Chapter 6
The Ball in Ambrosia
Elizabeth woke up, stretching. She slipped out from under the covers and threw open the drapes to admit the soft morning light. Hues of pink and orange painted the horizon, it was still early.
Donning a housecoat, she padded silently into the hall, picking up an ornate silver tray set with a teapot, a tiny jug of milk, a pot of sugar, and a plate with a breakfast pastry.
Setting it on a small table on her terrace, she reclined into a lounge chair that faced the gardens.
The sunrise unfolded in all its glory, and the birds’ twitterings filled the crisp morning air.
She prepared her tea, adding cream and a small spoonful of sugar, exactly how she liked it. She swirled the tea with a spoon and slowly took the first sip. A small smile graced her lips. Perfection.
Spearing a piece of flaky pastry with her fork, she brought it halfway to her mouth before she stopped dead.
She spotted something, a rectangle of yellowish parchment tucked underneath the leg of the table. Frowning, she set down the pastry and retrieved it—it was an envelope. ‘Elizabeth’ had been scrawled in angular male handwriting on the front.
Inside she found a folded sheet of parchment and a short note. Picking up the note first, her eyes flew to the bottom, where it read: ‘-Caspian.’
She closed her eyes and pressed the note to her chest. How had he known that she stayed up all night, fretting that she had made the wrong decision? Worrying that she had no way to reach him now if she changed her mind?
She bent over to read the note and had just glimpsed the phrase ‘helping you run away and settle your life somewhere’ before she heard someone clear their throat behind her.
“Lady?”
Elizabeth gasped, pressing the note to her chest.
“My apologies, I didn’t mean to startle you. Your mother has guests in the lounge. They’ve arrived much earlier than expected,” her maid said with a curtsey. “Your mother has just announced they will hold a formal breakfast in the dining hall.”
“Oh.” She hurriedly shoved the note back in the envelope.
Elizabeth followed her maid inside and reluctantly sat in the cushioned chair before the vanity. She clutched the envelope to her lap while her maid brushed her hair. Her maid plaited it around her crown and glanced down. “What’s that you have there?”
“Oh, nothing,” Elizabeth said, flushing.
Her maid gave her a knowing look. “A love letter from your betrothed?”
“Er.”
Elizabeth’s evasion and flustered appearance must have been deemed answer enough. “I had heard there was a match in the works.” Her maid contentedly hummed and returned her attention to styling her hair.
Elizabeth plastered a false smile on her face and nodded, hoping her maid wouldn’t press further. Her heart hammered in her chest, but her maid said nothing more and continued to plait her hair so that it was out of her face, and her long hair swept over her shoulder.
Her maid applied a small amount of rouge to her cheeks to make her look more alert and tucked the pot of rouge into the vanity drawer. She strode to the closet. “Perhaps a cream coloured dress today, Lady?”
“Er. Sure,” Elizabeth replied, quickly hiding Caspian’s note in her writing desk while her maid picked out her attire.
As she was cinched into a brown corset worn over a cream cotton dress, her thoughts drifted to the note and whatever was in the thicker, folded piece of parchment.
She itched to know what it said, but was whisked downstairs.
To Elizabeth’s dismay, she was forced to entertain her mother’s friends all morning, and it wasn’t until late afternoon that she was able to return to her chambers.
Her mother had remarked upon her distractedness and eagerness to say her farewells, exclaiming that she looked like she was finally getting excited about her coming nuptials.
How wrong she was.
She nearly ran to her chambers when she was dismissed and yanked open the drawer to her writing desk. With trembling fingers, she finally pulled out the note and read:
Lady Elizabeth,
If you would like to come with me, sign this contract, and I will come to fetch it tomorrow night. In exchange for helping you run away and settle your life somewhere, I ask for blood.
-Caspian
He wanted to drink her blood?
Revulsion gripped her as she realized the other sheet of parchment was a formal looking contract, with a line for her signature at the bottom.
She held the unsigned contract in her pocket throughout the entire next day. She was tempted, sorely tempted. Especially as she suffered through her mother insisting on altering her gown’s neckline to plunge even lower for the ball. She did not want to feel so on display in front of Duke Howard.
