by Shana Abe
Solange rubbed her eyes and wondered at that. "What is so special about this morning, then?" Was it her birthday? Was it someone else's?
The old woman clicked her tongue. "Tch! As if ye could truly forget, little slypuss! Why, mistress, the priest is already in the chapel. He came before dawn. Today is the day of yer wedding to the man!"
Everything came back to Solange in a rush, causing her to choke on her tea. Indeed, how could she have forgotten?
Last night marked the beginning of the rest of her life as far as she was concerned. She quickly checked her hand, and yes, there it was, the glorious ring Damon had given her. She had not dreamed it after all. Her heart filled with exultation.
After Damon had escorted her back to her room— he distracted the guard while she slipped through the door—he must have sought out her father, as planned. As she lay in her bed last night, she had prayed and prayed for her father to accept Damon's suit, until exhaustion had at last swept her into unconsciousness.
Please God, let it have worked.
Adara had gone to the dressing chamber and was busy fussing over something Solange could not see.
"A pity," the maid was muttering to herself. "Look at this hole here. The thread is loose enough to cast a net, I'll warrant."
Suddenly Solange leapt out of bed and ran over, grabbing Adara by the shoulders and spinning her around. "Tell me! Tell me who it is!"
Adara eyed her wildly, backing up. "Eh? Who?"
"The man! Who is the man I am to wed today?"
Solange could not know how she looked at that moment to the superstitious peasant woman. The devil's magic she was said to possess surely flowed around her now, with her hair crackling and her eyes like golden flames. Without meaning to, Adara crossed herself.
"The man, mistress, the man from Redmond, of course. He is the man ye met last night, do ye not recall? A fine man, a fit husband for ye."
"Redmond," Solange repeated, aghast.
Adara moved over to the chair taking up most of the dressing chamber. She indicated a stiff bundle of scarlet cloth draped across it. "This be yer mother's gown, mistress, from her wedding these years past. My lord himself wanted ye to wear it today. I've done the best I could with it, I have," she added defensively. " 'Tis an old gown, and not in best repair. A French thing, no doubt. But it will fit ye."
"Redmond," said Solange again before her knees gave out and she sank to the floor. The woolen skirts of her nightgown pooled around her waist. She buried her face in her hands.
Adara rolled her eyes fearfully and began to curtsy her way out of the chamber. "Yer father bids ye to dress quickly. I will return in a few minutes to help ye."
"Wait!" Solange scrambled to her feet and caught the woman before she had made it to the door. "I want you to deliver a message to my father. I want you to tell him I must see him immediately."
"Milady, the marquess is off preparing for the wedding—"
"I don't care about that! Tell him that I will not dress, I will not be ready until he comes to me, do you understand? I will not do one little thing until he arrives. You tell him for me."
The maid gaped at her.
"Please," Solange begged. "Go tell him."
Adara collected herself and nodded, eager to leave.
Solange let go of her arm. As she exited, Solange noticed a new guard outside her door, standing firm with bored resolution.
She was trapped there until Henry came. Her mind raced in circles around the mystery of what was said between Damon and her father. Poor Damon, he obviously had not been able to convince Henry of the sincerity of his offer for her. She would do it herself. He would listen to her, the child of his flesh.
He would not be pleased, no, to give up the Redmond lands, but she would show him how Damon's holdings would be vastly more suitable, in the long run, for an alliance. Somehow.
She could not marry the earl. All that she was lived with the spirit of Damon. Redmond had nothing of his soul, nor his beauty. Damon had been there her entire life. If she were separated from him, she surely would wither away to a dry cusp of herself, a starving specter.
She paced the room impatiently, then caught a flash of herself in the standing glass. Her hair was disheveled, her feet bare, and she was still in her nightgown. She realized that she would make a better impression if she were a little more presentable.
She hurried over to the ceramic basin and splashed her face with the cool water, then dragged a comb through her thick tresses, throwing the mass of it over her shoulders when she was finished. She didn't have time to change clothes, however, for by then Henry had arrived.
He didn't bother to knock.
"What is this, daughter? Your woman comes to me in a frenzy and tells me you will not dress, nor do aught, until I come. Well, I am here. Explain yourself."
He was already wearing his wedding finery, a fancy blue and green tunic with split puffed sleeves, all stitched with threads of gold. A heavy gold belt, studded with lapis and malachite, secured the long tunic over his dark blue hose. Solange approached him cautiously.
"Father. I have an urgent matter to speak to you of before this morning's events can go forward."
He walked over to her bed slowly, taking in her room with an exacting eye. He had not been in here for years, it seemed, since she was a child. Apparently it had gotten no neater since then. He removed the comb from the edge of the bed and sat down amid the tousled covers and furs, crossing his legs.
"Yes?"
"Did Damon speak with you last night?"
His expression did not change. "Yes."
She waited, but it appeared that was all he had to say. "Well, then, may I ask what occurred? Did he tell you we are already betrothed to each other?"
"Yes, he did."
Solange raised her winged eyebrows, attempting to match his coolness. "And, what happened?"
"I told him it was inappropriate, of course. Neither of you has the right to contract a betrothal on your own."
