Loras had told him enough about Highgarden that Jon knew Dragonstone must seem drab and dreary and utterly forbidding in comparison. As proud as he was of his home, he could not shake those thoughts the next day as he showed his betrothed around the castle she would be Lady of. She spoke her pretty, courteous words at many of the sights he showed her, small hand almost unbearably heavy in the crook of his arm, but they were just bland and nondescript enough that he knew she must be struggling for anything good to say. Between the stone monsters and barren cliffs and heavy black sky, he supposed that made sense, even though all he could see was a place he loved, the only place where he had ever belonged.
"Show her the gardens," Loras spoke up from where he was chaperoning them. "You will be outraged, sister. These wolves, they fuss over their Godswood, but they have no idea what to do with the rest of it."
Jon bit back a snort. Loras, to be perfectly honest, was right about that. Neither he nor Benjen and Dacey had much of a green thumb, or the patience for something as useless as attempting to restore Aegon's Garden, which, from what Jon had heard, had been half-wild even before Stannis' tenure as Lord anyway. Besides, Jon had little to no idea what an ornamental garden looked like in the first place. The glass gardens at Winterfell were mostly utilitarian, for growing fruits and vegetables even when the cold weather should have prevented it. The winter roses were the only truly ornamental thing he remembered from there, and even those were often sold for good sums, to be made into oils and perfumes. "Uncle Benjen says he tried to plant a patch of winter roses the first year he was here," he said. "They do not do so
well south of the Neck, though, and when the plants died, I suppose we all just kind of gave it up as a lost cause. It was that, or turn Aegon's Garden into a cabbage patch." He only realised how he had spoken after the words had already escaped his lips. The way he had with Loras for a good long while now, honest and wry. But he and Loras had known each other for two years now. Loras knew him well enough to understand that Jon's way of speaking would always be of the North, and Jon knew Loras well enough by now to trust he would not be judged for it. He had forgotten, for a moment, that Margaery was even there, and now he could not hold back a flush at the thought of how much of an idiot he must have sounded to her ears. Turning Aegon's Garden into a cabbage patch. What must she think of him?
Somehow, despite all his fears, she laughed. Not as much as Loras did, but a short, small one that made him breathe a sigh of relief. "A cabbage patch might still have been better than leaving it to ruin," she said. "It might not have been pretty, but at least it would have been good for something."
"Well, there are cranberries there," Jon said. "They are growing wild and have mostly swallowed up everything else except the oldest trees, but at least it is good for something. Cook makes delicious cranberry preserves." He stopped, replayed the words in the privacy of his own mind, and flushed all over again. He should just keep his mouth shut now, since everything that came out seemed designed specifically to make her think less of his intelligence.
"I should like to see the Garden," she said at last, saving them from an awkward silence that would have been left for Loras to fill. "And with your leave, perhaps, in time, work on replanting it?"
Jon let out a sharp breath and nodded, turning them around and leading the way towards the Dragon's Tail. The garden truly was in shambles, overgrown and utterly wild, excepting the fledgling Godswood in the far corner. But something lit in Lady Margaery's eyes at the sight of that plot of land. As she spoke enthusiastically with her brother about plants and flowers whose names he had never heard before, her hand felt a bit less heavy on his arm. For the first time since she arrived, he felt he could breathe almost freely.
When they moved on to see the Sept, which Jon had barely stepped foot in for the past three years, her words were a bit less bland and guarded than they had been. "Do you enjoy music, My Lord?" she asked.
Jon winced, remembering his disastrous attempts with the high harp. "I enjoy listening to it," he said. "I fear I have no talent for performing, though. And I will warn you now that I am like to step on your toes at the feast tomorrow." Tomorrow, Gods, was it really so soon? The realisation made his stomach knot and his palms grow sweaty.
She gave him a soft smile. "You are graceful in the training yard, though, are you not?" she asked. "My brother tells me if you had squired with your uncle, you would have likely been knighted already." So why have you not? she did not ask, but clearly thought.
"I fear those two do not always translate," he said. "And my Uncle Arthur is kind enough to train me without expecting me to squire for him; he understands that I do not wish to make a mockery of my Gods or his by entering into an institution that holds so closely to the Seven."
"There are knights in the North, are there not?" Margaery asked.
"Aye," Jon replied. "There are also Septs and followers of the Seven. There is a Sept and a Septa in Winterfell, even."
"So if I wished to raise our children in the Light of the Seven?" she asked slowly. "If I wished for our sons to be knights..."
"My siblings were raised in both religions," Jon said. "Lady Catelyn wished for it, and I would no more deny you than my father denied his Lady wife. I know my brother Bran plans to become a knight."
She seemed to let out a small breath of relief at that, and Jon wondered if she had thought him some kind of savage, the way he knew his bannermen had when he first arrived. He would have hoped his friendship with her brother might have inspired more confidence than that, but then what had he done since she arrived other than make himself look a fool?
Considering that, he could not really blame her for her misconceptions. "Your siblings were raised in both religions," she said. "Yet you were not." The question was not stated, but it was there nonetheless, and Jon could not quite help but wince.
"Lady Catelyn did not care to take any part in raising me," he said. "I believe she preferred that I never set foot in her Sept. My religious upbringing was left entirely to my father, and he is of the North." He swallowed, hated having to remind her of his own bastardy, but was it not her right to get to know him, at least a little, ahead of tomorrow's ceremonies? "Besides, Septa Mordane scared me."
She gave a small laugh at that, and Jon felt a brief flash of pride at the sound. If he could make her laugh, could continue to make her laugh, perhaps this union need not be some horrible cage for them to live out the rest of their lives inside.
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