Chapter 49
Family breakfast was a delightful affair, brightened by Briony bemoaning Squire Godwyn not asking her to the ball—“I shall not eat. I shall starve, and then he will be sorry and weep at my pyre”.
Haldric declared that any boy who wounded his daughter’s heart had no place drawing breath in his kingdom, while Aralynn told him plainly that if he so much as looked at the poor squire wrongly, she would make him sleep with the dogs.
By afternoon, the castle bustled in anticipation of the ball.
Servants hurried through hallways with garlands and platters.
Musicians filtered into the Great Hall, and the most delicious scents wafted from the kitchens.
Seamstress Cecily and her attendants descended upon the royal family.
When Briony’s wails about her corset being too tight rang through the quarters, Aralynn entered the girl’s bedroom and, after a long moment, called the family in.
Richard stepped through first, the others trailing behind. He smiled at the sight that greeted him. Briony wore a plum-coloured gown, her curls coaxed back, and a pearl necklace circling her neck.
“Little star, you shall be the loveliest girl at this ball.”
Briony fiddled with the ribbon around her waist. “Do you—do you think I’ll look better than Squire Isolde?”
“But of course,” Richard said.
Haldric pressed a hand to his chest and staggered into Corwin, who pretended to catch him. “No, this cannot be. Behold this child of mine—a blossom, she is. Some young rascal shall try to steal her heart, and I shall be forced to challenge the youth to single combat.”
Briony beamed. “Do I truly look like a blossom?”
Corwin snorted. “Well, you look more like a plum than a blossom, if we’re being exact—” He yelped as Elara stomped on his foot and stammered when he spotted their mother’s glare, “I mean, beautiful. Radiant. A vision. I shall have Kaelen write a sonnet.”
Richard chuckled, then stopped as a thought struck him. He gave his father a sidelong glance.
Haldric had not once—not once all day—mentioned the matter of marriage.
So many balls before had begun with his father’s stern counsel.
‘You are climbing in age, son—past thirty! And still you have failed to find one you could call your own. The whole realm laughs at you, at me for failing my son so. Do you think I host balls for the pleasure of it? I do it so you can meet people and finally, finally choose one. Now, stop looking as though I have commanded you to kill your horse! Find a partner, boy! A partner who can share your life, your burdens and your bed!’
There had been none of it today. No warning during breakfast. No brandishing a guest list and underlined names. No reminder of the unmarried dukes and duchesses that would be in attendance.
Richard was glad of it.
And yet, the strangeness of it would not stop rankling him.
* * *
Richard checked himself in the mirror. It stood the height of a grown man and was gilded in gold.
A gift from Estara for his twenty-first birthday that took up a corner of his bedchamber.
The man in the glass looked well enough, he supposed.
Seamstress Cecily had dressed him in a red doublet embroidered with a dragon, and the attendants had powdered his cheeks and tinted his lips.
And yet, the lines around his eyes remained visible.
The door opened behind him, and Aralynn entered. Her gown was plum-coloured to match Briony and Elara’s, and her crown glittered in the evening light. With a click-clack of her heels, she came to appraise him in the mirror.
“Look at you,” she breathed. “Look at my handsome boy.”
“Mother.” Richard rolled his eyes. “I have not been a boy for nearly two decades now.”
“You shall be my boy when you are sixty.” Aralynn reached up to run her fingers through his hair, smoothing it back. “You shall be my boy when I am ninety, and toothless, and being wheeled about the gardens in a wicker chair.” Her eyes creased. “I have been watching you.”
Richard’s brows wrinkled. “Yes?”
“Yes, indeed. The whole spring, I think. Perhaps longer.” She straightened his collar.
“I have been watching where your eyes travel. You do it discreetly, and yet, I have seen them travel in the courtyard, in the throne room, in the training grounds. Why, this very morning, I saw them flit straight to a young knight leaning against my oak tree.”
Richard flushed. He tried to look away, but she cupped his cheek and gently tugged his gaze back.
“A mother knows her child’s heart. Will you tell me of it?”
Richard exhaled a slow, shuddering breath.
“I—” He paused. “I have come to care for him. Deeply. In a way I—in a way I have not before. For anyone. In these recent months. I cannot—I cannot quite recall when it began. Or how. It seems strange to say. But tonight, Mother, I—I mean to ask his permission to court him.”
Aralynn’s eyes shone with tears. “Oh, my dear, dear boy.”
“He may yet refuse me,” Richard reminded her, though the sight of her so happy made a lump well in his throat. “Kaelen may yet tell me he is not interested, and I shall have to fling myself from the western rampart come midnight—”
“Oh, hush, you.” Aralynn’s thumb stroked his cheekbone.
“In what world would that silly knight ever refuse you? He shall embrace you and weep, and your father shall have to endure Dain’s gloating for the next thirty years, for they have long secretly wagered as to whether your pairing might come about. ”
Richard swallowed. There was more. He had not said it aloud, not properly, not to her, not in all these years, though he suspected she knew.
She might even have known since the disaster with Duke Ceryn, though she’d never brought it up—as if avoiding mention of it erased the complication altogether.
“There is also, Mother,” he said quietly, “the matter—the matter of bodily desire. I have never had it. For anyone. I wish for Kaelen to belong to me. I wish to belong to him. But the rest that other men want. The rest that he shall doubtless want—” His voice cracked, and he paused to recover his composure.
“I cannot give such things. And it does not feel fair to ask him to commit to only half a portion when he might have a full one with someone else.”
For an instant, Aralynn’s eyes looked terribly sad. She squeezed his cheek. “There needs only to be love, understanding, and the willingness to make of it what suits both of you. Whatever shape your love takes, it shall be enough.”
“But—”
“My son is not a bargain to be struck in flesh,” she said sharply. “He does not beg for scraps at a table, for he is a person, a full person, to be loved entirely.” She tiptoed to gently thud their foreheads together. “All will go well tonight. I promise you.”
Richard’s throat ached, but he managed a nod. Aralynn released him with a reassuring smile, and as she turned to go, the mirror’s surface shimmered. It warped into a milky white, once more becoming a door.
Richard reared back with a gasp, almost tripping over a stray belt. “Mother—”
But she was already gone. And the mirror, when he glanced at it, was glass again, reflecting only his pale, startled face.