Chapter length: ~4,300 words

Some keywords: arranged marriage, wedding night, virginity, nervousness, mild sexual content

A/N: I chose the romance category but it doesn't fit very well because these two are not (yet) in love.

There is little actual sex in this because I can't really write sex scenes, but there's a lot of build-up. This fic is all from Lothíriel's point of view.

It was probably already clear in my previous fic about Lothíriel and Éomer (Stars above the Golden Hall) that I don't employ modern gender roles in my fics about them so I hope that you will not judge them by those. I try to write them close to how I imagine Tolkien intended their attitudes, experiences and expectations to be.

PLEASE NOTE. Because of this website's strict ratings policy that I don't want to break, this is a very, very slightly censored version of this fic. If you want to read the tiny bit longer and tiny bit more explicit version, go to Archive of Our Own and look it up there. I'm username Elesianne there too.

Mid-year's night: Chapter I – Night

Seated in front of the mirror, Lothíriel takes off with gentle fingers and for the last time her pearl and diamond diadem. Tomorrow – for a bride must be both wedded and bedded, the Rohirrim believe, before she can be declared her lord's lady – she will be crowned queen, and Éomer will give her a new crown.

She takes the diadem to a table next to the door. She will give it to her brother Elphir to give to his daughter, the next eldest unmarried daughter of Dol Amroth. Her niece is only three months old, so the diadem will wait unused for many years. Lothíriel will miss it: it has been the finest, most beautiful thing she owns, and she has been proud to wear it on feast-days and other important occasions.

From the door she looks around the bedchamber. During the day servants have brought all her things here from the room where she stayed before. The books and scrolls she brought from Dol Amroth lie in neat piles on a side table, the only such objects in this room; beside them, the chest of her writing things; in the corner her harp, which had survived the long journey better than she'd dared to expect; and piled on top of each other and next to each other, many trunks full of clothes and fine fabrics and silk thread. She brought a lot of fabric and thread for the works of future years.

The room is cluttered with her possessions, more of them here than there are Éomer's things. For a king, he appears to have little need to surround himself with many fine, expensive things, or else he keeps very few of them in his bedroom.

She can still hardly believe that he left her here alone. After he brought her to this room – his room – and closed the door behind them, he just gazed at her until the drunken cheers outside the door died out. He then pointed at her hair and mumbled something about having her maid undo it. Then he was gone, and Lothíriel was left in a man's bedchamber for the first time in her life.

Well, she'd thought, it was her bedchamber as well now, and she had better become accustomed to it.

She had looked around the tidy room for the first time then, taking notice of the large fireplace with a fire crackling merrily in it. The next thing she noticed was that the blankets and furs on the large bed were already turned aside neatly by servants. And though that should not have been surprising or startling, startled she was, and she went and sat down quickly before the mirror that someone had also brought here. It is hers too.

At least there she only has to look at her reflection and not this… man's room around her, devoid of the man.

It does not seem like an auspicious beginning for a wedding night.

A feeling of dread in her stomach after her second time looking around the room, Lothíriel sits back down at the mirror and starts undoing her complicated hairstyle herself. She doesn't know what is taking her maid so long, if Éomer indeed did go to fetch her and not do something else.

Does he regret marrying you? an insidious voice in her head asks. Already?

She looks into her own eyes in the mirror and tells herself sternly to not think such foolish thoughts. Éomer appeared to be in a good mood all day, showing no sign of reluctance or regret when he said his vow to her, and many times she thought she caught him looking at her with something more intense in his eyes than respect or friendly interest.

She must be patient. Picking hairpins out of her hair helps her not to think too much, so she does that. A hairstyle like this, with braids and curls and pins and pearls, isn't meant for a woman to disassemble herself, and trying to do it takes concentration and rather more dexterity than she possesses.

She'd been expecting Éomer to take it all out of her hair.

Perhaps she had been looking forward to it: feeling his fingers running through her hair, on the back of her neck, his body close behind hers –

Lothíriel startles as the door opens, and turns at once towards it.

'The king said you needed help', says her new Rohirrim maid Guthild in her heavily accented Westron.

Guthild has rather too much of an expression on her face and as Lothíriel turns back to the mirror again she says briskly, 'Yes, with my hair. Come help me with these twisted braids.'

Guthild chatters the entire time she works Lothíriel's hair free of adornments, undeterred by the meagre responses she receives.