The following day passed at a snail’s pace, and when evening came, Elizabeth swore time ticked by even slower. She watched the terrace, eyes flitting across the landscape for any movement between the shadows. Eventually, a dark figure dropped onto the ground, looking for the letter.
“Hello, Caspian,” she said, slinking out of the shadows where she had been waiting since the sun had begun to set. “Looking for this?” She kept her voice soft to avoid waking anyone and held the contract aloft.
He reached out a hand, and she snatched the letter away, holding it just out of reach.
“What exactly is the deal you are trying to make with me, sir?”
His eyes slowly met hers. Elizabeth tilted her chin up, challenging him even when it felt like his gaze seared into her soul.
“I would spirit you away from here and help you disappear from the responsibility to your name. I would help you build a new life. In exchange, I ask for something very small. Blood.”
“Am I to be your wife?”
His nostrils flared. “If you want to be someone’s wife, I suggest you marry Duke Howard.”
She pressed her lips together.
“You will be my companion and live with me for a year. You will trade a small amount of your blood with me whenever I desire. When the year is up, I will give you enough gold to buy yourself a home and make your way in this world.”
“A year is too long,” she said, raising her brows. “One month.”
“A year.” His voice was firm.
“Three months.”
“Three,” he agreed, looking content that he had won. “You will live at my home and be mine to call upon for three months.”
Silence stretched while she mulled it over.
After a moment, she smiled and said, “Tempting, but I think not.”
She handed the unsigned contract back to him and slipped inside, locking the door and firmly shutting the curtains.
***
The carriage ride south was long—a week and a half filled with painful small talk and many awkward silences.
Her mother and father danced around the subject of her engagement.
Her mother occasionally filled the silence with chatter about the sunny weather or the fashions she expected to see at the ball.
Her father hardly said a word, choosing to spend the time with his nose buried in a book.
Elizabeth spent most of the trip clutching a book to her chest as well, as if it were a teddy bear, a tether to normalcy.
The only reprieve she had was when they stopped at inns along the way to relieve themselves and stay the night, where she could have moments of blessed solitude and the tension could finally leave her shoulders.
At night, she would lie in bed staring at the ceiling, attempting to reassure herself that she had made the right choice.
As they neared Ambrosia, the landscape changed from rolling hills speckled with wildflowers into leagues of apple orchards and vineyards. They passed rows and rows of neatly tilled grape vines, and the smell in the air grew earthier, like the scent of freshly turned soil.
They skirted the city of Ambrosia, and their carriage made for a wide cobblestone road that ended in a manor of cream coloured stone.
The grounds before the manor bloomed with hundreds of red roses.
Marble statues and trickling fountains could be seen throughout the gardens, half obscured by waist-high flowering bushes.
The sculptures they passed were of fierce-looking archers and swordsmen—a testament to the fearsome warriors of House Howard.
Gardeners wearing straw sun hats lifted their faces to watch their arrival.
Their carriage rolled to a stop outside Howard Manor, and despite herself, it took her breath away.
Two imposing statues stood on either side of the doors, one of the Sun God and the other of the Sea God, both enormous and so lifelike that it looked like their robes were rippling in the wind.
The manor itself was large enough to be a castle, with more crimson blossoms bursting from everywhere she looked.
A white banner bearing a red archer rippled in the wind above the highest tower—the sigil of House Howard.
A footman helped her out, and she noted with no small sense of wonder that the stone beneath her feet was carved into the shapes of roses and leaves. It was a manor fit for a princess.
It was far beyond her wildest expectations for her future home. Elizabeth’s father and mother cast glances at her as they walked to the door, as if to say, we told you so.
A housekeeper welcomed them at the door, and servants took their bags, leading them inside.
Tapestries hung around the entrance hall, bearing the sigil of House Howard—as if she were liable to forget where she was.
Everywhere she looked, she was met with cream walls decorated with gold accents.
Elizabeth found herself awed at the extravagance, even though she would never say as much to her parents.
Trailing behind the housekeeper, images of what her life would be like here filtered through her mind: going for walks in the gardens, reading under the shade of an apple tree, spending her evenings dressed in silks, and having enough gold to buy herself anything she ever wanted.