Chapter 2 – A Wedding #4
He spoke to his men, but never to her. She didn’t want him to talk to her, anyway.
She wanted nothing to do with him. There was nothing to look at but the rutted road and naked forest, and boredom slumped side by side with her resentment, a sore trial for a girl who had always had books for companions.
The knowledge that marriage to a man who hated her waited at the end of this dreary road oppressed her.
“I had to be sure, Princess,” he said abruptly, after they had been riding in silence for at least a year.
She said nothing. Even the word princess was loaded with his scorn.
In one breath he was both condemning her for being the Emperor’s daughter and ridiculing her for doing it badly.
It wasn’t her fault she had no dresses of her own, or that he hadn’t given her time to gather the things she needed to look less like a beggar’s brat.
All she could do was try to bear it with dignity, and he wasn’t even allowing her that.
“Don’t sulk.”
“I am not sulking,” she said, her voice giving a traitorous quiver. She was too miserable even to be afraid of him. “I am humiliated.”
He was silent for a moment.
“That was not my intention.”
That was not an apology. Lady Hurrell had been punctilious about the proper parts of an apology. That had not included either an admission of error or an expression of remorse.
They rode in frigid silence until the noon meal, where he gave her a chunk of bread and cheese and told her to stay near his horse but absolutely not to touch it.
When she took his hand to be lifted back in the saddle later, the worst of her anger and embarrassment had faded; Ophele had never been able to sustain a grudge.
But she was desperately unhappy, and looking at a future that seemed so bleak as to hardly be worth living.
Was it always going to be like this?
It seemed impossible that it would be any other way.
He was treating her like his horse, feeding her and bedding her down for the night, watching constantly to make sure she didn’t wander off.
She supposed she was lucky he hadn’t tied her to a picket.
But there was no chance of escape. The woods were still bare and her shoes were so big, she would have fallen flat on her face before she made it off the road.
No, there was no way she could run away, and miserable though she was, she knew more than anything that she did not want to die.
How had her mother endured it? Lady Rache Pavot had never married. She had become the Empress’s lady-in-waiting when she was seventeen, and then become pregnant with the Emperor’s child, an event that precipitated the Conspiracy.
Had her mother chosen to lie with the Emperor?
It was impossible to square the loving, gentle woman she remembered with something so ugly and tawdry, not to mention the bitter betrayal of the Empress she had served.
But perhaps that was why her mother had told her time and again: the only person you can control is you.
They would arrive in Celderline tomorrow.
And she hadn’t bathed or brushed her teeth in two days and while her second dress lacked the slept-in wrinkles of the first, it was even more tatty and ill-fitting.
She could see it in the duke’s eyes when he dragged her into the saddle the next morning, a slap of disapproval that made her face burn.
She spent the morning anxiously dragging her fingers through her tangled hair, craning her neck toward the horizon.
She had never been to a city. She had never seen a city.
Her mother had been exiled to Aldeburke before she was born, and Ophele had only seen a few pictures of cities in books.
She didn’t realize the strange black clouds on the horizon belonged to the city until they connected to chimneys, and at last she saw the vague shadows of distant rooftops, unmistakably manmade in their angular lines.
“Is that it?” she asked, her fingers clutching the edge of the saddle.
“Yes.”
Her heart gave a tremendous thud.
“Are we getting married today?”
“Tomorrow.”
It felt like a nest of serpents had taken up residence in her belly.
She could have cried. Could have pleaded with him to reconsider the virtues of Lisabe.
She could have tried to flee when they stopped for lunch, forced him to drag her down the aisle to the altar and wailed her protest at the top of her lungs.
She could make all of this as unpleasant and humiliating for him as it had been for her.
It would please her father tremendously, if he heard about it.
But in her heart, she was not the Emperor’s daughter. She was the daughter of Rache Pavot, who had accepted her fate with grace.
The city drew steadily nearer. There wasn’t much to see but the high city wall and the rooftops beyond, taller than any building she had ever seen before.
