How can it? O how can love's eye be true,
That is so vexed with watching and with tears?
No marvel then, though I mistake my view:
The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.
Sonnet 148 by William Shakespeare
The wife of the Warden of the North.
It always meant a lot to her. Family, duty and honor were the foundation of upbringing in the House Tully, and she always knew that she would be promised to the High Lord and would be happy to bear his children.
The engagement to the heir of Winterfell was expected, because their fathers were friends, Catelyn was glad to finally had her future laid out to her. Poor Petyr, Lisa's beloved friend and Lisa's young love, always hoped to bind himself to her House even more tightly, more than the bonds of a fosterling.
His morbid pride and stupidity committed in relation to her betrothed decided a lot for Petyr, because it was after that that he lost almost all his reputation in the eyes of her father and was forced to look for another defender for his small house. Which was successfully done during Robert's coup that started at the time.
But Catelyn, neither in the past nor to this day, could not fully rejoice for the successful outcome in the life of her childhood friend when her betrothed was lying in the crypt. And the love for him, which had already begun to flare up from the first moments of their interactions, had to be directed to the middle son of the House Stark. A noble man who, it seemed, would not have betrayed her in word or deed, but had a bastard who was older than her firstborn and was almost a complete copy of Eddard - dark brown hair and gray eyes. Except that the facial features were softer and the hair curled differently.
Brandon was jolly, tall and strong, it was easy to fall in love with him. "The Wild Wolf" was what his friends and enemies called him. Eddard is called the Quiet.
They definitely didn't love each other when they shared a bed and conceived Robb. Catelyn knew this and saw it, but they both understood that family and house are much more important than feelings. After all, in her youth, all the older women always said, sharing their wisdom at needlework or after staying in the Sept by the castle, that love comes with time and humility.
For Catelyn, it came.
She and Ned were united by children, household, duty and bed. But very little after the birth of Rickon, as red-haired as the rest of her children, except for Arya of course, he changed. Her husband started talking about reforms, rebuilding the castle and the long Summer, which forshadows the long Winter.
It was as if he had decided that his duty to her had been fulfilled and the only thing he might need from her was to inquire about the health of the youngest of the Starks.
The rest of the children were gradually getting out of her control. By the Seven, he even allowed Arya and Sansa to practice with weapons and ride horses with him! And most importantly, even Sansa, her sweet gentle Sansa, decided to try. Notably it happened, after Ned, right in front of the children, made a comment intended specifically for Catelyn. He looked at her with usual coldness, staring into her eyes with obviously feigned ignorance, and saying that there is no unnecessary knowledge in life, and "if someone does not agree, then let them stay a spiteful log they are."
While she was trying to find words, her husband's face suddenly scrunched in some faint semblance of a guilty frown, as if he simply let these words slip out of his mouth and did not expect it of himself. He then sighed wearily and turned his gaze to the children frozen at the dinner table, watching the parents' quarrel so closely for almost the first time in a decade.
The eldest son then almost choked on his food, and Greyjoy tried to suppress a grin. The girls and Bran didn't understand much and were rather perplexed, having stopped messing with food.
John also looked up at Ned in bewilderment, as if he was not at all interested in what was happening and was thinking about something completely different. Then Ned smiled awkwardly at him, barely twitching the edges of his lips.
Cat would never have caught this if she hadn't been staring at her husband, trying to come up with anything that would help her win this argument.
He was encouraging his bastard when he should have been thinking about how he was talking to his wife! As if the well-being of this dirty stain on the reputation of House Stark meant more to him than the well-being of family and duty! A spiteful log, how dared he!
This man had never before stooped to such underhanded insults, and most likely Catelyn herself invented that it was an insult, and not a stupid choice of words. But for some reason in her heart, previously calm, especially when there was no bastard in sight, and surrounded by warmth of the family circle, the pulling pain settled. It appeared every time she looked into her husband's ever cold eyes, sometimes shimmering with mockery if they had to argue about some child-rearing reasons.
If the topics of their skirmishes concerned something else, then it seemed to her that her husband seemed to have awakened from a dream in which he had been since their wedding. It seemed like he was using all the knowledge he had to improve and remake everything he saw around him.
In those moments when he fiercely scolded the castle blacksmith for some mistakes in processing, whatever it was, or carpenters, workers and masons who had added in number because of the construction that had begun, Ned's face became as lively and bright as she remembered young Brandon. But after a few moments of her watching him, whenever it was, Ned would put on his lord mask again and look at her with a familiar gaze that contained ice and frost.
Similar to those occasional glimpses, Eddard perked up when he realized that the king was coming to them. Kat was finally able to understand, as it seemed to her then, how such an honest man as Stark could have an affair and, moreover, a bastard. It seemed to her then that she had solved this riddle - he changed when he explained his ideas and directed their fulfillment, and when it came to his childhood friend, King Robert.
Catelyn could probably understand such feelings, because every time Liz mentioned Petyr in letters, a warm feeling settled in the heart of the wife of the Lord Paramount of the North, reminding of home and those days when the three of them could sit for days with books by the river or chat in the library for so long that the Maester personally came to oust them.
The day of the King's arrival changed a lot.
Catelyn realized how poorly she knew her husband, despite how simply she fell in love with him and how simply she imagined to herself that he fell in love with her in return.
He didn't look like that at the pretty maids, with whom, as she knew perfectly well from the rumors of the servants, the young Greyjoy copulated, nor at her when it was time to go to bed and he familiarly entered her, painfull and deep. She had long wanted to feel his seed in her again, to prevent this lack of love corroding their family, to finally figure out what was amiss!
That day, Catelyn realized that she had never known Eddard or his love, no matter what she thought before.
Because for the first time she saw in him that strange and barely familiar fire that sparkled in his icy gray eyes. His eyes followed the movements of the Queen and lingered on her hair or face when her husband thought that no one was looking at him.
His face honestly did not express anything that could cast a shadow of dishonor on their family. But that wasn't what struck her.
The Queen did not notice these looks, the ones that Catelyn herself could only dream of. The Queen periodically glanced at her husband, and a toothless smile slipped over her plump lips, for some reason not at all royal, rather soft and permissive. Besides, that smile unfailingly gave Catelyn a special displeasure, manifested in a slight tingle of jealousy that she usually felt when looking at the bastard.
For some reason, Catelyn did not empathize with Cersei Lannister at all when the King got drunk and started pestering the maids, who were pleased with such attention. But it felt wrong to some extent, not to empathize, because hers were simple glances, and Kat could even assume that she was inventing something that was not there.
If it wasn't for the fact that Eddard deliberately met the Queen's eyes, first glancing at his wife's face and blinking dismissively at her unspoken question when their gazes crossed. A couple of moments after the two women, who were sitting side by side, directly opposite Ned and the already empty king's chair, noticed the behavior of His Highness and barely managed to keep a calm expression on their faces so as not to drop their own honor, Ned looked at them.
Kat glanced sideways at the Queen to see from her expression exactly what the Warden of the North and her lawful husband meant by that look. He must have said something with his lips, because the queen's face seemed to light up and she barely held back a laugh. And then she leaned up to Catelyn's ear, brushing her golden curl against the fabric of the dress on the other woman's shoulder, and spoke.
"Your husband has a very entertaining sense of humor, dear Catelyn."
Cersei didn't need her answer - the wife of the Warden of the North suddenly realized. Her tone was patronizing and somewhat surprised. Catelyn didn't want to believe it, but the third component of the Queen's sentiment when she talked about the Warden of the North was undoubtedly delight.
Kat did not doubt her love for her husband and family. But never before had this love brought her so many doubts about Eddard.