Warm… Safe… A blessed absence of nightmares… Éowyn shifted beneath the covers, and felt an arm pull her gently into the curve of another body. In a huge flood, the deluge of emotions of the previous day came washing over her, beginning with the memory of the despair when she woke thinking him dead through to that moment in the garden where she had suddenly seen him in the distance, high on the wall above – a moment of disbelief, of shock, of joy, a complete mixture of emotions almost overwhelming in their intensity.

After his kiss, they had clung to one another like the survivors of a storm at sea. They spent the afternoon in the garden, talking, holding one another. There had been joy in being alive, terror at the thought of what had so nearly come to pass, sadness at the thought of those they had lost. And most overwhelming of all, Faramir's reaction to being told he was to become a father. For a moment, the all encompassing darkness of Mordor seemed cast aside in a blaze of sunshine, such was the bliss on his face. He had held her close and kissed her, looking stunned beyond belief and transported to a realm of delight.

The day passed as they had sat together in the garden. They lost all sense of time, and when, finally, the sky had begun to grow dark, they had shared a meagre supper in the refectory of the Houses, then Faramir had led Éowyn back to the room he had been given for the duration of his stay. It had seemed natural that they should sleep together, share the bed – they hadn't even discussed it. There seemed to be an unspoken understanding that they could not be parted, even for a moment.

A quiet murmur into her hair drew her back into the present. She felt Faramir's breath on her neck as he nuzzled against her. Her arm ached dully, and she realised that the cushions Faramir had carefully placed under it the night before had now tumbled onto the floor. But apart from the dull ache, she could not imagine being more contented than she was now. There was the nagging knowledge, buried at the back of her mind, that the war was not yet over, and that it was a war they were unlikely to win, but for the time being she was content to live in the moment. She leaned back into Faramir's embrace. In response, he whispered, his voice still laden with sleep.

"I know I have said this to you before, but what a way to wake!"

"I never want to wake without you again," she replied. His answer came in the form of a languorous succession of kisses planted on her shoulder. His hand snaked its way across her belly, lying there, radiating warmth into her skin. Éowyn found herself humming with contentment. As she shifted her body to snuggle in yet closer, she realised he was already half hard, the hardness familiar from so many morning waking up next to him. She also knew that he would be content to take his lead from her, letting her inflame his arousal or allowing it ebb away, as she chose. With a quiet smile, she rocked her hips back against his groin.

"Mmm," came his response. His hand started to stray lower, his cock pressing insistently against her. She shifted her legs, letting him slide a knee between them, and tilted her arse. Another kiss on her shoulder, right at that angle where it joined her neck, where he knew she loved to be kissed, then she felt the tip of his cock pressing between her legs. As he slid against her, his hand found its way into the nest of hair at the top of her thighs, and his fingers began to stroke in a gentle rhythm in the spot he knew from long practise was just right. She knew she was smiling broadly now – she thought of this position fondly as a lazy holiday morning shag – one that they didn't often find themselves with the chance to indulge in. His other hand had somehow wormed its way beneath her body and now cupped her breast. She pushed back against him, encouraging him to progress from sliding against her to sliding within her.

All of a sudden someone gave a sharp rap on the door, then, without waiting for an answer, pushed the door open.

"Morgoth's balls!" Faramir almost yelped, pulling back from her and tugging the covers over them. There was a crash as an earthenware ewer broke on the stone flags, and Dame Ioreth let out a shriek of surprise. Éowyn tried to burrow further under the covers. She took in Ioreth's look of complete shock, the woman's face reddening with embarrassment. For a moment all three of them seemed frozen in the most absurd tableau imaginable. Then the Healer gave a faint gasp and bustled from the room. In her haste she left the door wide open.

Faramir grabbed his shirt from where he had left it, part of an untidy heap beside the bed. He didn't bother to put it on, but clutched it in front of him as he took a couple of strides over to the door. Éowyn nearly giggled as she registered how undignified he looked, linen clutched over his groin, but his buttocks clearly visible from where she was lying. Hopping awkwardly to avoid the broken pottery, he slammed the door shut then dropped the bar firmly into place.

Éowyn by this stage had rolled onto her back and lay with her good hand over her face. "Béma! The Warden will be furious. What are we going to do?" She swallowed her next words, but couldn't help thinking crawl under the bedclothes and hide for all eternity.

Faramir looked at her. Then suddenly he started to chuckle. "Oh Valar, poor Mistress Ioreth. She got quite an eyeful, didn't she?"

"Don't… it would have been bad enough if we had simply been cuddled under the covers, but they were all askew and it must have been quite obvious what we were doing..."

"What we were about to do," corrected Faramir. "Damned woman and her damned timing. If only she'd left it another five minutes," he added, with an air of chagrin.

Éowyn finally started to see the funny side too. "Oh gods, five minutes later might have been even worse – I mean, imagine if she'd walked in when..."

Faramir gave a great snort of laughter. "Sweet Elbereth, you're right. You're not exactly quiet."

"No need to look quite so smug. And you have been known to make the odd satisfied groan on occasion. But… poor Mistress Ioreth."

