by Barb Hendee
One morning, Heath and Lizbeth waited impatiently downstairs for Rochelle. She didn’t come. Finally, he went up to get her, and he found her in their mother’s room—with their mother. His sister Carlotta was there, too, along with several women who were draping silk around Rochelle, and chattering about “the neckline.”
Heath stood in the doorway, wanting to pull Rochelle away.
“Heath!” his mother said, spotting him. “What are you doing there? We’re fitting your sister for gowns. Get out and close the door behind you.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Bereft, he went back downstairs and told Lizbeth what he’d seen. Rochelle didn’t come down all day. Lunch was even carried up to Mother’s room. Normally, Rochelle’s muslin dresses were fitted from previous ones, and even if she’d needed to be fitted, it had never taken long and she’d never been called to Mother’s room.
Heath and Lizbeth tried to create a story and play out the characters by themselves, but it didn’t work without Rochelle.
Shortly before dinner, he caught her alone. “Why did it take all day to fit you for a gown?”
“Gowns,” she corrected. “Mother is planning a visit to Enêmûsk, and I’m to go. I think she wants to present Carlotta to a few suitors, but she also wants it to appear as a family visit so we aren’t too obvious.”
“Oh . . .” Heath’s discomfort grew. Mother was taking Rochelle to Enêmûsk? “Still, did you have to be up there all day?”
“I need gowns, Heath. We’ll be attending formal dinners.”
This was the beginning of a change in Rochelle that he could not seem to stop. A few days later, her first silk gown was finished, and when she walked into the dining room that evening, she looked . . . different. Her body was beginning to change, as his had, and her slender form was developing soft curves. The silk gown fit her snuggly and the neckline was low. Her delicate face seemed more defined, her hair more lustrous, and her skin more creamy.
He didn’t like it.
Weeks passed, and she took to walking to the stable in her new silk gowns—to visit her horse. Every guard in the courtyard or near the gates would stop whatever he was doing to stare at her.
She never had time for games of make-believe in the forest anymore, and she seemed to spend most of her hours in front of her mirror. She collected perfumes and earrings and small jeweled clips for her hair.
He grew desperate, missing the games they’d played out in the forest so much that the inside of his chest hurt. One morning, he cornered her. “Lizbeth and I have made up a story. Come outside today.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t? Not even for one day?”
“Heath,” she said sweetly. She always spoke to him sweetly. “Those days are gone. Mother, Carlotta, and I are packing for our visit to Enêmûsk. I am becoming a young lady now . . . and you are becoming a young man.”
A white-hot anger flooded through him. Turning on his heel, he walked away.
But she left the following day, and she was gone for two weeks. Every day was torture just for him to make it to darkness as he counted the time passing. When she returned, he fell to his knees and begged her forgiveness, which she gave.
The next morning, she came up to the attic with him and Lizbeth, and they acted out a game of make-believe in which Rochelle was a princess sold into slavery, and Heath rescued her. He was dizzy with relief afterward, like a starving man who’d been fed.
Both his mother and Carlotta seemed more animated for a few days. Carlotta had been presented to several eligible noblemen, and she was expecting a written offer soon.
A messenger came just before dinner. He carried two letters.
Rochelle was a vision that night in a white satin gown. Even Maddox looked startled when she walked into the dining room. Father stood up to greet her.
“Come and sit, my dear. We may have good news for your sister.”
Everyone else in the family had arrived for dinner. Father enjoyed a little drama, and he’d waited to open the letters. Carlotta sat expectantly, watching him.
She was only in her twenties, but her hair was already streaked with gray, and her mouth was lined. Heath had often tried to feel pity for her, but she never had a kind word for anyone and couldn’t seem to look at another person without finding fault.
Father opened the first letter and began to read. “Yes.” He smiled. “It is an offer . . .” His smile faded. “For Rochelle.”
Carlotta stiffened in her chair.
The second letter also contained an offer for Rochelle.
Mother looked stricken. “I am sorry, my dear,” she said to Carlotta. “The next offer will be for you. I’m sure of it.”
Heath felt sick and didn’t know why. “What of those two offers?” He rarely spoke at the table, and everyone turned to him.
“Well,” his father began, “I’ll write back and refuse them. Rochelle is only sixteen. In my mind, she is too young for marriage.”
Relief flooded Heath’s stomach. He loved his father more than ever at that moment.
But the pattern was set, and over that winter and spring, every man with whom Father began negotiations for Carlotta would either vanish after meeting her . . . or make an offer for Rochelle if he’d been allowed to meet her.
Father and Mother tried to make light of this. Carlotta did not. Lizbeth was often forgotten during this time period, even by Heath, as their games didn’t work without Rochelle.
Sometimes Heath couldn’t stop himself from begging his twin to come into the forest or the attic with him. She was always sweet, but she always had something else to do.
He began to have trouble sleeping. In his mind at night, he made up stories and he acted them out with Rochelle.
Summer came, and Jace returned. Taking up the dagger lessons again helped a bit. No one mentioned him learning the sword again. Mother was too busy trying to find a husband for Carlotta.
