Chapter 42
Forty-Two
Sorcha
“Ihate this,” I said instantly when we walked into the glittering ballroom off Park Avenue.
“Find one positive thing to focus on,” Ansel suggested, “so you can look utterly pleasant and approachable while we terrorize all the suitors Iksura sent you.”
“I like the dress,” I admitted.
“It is truly your color,” Ansel observed. “Though I would have suggested ruffles. Somewhere. They’re typical on ball gowns, you know?”
I smoothed my skirts. The gown was deep emerald-green silk. It had a cartridge pleated skirt with a gathered, V-front bodice—not tiered or ruffled at all—and a subtle row of beetle-wing sequins in a diamond pattern at the hem and repeated along the low, off-shoulder neckline.
“I don’t like flashy,” I said.
“Don’t let him ruin it,” Neal said, kissing me quickly. “You look fantastic. And I’m going to go chase down the butler and make sure I can find something you can eat and not immediately throw up.”
And within seconds some Inner Court nobleman was making eye contact, heading my way.
He was tall, blond, probably Scandinavian, with a bright pink silk tie and a pocket square that looked like it took longer to fold than I had spent getting ready.
It was strange—to feel annoyance instead of fear when I saw him, even knowing Iksura’s intent.
But knowing the legal claim was unfounded gave me confidence, and knowing I could now apparently summon arachnids helped too.
“High Lady Wilson,” he said, lilting accent immediately confirming my suspicion—Danish was my best guess—“Lord Noah Beck, from Viborg. May I have this dance.”
“Oh I really don’t—” I began, but Ansel cut me off.
“Don’t let me keep you,” he said, a mischievous smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. I let Noah take my hand and shot a glare at Ansel back over my shoulder.
“My father tells me you grew up in New Mexico?” Noah asked. “I’ve heard it’s very beautiful there.”
“I like the mountains,” I said, “but it’s dry. Rugged. The kind of place that reminds you nature’s in charge. Not us.”
“Like the North Sea!” Noah enthused.
And for a split second I felt bad. He wasn’t even unpleasant. In another life we could have been friends. But there was no version of reality where I even contemplated a husband other than Neal.
“Do you know how to waltz?” Noah asked as I nearly tripped over my feet.
“Not much opportunity,” I admitted as he pulled me closer and led me through the dance.
I tried to follow the conversation, but quickly the movement triggered the nausea, and I found myself making vague, noncommittal sounds in response to Noah’s enthusiastic discussions about peat bogs and migratory birds.
Normally? I would have been interested. Right now?
I was dead set on finding a way to excuse myself before I threw up on someone important.
Cold sweat beaded on the back of my neck, and I could feel a flush creeping up from the neckline of my dress.
Apparently baby hated waltzing as much as I did.
“I am so sorry, Noah . . . Lord Beck . . .” I mumbled, “but I need to go.”
And I shrugged away from his touch and stumbled off the dance floor, my knees hitting the marble floor as I retched into a potted plant.
I heard footsteps—multiple people, all men in boots—but ignored them entirely.
A few scandalized whispers—mostly women, mostly older, mostly assuming I was somehow already drunk at eight o’clock in the evening.
And then Neal’s voice close behind me: “Oh don’t worry, Lord Beck. She’s fine. It’s just the baby.”
“Baby?” Noah sounded earnestly confused.
“My baby,” Neal said. “No one’s mentioned she’s pregnant?”
“I must have missed that,” Noah said quickly, embarrassment clouding his tone. “I am so sorry to have intruded. I’ll be sure to spread the word.”
If he didn’t know, that meant Iksura was softening her approach—if only by degree—after the fiasco with the surgeon in Washington.
“Good man,” Neal said.
A second later I felt his hands on my shoulders.
“You done?” he murmured, kissing my head.
I nodded.
Five minutes later I was situated in a quiet corner, balancing a mug of peppermint tea and a plate of blueberry muffins Neal had seemingly apparated from nowhere.
Neal and Ansel were chatting over glasses of whiskey, giving me space and not at all subtly keeping an eye.
Someone was wearing too-strong cologne that reeked of castoreum vanilla and a heady floral that almost smelled like opium.
I buried my nose in my tea and tried to take deep breaths, convincing myself—ineffectively—that I wasn’t going to throw up again.
I glanced down at my plate, and when I looked up again a tall, dark-haired Elven man in an absurdly expensive arsenic-green tuxedo was standing over me.
The cologne smell was stronger now. I glared.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“I have it on good authority that you are High Lady Sorcha Wilson?” the stranger said, Italian by his accent. “I am Lord Giancarlo Vespucci.”
