpless. Unless I am actively giving birth, I can go for walks, and even then moving around helps.”
He flushes a little.
“I know that,” he says.
“Do you even listen when the physicians are lecturing us?” Ada teases.
“Not really,” he admits.
“Chrom,” she laughs.
He makes some sort of vague hand gesture, dropping the reins entirely, and Ada is sure that Frederick will have a minor aneurysm when he notices — she’s heard that lecture too many times before, how that will break contact with the horse and let the bit fall against the horse’s teeth. Neither Chrom nor Lissa are terribly proficient riders, even having grown up around horses.
“Now there’s an idea,” she says.
“What?”
“The court physicians,” Ada says in a leading tone, leaning back in the saddle.
“No,” Chrom says, pointedly.
Ada raises an eyebrow.
“Why not?”
“Because… no,” he says. And then, having thought of something better: “Do you have any idea how hard it is to be royalty and a young man at the same time?" Chrom asks, voice lowering somewhat. "I managed to get through most of it without making too much of a fool of myself, so I'm not going to break that streak asking the physicians about something like that.”
“That’s silly,” Ada informs him, not lowering her voice.
Chrom gives her an unimpressed look. He glances back at Frederick, so Ada does too. Frederick is staring straight ahead, though not necessarily watching them.
“It is,” she maintains.
“I won’t do it,” he says.
“Well, what would you rather do?”
“Milord,” Frederick says, and Chrom nearly (as he so colloquially put it before) jumps out of his boots.
“What?!” Chrom says.
“We ought to turn back,” Frederick says. “Lest you be late for your next meeting with council.”
“Alright,” Chrom says, turning his horse immediately and kicking into a jog.
Ada is slower to turn, and Frederick waits for her.
“What is he after?” Frederick asks her.
“Something for your birthday,” Ada says. “Pretend you don’t have a clue, please.”
Frederick looks at her dubiously.
“I see,” he says.
Ada can’t help but laugh as she nudges her horse to speed up, and she catches up with her husband.
That night, Chrom deliberately wakes her up at some ungodly hour in the morning. Ada groans and rolls away from him, groggily flapping a hand behind her to swat him away.
“Ada,” he says, in a hushed voice.
“Shh,” she grumbles.
“Sorry,” he says, “but I couldn’t sleep and I was thinking maybe one of our lady friends knows where to get one.”
She cracks her eyes open and cranes her neck to look at him, and through her bleary vision she sees him looking at her with such simple, earnest hope. Gods.
“Did you just wake me up to ask me to talk to a ‘lady friend’ about where to find a dildo?” Ada asks him, this time a lot less grumbled and a lot more incredulous.
“Uh,” Chrom trails, “yes.”
“Since when do we call them ‘lady friends’?” Ada asks him. “Did you even finish that semester on etiquette?”
He doesn’t answer that, instead reaching to rearrange the blankets nicely around them, and he cuddles up as if that could make her less grouchy. (Which it does, but it’s also still something-in-the-morning o’clock.) He settles with his mouth by his ear, fingers gently brushing her hair from her face.
“Could you?” he whispers.
“Goodnight, Chrom,” she retorts, shrugging his mouth off but staying put in his arms.
“Okay, goodnight,” he whispers. “I love you.”
Of course, it takes her thirty minutes to get back to sleep, especially with his dick pressed against her ass. Still, she loves him, even if she wants to push him out of bed sometimes.
He is up early, and she isn’t. She’s not sure whether to kiss him or berate him for letting her sleep late and make her late to the meetings she didn’t want to attend anyway. When she finally sees him that morning, it’s when he slips into the privacy of her estate office. Somehow he’s both shaken Frederick and caught her when her assistants are at lunch, so in his playful way he wraps an arm around her as she sits at her desk. He presses a kiss to the side of her neck and takes her hand to lace his fingers to hers.
“Where do you want to meet for lunch?” Chrom asks, brightly. He’s hoping she’s forgotten last night, which she hasn’t, but she lets him have it because he has a way of making her melt.
“I can’t today,” she says, maybe a little regretfully. “I’ve already got lunch plans.”
He looks notably disappointed, but he still keeps his arm around her.
"Oh," he says. "Who are you having lunch with?"
Ada smiles tightly.
"A lady friend," she says.
He's quiet for a beat, and then he repeats: "Oh." Ada just smiles, turning her eyes down to her papers.
"I suppose that's a fair enough reason," he says, his disappointment faded, and he leans in to press another kiss to her cheek. He lingers close, afterwards, too, chin over her shoulder, his arms still wrapped around her from behind. She closes her eyes and tilts her head to lean her temple against his.
"Do you want to come?" Ada asks, just to be polite. She knows what the answer will be, and sure enough, there is is, almost immediately.
"No, no," he says.
"She's going to know," Ada warns him. "You don't want to know who knows?"
"Whoever she is, I would like to look her in the eye for the rest of my life," Chrom replies. "And I will absolutely not be able to do that if all I can think of is her sitting with us at lunch having a conversation like that."
"Suit yourself," she replies, amused, and he kisses her cheek once again before gently pulling away. She continues: "Does it bother you that I keep teasing you? I hope I’m not turning you off the whole thing.”
Chrom chuckles.
“It makes me a little nervous, maybe,” he says, "but you've never led me astray before, so I don't mind."
