Page 38 of His Bride

“So what did you do to end up with this job?” I ask her the question because I don’t know why Arthur chose her, and I want to know.

“I’m a woman,” she says. “And a soldier.”

There’s a lot not said there. She must have been a good soldier. He wouldn’t trust just anybody with me.

Arthur

The ladies have returned. I can hear my bride complaining. It speaks to my attachment to her that I find the sound endearing. My work has been tedious compared to the time spent with her.

“I need a bath,” she says. “Lydia pushed me into a pond.”

“I did no such thing,” Lydia denies immediately.

Mila rushes past in a huff, going straight to the bedroom.

“Interesting visit to the gardens?”

“She takes pleasure in not listening,” Lydia says, following me into my office. “However, an opportunity presented itself today.”

“Oh?”

“Mila met a young woman now known as Elizabeth Idaho on the plane. She was matched with Edward Idaho. She wants to meet up with them in the hope of making friends with Elizabeth.”

“I see.”

Edward Idaho is my equivalent, in a sense. He is the leader of the merchant class, a man with more money than most, and almost as much power.

We do not move in the same circles, because there is something of a mutual mistrust as well as a symbiosis between those who go to war and those who sell weapons. The Artifice is responsible for both our successes, in a way, though I would not be where I am if I were not capable of surviving. The same could be said for Edward. I have heard he is ruthless and brutal.

“Thank you for letting me know, Lydia.”

“Arthur! I want to invite a friend over. Her name is Elizabeth Idaho.” She asks me the question as we are preparing for bed. I have watched it percolate through her mind all evening as she worked her way up to asking me. It has been a most adorable process to observe.

“Consider it done,” I say, mostly because it is.

“Really?” She smiles very broadly.

“Yes, of course. I want you to be happy here, Mila. And I want you to have suitable companions.”

“Ones you don’t banish to the colonies,” she smiles. Then the smile falls. “You won’t banish Elizabeth, will you? She seems very nice.”

“I will try not to,” I smile. I like seeing her excited about something. I like the idea of making her happy. She wants such simple things. Other men talk incessantly about their wives’ endless requests for jewels and such. Mila might be working up to begging for a diamond, but I don’t think so.

“How exciting!” Mila smiles broadly. “I can’t wait. When will dinner be? What will we have? We’ll have to play parlor games. She’s from Angeland like me, so she’ll know them all. We’ll have to teach you.”

Several days later, we have dinner with Edward Idaho.

He arrives two hours late, which I find unspeakably rude. I live in a world where a seven p.m. dinnertime is a seven p.m. dinnertime, not a nine p.m. arrival.

There is a hold-up down at the gate due to the untimeliness of the whole affair, which further delays their arrival. Mila is a nervous wreck. She has changed her dress four times, and every time she does, she feels compelled to repaint her nails. She has also put on a good amount of cosmetics that she sentout for the moment the dinner party was confirmed. Having met her without so much as a scrap of makeup on, it is quite interesting to watch my simple country bride transform into a smooth-skinned sophisticate. She looks gorgeous either way, but internally I think I prefer her without it. I like seeing her just as she is, not as she imagines she wishes she was.

But I understand that women have their battle paint, and that a social occasion, even one with those one hopes will be friends, is not without danger.

“Do you think they’re not coming? They would have said if they weren’t coming, wouldn’t they?”

“I don’t know,” I’d replied, largely because I do not know. Edward Idaho is a stranger to me.

“All the money in the world and I can’t get a place like this,” he says, shaking my hand. “They say something happened to your eyes. Is that what the glasses are for?”

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