by Carol Arens
Next to Eliza stood her sister, Mrs. Hollis Honeycutt, the matron of honor. Hollis had the help of eight little cherubs to oversee the elaborate train affixed to Eliza’s wedding dress. The cherubs were dressed identically to Eliza, without the train, of course, because only the most seasoned of ladies could maneuver in them. Instead, the girls wore flower crowns on their heads. There were no bridesmaids.
If it were Caroline’s wedding, she would have had a fleet of bridesmaids.
But in Alucia, Eliza explained, that was not the custom. “Flower girls,” she’d said. “They come from all over the country. It’s quite an honor to be named a flower girl, as I understand it.”
“But why can’t you have what you like?” Caroline complained, assuming, of course, that Eliza liked what she liked. Since the day of Eliza’s betrothal to Prince Sebastian, Caroline had also assumed, quite incorrectly, that she would be the principal bridesmaid. After all, she and Eliza and Hollis had been entwined in one another’s lives since they were very little girls.
“I am content with flower girls, honestly,” Eliza said. “I’d be content with a very simple affair. I was content with the civil ceremony. But Queen Daria prefers otherwise.”
“Naturally, she does. This is the wedding where you will be seen by all the people you will rule one day.”
Eliza snorted. “I will not rule, Caroline. I’ll be fortunate if I can find my husband in this massive place.” She’d gestured to the decorative walls around them. It was not an exaggeration—Constantine Palace appeared to be bigger than even Buckingham.
“Let me be the maid of honor,” Caroline had begged her. “I am much better equipped to see to your train than Hollis is.”
“I beg your pardon! I am her sister,” Hollis reminded Caroline.
“The train is thirty feet, Hollis. How will you ever manage? You’ve scarcely managed your own train since we’ve been in Alucia. And my gown should be seen. I spared no expense for it.”
Eliza and Hollis looked at Caroline.
“I mean, of course, after your gown is seen.”
The sisters continued to stare at her.
Caroline shrugged a very tiny bit. “Obviously,” she added.
“I rather thought that’s what you meant,” Eliza said charitably.
The three of them had gleefully adopted the Alucian style of dress since arriving a month ago in Helenamar. The English style of dress—full skirts, high necks and long sleeves—was hot and heavy. They’d admired the beautiful Alucian gowns that fit the curves of a woman’s body, with the long flowing sleeves, and, most of all, the elaborately embroidered trains...until they discovered that the unusually long trains were a bit of a bother to wear.
“I will manage,” Hollis had insisted. “No one has come to this wedding to see your gown, Caro.”
“Well, obviously, Hollis, they haven’t. But they will be delighted all the same, won’t they? And by the bye, there’s no law that says the attendant of honor must be one’s sister.”
“There is no law, but she is my sister and she will be the attendant of honor,” Eliza said. “And besides, if you were to stand with me, I’d fret the entire ceremony that you were too enthralled with Leo to even notice my train.” She’d arched a golden brow directly at Caroline.
As if Caroline had done something wrong.
She most certainly had not. “Leo? Is that what we’re calling him now?” she drawled. Leo was Prince Sebastian’s younger brother. His Royal Highness Prince Leopold.
Prince Leopold, as everyone knew, had spent the last several years in England, “attending” Cambridge, which meant, in reality, that he spent more time at soirees and gentlemen’s clubs and hunting lodges than studying. Caroline had encountered him last summer in Chichester at a country house party. They’d engaged in a charming little exchange that Caroline recalled perfectly, word for word. Prince Leopold, on the other hand, remembered it not at all. Worse, he didn’t seem to remember her.
The archbishop’s voice suddenly rose into a chant of some sort, drawing Caroline’s attention back to the ceremony. Oh dear, she was thinking about Prince Leopold again when she should be watching her best friend marry a prince. At that moment, Eliza slipped her hand into Prince Sebastian’s hand and held on tightly as the archbishop asked her to repeat after him in English. To love, to honor, to protect and defend.
So romantic.
Caroline glanced to her right. She was seated next to her brother, the baron Beckett Hawke. He was older than her by half a dozen years and had been her guardian since she was eight and he was fourteen. She leaned against him. “Isn’t she lovely?” she whispered.
“Ssh.”
“I think she is lovelier than even Queen Victoria on her wedding day,” Caroline whispered. “Her gown is beautiful. It was my idea to use the gold and silver thread on the train.”
Beck pretended not to have heard a word.
“Do you know, I think I could have made that train.”
Her brother put his hand on Caroline’s knee and squeezed as he turned his pale green eyes to hers. He frowned darkly.
Caroline pushed his hand away and glanced around her. It was massive, this Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Painted ceilings soared overhead with visions of angels and other godly images. All the fixtures were gold plated, particularly the pulpit, which looked more like a monument than a stand for the Bible. There was so much stained glass that the morning light fractured across Eliza’s long train, turning it into a moving rainbow as sunlight shimmered through the panes.
