The Beauty of Darkness - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,16
wasn’t even sure how to answer him. She had become an enigma for me. “She shrugged off Aunt Cloris’s admonishments,” I told him. “She said it was healthy for me to run and play with my brothers. She encouraged it.”
But then something changed. Where she had once sided with me against the Royal Scholar, she began to take his council; where she had never been short with me, she began to lose her temper. Just do as I say, Arabella! And then, almost apologetically, she would draw me into her arms and whisper with tears in her eyes, Please. Just do as I say. After I’d had my first cycle, I had run into her chamber to ask her about the gift that hadn’t yet appeared. She was sitting by the fire with her stitchery. Her eyes had flashed with anger, and she missed a stitch, her needle drawing a bead of blood on her thumb and staining the piece she’d been working on for weeks. She stood and threw the whole thing into the fire. It will come when it comes, Arabella. Don’t be in such a hurry. After that I only cautiously brought up the gift. I was ashamed, thinking she’d had a vision of my shortcomings. It hadn’t occurred to me that she was the cause of them. “I think my mother is somehow part of all this, but I’m not sure how.”
“Part of what?”
Other than the kavah on my shoulder, I didn’t know what to say. “She wanted to send me off to Dalbreck.”
“Only after my father proposed it. Remember, it was his idea.”
“She went along easily enough,” I said. “My signature on the contracts hadn’t dried before she was calling for dressmakers.”
A flash of surprise suddenly brightened his face, and he laughed. “I forgot to tell you. I found your wedding gown.”
I stopped my horse. “You what?”
“I plucked it out of the brambles when I was tracking you down. It was torn and dirty, but it didn’t take up much room, so I shoved it in my pack.”
“My dress?” I said in disbelief. “You still have it?”
“No, not here. It was too risky to carry around in Terravin. I was afraid someone would see it, so when I got the chance, I stuffed it behind a manger stored up in the loft. Enzo’s probably found it and thrown it out by now.”
Berdi maybe, but not Enzo. He never did any more tidying up than he had to.
“Why in the gods’ names would you keep it?” I asked.
A smile played behind his eyes. “I’m not really sure. Maybe I wanted something to burn in case I never caught up with you.” A disapproving brow shot up. “Or to strangle you with if I did.”
I suppressed a grin.
“Or maybe the dress made me wonder about the girl who had worn it,” he said. “The one brave enough to thumb her nose at two kingdoms.”
I laughed. “Brave? I’m afraid no one in my kingdom would see it that way, nor likely yours.”
“Then they’re all wrong. You were brave, Lia. Trust me.” He started to lean over to kiss me, but was interrupted by the whinny of Jeb’s horse not far behind us.
“I’m afraid we’re holding everyone up,” I said.
He scowled, jerking his reins, and we moved on.
Brave enough to thumb her nose at two kingdoms. I think that was how my brothers saw it too, but certainly not my parents—nor the cabinet.
“Rafe, have you ever wondered why I was the one who had to go to Dalbreck to secure the alliance? Couldn’t it have been accomplished just as well by you coming to Morrighan? Why is it always the girl who must give up everything? My mother had to leave her homeland. Greta had to leave hers. Princess Hazelle of Eilandia was shipped off to Candora to create an alliance. Why can’t a man adopt his wife’s homeland?”
“I couldn’t because I am going to rule Dalbreck one day. I can’t do that from your kingdom.”
“You aren’t king yet. Were your duties as a prince any more important than mine as a princess?”
“I’m also a soldier in Dalbreck’s army.”
I remembered my mother’s claim that I was a soldier in my father’s army, an angle of duty she had never used before. “As I am in Morrighan’s,” I said.
“Really,” he replied, his tone dubious. “You may have had to leave your homeland, but did you consider everything you would have gained as my queen?”