Around them, the duke’s knights shouted and shook out their cloaks, black lined with silver fur, and produced that ominous black standard with the bridge and crossed swords.
Distantly, she could hear shouting.
“Why are there so many people?” she asked, squinting at the crowds lining the road ahead, and the duke cursed under his breath.
“Miche,” he said, like an oath, and quickly rearranged her in his lap. “Turn this way,” he ordered, before she could protest. “Both legs over my right thigh. Good.”
With a flick of his hands, his heavy cloak fell over her, concealing everything but her face.
One massive arm slid around her waist to press her firmly against his chest as he spurred his horse to the front of the column, managing the reins with one hand.
It was just like the final bookplate in a romance she had once read, except his only reason for doing it was to conceal his bride’s house slippers and ragged dress.
Her long hair, unbound and unwashed, flapped loose to whip around them romantically and made the duke’s horse very uncomfortable.
For all the evil tales about Remin Grimjaw, the Duke of Andelin was of higher nobility than most people would see in a lifetime, and a war hero to boot.
His knights were a glorious sight with their shining armor and fluttering banners, and there were actual showers of petals as they approached the gates of the city.
Flocks of children scampered ahead of them and formed a shouting mob behind, and Ophele was stunned by the sea of faces, more people than she had imagined there could be in the whole world, clustered ten deep by the side of the road.
A blond knight was waiting for them at the gates of the city, mounted and armored and bearing the duke’s black banner.
“Your Grace!” He shouted, flinging out his arms in welcome. His voice boomed even over the noise of the crowd. “All of Celderline is waiting to greet you!”
The gates yawned ahead of them, the spikes of the portcullis bared like fangs, and Ophele prepared herself to be brave.
* * *
Miche had outdone himself, arranging all this with barely a day’s head start.
It wasn’t the first time Remin had received such a welcome.
The triumphal progress through the capital of Segoile had lasted three hours, and for the first few months after Valleth surrendered, it seemed like all the roads before him were strewn with flowers.
It had been strange and humbling, and almost made him feel like an imposter, even though he knew he had really done all the things they said he had done.
He accepted the shouts of the people of Celderline with the same stern, expressionless face with which he had received the war cries of the army of Valleth, holding his warhorse back to a dignified walk.
Before and behind him, his knights paused to accept flowers from ladies, nudged their horses into a dancing trot, or lifted their banners and sang along with the crowd, each according to his own inclinations.
They, too, had faced far more hostile crowds than this.
Belatedly, he remembered that the girl in his lap had not. The Exile Princess had never seen a crowd of any description, and she was pressed so tightly against him, he could feel her heart knocking against his ribs like it was trying to climb in and hide.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, bending his head so his mouth was beside her ear. “They don’t mean any harm.”
She looked up at him, her eyes enormous. She had a small scar at the outer edge of one delicate eyebrow. Under his cloak, her hand was clutching the hem of his jerkin, and his arm tightened around her automatically, even as his back prickled at the remembered stab of a knife.
Fortunately, it wasn’t far to the inn. Fifteen minutes was a satisfactory progress for everyone; it gave the townspeople a bit of excitement on an otherwise ordinary day, without disrupting the business of the city too badly.
Following Miche, they wound through a large market square and then up a narrower avenue to a hilltop in the middle of town, passing through wide gates into the stable yard of a palatial inn.
The innkeeper was already waiting, bowing low and declaring himself ecstatic to have the opportunity to serve so renowned a hero.
“Tell your lads to be careful of the horses,” Remin replied, acknowledging the courtesy with a jerk of his chin.
Swinging out of his saddle, he landed with a thud, doing his best to keep the princess concealed under his cloak.
“They’re trained for war. Feed and water them but leave the grooming to my men. You have a room for the princess?”
“The Prin—Your Highness!” the innkeeper exclaimed, prostrating himself on the cobblestones when he spotted the girl in Remin’s arms. “Sacred Daughter of the Stars! Yes, of course, we are deeply…deeply honored!”
“Rise,” Remin said, gesturing. “She needs maids. And a bath. And whatever else ladies require.”