"The right?"
"In addition to that," he continued smoothly, "a marriage between the two of you is completely out of the question. You are my daughter, Solange. You will become a great heiress someday. Damon is a good boy, of noble stock, but his lineage is tainted with rumors of druid blood. Redmond's line is pure. Most certainly Damon's lands cannot even come close to the earl's. When it does come time for the boy to marry, he will do fine with one of the minor noblewomen hanging about the castle." Henry waved his hand in the air.
"No," said Solange very calmly. "He will not. I love him and he loves me. Bloodlines mean nothing to me. We cannot be married to anyone but each other."
"You are quite wrong, my dear." The marquess stood up. He sounded almost indifferent. "You are going to be married to the Earl of Redmond on this very morning, in just over an hour, I think. The preparations are nearly complete."
"I won't do it," she said, fighting to keep the fear from her voice.
"You will, Solange." Suddenly his temper snapped, betraying the anger that had been buried under his casual demeanor. "By God, I have put up with your tempers and your moods long enough! Perhaps it is my fault for allowing you so much freedom growing up. It has poisoned your mind and spoiled your sweetness. That will end today. I am taking in the reins with you, daughter, and passing them on to a man who knows full well how to control your willfulness. You are fortunate that Redmond is eager to have you, not just the lands."
Her heart was pounding. "Father, please, just listen to me—"
"I have heard enough! You will do as I bid, and that is all!"
She threw herself at his feet. "Please don't do this! I can't marry him—"
He shook her off. "You can. You'll see."
"No." The hated tears were starting again.
Henry picked her up off the floor and pushed her gently over to the bed. "Let me say it this way to you, Solange. This match means a great deal to me. A great deal. My father, your grandfather, dreamed of
owning the land Redmond now controls. A good many men died in those days, your grandfather's men, trying to claim it. Now, through you, we will at last have what they gave their lives for. Our descendants will rule Wellburn Castle, and all the lands with it. A lifetime of wishes is about to come true, through your body."
"That's what I am to you? A body?" She had stopped crying. "Have you no heart at all?"
Henry scowled at her.
"Land is what matters, foolish child," he snapped. "Land is power. Did I waste my good gold on those tutors I hired for you? Remember your history, Solange. Men with land are men with money, and money equals power. Power like mine, and Redmond's." He paused, and lowered his face level to hers.
"Power like Damon of Lockewood wants but does not have."
Their eyes met and clashed, exactly matched in both color and pride. But Henry had an unbeatable advantage, and he chose now to play it.
"You will marry Redmond this morning." He bit off each word, measuring their effect on her. "You will do it without tears, without sighs and moans. You will do this, or I will toss your Damon out of the castle this very minute with nothing more than the clothes on his back."
"You would not," she gasped.
"You know I would. He is a man now, and I have no further obligation to him."
It would be a death sentence, and they both knew it. No villager, no peasant, would dare take in someone who had so displeased the Marquess of Ironstag. There was no other shelter for miles and miles around, several days' worth of traveling. He had nowhere to go; he would live only as long as his skills allowed him to. True winter was only days away; no one caught out in the open would survive the savage storms that whipped over the fields here. No matter how many precautions were taken, seasoned men were lost every winter due to the sudden blizzards. Damon could never make it to safe haven in time, much less his own lands.
"I would give him nothing, Solange. Not food, not water, not clothing, not bows nor arrows, not a horse. Nothing. All his herbs, that impressive collection, would be burned in the courtyard." He cocked an eyebrow at her ill-concealed surprise. "Oh, yes, I know about his pharmacopoeia, and about his imprudent ambitions to become a physician. I am not quite so isolated from castle society as I seem to be."
Her limbs were numb, as if they no longer were a part of her body, but rather just pieces of flesh belonging to someone else. She pressed her fingernails into the palms of her hands, trying to feel some other pain than her father's words.
"And were you to devise some foolhardy plan of running away together . . . well, I think we both know how easy it would be to find you. And my punishment then would be much more severe."
"Father." Her voice was a thready whisper.
"Would you do that to him, my dear? Would you sentence him to die like a stray dog in the wild?"
It smothered her: the image of Damon in rags, living in the dirt, worse than the most wretched of serfs. Succumbing to the inevitable. Lying dead in the snow, his perfect face frozen, his body left to be picked apart as food for scavengers . . .
Henry noted with satisfaction the torment etched on her face and resumed his indifferent air. "You decide, Solange. But before you do, let me tell you something else."
He backed away and walked over to the window, as if to admire the view. Leaning his weight against his elbow, he addressed his remarks to the square of hard blue sky outside.
"If, on the other hand, you do as I command you to, Damon will have quite a different life from the one I just described. You know I can see to that as well. If you wed Redmond today with no more fuss, then I will use my power to help Damon. I will supply him with horses and men, food, armaments, whatever he needs to ride to Wolfhaven, or even to the king himself, to reclaim his lands. I will give him all these things for free, for as long as he needs them. I will use my influence—influence about to be made significantly more powerful by your marriage—to help oust the lords who have stolen the fringes of his estate. I will also inform the king that Damon Wolf has my full support in these matters."
A long pause.