"Good," Ada says. “Just tell me if I go too far, okay?”
“You worry too much,” Chrom tells her, somewhat ironically. And then, leaning back in for the briefest second, he whispers: “It turns me on.”
She laughs, loud but loving, and she leans over to press a hard kiss to the corner of his mouth.
“Get back to work,” she says.
“As you wish,” he says, and with a last squeeze to her shoulder, off he goes.
The ride out to the countryside to her lady friend’s family estate would take more time than Ada would generally like to spend in the saddle, especially just for lunch, so it’s quite fortunate, in her mind, that Maribelle has taken up so much work with the magistrate.
The Royal Courts of Justice are a crisp ride outside the castle walls and through the town, and Ada rather enjoys it despite having Frederick as an escort once more, but then again, perhaps that is not so bad either. She and Frederick have grown quite tolerable of each other since the wedding — call it giving in or call it a grudging acceptance, but both of them have accepted that their lots are both with Chrom, and so their lots will be together until the end. They chat most of the way, mostly about politics, which is a topic they are surprisingly very agreeable on.
And then, when that topic dwindles, he offers a new one:
“This is quite unusual for you, to make plans so last minute,” Frederick remarks. “And you decline Maribelle’s offer for tea so often.”
“She’s sweet, but a little bit of her goes a long way,” Ada says.
“She has a lot of personality, that is for sure,” Frederick says. “And a lot of opinions, and a lot of… well, everything.”
“She really does.” Ada pauses, and then asks: “You’ve known her for a long time, right? Was she like that when she was a child, too?”
“She has been one of Lord Chrom’s friends since childhood,” Frederick says. “Sully, Vaike, Stahl, the rest of them. She used to be just as rowdy as the rest of them, too, but she took growing up quite seriously. She used to push Lord Chrom in the mud and then lecture him on his language when he retorted.”
Ada is so charmed by this mental image that it strikes her memory, suddenly, that Frederick once leapt from his boots at the sight of Maribelle’s dildo, and that mental image draws a sudden laugh from her.
Frederick raises an eyebrow at her.
“Sorry,” Ada says.
He stays in stony silence for the rest of the ride. At the gates of the courthouse, he dismounts first and moves to help her dismount, but she is already sliding from the saddle.
“You mustn’t exert yourself,” he scolds her, because he can never resist the urge to be fussy. His eyebrows frown deeply. “If you landed poorly you could fall and injure yourself and the child.”
“Frederick,” she sighs, and then she moves right along, handing him the reins and then stripping her riding gloves from her hands one after the other. “I will be a few hours, I think. Will you be coming to get me, or can I be trusted to ride back alone in such a delicate condition?”
“I will send for you myself if Lord Chrom is not available,” Frederick says, though Ada knows Frederick will come whether her husband is available or not.
“I will see you in a few hours, then,” Ada replies.
“Very well,” Frederick says, but he hands off the reins to a waiting valet and sees her all the way up the stairs and through the grand doors of the courthouse before she finally shoos him away.
Maribelle’s father’s office is upstairs, Ada knows, and though she’s not sure if Maribelle does her work in the same office, she heads in that direction anyway. At the end of the hall she realizes it is not the case, but fortunately, she is intercepted by Maribelle herself, who calls to her from the top of the grand center staircase.
“My dear Ada!” she says. “I thought you weren’t going to make it.”
“With Frederick fussing and slowing me down, I didn’t think I would, either,” Ada says, turning in that direction. When Ada reaches the top of the stairs, Maribelle pulls her into a firm embrace and kisses both of her cheeks.
“That Frederick,” Maribelle huffs, and she gives Ada a cursory inspection, a smile her only judgment. “If he doesn’t have you huffing and puffing doing push-ups in the dirt, he’s fussing so much that you’re delayed. Though I’ve certainly missed the Shepherds this past while, I most certainly do not miss his nonsense.”
“Trust me,” Ada says, “It has only gotten worse lately.”
“I’m not surprised,” Maribelle says. “Well! Let’s not waste another word on him, then. I have tea waiting, and the servants — well, apprentices — will have lunch for us shortly.”
She touches a hand to the small of Ada’s back to guide her down the hall, and then she links her elbow with Ada’s in that easy, ladylike way of hers. Ada just smiles.
“Well, I’m happy you could see me today, despite the short notice.”
Maribelle laughs, high and melodious.
“Not at all! Of course Lissa’s sister-in-law is a sister of mine, you know,” she says. “Especially since your messenger said you had some urgent personal matters to ask me about, you know I can always make time for that.”
“I appreciate that,” Ada says, and she has never been so pleased that Maribelle is such an easy confidante. “I just hope it’s not too presumptuous.”
Maribelle quirks a finely-shaped eyebrow and smiles. She opens the door to her office.
“Try me,” Maribelle says, holding the door for Ada.
Ada glances at her, lingering in the doorway. No sense in being delicate, she supposes, not when Maribelle always puts such a fine edge on things.
“I’m wondering where one might acquire a dildo,” Ada says.
“For you?” Maribelle asks.
Ada’s sure the look on her face gives it away, either the broadening smile or the slightest bit of mischief or the way she meets Maribelle’s gaze.
There’s a twinkle in Maribelle’s eye, and then she laughs again.
“Well, I can certainly help with that,” she says.
Maribelle simply gestures Ada out of the way, and then she closes the door behind them.