Chapter One
The people in the neighborhood of Keldwood Cross hated the bride.
Not that they had met her, of course, but village, manor, farm, and hamlet were agreed.
No female from Marshhold-Over-Water could possibly be anything but a villain, and it was a terrible thing that the Young Master was going to have to marry the daughter of Marshhold’s marquess.
Or so they were saying in the tavern. Lord Pelham Townswell sat so quietly in the corner that they must have forgotten he was there. On the other hand, perhaps they remembered and intended him as their audience, for they did not blame his father, their own duke.
Neither did Pel blame his father. The Duke of Harwood was in a difficult spot, and clearly his people realized that. The Prince Regent himself had taken an interest in the Marshhold-Keldwood feud, and the two heads of family had been commanded to make peace and to seal it with a marriage!
Since Harwood had an unmarried heir, and the Marquess of Ilton’s eldest daughter was also unwed, they were the obvious choices for the arrangement.
Pel’s older brother was furious about it.
Clay—Earl of Clayton was the Harwood courtesy title—had been drinking for two solid weeks, and his prognostications for the marriage got gloomier by the day.
Pel wondered what the bride thought. And what of Ilton’s people?
Were the people of Marshhold as upset about the marriage as the people of Keldwood?
Did Lady Margherita Ruthermond dread the marriage as much as Clay?
Probably more. After all, Clay would have to live with Lady Margherita, but the lady would have to live with Clay, his family, the household, and an entire countryside who had already decided to hate her.
At least Ilton was conscious of the size of the problem.
He had asked to have it written into the marriage agreement that his daughter must be treated well, and that—if she could show grounds for complaint—she could return to her family.
In that case, the Duke of Harwood and the lady’s husband would need to pay massive damages.
Father’s reaction to that clause had been to send his secretary with a letter to the Prince Regent, complaining that the clause was an insult, and showed Ilton’s ill intentions.
The Prince Regent decreed the clause was to stand, and Father had spent fifteen minutes breaking every vase, dish, cup, and china statue in the library, where he had been when his secretary reported.
Clay and Pel had taken the secretary out for a drink, and then another, until they heard exactly what the Prince Regent had said. “Wise man, Ilton. Young Clayton had better behave himself and treat the Ruthermond girl well, or she will beggar the Townswells.”
When Father was over his tantrum, he declared that the new bride was to be given every courtesy, and pampered like a princess, and Clay had begun drinking. So far, he had not stopped.
Pel was glad to be only an observer in the coming carriage wreck of the Harwood-Ilton marriage. Right up until the moment that Father realized that his eldest son was too drunk to send to the wedding, so he decided to offer up Pel on the altar of marriage instead.
*
Mima’s sister Marge had locked herself in the tower and was refusing to come out.
Papa said she would give up when she was hungry, but Mima asked the servants, and had discovered that Marge had given orders.
All the cisterns were stocked with fresh spring water, the wine store replenished, and the larder fully stocked.
The artful woman had told the servants she was merely preparing against the possibility that the evil Townswells might break the marriage agreement and attack the Ruthermonds.
Of course, they believed it, for no one thought this proposed marriage was anything except a trick by the wicked inhabitants of Keldwood Cross. So, they had willingly provided the stores their lady could easily live on for months, if she did not mind an almost endless supply of preserved food.
No one had ever said that Lady Margherita Ruthermond was stupid.
Spoiled, yes. Willful, certainly. And determined not to, as she put it, sacrifice her happiness on the altar of the family feud.
As always, Mama sided with Marge, and when Papa growled that she and her daughter were both selfish termagants, she took to her bed.
After ranting for three days, Papa sent for Mima. “You shall have to go in Margherita’s place, Mima,” he decreed. “Someone has to marry the Townswell cub, or we have broken the agreement.” He shuddered.
“Would that be such a bad thing?” Mima asked. “After all, we have been ignoring the Townswells for three hundred years, except for a few broken bones here and there. We can go back to doing so again, can we not?”