"I see," Solange said.
"And, in his own castle, with no one else to rule over him but our good King Edward, he will have a measure of freedom he has never tasted before. He may cultivate his own crops, collect his own rents." Henry cleared his throat delicately. "He may even practice medicine all he wants. Who knows? Perhaps one day, with enough experience, he would become a truly outstanding healer."
She stared at him wordlessly.
"And naturally, if you choose this path for Damon, you will not mention this conversation to him. We wouldn't want the boy to go off and get himself speared to death by one of Redmond's men over some youthful, misguided devotion to you, would we?"
Her eyes were glazed and vacant. Her father smiled to himself, tracing his fingers into the dust motes on the windowsill.
"Only you may say, Solange. You hold the power of not just his future but his very life in your small hands. What will you do with it? I wonder. How much do you really love him?"
The wedding was mercifully short.
The castle chapel had been built two centuries earlier by a more pious lord of Ironstag than the present one. No expense had been spared to make it one of the most lavish around, and the result was an overbearing mix of marbled suffering saints, depictions of scriptures on stained glass panes, and endless curlicue swirls on anything wooden. In the center of the pulpit hung a tremendous crucifix of gold leaf and rounded gems. The painted eyes of the hanging Christ were cast up mournfully to heaven, meant to remind that salvation was never painless.
Solange had never been comfortable amid all the fussy somberness, but now all she felt was emptiness where her heart and mind used to be. She concentrated on the cool, musty air filling her lungs in rhythmic expansions, on the abstract patterns of colored light falling all around her. What relief to feel like this, what blessing after the torment she had endured giving up the one thing in her world that had ever really mattered to her.
Damon was not there to witness the event. At least, she had not seen him as she walked down the chapel aisle on the arm of her father. The gilded room was far from empty, however. Every pew was fully crammed, and more people crowded in the back and spilled down the sides, all eager to witness a royal wedding. They gawked and whispered in a moving mass of ruffles and lace, wondering at the paleness of the bride, the fixed stare of her father.
Only the groom seemed truly pleased, regarding his bride with the proper sort of satisfaction that made several feminine hearts flutter with envy.
Except for one.
Lady Margaret had no envy in her heart today, only complete and utter satisfaction. Today was the end of a long series of events she had taken exquisite pains to begin over a year before. She watched the back of the bride stiffen as the marquess handed her over to the earl. Her lips curled into a cat's smile.
It was almost done now. How clever she was, she crowed silently, how terribly clever. It had been so much easier than she had hoped. Her hands smoothed the rich mauve velvet of her best overskirt on her lap, then reached up to adjust the fine veil covering her favorite headdress, one composed almost entirely of pearls.
Her eyes were green and bright, her cheeks flushed as a young girl's with self-pleasure. A flattering beam of pink light from a stained glass prophet's skirt cut down by chance though the chapel to surround her angelically. Many agreed among themselves that Henry's mistress had never looked better. She rather thought so herself.
It had been Lady Margaret who had first brought to Henry's attention the fact that his young daughter was rapidly budding into full womanhood. It was time, she declared one night in his bed, to give Solange what her heritage deserved: a hearth of her own to manage, a husband to provide her with sturdy, noble children.
Many of them.
It was for her own good, she argued in a voice rich with mock concern. The girl was growing up wild and unsupervised, surely he coul
d see it? It would not be fair to Solange to allow her to continue like this.
Eventually, after more than a few nights of these soft persuasions, coupled with Margaret's rather limber personal charms, Henry decided he agreed.
When she proposed the Earl of Redmond as a suitable candidate, Henry had more than agreed. It was a match he had been considering for some time. To have his mistress, a woman with her finger firmly on the pulse of society, confirm his thoughts cemented the idea in his head.
But he did not know that Margaret had already contacted Redmond regarding Solange.
She was a woman who understood men, and she had understood what Redmond wanted two years earlier, when she had first met him in London on a visit to court to wrap up the affairs of her recently deceased husband. A brutally handsome man, Redmond's strange, magnetic manner attracted the court ladies in droves. Yet he had rebuffed them all.
Margaret knew why.
The earl, with his curling eyes and curling hair, had no use for women jaded by court life. Even the maidens there, simpering with their painted faces, held no appeal to him. He wanted someone fresh, someone completely innocent.
Her reasoning was close enough to the truth to hold the earl's attention when she approached him. Soon she had woven enough insinuations regarding Solange into her conversation that he was asking questions of his own, probing her further.
They had continued the conversation for months afterward, using his men as messengers, men who came to Ironstag as travelers, pilgrims, or tinkers.
It was no matter at all to have him come out to take a look at Solange for himself. Margaret had offered to send him a miniature of the child, but Redmond had cordially refused, noting that more often than not painters would flatter their subjects until they became unrecognizable in person. His message to her stated he needed to evaluate Solange with his own eyes.
And he had insisted on anonymity to do it. Margaret was not to inform even the marquess that the Earl of Redmond was posing as a simple traveler in a rough group of men, all of whom were really his soldiers. Redmond claimed the ruse necessary in case he decided the girl did not suit him. He wanted no further ill feelings between the two families, he said.
