Page 21 of Traitor Son

The rest of the evening galloped by like a panicking horse.

After the ceremony, the wedding party retired to the inn for a feast attended by anyone who impressed the innkeeper and the duke’s knights. The food was tested for poison before it was brought to His Grace’s table, and the only attendees permitted to carry weapons were the Knights of the Brede.

Ophele was ignorant of all these precautions. Seated at the high table beside her new husband, she picked at her food and tried to ignore the stares, unaccustomed to the attention of so many people. The duke was being unusually considerate, and she wondered why. It was impossible to tell from his expression; when he wasn’t actively irritated, his face was at best neutral, if not grim. But he prepared a platter for her, cut up her meat, and offered her savories as they passed by, though his suggestions sounded more like orders.

“Do you have much experience of wine?” he asked as he poured her some, pausing with the glass half-filled.

She shook her head. The first time she had ever tasted wine was in his camp the night before last, and it had been sour and made her feel sleepy.

“You have to cultivate a taste for it,” he explained, setting the jug aside. “Here, try it.”

Obediently, she sipped, wondering if this variety might be any better. The taste filled her nose and tickled her tongue with a stinging heat, sour and acid. Her mouth puckered.

“No, eh?” The duke signaled a serving girl to bring her something else. Tasting his own cup, he frowned. “We will do better in the valley.”

He meant to grow grapes? And he wasn’t ignoring her, or barking orders. Ophele cast about for something to say, attempting to meet him on his own ground. “Are you going to—”

“Edemir.” He was already speaking, leaning over to the knight on his left. “Before we leave, send out some inquiries…”

He probably hadn’t heard her in the din. Ophele accepted a cup of fruit juice from the serving girl and sipped, trying not to notice that the sky outside the casement windows was completely dark, and the servants were lighting the oil lamps along the sides of the banquet hall. A space in the center had already been cleared for dancing, and musicians were tuning their instruments, the sounds of flute, drum, and mandolin rippling through the noise of conversation.

She caught the duke watching her from the corner of his eye and lowered her head, hoping he wouldn’t ask. She could already hear his question in her head, punctuated by the derisiveprincess.She didn’t know how to dance. Her mother had danced with her when she was a little girl, but after she died, there had never been a tutor or a dancing-master. Not even a nurse like Mistress Ursule, who taught Lisabe the proper arts of a noble lady.

Ophele looked up at her tall, imposing husband, wondering with renewed fear what he would say when he realized exactly how poor a princess she was.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she whispered, looking hastily away. She watched the moon rise like a criminal counting down the minutes to their execution, and saw the key players in the final drama moving into their places: one of his knights came to murmur in the duke’s ear, and a moment later Mistress Goel appeared at the far end of the table, flanked by two maids. It felt as if her heart stopped.

His Grace looked at her with opaque black eyes, and bent his head to her ear.

“Go on up, Princess,” he said quietly. “I will follow shortly.”

It occurred to her that dancing might have been a better alternative.

Traditionally, her mother and sisters should have escorted her from the hall, along with any other married female relations and close friends. Ophele rose and exited the hall alone, trying to walk with dignity, her head held high and her pace unhurried.

But they did not take her to her room. They went instead to a different room at the end of the hall, where Sir Auber was just coming out of the door.

“Your Grace,” he said, moving aside with a polite bow.

The new bedchamber looked much like her old one, a large and luxurious room with a large and luxurious bed, littered with a small assortment of belongings that plainly belonged to a man: a large pair of boots on the floor, a familiar cloak over a chair, a rough leather bag. Patiently, the maids undid all their work, removing the layers of her gown and replacing her chemise with a lighter one of thin white silk edged in lace. Then Mistress Goel shooed them from the room and sat her by the washstand to remove the roses from her hair.

“Your Highness, please forgive me for asking,” she began, looking troubled. “I assumed someone from your family was on the way, and had perhaps been delayed on the road. But…has no one given you your bridal lessons?”

“Bridal lessons?” Ophele repeated blankly.

“Oh, dear.” The mistress glanced anxiously at the windows, marking the progress of the moonrise. “And His Grace will be here any minute, I wonder if I dare…you must be very honest with him, Your Highness. I believe he is a sympathetic man, he seemed quite taken with you. It was just as I said…”

A knock sounded at the door, and both women started.

“He hasn’t been able to take his eyes off you,” the mistress finished in a whisper, and gave Ophele’s hair a final stroke with the brush before she rose and departed. There was a brief, whispered conversation in the hallway, and then the duke ducked through the door, and made the room small with the sheer force of his presence.

She had skittered halfway across the room like a frightened deer before she realized it.

“Wife.”

The single word stopped her in her tracks. Her fingers tangled in an anxious knot before her as she lifted her eyes to his, ignorant that the fire behind her revealed the curves of her body through her thin chemise.

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