by J A Armitage
She raised my hand and slid the leafy band onto my finger.
“By the power vested in me by the Throne of Floris,” the officiant declared, “and in the sight of all the world, I now pronounce you man and wife.”
He took a moment to glance at each of us and let the tension hang in the air. Lilian shifted impatiently from foot to foot, and a dimple appeared at the corner of her mouth.
The officiant cleared his throat. “You may seal your union with a kiss.”
Lilian’s mouth claimed mine. Somewhere beyond the soft embrace of her lips, the room erupted in cheers. There was joy out there--the kind of joy that hadn’t been seen in Floris since the flowers began to die. Lilian pulled back, and the light from the lilies whirled across her face and sparkled in her eyes.
Far above us, from the highest towers of the palace, bells pealed the news out to the kingdom. Our guests rose, still applauding, and we walked back down the aisle hand-in-hand, the scent of flowers all around us.
The wedding ceremony was followed by a luncheon, which was followed by a late-afternoon reception that was open to the public. Lilian and I stood together, shaking hands and accepting the congratulations of what seemed like every person in Floris. It was exhausting, but Lilian stood up straight and smiled for everyone. She had a knack for greeting complete strangers as if they were old friends, and seemed to have no trouble keeping the line moving without ever making our guests feel rushed. I just tried to keep something like a pleasant expression on my face and not keel over.
By the time the last person had gone through the line and the guards had closed the doors before anyone new could arrive, I felt like I could sleep for a week and still not have it be enough.
“How do you do that?” I muttered to Lilian, who was still looking fresh as a daisy.
She winked up at me. “Why do you think I take my dance lessons so seriously?” she asked. “Diplomacy requires stamina.” She tilted her head. “You’re new to this, poor boy. We’ve got a couple of hours before we have to dress for the ball. Come with me.”
I groaned. “I forgot there was still a ball.”
She laughed and took my hand. We escaped through one of the ballroom’s side doors, and Lilian led me up to her quarters. She left me on her sofa and disappeared into her dressing room with one of her maids. By the time she came back, I had already kicked off my shoes and curled up on the couch.
“Sit up,” she ordered.
I obeyed, bleary-eyed, and then abruptly noticed that she was no longer in her wedding gown. Instead, she was dressed only in a chemise and stockings.
I’d seen her in light summer dresses and bathing gowns before, and this chemise covered far more of her than those had.
But that had been Lilian, my friend.
This was Lilian, my wife.
She giggled, and my face grew hot.
“Stars, you’re adorable.” She sat on the couch next to me, then patted her lap. “Come here, my love. You deserve a few moments to rest. It’s been a long month.”
Obediently, I rested my head in her lap. She played with my hair and traced her fingertips along my forehead and cheekbones, smiling down at me with that cloud of golden hair surrounding her like a halo.
“How’d I get so lucky, Lils?”
“You were kind to me.” She traced a line down the side of my jaw. “And you trusted me.” Her fingers paused, and I opened my eyes to see her frowning. “Always. Even when I was running headfirst into the worst mistake of my life.”
“I should have tried to stop you.”
She shook her head. “That would have made you like him. He tried to tell me what to do all the time. You never have, even when we were little.” She shifted, and her fingers started moving again, this time wandering down my neck. “You’ve never tried to diminish me or control me or turn me into something I’m not.”
The thought was horrifying. “That’s because I like who you are.”
“I know,” she said, smiling gently down at me. “Isn’t that remarkable?”
Her fingertips drifted down to the skin between my collarbones, dipping just beneath the neckline of my shirt. My breath caught.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” I said cautiously. “But I’m going to advise you, as your friend, that maybe you should stop doing that if we want to make it to the ball.”
She turned bright red and laughed. She bent down awkwardly to kiss me, and I pushed myself up to make it easier for her.
“Your lips are the best thing in the whole world,” I said.
“Better than strawberries?”
I snuggled back down onto her lap, and she returned to raking her fingers through my hair and scratching them along my scalp. “Better than strawberries.”
I drifted into a blissful sleep and was woken all too soon by Lilian gently shaking my shoulder. We went our separate ways, and, for the second time today, I had the uncomfortable experience of being dressed by a valet.
“You can relax, sir,” the man finally observed, suppressing a smile.
I shifted and gave it my best effort. It didn’t take me very far.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m used to being a servant, not having one. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do here.”
The valet, Avens, whom I’d seen around the palace but never really spoken to, stopped buttoning my shirt for me and stepped back with a polite half-bow.
“How about you dress yourself, sir, and I’ll make sure the back looks all right when you’re through?”
I shot him a grateful look. “I think you and I are going to get along just fine,” I said.
He allowed himself a tiny smirk. “I believe we are.”
Once dressed, I met Lilian outside the ballroom. She had traded her chemise for a stunning evening gown of rose silk, with the skirt pinned up by clusters of live flowers from the wedding earlier. A ribbon of blossoming sweet peas wove its way through her hair.
I had timed them exactly right. The flowers had unfurled at the perfect moment. I touched one gently. “I’m going to keep growing you flowers, Lils,” I promised.