Heath gained permission from his father to miss dinner once or twice a week, and he spent those evenings in the Móndyalítko camp. The people there had little interest in the “adult” world, and they lived as they pleased. He knew they earned money by visiting neighboring towns and villages and putting on musical shows and telling fortunes. But otherwise, their time was their own, and at night, they entertained one another with songs and stories. A part of Heath’s earlier education had involved music, and he sometimes brought his lute so he could take part in the songs, but he most enjoyed listening to the darker stories, with magic and curses and revenge.
One night, he noticed the gypsies drinking from a small, familiar-looking cask . . . from his own family’s outer storage sheds.
“Is that ours?” he asked.
Startled, Jace glanced at the cask and then looked chagrined. “I fear it is. There were so many that I didn’t think anyone would notice if I liberated one.”
Heath smiled. He didn’t begrudge them a cask of wine, and neither would his father.
But then, toward the end of that summer, Heath noticed a change in his father. Alexis grew pale, and then he lost his appetite. A physician was called, who used the word “consumption.” It never occurred to Heath that father might not recover. But halfway through that autumn, his father died.
Within a week, Uncle Hamish, his mother’s brother, came to live with them.
The world had shifted again.
Heath was named baron of Quillette.
Since he knew nothing of the wine business, Uncle Hamish took it over, and he became master of the house.
Any and all love and kindness vanished from Heath’s life—except for Rochelle. Lizbeth did love him, but she couldn’t express it. Only Rochelle gave him love in the form of kind words. She began letting him come into her room at night to brush her long hair before bed. No one else knew they did this, but he relished the time she gave him.
The two of them celebrated their seventeenth birthday.
Carlotta was not yet married.
A week later, at dinner, Uncle Hamish pronounced Rochelle was of age to consider marriage proposals.
Heath politely excused himself from the table. He went outside and threw up.
After that, Rochelle had even less time to spare.
Noble families with unmarried sons would come to the manor for short “visits,” and every man who walked through the door—married or not—followed Rochelle with his eyes. Offers were made, but somehow Rochelle always found a way to get Uncle Hamish to turn them down. She smiled sometimes and teased, “Let’s wait for an offer from a prince.”
This seemed to have the desired effect, and polite refusals were sent.
However, Rochelle’s string of refusals frustrated their mother.
Worse, with each new offer, Carlotta’s mouth became more and more downturned.
Still, Heath lived in fear that Rochelle would be married off and taken away from him. One afternoon, he begged her to go riding with him, just for a few hours, but she touched his face and told him she had other things to do.
Angry, he strode out of the house and went out to the stable, climbing into the loft and lying alone up there. If he couldn’t spend time with her, he wanted to be alone.
The stable was quiet and peaceful this time of day, and he’d almost dozed off when he heard hushed voices below.
“Samuel, stop. We can’t. Not here.”
“No one will see. Come on. There’s a good girl.”
Heath rolled onto his side and looked down over the edge of the loft to see one of the house guards, Samuel, and a pretty kitchen maid directly below him. Heath didn’t know the girl’s name.
Samuel dropped to his knees, pulling the girl down with him, and then pushing her onto the floor.
Although she pushed back at him, she didn’t fight or scream. “Let me up. We’ll be caught, and I’ll be dismissed.”
“No one will catch us. I’ll be quick.”
After opening the top of the girl’s white blouse, he tugged at it. Then he ran his hands over her bare breasts. Dipping his head, he began doing the same thing with his mouth.
Heath froze, appalled at the indignity, but he couldn’t look away.
“Samuel, stop.”
She wasn’t fighting or crying out, and although Heath had no intention of revealing himself up here, he wanted the guard to stop what he was doing. It was so crude and raw . . . and it must be awful for the girl.
Then it got worse. Samuel grasped at the girl’s skirts, pulling them up, exposing the rest of her body, and he pushed himself inside her, breathing hard as he did so. Heath’s dismay grew as he lay there silently, just watching.
It went on for a while.
Heath knew the principle of such things . . . and they happened between men and women. Intellectually, he knew that his father and mother had acted out something of this nature to conceive their children, but he’d never realized what the woman had to endure. The sheer animal nature of it continued to fill him with horror.
Below, Samuel gasped, and a moment later, he rolled off the girl, leaving her lying there with most of her skirt up around her stomach.
“We’d best get out of here now,” he said.
She began to cover herself, and when she was ready, they left.
Heath took shallow breaths. To date, his fear . . . his terror had been that Rochelle would be married off and taken away from Quillette. That fear paled next to what he felt now. If Uncle Hamish married her to one of these men who followed her with their eyes, she would have to endure what the servant girl had just endured.
Rochelle was no serving girl.
She was fragile and innocent, and she would not be able to withstand such treatment.
Somehow he had to save her.
* * *
As Heath and Rochelle’s seventeenth year wound to a close, she’d still managed to avoid her uncle accepting any offers. This brought Heath great relief, but he was troubled by the way a few of the manor guards never stopped watching Rochelle with their eyes.