Faramir came over and perched on the side of the bed. "It can't have exactly come as a complete surprise to her – after all, she knows you're with child, and after our meeting yesterday, there wasn't any mystery as to who was the father."

"You are really quite smug about having got me with child." Éowyn looked up at Faramir's face. He still had that look of delight at the thought of their child, but also undoubtedly looked very pleased with himself, like a cock crowing in the knowledge that he alone rules the hen coop, or a stallion who has just covered several mares. This unexpectedly self-satisfied side to Faramir amused Éowyn greatly. And more than that, she had to admit, aroused her greatly, a situation not helped by the fact that he had now started to rub his hand in warm, insistent circles on her naked skin, working his way down from her shoulder blades towards the small of her back. He bent over her and kissed his way from her shoulder, up her neck, to the soft skin below her ear.

"I am not 'quite smug'. I am very smug. And you are very, very beautiful. And very, very desirable..."

"And you are very, very incorrigible. Hasn't being caught once already this morning done enough to damp your ardour?" Éowyn's laughter died away. "But seriously, what are we going to do?"

He sat up, looking suddenly thoughtful, and took her good hand in both of his. "Do you remember the least romantic proposal of marriage ever made?" he asked, a smile on his lips, but his eyes serious. Éowyn nodded. "You never did give me an answer, you know..." She stared up at him from the bed. Eventually she managed to speak, just one single word.

"Yes."

Faramir's face lit up with a broad grin. He bent and kissed her, slowly and thoroughly. "Thank goodness for that. I was worried you might not be prepared to make an honest man out of me." He brushed the hair back from her face and kissed her brow. "I think I need to ask the Warden if Lord Hurin of the Keys is still within the city. I am guessing he is too old and infirm to have ridden to war. He has the legal authority to marry us." Faramir paused for a moment. "That is, if you are prepared to get married quickly and with little fuss."

Éowyn shook her head, as if not quite believing how slow on the uptake Faramir could be. "I would marry you any way you pleased – with all pomp and ceremony, or over the blacksmith's forge, as we say in the Mark. I don't care. I just want to be with you."

"Then let us dress ourselves properly, go and face the warden's censure, and see if we can make ourselves respectable in his eyes with the help of Lord Hurin."

"The warden will be most surprised… I told him we were already married."

"And in my mind, I have long thought of us as such. This is merely a matter of arranging the legal niceties. And a way of ensuring..." Faramir gave a cheeky grin, "That once we are respectably married, in a manner acceptable to all, we can come back here, bar the door and finish what we started earlier, knowing that no-one is allowed to look askance any more."

"I suppose we had better get up, then," said Éowyn, and pushed herself into a sitting position with her good arm. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, got up and walked across the room to where she had left the drab brown dress lying over a small wooden chair. Faramir watched her progress.

"You know, you really do have a beautiful arse!"

Éowyn looked over her shoulder and rolled her eyes, then turned back and started to put the dress on, stepping into it and pulling it up. "Dammit, I can't get this on one handed. You'll have to help."

Faramir got out of bed. A couple of paces, and he stood behind her, where he took advantage of the half-donned dress to kiss her naked shoulder and run his hands over her spine.

"I said 'help', not 'hinder'," Éowyn said. Faramir made a noise vaguely like a very theatrical sniffle crossed with a sob. "If you're very good, I shall let you help me take it off again later," she added, with a chuckle.

"I shall hold you to that promise," he replied, and somewhat reluctantly, eased the dress over her injured arm, then started to lace it up.

~o~O~o~

Lord Hurin stood beside the fountain in the centre of the garden, law book in hand. Out of the corner of his eye, Faramir could see the Warden and one of the Rohirrim from the camp on the Pelennor, Marshal Elfhelm, who had been invited as witnesses. The Warden's thin lips were pursed; a look of faint disapproval still flitted across his face. The man had been taken aback to discover that Éowyn and Faramir were not, in fact, married. And shocked to discover that they had had the effrontery to share a room and a bed within the houses despite being uwed. Faramir had responded by saying firmly that he considered the customs of the elves, whereby one might, in time of strife, take another in marriage by the simple act of bodily union, to be binding on him as one of the heirs of the Faithful of Numenor. This ceremony, he added, was purely a matter of tidying up the situation legally.

The Marshal had seemed equally unimpressed by the situation. At first he had voiced his uneasiness at consenting to Éowyn's marriage in the absence of her brother, the King. However, Éowyn had rapidly silenced him by pointing out that since she was already pregnant, any attempt to raise objections was really a case of trying to shut the stable door after the horse had bolted. She had left unsaid the fact that there was in any case no guarantee that her brother would be coming back in order to consent to her marriage, though both she and the Marshal surely knew it. Faramir, as if sensing her change in mood, had silently taken her hand and held it, and it was this gesture, more than anything else, which had (however reluctantly) reconciled Elfhelm to the marriage.

Faramir decided the Warden's expression was best ignored. He turned instead to Éowyn, and his face lit with joy. She was still wearing the drab brown woollen gown that did not fit quite right, but she was breathtakingly beautiful, golden hair loose round her shoulders, gazing up at him with a smile on her face. He took her uninjured hand in his, lost in their own little world.

