“Nothing. I mean, it’s good,” she said, starting as Remin spoke to her. “Will you be very late tonight?”
“I hope not. I’ll miss supper,” he said, reaching for another platter of eggs as if to fortify himself. “There are a great many details to be seen to before we leave.”
On the other side of the table, she saw the mischief in Mionet’s gaze and looked hastily down at her plate.
It wasn’t as if she was doing anythingwrong,Ophele told herself. Remin would certainly have listened if she asked him to reconsider his decision, even without this little…surprise. What was wrong with making sure he was in a good mood when she asked? He would enjoy all of it very much, and tease her when it was all over.
Probably.
Maybe.
Oh, stars, what if he didn’t?
***
“I don’t know,” she said later that night, wringing her hands as the hour of her doom approached. She was sitting ather dressing table with only Mionet and her guilty conscience for company. “He’s going to be tired, and you know he doesn’t like Segoile nonsense, and he already said no…”
“I think he has seen too much of the unpleasant parts of Segoile,” Mionet told her, brushing Ophele’s hair in long strokes. Ophele wore a new robe of shining blue satin, belted very securely about her trim waist. “I know you are both worried about going, my lady, and I will help as best I can, but that will include attempting to make the tripenjoyable.There is the possibility that you both might do more than grit your teeth and endure it.”
She had been saying that for two months now. Painting pictures of the fascinating people Ophele would meet, the beautiful places they would go, the endless shopping excursions for objects Ophele had never heard of. It did sound very nice, a comforting counterpoint to Ophele’s worries and Remin’s abject loathing of the whole exercise. It would be good to distract him from all of it for a night, wouldn’t it?
“It really looks all right?” she asked, looking at her reflection as Mionet clipped pearl earrings into place. “I’ve never…”
“It is lovely,” Mionet promised her, rising with such assurance that Ophele felt a pang of envy. Of course,shewould never be afraid to wear something like this. Mionet was perfect, tall and confident and beautiful. But Ophele had seen Lady Hurrell play tricks just like this, cruel pranks that her victims hadnotenjoyed, and what if there was something wrong with these clothes after all? What if it was like the prostitute thing again? She didn’t know, and there was no one she could ask, and she folded her hands tightly together in her lap.
“You would not…let me look a fool in front of Remin?” she finally asked, forcing the words out with a wooden tongue. It was an unworthy thought, but Ophele knew what she looked like.She and Lisabe were of an age, and Ophele had always suffered in comparison to her foster sister, scrawny and ill-favored, barely a woman at all.
Mionet’s hand paused in her brushing, her red eyebrows lifting.
“I don’t know if I…look right,” Ophele said, low. “In something like this…”
“You look perfectly lovely,” Mionet replied, sounding surprised. “Whyever would you say that? There’s nothing wrong with—ah. I see.”
For a moment, her lips tightened.
“My lady, there will always be people who try to make you feel ugly. The charge comes first, andthenthey find the evidence. The greatest beauty in the capital could pass them in the street, and if she is tall, then she is too tall, and if slender, then she is bony, and if she is ravishing in every way, why then, she has the wits of a turnip. If someone wishes to be hateful, they will find an excuse.”
Gently, Mionet nudged Ophele’s chin upward, turning her face toward the mirror.
“Every woman has parts of herself that she loves, and parts of herself that she hides,” she began, meeting Ophele’s eyes. “Your beauty is a story you choose to tell the world. For you, it is this heart-shaped face, these splendid eyes, these darling little hands and feet. And perhaps it is not these lips, which are a little small. You must know where your own beauty lies. Do you see it?”
Ophele looked.
Mionet had not made her into a stranger. That was her, with a rosy pout to her small mouth that made it look lush. Her large eyes glowed in the candlelight, her lashes dark, thick, and mysterious. And around that heart-shaped face, her long haircurled in a glossy frame, maple-warm beside the cream of her skin.
Ophele met her own golden eyes, and color flushed her cheeks.
“When you feel beautiful, it shows in your face,” said Mionet softly. “You should feel proud when you succeed. You are the best version of yourself. And you are making the whole world more beautiful for His Grace.”
Oh, she hoped so. She hoped she would please him. He wouldn’t admit it, but she knew he was very worried, and hardly sleeping at all, and even aside from all this business of surprises and strange costumes, she wanted him to forget his troubles. For one night, she hoped he would have sweet dreams.
Once Mionet bid her goodnight, Ophele was alone, seated by the fire and retaining absolutely nothing from the eighth volume of the Imperial Code in her lap. It was an age before she heard Remin’s heavy tread in the corridor, and she looked up as the lock clicked loudly.
“Wife,” he said, locking it shut and stooping to kiss her hello. “You don’t have to wait up for me.”
“I wasn’t tired,” she answered. “Have you eaten?”
“I had a bit.” He set a thick sheaf of paper on the table and began shedding his many layers of clothing on the way back to his dressing room. “But if you kept something back, I wouldn’t say no. Stars, I thought we’d be there ’til morning.”
