Chapter 1 #3
Huang Fu’s curse was centuries ago, and the people of Leighton still hungered like winter wolves with bellies that never stayed full for long.
Chandler’s eyes, a lovely shade of green, were hard as the gemstones his kingdom dug from the ground. His jaw seemed perpetually flexed, like he was doggedly trying to crack a walnut shell between his teeth. Tension was a living thing in his arms and shoulders, like a flexed bow beneath his skin.
He was the first to speak, his voice oily, his smile insincere. “Mildred.”
No honorific. How could she expect it when he had none himself?
She shuddered inwardly. What she had heard, hidden in the hydrangeas .
. . Well, one thing was certain. While Chandler Stonevein wasn’t responsible for his kingdom’s curse and current hardships with drought and famine, he certainly was no Worthy One to draw a soup spoon from a stony loaf of bread.
As if the honey-drenched derrière and sandpaper condom weren’t horrifying enough, what poured from Millie’s mouth next was so vulgar, the words wiped themselves from Sicily’s mind the very instant she heard them.
The etiquette tutor’s jaw dropped further and further until she was positive it was simultaneously still attached to her skull yet resting on the floor, drool pooling in the grout of the tiles between her shoes.
The prince’s face grew redder, fists clenching tighter, as the princess exposed his every darkness to the light. He could not speak, equally enraged and morbidly curious at what words she would utter next from those luscious lips.
But the etiquette tutor rallied and rediscovered her voice. No longer a croak, it was the screech of a parrot mid-strangulation. “That is enough!”
Millie poured the cup of tea out on the floor at Chandler’s feet—the ultimate Amberlian insult.
The remaining suitors gasped. Even Viscount Saltreave risked the integrity of his styled mustache by slapping a hand over his gaping mouth.
There was a crack as one of Chandler’s bones or teeth popped from all the tension, echoing like thunder against the glass dome of the greenhouse parlor. His lip curled as Millie spun on her heel, auburn hair gleaming and releasing a faint tease of jasmine.
He inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring like a wolf’s catching the scent of fresh blood. “Leighton will remember this,” he seethed, and stormed out.
“As will Merle,” the baron snarled, chasing the heels of the Leighton prince.
The other suitors were quick to follow with a cacophony of expletives and a variety of ill-wishes like, “No one wants a fatty for a wife, anyway,” and “I hope a dragon eats you.”
The first insult stung, but mildly, as Millie had heard similar comments about her weight all her life from her various governesses and tutors, and as for the second—
Amberly has a fantastic relationship with the local dragon population. We have tea every third Sunday of the month, so the joke’s on you, Baron Demir.
When Millie rejoined her family, Sicily, and Olabeus at the table, she set the empty teacup and saucer down on the tray and hefted the teapot. She smiled sunnily. “Crone’s Crooked Tits, that was more liberating than loosening my corset strings. Tea, anyone?”
“You’re grounded,” the king declared.
“Just me, then.” She poured herself a cup, added a swirl of honey, and sat down in the empty chair with a practiced sweep of her skirts.
After a sip and a hum of pleasure, she lifted sincere brown eyes to her tutor.
“I am sorry, Miss Sicily, but it was necessary. I did learn a new thing or two from you in our time together, though.”
“Such as a diabolical level of patience?” the tutor erupted. “You deceived me!”
“Well, yes, I had to.” Millie set her cup down for a slice of shortbread.
“If you hadn’t convinced Mother and Father that I was ‘the epitome of regal grace,’ they never would’ve allowed another bunch of suitors in here.
And then I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to dismiss them and once and for all convince my parents that piracy truly is the life for me. ”
She had learned, long ago, that the rest of the kingdoms weren’t as progressive as Amberly, with a queen’s voice equal in authority to that of a king. If her voice was to be heard amongst her peers, it had to be projected from the end of an unscrupulous blade.
“‘Dismiss them?’” Miss Sicily shrilled. “What you did was nothing short of an act of war! With seven fiefdoms, one viscounty, and two kingdoms. And what’s worse, you’ve made yourself entirely unmarriagable!”