Lord Hurin gave a cough, and reluctantly, they turned to face him. The words of the ceremony were short and to the point; clearly the keeper of the keys did not see the point in any sort of flowery ceremony given the circumstance. He merely ascertained that neither of them knew of any impediment to their lawful marriage, that each consented of their own free will, and that other parties were content to bear witness to the marriage. He pronounced them husband and wife.

The perfunctory nature of the ceremony did not even seem to register with Éowyn and Faramir. The two of them stood, hands joined, gazing at one another. With a strange jolt of other-worldly connection as if with some ancient, magical realm, the warden realised that for all his earlier disapproval, he was in fact witness to the joining of two fëar. The new steward had not been seeking an elaborate historical justification for his moral incontinence, but had simply been speaking the truth.

~o~O~o~

The next eight days were among the strangest of their lives. At one and the same time, they lived in a haze of happiness, but a haze overshadowed by the threat of terror beyond imagining. Always, the shadow lowered in the east when they looked out together from the walls. Yet somehow, in the garden of the houses of healing, they could forget for a short moment the threat that hung over them like a sharp, keen blade waiting to descend.

And as their days were split into two conflicting sets of emotions, so too were their nights. The warden had initially tutted over the prospect of having a couple share a bed within the houses, even now they were married, but since the world teetered on the brink, neither Éowyn nor Faramir was inclined to pay him any heed. In that narrow bed they found both bliss and comfort, moments of passion and long hours where they clung to one another, seeking to forget the sorrows they had borne in the soft, gentle warmth of one another's bodies.

Then at last, there was the cold, crisp day where they stood side by side high upon the walls, and the dark clouds parted, the sun shone through, and out of the golden light flew a huge eagle, bearing great tidings. Filled with joy, Faramir took Éowyn in his arms and kissed her. Éowyn, realising they stood on the wall in sight of the city below, whispered, "Man of Gondor, would you have your people say 'there goes a man who tamed a wild shieldmaiden of the north? Was there no woman of Gondor good enough?'"

"I would," he said, smiling into her hair as he held her close. "But I hope that I have not sought to tame you, for none could do that, nor would I wish to try..."

"And I love you for it. But I am tired of war, and of fighting. It is time for both of us to turn to healing the hurts of our lands."

"When the king returns, if he wills it, we shall move to my ancestral lands of Ithilien, and scour them of the darkness that marred them, and together we shall build a house, and plant a garden, and restore the villages and farms around."

"Making a garden?" said Éowyn, with a smile. "Once that would have seemed a tame occupation. But after so much death and suffering, now it seems the best pastime I can imagine." Her smile broadened into a grin. "Though I may miss the excitement of running from raging mumaks."

Faramir took her hand and led her down the stairs. Together, they walked across the grass lawn, past the herb beds and the rose bushes, planted for their calming scent but now only beginning to show the first hint of budding leaves. Towards the building stood an ancient, gnarled yew tree, and for the first time, Éowyn noticed something which stirred her memory – the twisted trunk was split by a huge crack.

Faramir's eyes followed her gaze, and he slipped his arm round her waist, drawing her close. "I seem to recall a wild shieldmaiden of the north who made improper advances to her captain in just such a tight spot as that."

"So she did… and they had to run a whole mile down the track to the old woodsman's cottage before she could have her way with him..."

"And now the same captain has a room, and a bed, a mere twenty paces or so away. And the wild shieldmaiden is now his wife. Shall we, my love?"

~o~O~o~

Far below in the city, a group of soldiers, injured in the battles before the siege, but sufficiently recovered not to be confined to the houses of healing any more, sat on benches outside a tavern. The table in front of them bore many tankards, some empty, others pleasingly full. One of the men had spotted their Captain and his lady high upon the walls, and nudged the others. With whoops of glee, they had watched the kiss.

Now the youngest of them, Anborn, held out his hand, palm up. "Come on lads, pay up. I said he'd marry her right and proper, and he has."

Mablung gave a laugh, and slapped some silver coins into Anborn's hand. "For once, I can't begrudge you the win, you lucky bastard."

~o~O~o~

THE END

~o~O~o~

Thank you to everyone who's reviewed, followed and favourited this! As always a big thank you to my guest reviewers, as I can't PM you to say thanks. (And thank you for reviewing Pearl Buttons too!)

So, it's sad to get to the end of this. But I have a few works-in-progress which will be popping up soon (and if you are regularly review but don't have an account, it might be worth making yourself one, because then I can PM you when there's new stuff up there!)

I'm planning a sequel to Howzat!/prequel to Whenas in Silks (which I have decided are set in the same alternate universe, populated by Lena's Aussie Rohirrim. And (just to redress the balance after all those fics in which Gondorian society is portrayed as prudish and women there "lie back and think of Gondor") in this one, Gondor will be a kind of Medieval version of Regency England – and every bit as racy and decadent. (Actually, from what I read of it, Medieval Aquitaine might not be a bad model for that!) And following on from that I'm going to have a stab at that old favourite, the diaries of Faramir and Eowyn in the Houses of Healing (or, the events which lead up to Whenas). So, "watch this space..."