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“Mother. You need not speak to her that way.”
Again she made an impatient tsk, lifting her upper lip slightly to reveal her front teeth. She yanked on the ribbon of my corset and I gasped as the breath was forced from my lungs. Moving quickly up my back, she looped one finger through each cross tie, pulling the ribbon free.
As the corset began to loosen, I found I could finally breathe. But it also unleashed a torrent of emotions, as if being unbound let my heart feel the full magnitude of what had happened. And what was about to happen to me. In merely two weeks.
My nose stung with a rush of sudden tears. My mother paused her unlacing and stared at me.
“Shame on you. You should be thanking me for arranging such an excellent match for you, not standing here sniveling like a petulant child.”
My mother yanked my corset off and stood beside me, fuming at my reflection in the full-length mirror. She pinched my upper arm between first and second finger, the way I’d seen butchers examine hogs.
“Too thin, too stubborn, too everything. You’ve been a spoiled for too long. It’s time for you to grow up. And fatten up. We can’t have the children you give the prince coming out as scrawny as you!”
Children. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind until now. Prince Galen had repulsed me so deeply that I hadn’t even let my thoughts go to the intimacies of marriage. But to think of that man taking me, fathering my children…
I pressed the back of my hand to my lips to keep down a wave of nausea. Hot bile singed my throat.
Now my mother began work on unfastening my skirt, pressing her lips together unpleasantly as she focused on the small buttons that ran down from my lower back. “Your stepfather and I will be going with Prince Galen upon his departure tomorrow. There’s much to discuss about trade and how best to unite our kingdoms. War is over and it is time for peace. That is to be celebrated. I had hoped that you would be able to come with us. But clearly,” here she popped her head up over my shoulder, looking me in the eye through my reflection in the mirror, “clearly you’re a bigger threat to the marriage if you’re with us than if you stay here.”
That, at least, was a bit of comfort. Two weeks of complete freedom before the gauntlet fell.
But then my mother continued. “After the marriage, you’ll be Prince Galen’s responsibility. And I can assure you,” she said with a knowing chuckle, “he’ll put a stop to all your hunting and wandering. All your foolishness will be a thing of the past. Thank goodness!”
Again, the sting of tears snuck up on me. What my mother had always called my foolishness was, in fact, the most simple and basic part of me. I had always felt that despite my circumstances, some part of me remained untamed. Marriage would surely change all of that. And I’d become as dead and dry as one of my hunting trophies. The thought of it was more than I could bear.
Falroy might even choose to leave. He needed to run free and honestly, could I blame him? Perhaps I’d bond with some home-loving animal. A cat or a lap dog. Or perhaps I’d never find that relationship again.
Fighting back my tears with all my might, I looked at my mother through bleary eyes. I forced a yawn and blinked a few times to stem the flow of tears. Or to excuse them, if I couldn’t stop them after all.
“I’m so tired, mother. Do you think we could talk about this more tomorrow, before you leave?”
Do not let your chin quiver. Do not. Any sign of weakness and she’d be on me like a hawk on a mole.
“Fine. I’ll speak to you in the morning before we leave,” she said, scooping up my dress and taking it with her, like she was the keeper of the jewel house and didn’t trust me to be left alone with something so valuable. “While we’re gone, Maksim will have charge of you.”
Here again, she focused hard on my face for any sign of emotion. I gave her none. What I was feeling about Maksim was such a torrent of confusion, I hardly knew how to place him in my own mind. Brother? Lover? Tormentor?
My mother needled me a little further.
“I warn you now, your stepbrother is known to have a very heavy hand. If you step out of line with that one, you’ll find yourself in the dungeon. So behave.”
I nodded quickly, keeping my gaze down, keeping my emotions hidden. She was surely exactly right; if I angered Maksim, I’d be in a world of trouble. But some deep, secret, forbidden part of me wanted just that. To test him, to learn him. To be his prey.
