Chapter Twenty-Five
The house ticked like a clock, waiting. Table set and food prepared.
A line of loaves down the center of the table.
Pewter bowls of fruit decorating the mantels.
Curtains drawn and candles lit. I walked through the rooms checking all.
Fussing with cushions. Pinching bits of lint from the upholstered places it clung.
Fretting, because the accumulation of these details—wiped dust, polished mahogany—did little to hide how Bramley had gone shabby around the edges.
I hoped the high ceilings and ornate friezes, the oversized fireplaces, and the columned great hall—the solid leftovers of Bramley’s wealth—made up for it. A vestigial disguise.
When we heard the clamor of arrival—grinding gravel and the hollow thunking of hooves, reliable as a door knocker—I rushed down to the kitchens to gather the staff. Wenthelen, Alice, and Morwen were busy with last-minute preparations.
“They are here,” I told them. “Get outside for the receiving line.” I removed my apron and put it on one of the pegs by the back door. “No one—no one—is to be allowed into the back.”
Alice retied her apron strings, but Wenthelen remained inert. She nodded to a copper pan in the hearth—the sucket. “Syrup’ll burn if left on by itself.”
“I’ll watch it,” Morwen offered.
“It needs to reduce.” Wenthelen peered into the pan, then nodded at the candied rinds. Fruit and root preserved in syrup of sugar. “A proper sucket should go for twelve days.”
I used my hands to smooth my hair, to check my dress. A fingertip on each button to ensure it was in place. “Everyone upstairs. The syrup can sit for a moment.”
“Do you not care about the sucket, then?” Wenthelen sniffed.
Morwen frowned at me. “You said I would not wait on anyone.”
I blinked at her. “And you will not.”
“I will stay here,” she announced.
“Morwen,” I exclaimed. “We are all—”
“No,” she said sharply. She bent over the syrup. Something in the set of her shoulders stopped me from arguing. Stubbornness, yes, but also fear.
“Come along, then.” Alice brushed past me on her way to the stairs.
When Simeon emerged from his carriage, waving away the footman and helping himself down with the handrail, he observed the lot of us women with a subtle grin. “If I had realized how few men were in your household, I would have brought more.”
He was surrounded by them. Two more footmen, riding up front, and a page holding on to the back of his coach. Men-at-arms on horseback, the horses themselves plumed and armored. An echo of Sigrid’s own retinue. Otto—the prince’s shadow—had come, too, riding atop his black-coated horse.
All of us women were lined up and waiting. The girls had arranged themselves: Mathilde and Rosie, looking so alike, and so much taller, on one side of Elin in the purple bodice that turned her eyes so blue the sky felt gray in comparison.
The prince went to Mathilde first, at the end of the row, and kissed her hand.
She nodded impassively. Rosie was next. I did not envy her position.
Did not envy the discomfort, the inherent awkwardness, of having been passed over.
But Simeon lingered a little longer in front of her.
She, who had spent extra time readying, looked becoming.
Even then, committed as I was to the march we were all participating in—forward!
To the wedding!—I’ll admit it brought me pleasure.
A little salt to sprinkle. Whatever charms she had mustered worked their small magic, for Simeon held her eyes and did not drop her hand too quickly.
He stepped over to Elin. “My darling,” he murmured. Instead of kissing one hand, as he had done with her stepsisters, he took both of Elin’s in his own and leaned forward, planting a kiss on each of her cheeks, which flushed upon contact. Spellbound, she peered back up at him.
When he tore his eyes from hers, he stepped ahead, to me, the last in line. He took my hand, too, in his own, and raised it to his lips. “You could not have arranged for a more perfect day for a visit.” He held my hand and my eyes with his own but used a free arm to gesture at the skies above.
“The gods and the clouds both complied,” I agreed. Under his gaze, I found I wanted to elicit his good graces. “Welcome to Bramley Hall.”
I heard a throat clear and looked up to see Otto had come forward. He did not greet me, and instead asked: “Where shall the men rest their horses?”
“Take that path”—I jutted my chin toward the outhouses—“to the stables. Do not stray off the walkway. We are reseeding the grounds. Alice will show you the way.” She had been instructed to keep a close eye on the men—and not to let any wander to the rear of the house.
“I’ll join you for your dinner,” Otto said, as if the invitation were his to issue.
“We need not sit right away,” Simeon protested, tilting his face up toward the light. “Perhaps Elin and I will take another stroll in the orchard.”
All of us eyed the path that wound along the side of the house, toward the trees, and right past the view of the hole in the roof. Rosie looked down. Mathilde kept her eyes resolutely forward. Elin blushed. No one dared contradict a prince.