“Of course, you are.” She stood on tiptoes and gave me a quick peck on the lips. “Why would I marry the kingdom’s best gardener if not to always have flowers in my hair?”
“Sure it wasn’t my roguishly good looks?”
She giggled. “Those golden rings in your eyes might have had something to do with it.”
I leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Me with the golden eyes,” I murmured. “You with the golden hair.”
Lilian wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my chest. The embrace crumpled the front of her gown, but she didn’t seem to care, and I couldn’t bring myself to, either.
And then the doors opened wide.
“Their Royal Highnesses, Princess Lilian and Prince Deon,” the announcer boomed.
I froze and glanced at Lilian. She smirked up at me.
“Yes, darling, you’re a prince now,” she said. “That’s how we do things in Floris, remember?”
It didn’t feel right.
But having Lilian on my arm did, and that was all that mattered.
The ball slipped by in a haze of music and drink and light conversation. I didn’t recognize most of the people here, although I took comfort in the fact that some of our guests looked as awkward as I did. Most of the young nobles seemed at home in the ballroom, but at least a few lingered near the wall and contented themselves with watching the goings-on rather than participating.
I caught the eye of one young woman with stern features and dark blonde hair pulled tightly back in a braid. She examined me from across the room, then gave me a respectful nod of what I assumed was congratulations and said something to the pretty red-haired woman next to her.
I rather wished I could be over there with them, sitting and observing the dancers. But it appeared I was a prince now, and I was determined to do as good of a job as Lilian--or, at least, to not completely embarrass myself.
So I danced, and I smiled, and I complimented elderly noblewomen on their jewels. I met King Alder’s friends and pretended I knew anything about hunting, and accepted the congratulations of what felt like everyone in the room.
“I’m proud of you,” Lilian whispered, as the clock crept toward midnight and sleep began to gather like sand in the corners of my eyes.
It was all I needed to hear. The fatigue cleared, and I was able to throw myself with real enthusiasm into a conversation with the Duchess of Clover about the sibling rivalries that were beginning to emerge among her fourteen cats.
And then, finally, the queen made her way to us across the crowded dance floor. Her wig was bound back in a jeweled net, either to keep it from getting caught or to shield it from closer inspection. She touched my arm and leaned up to whisper in my ear.
“People are beginning to retire for the night,” she said. “It’s a good time to slip away.”
I didn’t need telling twice. I found Lilian, who had been cornered by a talkative baron. I only needed to give her the slightest nod for her to catch my message. She politely disentangled herself from the conversation and guided me to a side door. We slipped through it and into the luxurious quiet of the corridor outside.
The instant we were back in her quarters, Lilian kicked off her shoes and dropped onto her sofa with a sigh. A cloud of rose silk billowed around her.
“Is your life always like this?” I said, not sure I wanted the answer.
She laughed. “This was a wedding,” she said. “Luncheons and balls are rarely like this, and even more rarely all on the same day.” She leaned back and closed her eyes. “My feet are killing me.”
I took off my shoes, too, and set them neatly next to the sofa. My room was usually neat enough, but I always made a special effort to avoid making a mess in Lilian’s quarters.
I glanced around, realizing for the first time with a jolt that these were my quarters now.
That would take some getting used to. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to miss my manure bed.
“Give ‘em here,” I said, settling onto the sofa.
Lilian instantly groaned in what I assumed was relief and stuck both her feet in my lap. I laughed and began to massage one of them, rolling my thumb up underneath the ball of her foot and scraping my knuckle down the delicate arch.
“Deon,” she murmured, closing her eyes and leaning against the arm of the couch. “I very well might marry you.”
I let the words sink in. They were like rain after a drought.
“Lils?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“We’re married.”
Her eyes flew open, and she grinned at me with a smile so wide I was worried she was going to hurt herself.
“I know,” she said.
“Like, married, married.”
“I know,” she said again, and her smile, if it were possible, got wider. “And I’m married to you, not some idiot ogre from Thornton.”
“You married the gardener.”
She threw her hands in the air and beamed up at the ceiling like it had done something to make this miracle happen. “I married the gardener!” she shouted.
I cracked up, and she nestled back down into the cough and grinned at me. I grinned back, and we stared at each other like a couple of happy owls as we soaked in the reality of our new life.
She winced suddenly. “Ooh, right there.”
I focused on the spot high in the arch of her foot, and she made a face and then relaxed with a sigh.
“What are we going to do now?” I said.
Every thought I’d had about my life and my future had changed, transforming in an instant like the world under a sudden sunrise. I didn’t have to leave Floris now. I didn’t even have to leave the palace. I could stay here, and… and what? Would I continue to work as the head gardener? I didn’t mind the thought, but I couldn’t begin to imagine what the rest of the kingdom would think about it. Would I forget about gardening entirely and begin studying in earnest to one day be king? That didn’t feel right, either.
I thought back to how Queen Rapunzel might have felt on her first night as King Alder’s wife. She had been new to this royalty thing, too, as a bride, but she’d made a brilliant go of it.
