The Consolation Prize (Brides of Karadok #3) - Alice Coldbreath Page 0,67
the passage outside. Soldiers, she thought, turning dizzy, as her stomach pitched and rolled. They’ve come to drag me away.
She saw Armand’s head turn quickly and then, the door was flung back and Otho was leading a small party into the great hall. They were not soldiers, Una saw, forcing herself to draw a pained breath. Just three men and a woman.
“Oh gods,” muttered Armand under his breath. “Brace yourself. It’s my bloody family.” He dragged his chair back, plastering a smile onto his face. “Welcome! Father! Brothers! All!”
*
After that came a round of confused introductions that Una unfortunately felt completely removed from. Her head swam and she still felt quite sick with the dread that had overtaken her at the unexpected interruption.
Desperately, Una tried to focus on the tall flinty-eyed stranger who she was sure Armand had introduced as his father, Sir Hugo de Bussell, and then the other two males who curiously did not resemble her husband at all. They must be Henry and Roger, she realized after they had been persuaded to sit themselves down and been given trenchers and plied with wine and bread.
The younger one’s eyes nearly fell out of his head when Rose passed him his goblet of wine and Una frowned, for had not Armand said his youngest brother was bound for the clergy? Everything seemed to have got muddled up in her head, and she gave herself a slight shake to try and rouse herself from her stupor.
Armand turned away from the hearty conversation he was conducting toward the menfolk of his family and refilled her goblet. “Drink this,” he muttered, passing an arm around her back. “Are you going to faint?”
“I—I don’t think so,” Una gasped out. “Not now.” She swallowed down half the cup of wine. “I don’t know what’s come over me,” she said miserably.
His hand at her waist, squeezed comfortingly. “A perfectly natural reaction, I assure you,” he said staunchly. “I told you they were a parcel of frights.”
Una gave a choked laugh. “Nothing of the sort,” she said weakly.
Just then, a woman’s querulous voice was raised above the hubbub of conversation. “Two kinds of meat at one sitting, Henry, mark you,” she said in a thin, reedy voice. “I hope you could never accuse me of such folly, even in the early days of our marriage.”
“Such extravagance would bankrupt me within a twelvemonth,” replied Henry sourly. “But it seems my brother is above such considerations.”
Una glanced down and saw the other woman eyeing her gold gown with a scandalized expression. She was clad respectably, if shabbily, in a velvet robe of navy blue, which looked a little threadbare at the elbows and hems.
“Ah, but we are newlyweds, my dear Muriel,” Armand boomed. “You must allow us our homecoming feast.” He gave them a beaming smile. The woman sniffed, her long nose quivering. Una thought she muttered something about the extravagant use of candles, and the harassed-looking Henry tutted.
“Roger!” Sir Hugo barked suddenly, and Armand’s younger brother was forced to divert his rapt attention from the fair Rose and back to his supper plate.
“Sorry, Father,” he mumbled.
Una turned her head to Armand’s ear and murmured. “I’m so sorry, but I did not perfectly take it in, that lady is your—”
“My sister-in-law, the sainted Muriel,” Armand supplied, then a look of horror passed over his handsome face. “Please don’t say you mistook her for my twin sister!”
Una leaned against him heavily. “No, no,” she said, and glancing at her plate realized she was not going to be able to eat even a morsel of her food. “Oh dear, I do hope Mr. Beverley won’t be offended.”
Armand gave her a shrewd look, then reached over and stabbed a piece of beef from her plate and ate it. For the rest of the meal, he ate alternately from their plates, so it appeared Una had cleared hers. No one seemed to notice, though she was sure people must think it strange that he kept her clamped to his side in such an odd fashion.
“I won’t fall over,” she whispered at one point and he smirked.
“Ah, but what you don’t realize is that I’m the one clinging on to you. For moral support,” he added with a wink.
Una could only give thanks once again, that the fates had blessed her with so good-natured a husband.
Toward the end of the meal, he raised a toast to his “good lady wife,” which was echoed heartily by the servants and faintly by her mealy-mouthed in-laws,