She talks about how splendid the wedding was, how good the food – even the stranger, Gondorian-style dishes – and how handsome the king looked, and the visiting lords of Rohan and Gondor, and how beautiful and finely dressed was the queen Arwen Evenstar of Gondor! What times they lived in, having elves visit every year…

Lothíriel hardly hears it. She looks at herself in the mirror. She looks pale and young. The day has been long which explains the paleness, and she is young. She has often told her family that she is not as young as they seem to think she is, but right now, she feels young and alone. Guthild is little consolation; Lothíriel met her six days ago.

She wishes her own maid from Dol Amroth was here, but Hemmoril didn't want to come to Rohan. She has a sweetheart, a vintner in the city, who she is going to marry soon. Lothíriel gifted her a diamond brooch for her to have as a dowry.

Lothíriel sits up straighter. Hemmoril would tell her, gently but firmly, to not be silly.

It is just that – for everything else that she has done here in Rohan so far, she has felt prepared for and capable of. Meeting scores of new people, learning their titles and their families and their relevant peculiarities, and already giving her opinion on a great many things concerning the household, and the ceremonies of a Rohirrim marriage: she has felt equal to all these tasks.

For this, for waiting for her husband to come to her and take her virginity, she feels utterly unprepared for in a way that she hadn't anticipated. What exactly is expected of her in this matter?

And Guthild finishes brushing out her hair, and Éomer is still not here.

'I wear my hair in a braid at night', Lothíriel reminds Guthild when the maid puts down the brush and steps away. She might as well get as ready for bed as she can, Lothíriel supposes.

Guthild purses her mouth. 'It is not my place to say, I think, but I will say it, my lady: the king will like it better unbound.'

'Indeed it is not your place to tell me how to wear my hair', Lothíriel snaps and instantly regrets it. She turns to her maid. 'Do you believe so?' she asks her. Guthild is about ten years older than her.

Guthild nods. 'Men like touching women's hair. And your hair especially, my lady…' she takes a lock of it and lets it go, looking at it as it falls, as if to demonstrate something. 'It is like black silk.'

Lothíriel takes a deep breath, trying to cling on to the shreds of her dignity, and decides not to ask how her unmarried maid knows what men like. 'Very well. The rest of the jewellery, then.'

Guthild takes off Lothíriel's pearl and diamond necklace and brooch (which she will get to keep, happily) while Lothíriel removes her bracelets and her rings other than the golden band Éomer gave her. She feels fairly certain that that she should wear to bed.

It is nice to be certain of one thing at least.

'Such fine jewellery', Guthild says, admiring, as she locks them all in Lothíriel jewellery chest. 'Similar to what queen Arwen wears, but she wears no pearls.'

'I am from the sea-shore', Lothíriel says, thoughts elsewhere, as she stands up from the stool. 'Pearls, the treasure of the sea, are traditional for the ladies of Belfalas.'

She takes off her belt. There is a heavy set of keys on it, pulling the slender silver girdle slightly askew. As part of the wedding ceremony, Éomer gave her all the keys of the household.

She sets the girdle on the dressing table, and the ring of keys on top of the chest of jewellery, and takes off her own overdress without waiting for Guthild's help or her opinions on whether she should wait for Éomer to undress her.

Lothíriel knows that she is being prickly but she's feeling too vulnerable to be anything else.

She turns her back to her maid and says, 'Petticoats next, would you help me with them.'

Lothíriel is very grateful when Guthild unties the three petticoats without commenting. Together they take off her stockings, and Lothíriel is left in only her stays and her shift. The wooden floor isn't cold under her feet like the marble in her room in the citadel of Dol Amroth.

'The stays, please, Guthild.' Lothíriel turns her back to her maid again.

The women of Rohan don't wear stays. Guthild has been learning how to lace and unlace Lothíriel's back-lacing stays for six days now, and has become quite adept at it. She has quick fingers and wit and tongue, and Lothíriel is on the whole rather satisfied with her. That is a relief for it would not be a good beginning to have to dismiss a servant chosen for her by the stern woman who has been keeping the king's household.

It is enough that there are dozens of traditions and customs that Lothíriel has to decide to embrace or to reject in favour of the way she is used to doing things. Wearing or not wearing stays is one such thing.