“I’m afraid the rains have made the fields impenetrable,” I said.
“A modicum of slush has never stopped me.” Simeon’s hand reached for Elin.
“I think—” She stepped toward him and looked back at me, beseechingly. “I think—” Simeon took ahold of her arm and began to walk her along with him, toward the side of the house.
Rosie nudged Mathilde to help, and she called out: “Elin, you must not catch cold!”
“Yes,” Rosie agreed. “We have such a warm fire inside.”
Elin looked at Simeon. Her blue eyes suddenly less blue. “I am a little…” Her voice was so quiet I could barely hear her. “Cold,” she finished.
“I will keep you warm.” Simeon pulled her arm with a small amount of force. Instinctively, Elin stepped backward, and the tension between the two caused a rip in her dress, an inch of her undergarments poking through the sleeve. Embarrassed, she whipped her hand up to cover the rend.
Instinctively, I reached a hand toward Elin, who was inspecting the tear with dismay. Beside me, Otto tensed.
“Alack,” Simeon exclaimed, shaking his head, though I perceived no real regret in the set of his brow.
“Your dress.” Mathilde took a step between them. Rosie hurried to her side. Their bodies a small wall of protection.
“I am clumsy.” Simeon looked around, ever the prince once more, hands held up in apology. “Elin is cold. We’ll go inside.”
In the great hall, we rinsed our hands in the basin and took our seats, Simeon at the head of the table. He unfolded his napkin and looked over the tableau—two days of work manifested in a series of dishes. “I am glad you haven’t done anything extravagant on my account.”
“A light meal,” I assured him.
“There is nothing worse than a feast where the food does not stop coming. I was hosted recently, and they brought out lamprey pottage and salmon in mustard sauce and venison in sauce of ale and some concoction of green leaves and bustard and I ate to my heart’s content and only then realized it was the intended first course.
It is refreshing to eat as you eat.” He reached forward and began to serve himself some carved pheasant.
“To dine as you dine in your everyday lives.”
“You do not need to worry,” I said. “The food you see is the food we eat.” Memories of oat cakes and watered-down stews contradicted the words in my mouth.
“I do not have a sweet tooth.” Simeon turned to Elin.
“I prefer smoked herring to pickled. Venison is my favorite meat. I cannot stand lamprey. I do not want to see lamprey, ever. There is something wrong with their round, teeth-filled sucking faces.” He cocked his head at her reassuringly.
“You will learn all this in time. My preferences. And we will ensure our cooks learn yours.”
“No lamprey,” Elin repeated, nodding, diligent.
Simeon continued as the rest of us served ourselves. “People always try to impress with the most exotic things—stork, bittern, that sort of thing. Porpoise. Seal.”
“Seal!” Elin’s brow furrowed.
“Yes, and what they do not understand is there is nothing as appealing or as humble as a good loaf of bread.” He nodded toward the row down the center of the table.
“A simple roast. I do not need to eat curlew to feel appeased. Food is about satiation, after all. Gratification, yes, but hunger, that is what food is for. So I thank you kindly for the bread.”
On Simeon’s other side, Otto withdrew a knife from his own pocket and used it to saw off a hunk of the loaf that was in front of him.
“Do not be worried,” Simeon told Elin, helping himself to the salt-and-pepper box, “by all my prattling. I like to hear myself talk. And if you want an elaborate wedding feast, we will serve swans for all I care.”
Otto put his knife back into his pocket and chewed the bread. Silent.
“Well,” I carefully interjected, “we have plenty of bread. As much as you want, and more for your guards.”
“They are terrorizing your kitchens, no doubt.” Simeon offered an inscrutable smile, and the rest of us—the women—chirruped.
“I wanted to ask, if you will permit me a question,” Mathilde said, and waited for him to nod. “Do you need guards? Riding through the countryside?”
Elin leaned forward. “Are you not safe?”
“Of course I am safe.” Simeon waved off her worry. “But it cannot be helped. The guards—and Otto here—are like a cage that moves forward on wheels. And backward. Where I go, they go.”
Rosie shook her head, sympathetically, a physical echo of the tutting noises Elin was making.
Mathilde eyed him, interested. “And what kinds of threats rattle the bars of your cage?”
Simeon laughed. “None! That’s my point precisely!”
“You do not need them,” Rosie asserted.
“One day I will shake them off. Slip away.” He wiggled his eyebrows at Otto, who ignored him.
Elin sat back. “They would not allow you to be unprotected.”