Papa shook his head. “It’s more than a few broken bones, though, Mima, isn’t it? Wrecking the Lion and Harp, beating the Ruthermond steward until the doctor feared for his life, blowing up the bridge across Coombe Water.”
He held up both hands, palms out. “You are going to say that was all the Townswells, but for everything they did, our people did something as bad or worse. And if I find the fool who led the attack on a Royal Mail coach because they mistook it for a Ruthermond carriage, I shall have their guts.” He thumped a fist into a hand to emphasize his point.
Mima, who knew perfectly well that the idiots in question were her two youngest brothers, kept her mouth shut.
“The riot in Coombe was the last straw,” said Papa, with a sigh, “and you know as well as I do, it was as much our people’s fault as it was theirs.”
Two packs of young hotheads, both the worse for drink. But property had been damaged and a Coombe innkeeper who had tried to stop the violence had been knocked unconscious.
Even worse, the daughter of another neighbor, the Duke of Norcross, had been caught up in the riot.
As far as Mima knew, the lady had not been physically hurt, but she had been shoved, and she had been scared.
Since her father had powerful allies in both Houses of Parliament, and the ear of the Prince Regent besides, neither Papa nor Harwood had been able to brush the riot into oblivion.
“I am sorry, Mima,” Papa said. “But now that the Prince Regent is involved, and some of my fellow lords are talking about sending in an outside magistrate… I had no choice but to sign the agreement that his highness demanded. If I do not produce a bride for Harwood’s son, I will be foresworn.
Even worse, the agreement says that, if one party defaults, he must pay a fine of ten thousand pounds and surrender the disputed lands in Coombe.
Do you want to hand Harwood a win of that magnitude? ”
So, Papa had bowed to pressure from the Crown and his peers and had put his pride on the line, Marge had thrown a tantrum, and Mima was to be the human sacrifice to save them all. That is, if Marge did not appear to do her duty.
But perhaps Papa’s plan wouldn’t work, after all.
“Will the marriage not be invalid? When my cousin married, his best friend gave the wrong name to the bishop, and they had to get another license.” The cousin in question was named Alfred, but the friend, who knew him only as Fred, had told the bishop’s clerk that it was Frederick.
But Papa was shaking his head. His tone was sympathetic but firm when he explained, “The Prince Regent organized four licenses, so that either of my daughters could marry either of Harwood’s sons.”
Mima signed. There was no way out, then. Unless Marge could be made to change her mind.
On the off chance that his eldest daughter would put in a last-minute appearance, Papa instructed Mima to keep the possible substitution a secret, so no-one would be able to say that he had substituted a bride and then changed his mind again.
Talking to Mama did not help. When Mima visited her to point out how unfair it was for Mima to suffer because Marge refused, Mama pulled the blankets over her head and called for her tonic.
As for Marge, when Mima went to the tower to plead with her sister, Marge completely ignored her, refusing to open the door or even look out the window.
That left Mima in the courtyard at the foot of the tower, shouting her reasons for Marge to come down and get married. It was ridiculous. Pointless, too, for Marge might as well have been on the other side of the county for all the notice she took.
So here Mima was, packed into a carriage with her maid, her wedding dress, and her hope chest, on her way to the nearby market town of Coombe—neutral ground for both feuding families and their supporters.
Which was, as her father had pointed out, why the riot had been the last straw for the county’s lords, who had ignored the feud until it affected their own people, but who had all joined in a petition to the Crown after the Coombe incident.
Even Mima—who had grown up on stories about the dreadful actions of the Keldwood Cross people and the righteous revenge of Marshhold’s champions—had been shocked at the list of offenses the lords had included in their petition. Ten closely written pages, and those were just the recent incidents.
Truly, any reasonable person would regard peace as a good idea. The problem was that, when it came to the feud, reasonable people were in short supply even on her side of Coombe Water. On the other side, she imagined they were worse.
She would soon find out. She, Papa, and all their party would stay at the Crown and Unicorn tonight, and make their way to St. Agnes Church for the wedding in the morning. And then she would be going back to Keldwood Cross with her new husband. What happened after that, she dreaded to think.