Guthild has only unlaced her halfway when the door opens and Éomer enters, and closes the door but stays there at the door.

He looks at Lothíriel and she looks at him. His hair gleams golden in the light of candles and the fire, and the plate and mail of his armour catch the light too, and she is in her underwear.

Guthild's hands have stilled as she waits to be told what to do.

After a few heartbeats Lothíriel gathers her courage, clears her throat, and says, 'Thank you, Guthild, you are dismissed for the night.'

Guthild doesn't move. 'My lady, the laces –'

'I can do it.' Éomer comes closer. There is something glinting in his eyes.

Guthild curtsies, leaves and closes the door behind her.

Éomer locks it, and then comes to Lothíriel. She looks at his face, her heart in her throat for several reasons.

The first thing he does is touch her hair that is all hanging beside her face to be out of the way, and then he moves behind her.

It is a relief not to have him right in front of her barely-covered breasts. How is she supposed to hold on to her dignity and pride when he can see her nipples through the sheer silk?

'Hmm', Éomer says. 'I may have overestimated my ability to undress you. I am not familiar with… this.'

'I'll guide you.' Lothíriel reaches behind her back to show him. 'Pull here, and hold on here.'

But instead of doing as she says, he puts her hands around her waist where the stays are still rather tight and says, 'You have a wonderful figure.'

Her voice wavering, she tells him, 'The stays flatter my figure. Wait till you see me without them to give compliments, my lord.'

She thinks she hears him muttering, 'Oh, I can't wait', and clearer he says, 'Don't call me your lord when we're alone. I am Éomer now.'

He begins unlacing her and in no time at all, the stays fall free. Lothíriel catches them and the cord that Éomer hands her and puts them on top of a chest, and then she turns back to him clad only in her low-cut, nearly see-through shift. He is still wearing all his clothes and armour.

Oh, how she hates feeling so vulnerable and unprepared. Her mother talked to her about the wedding night, of course, and then a day later her aunt Ivriniel came to her and said she wanted to have that talk too because, as she said, 'Your mother is a good woman but she is a prude'.

Lothíriel knows the… basics, and thanks to Ivriniel some other things that might happen, but she doesn't know what exactly Éomer wants of her, or how she will feel. And here before her tall, strong, eight-years-older, foreign husband, she feels young and stupidly inexperienced. He must have lain with many women, as handsome as he is, and a lord since birth.

She lifts her eyes back to his face to find him studying her; and not her chest, but her face.

'Are you well, Lothíriel?' he asks.

'I am – nervous', she says.

'That is natural, I think.' His hands wind about her waist again. 'You are quite unexperienced with men, are you not?'

There is no pity or anything like that in his voice, and that helps. Lothíriel replies, 'I have – I once kissed a boy. That is all.'

She surprises herself by putting her own hands on his upper arms, as if to steady herself perhaps, and then by starting babbling. 'It was my cousin Amdirgan years ago. I was fourteen, I think. He's three years older.' Horrified by her loss of control of her tongue, she keeps explaining nonetheless. 'He always called me pretty and didn't tease me like my other cousins so I thought it might be nice, but it was only strange and awkward for both of us. I suppose that he was too much like my brothers after all.'

Éomer grimaces. 'I met your cousin Amdirgan today. I would have preferred not to know that about him.'

'I… I am sorry?'

'No matter. We'll forget about him now. It will be all right, Lothíriel, this wedding night of ours. I don't mind your virginity. I expected it.'

'I never thought much about it before now', Lothíriel says. 'I never fell in love with anyone or anything like that that would have made it – difficult. Virginity was just one duty of my station among others.'

'And you are a dutiful sort of girl.' One of his hands rubs circles on her back. Even through her a layer of fabric, it makes her shiver. 'But would you prefer to wait a little, drink some mead perhaps, or sit and talk?' he asks.

Her pride could not bear making him wait. 'I don't want to wait, my l– Éomer', she says, lifting her chin, and then blushes at her own words. She said it because waiting would not make it any easier. But perhaps she also wants to see if his shoulders really are as broad as they look under his clothes, and she wants to find out what he wants to do to her – if it includes any of the things that aunt Ivriniel talked about that made Lothíriel blush scarlet.

'Just – please don't laugh at me if I do something wrong', she finds herself begging of him, ashamed of doing so even as she speaks the words.

Éomer frowns. 'I am not going to laugh at you.'