He sat down beside me. I moved farther away, digging in my pockets for a handkerchief to ward off the smell.
“I heard that, perhaps, you are searching for a new husband? That the—servant boy you married is not proving satisfactory?” Giancarlo said.
I mentally revised my evaluation of the suitors—Noah wasn’t awful. But Giancarlo was not giving me hope for the rest of them.
“Excuse me?” I asked. “The servant boy I married?”
“And clearly he has no understanding of how a noble lady should comport herself,” Giancarlo continued, clearly not paying attention.
He gestured vaguely at my belly then at my plate and continued, “Your figure for one thing. Hardly acceptable in Europe. And to be encouraging it with sugar like that?”
And that was the moment I felt Neal’s hand on the back of my neck. He bent and kissed my cheek.
“She is very busy working on having a big healthy baby,” Neal said, pulling me into an embrace that made Giancarlo go pale.
“You are having a baby?” Giancarlo said in utter disbelief. “With the servant boy?”
“Steward when I married him,” I corrected, voice dropping to something lower, more authoritative. “And now? Lord of the Outer Court. So watch your tongue.”
Word was clearly spreading. Over the next few hours I watched half a dozen different young men in expensive tuxedos glance at me, lock their eyes on Neal, and then scurry away whispering.
But not all of them had heard yet—heard that I was properly taken, uninterested in other offers, very pregnant, very sick, and mildly terrifying—not all of them.
Because as I chatted with an older Elven couple—listening to them go on about the ducks they raised on their estate, something about how it helped their vineyard—another young man accosted me.
He tapped my shoulder, begged the old couple’s forgiveness, and backed me against the wall, a hand on either side of my head.
I could get away, but it’d make a scene. So much for Iksura softening her approach.
“Lady Sorcha, I presume?” he asked. He was shorter than Neal, stocky build. His nose had clearly been broken. But the tuxedo was expensive, his hair was perfectly arranged. Still clearly an aristocrat, just one with a backstory.
“Who’s asking?” I replied.
“Lord Ferrysburg,” he said. “Family has a small estate up in Maine. But I also work with Iksura directly. Long line of diplomats.”
My pulse skyrocketed.
This was a problem—not a pansy aristocrat I could easily intimidate, not someone who would cave under pressure—an Inner Court Inquisitor. Here. Now. Where the hell were Ansel and Neal?
“Not interested,” I said. I gestured first at my wedding ring, then at my belly and prayed he would take the hint. “You’re very late.”
He didn’t.
“You defied Iksura’s orders. Married some no-name Steward.
What is that doing to our royal lines? What message does that send to our people?
” he said, voice calm but dangerous. He still hadn’t moved, hadn’t let me get a hairsbreadth of space from the wall.
“Oh and look, you are carrying his whelp. We’ll simply do away with that before word spreads any more—already spreading around high society here like a bloody wildfire.
You can claim he assaulted you, have the marriage annulled.
Start fresh. With me. All with Iksura’s approval and endorsement of course. ”
I shuddered. Iksura had no legal claim. She had no legal claim. I repeated it like a mantra over and over in my head.
Then I took a deep, steadying breath, squared my shoulders, and summoned every ounce of courage and composure I’d tried to learn over the last six months.
“Our people? They’re not yours. Ferrysburg?
You are a pawn. You are an Inner Court thug bought off with a title and dressed up like a dandy.
And I? Am your sovereign. So learn your damn place. ”
He froze. Didn’t speak. Didn’t move.
In the corner of my vision I saw Ansel and Neal, waiting, seeing how I’d let this play out.
“Have you ever seen a bull moose up close?” I asked, voice moving back to its usual octave. “Huge. Terrifying. And oh the smell.”
Ferrysburg swallowed hard.
“No,” he said, “I do not believe I have seen one up close, High Lady Wilson. Only at a . . . rather great distance.”
“Mrs. MacCairn,” I corrected, before continuing.
“If you’d like to keep it that way, just let me get back to my evening.
And don’t report any of this back to Iksura.
Otherwise I can ensure you and the entire moose population of Maine get intimately acquainted. They’re a nightmare in rut I’ve heard.”
And with that I shoved him off me and strode back over to Neal and Ansel. Ansel was holding back laughter.
“Did you just threaten him with a sexually frustrated ungulate?” Ansel asked.
But I didn’t get a chance to answer. Neal took my hand and started walking. “I need a minute with my wife.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked as Neal pulled me down a quiet hallway, trying doorknobs along the way.