One of them was particularly troubling. He was a new man Maddox had hired, and his name was Keenan. He was tall and muscular, with a handsome, weathered face. Rochelle took to riding more often, and she would ask him to saddle her horse.
Heath accompanied her when she allowed him, but he hated the way Keenan watched Rochelle’s every move. A few weeks passed, and she stopped riding, but she often could not be found in the middle of the afternoon.
One day, Heath was so lonely for her that he went searching in the back of the manor, and as he walked toward a corner, he heard Keenan’s voice . . . inside the house.
“You must let me speak to your mother or your uncle,” Keenan said heatedly. “I cannot wait much longer. I love you, but this isn’t right.”
“No, not yet. Let go of me.”
Heath stopped. The second voice was Rochelle’s. He bolted, skidding around the corner, and then stopped again.
Keenan had Rochelle pressed against a wall. Her hair was disheveled and the top of her gown was partly unlaced.
The whole world went white. Heath roared and charged, shoving with both hands so hard that Keenan went spinning. Heath jerked the dagger from the sheath on his wrist and brought his hand in front of his chest instinctively, ready to strike.
Keenan’s eyes widened.
“Heath, no!” Rochelle cried, grabbing his arm. “Don’t.” She turned her head and called, “Captain Maddox!” Heath looked down at her hand, and he almost threw her off. He wanted to cut Keenan’s throat.
“Captain Maddox!” Rochelle shouted again.
Booted footsteps sounded, and Maddox came half running around the corner. At the sight before him, he stalled. “What in the—?”
“This new guard you hired had his hands on Rochelle!” Heath spat, still wanting to spring. “Look at her!”
When Maddox glanced at Rochelle’s hair and dress, his expression turned mortified. “Oh . . . my lady.”
Something about this calmed Heath slightly. A house guard laying hands on one of the noblewomen was a serious matter.
Maddox turned in a rage on Keenan. “You are dismissed without a reference. I want you out of the barracks within the hour.”
“Sir . . . ,” Keenan stammered. “You don’t understand. She—”
“She what?” Maddox snarled. “And you’d best be careful. If you slander this lady, you’ll have more to deal with than a dismissal.”
Keenan stared at Rochelle for a long moment, and then he closed his mouth.
Maddox turned to Heath. “I’ll take care of this matter. You take your sister to her room and then get your mother. Rochelle will need the comfort of other women.”
Heath nodded and felt a wave of gratitude for Maddox. The captain had stepped in and kept Heath from doing murder—which was probably a good thing now that he had time to think. Then Maddox had dismissed the offending Keenan from service, and now he had turned Rochelle over into Heath’s care.
Carefully, Heath reached up to guide his sister down the hall. Poor Rochelle. She had no idea how close she’d come to real shock and suffering.
But she had been saved.
* * *
In the days that followed Heath and Rochelle’s eighteenth birthday, much in the manor remained the same—only more pronounced.
Heath’s mother pressed Lord Hamish harder to accept an offer for Rochelle’s hand.
Carlotta grew more and more sour until the servants began to avoid her.
Lord Hamish began to drink more of the wine stores, and a few of the serving girls put in their notice with complaints about him.
Lizbeth grew lonelier, but Heath was too wrapped up in his own concerns to do much about that.
Finally, Jace and the Móndyalítko returned in the summer, and Jace told Heath, “You’re getting so good with that dagger, there’s little more I can teach you.” Still, Heath found some comfort in visiting the encampment.
Then . . . as that summer drew to a close, Heath noticed an oddity at home that began to bother him more and more.
Maddox was not acting like himself.
Since his arrival at the manor, he’d been the one man Heath could count on to view Rochelle with the respect she deserved. He never watched her walk across the courtyard to the stables, following her every move with his eyes—like one of the house guards. He protected her and treated her as one of his sacred charges.
In the past few weeks, that had changed. Now . . . whenever she entered a room, he, too, followed her with his eyes. He was distracted and on edge, and on a few occasions, he couldn’t be found when he was needed.
This disappointed Heath, and it made him feel even more alone.
One night, Maddox was late for dinner, and everyone had been seated before he arrived. He looked troubled as he took his seat.
“Pour some wine for Captain Maddox,” Lord Hamish called to a servant.
Then Heath was caught off guard when his uncle stood and raised his goblet to Rochelle. “My dear niece. Your mother and I have such news for you . . . news for the entire family. We’ve been in quiet talks with the house of Pählen. Your sister Carlotta received a letter this morning from Castle Kimovesk, and have now entered formal marriage negotiations between you and Prince Damek . . . who we all know will be the next grand prince of Droevinka. My dearest girl . . . you will be the grand princess of our nation.”
Heath sat still in his chair. Prince Damek of Kimovesk? He couldn’t have heard correctly.
Rochelle stared at her uncle and then looked down at her plate.
“Are you not happy, my sweet?” Lady Helena asked. “Is this not the best news?”
“Yes, Mother,” Rochelle answered. “I am overwhelmed.”
“You cannot be serious?” Heath asked, rising to his feet and looking at his mother. “Damek? Prince Damek? You know his reputation.”