Chapter Seven #2
As if this had been timed, a tailor came through the doors of the study, with a rack full of suits.
Well. She wanted to do this, so she could stay.
He took his shirt off, and turned to the rack of suits. “What is the difference between these?”
He looked back at Fern, who was staring, eyes wide.
“If you do not wish to be involved,” he said.
“I’m going to be involved,” she responded.
He undid the buckle on his belt, worked it through the loops, and then cast it onto the floor. Then he took his pants off, which left him standing there in his black undergarments. And he could sense her eyes on him.
He looked at her again; her face was bright red, but she wasn’t backing down, and certainly wasn’t making a move to leave.
Well. It turned out he was not above a little manipulation himself. Not that he was trying to get her to do anything. It was only that he was proving to himself that she wanted him. And that it wasn’t simply a tactic on her part. The look on her face made it clear.
“There are three different styles,” the tailor said. “A more traditional tuxedo, a suit and then a slightly more modern choice.”
“Traditional,” he said.
“That is shocking,” Fern said.
“Is that a commentary on how predictable you find me, my queen?”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But you should know that I’m not shy about making commentary. I said exactly what I meant.”
“Of this I am aware.”
“I think you should do the suit,” she said. “I think it will feel more natural to you. More black. Less cummerbund.”
He lifted a brow. “I’m not even sure what cummerbund is.”
The tailor took a strip of shiny fabric off the rack.
“It’s this.”
“No,” he said, the rejection easy.
“I thought I might have guessed correctly.”
Which was how he found himself being dressed, and his wife watching all the while.
His wife. She wasn’t truly his wife.
She was…a complication.
He had been turning over their conversation in the library for days now.
The way that she had spoken about him not liking to be manipulated… Who did?
She spoke to him as if he had some sort of hidden trauma—well, he did. He knew well that he did.
His brain protected him from whatever it was that had befallen him the day of the coup, and beyond that, it had protected him by not allowing him to remember the happier times of his family. Which would have only been painful. He could only miss the idea of them. But not them.
He didn’t bemoan the missing memories.
But she made him wonder… No. There would be no wondering.
The suit was fitted expertly to his body, then removed from him. And before he could dress again, the tailor left to see to his work, and left him, wearing nothing, standing there with Fern.
“Obviously, I couldn’t act as if your body was a shock to me. We’re meant to be married.” She turned away from him.
“Is that why you were staring so intently?”
“No. I was staring intently because you have a nice body.”
She looked over her shoulder. “You must know that’s true.”
“I’ve never thought about it one way or the other.”
“Surely you must know that somehow your lovers respond to it.”
“Are you interested in having a dialogue about my previous lovers?”
“Perhaps.”
“Whatever game you’re playing, I don’t like it.”
“Must everything be a game?”
“I fear that everything must be.”
“And if it wasn’t, I suppose then it would be very serious, and would therefore have much further reaching implications.”
“Perhaps.”
He put his pants back on, buckled the belt. She was still determinedly turned away.
“And what are you wearing to this event?”
“That’s going to be a surprise.”
“A surprise? Why?”
He wanted to know. And yet at the same time he didn’t want her to know that it felt significant to him. But he was allowing himself to imagine her in a glorious gown.
He hadn’t seen her in anything like that since the wedding.
She had been…a vision.
Resplendent.
He had wanted her.
Utterly.
He still did.
This was the trouble with living with a woman. With her being his wife, even in a place the size of the palace. He couldn’t truly escape her.
“I didn’t know any of my previous lovers,” he said. “It was always opportune moments. Towns that we would be passing through.”
“Ah. I see. So casual sex is your thing.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I would say that much like I would try a different pub when we passed through towns, looking for whatever meal we might find, getting something to satisfy my hunger, I would treat sex the same way.
It is an appetite, nothing more. There is no need to feel shame about it.
There is no need to turn it into something more than it is. ”
“Spoken like a man.”
“Why do you think that’s masculine of me?”
“Because you have the physical power. Even with this life that you didn’t choose, nobody sold your body away.
By promising me to a stranger, my father promised my virginity to a man that I didn’t want.
By kidnapping me and intending to take me as your wife, you laid a claim on it too.
But you don’t think about being forced into bed, do you?
So, of course, to you it feels simple. Of course to you it feels like something that shouldn’t carry weight, or shame. But for me, it can’t be that way.”
Her words were sobering in a way he hadn’t anticipated. “But I have not forced you into anything,” he said, the incendiary kiss burning between them.
“No,” she said. “You haven’t. But I didn’t know that. Not when I ran from you. You think that my wanting choices is silly. You think that my having dreams is silly.”
“You said this to me once before.”
“And you didn’t understand. I can understand why that feels shallow to you. Why can’t you understand for me that it feels like everything?”
“I don’t have practice trying to understand other people.”
“Did you even have friends growing up?”
“No. I was a servant, for all intents and purposes.”
She turned around and looked at him, her gaze landing at the center of his chest, and then quickly moving to his eyes. “A servant who was meant to be king?”