She can't look him in the eye. 'I do not know how I should do things, and you must know, you must have so much more experience –'

'I do', Éomer interrupts her rambling, and his words hardly make her feel better. Then he adds, 'But this is new to me too. I've never lain with my wife before.'

She buries her face in his chest, her need to hide greater than her reluctance to take such intimacies. He wears a chest plate of steel, and it is cold. But he puts his armoured arms tight around her and says, 'Lothíriel, I promise you that I will do my utmost to not hurt you, and to give you as much pleasure as I can. More pleasure than pain, though it is your first time.'

If he is a good husband, her aunt Ivriniel had said, he will give you pleasure of a kind you've never known before.

She draws back and he lets her, though he keeps his hands splayed on her back still.

'Thank you', she says. 'Thank you. I will stop – being stupidly nervous now.'

'That is hardly something you can decide, is it? Though you have determination enough to try, I know.' A small smile plays on his lips and in his sky-blue eyes. One of his hands comes to cup her cheek and then, his fingers following the arch of her cheekbone and the curve of her jaw and the line of her neck, he says, 'The people of your country say that there is elven-blood in the lords and ladies of Dol Amroth, much more than in others of Westernesse blood.'

His fingers are on her collarbone now. 'According to the tradition of our house the mother of the first prince of Dol Amroth was Mithrellas, an elf-maiden from Lothlórien', Lothíriel says, half-breathless.

Éomer hand drops lower, caressing her arm and side before dropping down to her waist again. His hands are warm and large and somehow reassuring though he touches her like no man ever has.

'It is easy to believe', he says. 'You have an elven-fairness about you.'

Flattery is only to be expected on a wedding night, Lothíriel decides, so that she will not fluster too much.

Yet fluster she does when Éomer bends his head the little that is needed and kisses her. His lips are softer than she expected and he tastes of the honey-mead beloved by his people, and it is easier than she thought it would be to lean into the kiss and to learn how to kiss him back.

It feels nothing like she remembers the kiss with cousin Amdirgan feeling even though she doesn't love this man either.

He is her husband, though, and Lothíriel is determined to do her best with him in all things and all ways. She raises her hands to his shoulders, touching his fair hair at last. Unlike his lips it is less soft than it looks.

But she forgets all about comparing textures when his tongue coaxes her to part her lips, and they kiss in a new way. It is still soft and sweet but much deeper, and for all its strangeness it makes her lose much of her self-awareness and to cling to him tighter.

He tangles a hand in her hair and bends her back a little, supporting much of her weight on his hands.

The only thing she can think of as they keep kissing for a long moment is that she wishes that he wasn't wearing so much armour and clothes. Her own thin shift doesn't protect her from the coldness of metal against her. How much nicer it would surely be to feel his bare skin close to hers.

It turns out that Éomer's thoughts have been on the same thing for when they part to breathe, he says, 'I am wearing far too much.'

He touches her cheek and then starts on the clasps of his cloak, taking two steps away from her to get some space to undress. As he steps back, he bumps into one her clothes trunks.

He looks around. 'There are too many things in this room', he says, as if noticing it only now. Sounding a little out of breath, he decides, 'We'll have much of it moved elsewhere. There's an empty room next to this one. It has been used by the queens of Mark, and most recently by Éowyn. It is yours now.'

'Your housekeeper showed it to me yesterday', Lothíriel says, a little dazed herself. She raises a hand to her lips and finds them sensitive.

Éomer's lips are red, too. 'I should have asked my squire to help with this', he says, irritated, as he tosses his cloak aside and starts on his armour.

'I can do it.' Relieved that there is something she does know how to do, Lothíriel explains, 'I have helped my brothers and father sometimes. Just the armour, though, of course. Not the – clothes.'

'But I will gladly accept your help with both.' His eyes sparkling again, Éomer stands still without her having to ask when Lothíriel comes to him and works out how to take off all of his armour that has been polished to a high sheen for his wedding day. It is a little different from what she is used to but not too much, and she is confident she does it faster than he would have himself.

Piece by piece Lothíriel takes it all off and puts it to where Éomer tells her to, and the clothes under the armour too until eventually he is left in only his undertunic, and something on his lower body that Lothíriel doesn't dare to look closely at.

'You make a good squire', Éomer says as he steps close to her again. 'And you're much prettier than Garwine.'

