Sixty
“I visited with the Duchesse d’Orléans yesterday,” declares the Marquise d’Alen?on, “and she had the most charming new tea service!”
“Have you seen Lady Louise’s pretty riding hat?” asks the Comtesse de Marignac. “I must find out the name of her milliner.”
“If you ask me, hydrangeas have no place in an herbaceous border,” the Baronne de Beauvais says with a sniff.
Arabella is in the castle’s stable yard, seated on a placid mare. Her smile is painted on, like a fairground puppet’s. She wears a riding suit of pink trimmed in black, for the prince finds pink most becoming. Stiff petticoats rustle under her skirt. A starched-linen corset encases her torso, its laces pulled so tight they creak.
She no longer grits her teeth at small talk, and only occasionally digs her nails into her palms. And if her heart breaks every time she passes a castle or cathedral … well, what does it matter? It’s hidden away in a cage of bone where no one can see the cracks.
The prince sits atop Horatio, Arabella’s own magnificent stallion, as it is deemed unseemly for a princess-to-be to ride such a spirited animal. Jealousy sparks in her eyes at the sight of them, but she douses it before anyone notices. Her father is laughing this morning; her mother is smiling. She will not ruin their happiness.
“A glass of port here!” Constantine bellows, snapping his fingers in the air. “God’s truth! Where is that blasted boy?”
Henri, carrying a bottle and glasses on a tray, hurries to the prince and pours him a drink. Constantine snatches it from his hand. Henri bows. As he turns and walks away, Constantine leans out of his saddle and boots him in the backside.
The boy goes sprawling. The tray hits the courtyard’s cobblestones with a dull clang. The bottle and glasses smash. As he struggles to his feet, his face scraped raw, a braying laugh fills the courtyard.
The lords and ladies of the court know better than to stand there in stony-faced silence while a prince whoops and howls. There are only snickers at first, then giggles, then full-throated guffaws.
Arabella’s painted-on smile slips. Anger threatens. Alarmed, she closes her eyes and takes a few shallow breaths; the whalebone in her corset does not allow for deep ones. She hears Constantine, her betrothed, the man she will spend the rest of her life with, bark at Valmont to polish a smudge off his boot, shout at Florian to tighten Horatio’s girth strap, and order Percival off like a kitchen boy to fetch a plate of cakes.
When she opens her eyes again, her smile is back in place. She chats with the duchess about teapots, relieved to feel only what she has trained herself to feel—nothing.
The riders are all mounted now. The hounds are brought from the kennels. They bark and bay, impatient to be off. The hunt will soon begin. But then Horatio whickers unhappily and kicks at another horse. The horse shies and its rider nearly topples off.
“Slacken his reins,” Arabella whispers.
She knows that the stallion is headstrong and proud and does not suffer fools.
He is a horse fit for a prince, but the prince is not fit for the horse.
Constantine pulls harder on his reins, trying to keep Horatio under control, jerking the bit cruelly. Nostrils flaring, Horatio tosses his head and dances in circles, trying to spin the monster off his back.
The Austrian archduke laughs as Constantine tries to keep his seat. Wounded pride flames into anger on Constantine’s handsome face, branding his cheeks red.
“The girth is too tight, you fool!” he yells at Florian, striking him with his crop.
Arabella pales as she watches him. She presses her lips together, knowing she must say nothing. She forces her face to hide what she’s thinking: How could a man so beautiful be so hideous?
The prince strikes Florian again. This time, the crop opens a gash across his cheek.
Arabella gasps. “Stop it!” she says. The words break free from her lips against her will, but no one hears them. They are drowned out by the groom’s cry, the prince’s shouts, the horse’s frantic whinnies.
Arabella needs to make herself heard. She takes a breath, but her corset is so tight, it’s a struggle to draw enough air to speak, never mind shout.
The duchess, mounted next to her, grabs her arm, sinking her nails in. “Keep quiet.It’s not for you to upbraid the prince.”
But someone will, Arabella desperately hopes. Someone will stop him. His brother, his father … someone.
Horatio stamps his feet frantically. Grooms and servants scatter. The prince lashes into him mercilessly. The defenseless animal gives a piteous cry.
And deep down inside Arabella, something shatters.
“Dear God!” she cries, taking up her reins. “Will nobody stop him?”
The duchess snatches her reins. “Stay where you are, you foolish girl!” she commands.
But it’s too late.
Arabella rips her reins out of her mother’s hand and touches her heels to her horse’s sides.
“Stop! Stop it, you brute!” she shouts.
She raises her own crop, aiming to knock the prince’s out of his hand, but poor Horatio does not know that. He sees her coming toward him and his terror only grows.
It happens so fast. It only takes a heartbeat, but for Arabella, it will last a hundred years.
The stallion rears. The prince tumbles from the saddle. There’s a sharp crack as he hits the cobblestones. He twitches, then groans. The breath leaves his body. He lies there, perfectly still, his eyes empty, his blood seeping into the cracks between the stones.