“It wasn’t so bad as that. It was lonely. But then I had a lot of time to decide who I was going to be.”
“Did you have a mentor? Somebody who…came alongside you and told you that you were the chosen one?”
“No. I decided to be the chosen one. I decided that nobody was going to fix the mess. And that it was my blood that made it my responsibility.”
“You never thought about running away and leaving this place?”
“No. Because these are my people. I owe them my best attempt. Even if it isn’t perfect.”
He had never shared any of this with anyone before. It was strange. To talk about something so personal.
He had been a symbol of revolution. And he had found people who agreed with him.
When he wanted them to fight alongside of him, and form a coalition to oust the government, he had no longer been lonely, but what they had spoken of was not personal.
They had spoken of ideals. They had spoken of government.
Of war. They had been prepared to die if need be.
But then they had managed to get the military onto their side. And it hadn’t been necessary.
They had taken everything down from the inside; by the time he had walked into the throne room, it had been reclaimed.
A bloodless revolution, even though he had been prepared for violence.
This woman… She challenged him. Danced with him. Got him to talk to her.
It was such a strange thing.
And he found that the more he spoke to her, the more he wanted to speak to her.
It was like one of those little cakes. He had tried one, and it only made him want another.
He was studied in self-denial. Much less so in the craving of things.
“And what about you? You grew up entirely in a palace. And yet you were not treated like royalty.”
“No,” she said. “I told you I have five brothers. And my father could only use me one way.
“My mother was just… I don’t know why she married him.
It was just because she had aspirations to be queen.
If it was political, if her hand was forced the way that my father intended to force mine…
I don’t know, and I don’t know that I ever will.
Because I don’t know how to talk to her.
It’s like she’s withdrawn from her own life.
All she cares about is fashion and manicures.
I like those things too, but I also like to speak about other things.
I judged her harshly for a very long time.
But now I wonder if that’s simply how she survives it.
But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hollow myself out to be a vehicle for a man’s plans. ”
“You were going to do what he wanted,” he said.
“I didn’t especially have a choice. You would think that I would’ve missed the opulence of the palace when I went to the convent.
I think my father thought that I would. I think he found it somewhat amusing.
Like it would be lowering for me to be sent there, like I would maybe learn a lesson, and be more grateful.
But I wept in relief when he left me on the Isle of Skye. ”
Her eyes filled with tears even speaking of it.
“All I wanted was to be left to my own devices there. And I did find the divine. I did find a connection to myself that I didn’t know I could have.
I found thoughts that I’d never had before.
And strength, much more strength. I thought a few times about running away when I was in the palace, but I really didn’t know how to survive away from my family.
Or what it would look like. But one of the reasons I ran from you so easily was that by then I knew what independence felt like. I didn’t want to go back.”
“You don’t like being royalty?” Guilt lanced him. It was so unfamiliar he almost had a difficult time identifying it.
“No. I don’t. I find it to be…” She stopped speaking.
“I don’t actually know what it is to be royal.
For me it has always meant existing to do the bidding of someone else.
Not even for the good of my people. Maybe I would feel differently if I was the one in charge.
But for me, it has meant living a life of gilded subjugation. ”
“Your father’s foolish for not respecting your mind. I understand why you’re angry at me, but I fear that you are clever and insightful.”
“You fear it? Well.” There was some satisfaction in that word.
“A brilliant mind is a fearsome thing.”
“You were so angry at me that night.”
“I’m not accustomed to…” He didn’t even know what to call it. Whatever this was.
“Friendship?”
Friendship. He turned the idea over in his mind, and felt that it fit the situation uncomfortably.
And yet, it was possibly closer than many other things. He had shared things with her that he had otherwise never shared with anyone.
He felt compassion for her. Even sadness when she shared some of her life in Cape Blanco.
“Friendship,” he said again.
“Yes. Or maybe we’re moving toward something like it. Is that so absurd?”
“Not absurd,” he said. “Just…unexpected.”
“If you let me, if you stop resisting, it really would help you.”
“I still don’t wish to tell my life story to strangers in a ballroom.”
“You don’t have to. But it would perhaps be good to have an easy version of events that you can share.”
“Ah yes. For my place in the history books.”
“You don’t care about that, do you?”
“No. All I wanted was to survive for this moment. For this task.”
“And do you know what to do now that you have survived?”
The question was pointed. And he still didn’t have a shirt on. He wanted to move closer to her, and put her hand right at the center of his chest, where her eyes kept dipping. But he supposed that wouldn’t be the act of a friend.
Part of him rebelled against that word. He was a warrior, a conqueror, and he should behave in that way, not like this.
And yet her words, the revelations that she had given him about her life, the way she had been treated, the lack of choice, made him…
Care.
He was used to caring about causes, not about people.
But perhaps it was the next step. What came after survival.
Living, in some capacity.
“We would be having cake at the ball?”
Cake seemed easier than whatever was happening now.
“Yes,” she said, scrunching her nose up. “There will be. I noticed that you liked it.”
“Oh. That is… Thank you.”