“Unmarriagable.” Millie snapped off another bite of shortbread and chewed thoughtfully. “Is that even a word?”
Heat rose from Sicily’s neck and stained her cheeks a spotty fuchsia. The princess was indeed correct, and while Sicily simply adored the legendary logophiles Merriam and Webster, she cursed them today for omitting the negative of marriageable in their lexicon.
“It is today,” she shrilled.
The princess rubbed the crumbs from her fingers and retrieved her teacup. “Lovely. Job well done to me, then. Besides, who’s ever heard of a married pirate? It is the unfettered life for me.”
“Who’s ever heard of a lady pirate?” Sicily shot back. “Raiding and debauchery are solely men’s work, everyone knows that!”
Millie smirked over the rim of her teacup. “It was.”
“I want to be you when I grow up, Sissy,” Rosamund giggled.
“No you do not,” Sicily snapped.
“And you will not speak to the princess in that manner, as you are no longer a member of my staff.” The king stood and gestured to the parlor exit.
“Your Majesty.” Sicily caught herself wringing her hands in supplication and dropped them to her sides. She would be poised, dammit. “I had no idea your daughter was capable of such deception. If I had known—”
“But you should have, summa cum laude graduate of the Esteemed School of the Gentle Arts. I thought Intellectual Manipulation and Mental Warfare were required courses there?”
“Th-they are, but—”
“Olabeus, bring my wife around, would you? The coward.” He passed an affectionate hand over his wife’s hair, planted a kiss on the top of her head. “Now, Miss Sicily, this way. Do not make me call the guard.”
Tears sprang to the tutor’s eyes, but they didn’t fall.
She would be the embodiment of grace under pressure, even if she’d just been humiliated and her entire reputation destroyed in one afternoon by a nineteen-year-old girl.
Still, she cast one beleaguered look from the king to the princess and back again and found no sympathy.
Sicily startled when Rosamund pressed a slightly squashed petit four into her hand. This one had lemon curd filling that oozed into the seam between her fingers.
“Calumbria’s a bit far,” the kind-hearted bimbo said. “You’ll need a snack.”
Dazed, the tutor let the king grip her elbow and escort her from the greenhouse. In the foyer, she found all her travel trunks already packed and the footmen carrying them out to a stagecoach.
“Wh-what?” she sputtered. Even after all those years spent at school learning the art of eloquent conversation, that was the best she could come up with.
The king sighed. “You are the thirteenth in a long line of etiquette tutors. It would’ve been foolish of me to think that you could succeed when so many others had failed. Though, I had hoped—”
Sicily plucked her elbow from the king’s grip. “You knew this would happen?”
“I suspected.” He linked his hands behind his back, shoulders squaring.
“And it is far easier and more politically savvy to blame you for this afternoon than my daughter, though she seems to have really done it this time. If the suitors think it was your ineptitude in her education, they won’t return to their homes and draft missives of war.
Seven fiefdoms, one viscounty, and two kingdoms, you know. ”
“But you’ve made it so I’ll never find work as an etiquette tutor again!”
His expression softened but was hardly yielding. “You can’t say the writing wasn’t on the wall for this assignment. And I wasn’t exaggerating when I told you at the start that this job might cost you more than your sanity. Still, I appreciate that you truly tried, and so, a severance package.”
The king withdrew a thick envelope from his doublet and handed it to her. She thumbed it open and discovered freshly cut gold marks. It was a small fortune, easily twice a year’s salary. A bribe. A payoff.
Royals really thought they could get away with everything, didn’t they?
“But my repu—”
The king snapped his fingers and gestured to the closest footman.
The servant dropped the travel trunk on the threshold and took Sicily’s free hand.
When she tried to wrench away, the man slung her over his shoulder like she was nothing but a rucksack and trotted down the steps to the waiting stagecoach.
She gave one unladylike scream of protest, but the king only shoved the trunk off the threshold with his boot and closed the door.