“Maybe someone will show up with a baby,” I mused.
“Stars, I hope not,” Lilian said. She widened her eyes. “We’ve had quite enough surprises for one week. Not that I’m complaining.” She nudged me with her free foot. “This has been an awfully good week.”
“As surprises go, the duke’s pre-existing marriage was a good one.”
“I think we should start with the mushrooms,” Lilian said dreamily. “The blight’s the biggest problem facing the kingdom right now. Hedley and Reed and the magicians seem to have the enchanted glass approach well in hand, and it sounds like Hedley’s going to stay for a while.”
“I don’t think we could pay him to leave,” I said. “He’d never admit it, but I think this blight is the most interesting gardening challenge he’s faced in a decade or three.”
“And that leaves us free to begin researching the mushrooms,” she said. “I don’t even know where to start. We need to figure out all their properties and submit them for study by both magicians and botanists, and of course, we need to figure out if we can grow them on the palace grounds outside of your garden. That would be much easier than running back and forth to the woods all the time. We should determine if they’re edible, too. If they are, they could be an excellent food source for people who can’t get the enchanted glass right away for whatever reason.”
“I wonder if they’d work as goat feed?” I said. “Even if they’re only part of the goats’ diet, that would lessen the amount we have to import from other kingdoms, so people could keep producing cheese and meat.”
“Of course, if we can figure out how to cross-breed the mushrooms with other plants, we might be able to grow all sorts of blight-resistant crops,” Lilian mused. “Maybe even some flowers. The geneticists in Tulis are getting quite good at isolating plant traits and introducing them into new species.”
“It would be wonderful if we could keep growing tulips,” I said. “I’ve been worried about what’s going to happen to the economy now that our flower exports have all but stopped.”
“It’ll take time,” Lilian said. “We’re going to have a rough couple of years, I think. But I hope we can rebuild. We’re resilient.”
“Florians are the mint of the world,” I said. “It might look like we’ve died back, but we’re just about impossible to actually kill.”
“You’re a poet, Deon,” Lilian said, laughing.
“I’m a gardener.”
Her eyes softened. “That you are. Once a gardener of the palace grounds. Now a gardener of a kingdom.”
The weight of that responsibility settled on my shoulders. It was heavy, but it wasn’t a bad weight. If anything, it felt like something I was helping Lilian to carry, like my presence might somehow make her burdens lighter.
I began to work on her other foot. She closed her eyes and slid further down onto the arm of the sofa.
“Lils?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re going to sink between the cushions and be lost forever.”
“Don’t care,” she said, eyes still closed.
“Don’t you want to take off that dress, at least? It doesn’t look comfortable.”
“It’s not,” she said.
I glanced around. “Where are your maids? Or your ladies?”
She opened one eye. “I told them they could take the night off since I’d be getting back so late,” she said. “I figured you could just help me with the gown tonight. If you’re willing.”
“If I’m willing,” I repeated.
“You might not be,” she said lightly. “You might think I’m a disgusting monster. You never know.”
“A monster.”
“Mmhm, a vile one.”
I set h
er foot down and crawled over her, smashing her beautiful gown and pushing her further into the cushions. “I have an idea,” I said. “Let’s go get you out of that dress. You can snuggle up in bed where it’s comfortable. I’ll finish rubbing your feet.” I kissed her and then drew back, keeping my lips close enough to her face that I could feel her breath. “And then I’ll show you exactly what I think of you.”
Her eyes sparkled beneath her long lashes. She wriggled, and I pulled back to help her up. She stood and gazed up at me for a long moment.
Then she bit her lip, turned toward her bedroom, and held out her hand.
I took it, ready to follow her anywhere.
20th April
We didn’t emerge from our bedroom until early the next afternoon. Finally, we were wrested from the dreamy cocoon of our chambers by a note from the queen, inviting us to a late luncheon.
“I’m not entirely sure I want to see my parents just now,” Lilian admitted, cheeks flushed, and a mischievous sparkle in her eyes.
I knew the feeling. They’d only just gotten used to the notion that Lilian and I cared for one another as something other than brother and sister. The thought of them having any idea what we’d been up to all morning was enough to heat my face by several degrees.
“Still, they are the monarchs of the realm,” I said.
Lilian snorted. “I guess that’s one argument.”
We made it to luncheon only a few minutes late, and I thought we both looked reasonably presentable. Something like a smirk passed over the queen’s face when we arrived at her chambers, but it was gone so quickly I thought I might have imagined it.
Servants brought up sandwiches and scones with cream and a pitcher of the cook’s orange-mint lemonade. Daisy followed them, bearing a tray of jams and mustards in elegant little pots. She caught my eye and then looked away, clearly unsure how to navigate the new space between us.
“Good afternoon, Daisy,” I said.
She flushed, surprised to be acknowledged. It might not have been the ordinary way of things. But I wasn’t going to be an ordinary royal.
“This is Daisy,” I added to the king and queen. “She’s a friend of mine. She snuck food out to me several times when I was living outside.”