She smiles at him. 'Yet I'll let your squire have his work, and I will be content to be your queen.'

Éomer's light smile fades as he cups her cheek, a more intense and intent look taking its place. 'I am glad', he says, and then he is kissing her again, rougher this time, with a little less care.

Lothíriel doesn't mind. She likes the strength in him: she can feel it in his arms, and the muscles of his back that she can now touch through his tunic. She explores them, and his arms, and finds that she likes the corded muscles of his forearms in particular. She raises her hands to his face and is fascinated by his beard, the conflicting roughness-softness of it. It scratches her face a little as they kiss, making her skin tingle.

His hands are, as he keeps kissing her, no longer soft and sweet but rather hurried and… passionate. Less careful, too. They explore her back lower, below where her hair ends at her hips; he caresses her bottom and she jumps in his arms a little, making their teeth clack together very uncomfortably. But he soothes her by kissing her cheek and asks, 'Did you find that unpleasant?'

'No', Lothíriel says, no doubt blushing again, if she has stopped at all. 'I was only surprised.'

'Good.' He puts his lips back to hers and his hand to her bottom, cupping it and kneading a little, and isn't it strange how nice that feels, Lothíriel thinks in some distant part of her brain where she is still analysing everything.

She finds her own hands at his waist, bunching up his tunic to find bare skin.

Éomer breaks their kiss to tell her, 'Pull it up. My shirt.'

Lothíriel does. Pale skin and light brown hair and several scars cover the muscled expanses of his chest and stomach, and his shoulders are as delightfully broad and strong as she has imagined. She puts her hands on them and, encouraged by Éomer, explores downwards. By now she has gained some instinct for what would be good to do: for what she would like, and he too.

And he does seem to like her touch. Though when her fingers flutter on his stomach, close to the fabric that covers him below that, he grasps her wrist and pulls her close and says, low, 'Not yet', and he kisses her so hard that she cannot keep up.

He nibbles on her lips and then kisses her jaw, and her neck, and at the same time his hand, more gentle than his lips, caresses her side and stomach. She doesn't startle at it anymore, and she doesn't startle when his gentle hand moves up and cups her breast through thin silk.

It feels even better than when he did it to her bottom. She inhales sharply, and Éomer's lips return to hers, and as they kiss again, that exploring hand caresses and kneads and altogether begins driving Lothíriel crazy. She can't concentrate on the kissing so she pulls her lips from his and lays her head on his shoulder and gasps while in the small space between their bodies he continues lighting her body on fire.

After a moment – half a minute, a minute, or half an hour, Lothíriel could not tell – Éomer drops his hands, and drops quick kisses on the part of her chest that her shift leaves bare, and then she feels his hand on her thigh, drawing the hem of her shift upwards.

She raises her arms and lets him pull it up. He drops it on the floor and she doesn't even mind, even though it is silk and very expensive and she made it especially for today.

She doesn't mind it because he didn't take his eyes off of her for even a second as he undressed her, and she likes that, prefers it to careful handling of her clothes.

'Elven-beautiful but not otherworldly or unattainable – you're all mine to keep', he says after a moment of looking at her. His voice is low and sends delightful little shivers down Lothíriel's spine. Pinned by his gaze, she does believe that he finds her beautiful.

He is beautiful, too, in a masculine, dangerous way, his body built to perfection by years of practising the skills of war and then scarred by war.

'I want you to touch me again', she tells him, finally bold.

He laughs, delighted, and his golden hair catches the light again. 'I am glad, and will gladly do it', he says, and he grabs her and carries her to the big bed, pinning her down with his body as well as his gaze.

It is a good thing that thoughtful servants had set the covers aside earlier because Éomer wastes no time in exploring her body anew, now without even the shift in the way.

He keeps both halves of his promise, making sure that she is so ready that he causes her very little pain that passes soon in the onslaught of sweet, overwhelming pleasure, making Lothíriel lose control of herself in the best way ever.

A/N: I would like to note that Lothíriel's stays are not the same as what we usually think of when we think of a corset. Stays predate tight-lacing corsets, which were a Victorian thing. Lothíriel's stays have shoulder straps and they are not laced tight and aren't very restrictive.

Housekeeper feels too modern a word for Rohan but I couldn't think of another one for a female head servant.

There'll be a shorter second chapter about the morning after.