Every seat in the massive cathedral was taken, filled with beautiful people of varying skin tones and colorful costumes and glittering jewels. They had come far and wide, Caroline understood, from countries she’d never even heard of.
In a cove above the altar, a choir of young men and boys sang the hymns that had accompanied Eliza down the center aisle to meet her prince. It had sounded as if the heavens had parted and the angels were singing for this bride.
The ceremony, almost an hour of it now, was filled with a lot of pomp and circumstance. Caroline wasn’t entirely certain what was happening, as the ceremony was conducted in Latin and Alucian and, for the parts Eliza had to say, in English. It seemed to her that Eliza and Sebastian were up and down quite a lot, one minute on their knees with their heads bowed, and standing the next, staring starry-eyed at each other. There was a somber moment when Eliza was directed down onto her knees alone. It looked as if she were knighted or anointed in some way, and when it was done, the archbishop put his hand to her head, the king and queen stood, and then Prince Sebastian lifted her up and pinned a gorgeous sapphire-and-gold brooch to her breast.
“She’s a real princess now,” Caroline whispered to Beck.
Predictably, he ignored her.
Eliza looked like a princess, too, and Caroline wished Eliza’s father, Justice Tricklebank, could be here. Alas, his advanced age and blindness had made it impossible for him to attend. There had been a smaller, private ceremony in England—the first civil union—before Sebastian had returned to Alucia. That ceremony, which her father had attended, had been necessitated by the fact that Eliza and Sebastian could not seem to keep their hands from each other for as much as a few hours.
There was another civil union once Eliza had arrived in Alucia so there would be no question of impropriety, as the heat between Eliza and her prince had only grown. It was embarrassing, really.
But neither ceremony had been anything like this. This was a pageant, a feast for the eyes and hearts of romantics everywhere.
Caroline’s mind drifted, and she wondered if all these people would be at the ball tonight. She hoped so. She had a beautiful blue Alucian gown trimmed in gold that was astoundingly beautiful. She’d made the train herself. The ball would be her moment to shine...next to Eliza, of course.
Yesterday, Eliza had nervously counted out the heads o
f state that would attend the wedding and the ball and had turned a bit pale as the number mounted. Caroline’s pulse had leapt with delight.
“I can’t bear it!” Eliza had exclaimed, unnerved by the number of dignitaries, of the many kings and queens. “What if I say something wrong? You know how I am. Have you any idea how many gifts we’ve received? Am I to remember them all? I’ve never seen so many gold chalices and silver platters and fine porcelain in all my life! What if I trip? What if I spill something on my gown?”
“My advice, darling, is not to fill your plate to overflowing,” Hollis had said absently. She was bent over her paper, making notes for the periodical she published, the Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and Domesticity for Ladies. The twice-monthly gazette covered such topics as the latest fashions, domesticity and health advice, and—the most interesting part—the most tantalizing on-dits swirling about London’s high society.
Hollis could hardly keep up with the ravenous demand for society news now. She was planning to publish a gazette that would be twice the length of her normal offering with all the news of the royal wedding the moment she returned to London. She’d been busily dispatching letters to her manservant, Donovan, for safekeeping throughout the month they’d been in Alucia.
She was so preoccupied that her advice, while offered freely, was not offered with much thought, and Eliza took exception. “I beg your pardon! I’ve hardly eaten a thing since I’ve arrived in Alucia. At every meal the queen looks at me as if she disapproves of everything I do! I’m afraid to do anything, much less eat,” Eliza complained. “They’ll all be looking at me. They’ll be waiting for me to do something wrong, or speculating if I’m already carrying the heir. You cannot imagine how much interest there is in my ability to bear an heir.”
“Well, of course!” Caroline said cheerfully. “You’ll have to be a broodmare, darling, but after you’ve given them what they want, you may live in conjugal bliss for the rest of your days surrounded by wealth and privilege and many, many servants.”
“They won’t all be looking at you, Eliza. At least half the room will be looking at your handsome husband,” Hollis had said with a wink.
Caroline was once again jolted back into the present when the archbishop lifted a heavy jeweled chalice above the heads of Eliza and Prince Sebastian. Surely that meant they were nearly done? Prince Sebastian took Eliza’s hand, and they turned away from the archbishop, facing the guests with ridiculously happy grins on their faces. They were married!
Hollis turned, too, and even from where Caroline sat, she could see Hollis’s dark blue eyes shining with tears of joy. The guests rose to their feet as the prince and his bride began their procession away from the altar. Rose petals rained down on the couple and their guests from above. The little flower girls fluttered around behind Eliza like butterflies, flanking her train as they followed the couple down the aisle. Prince Leopold offered his arm to Hollis, and she beamed up at him. Caroline felt left out. Hollis and Eliza were near and dear to her heart, the closest thing to sisters she’d ever had, and she longed to be with them now.
Eliza and Prince Sebastian floated past Caroline and Beck without any acknowledgment of them. That was to be expected—the two of them looked absolutely besotted. They were so enthralled with each other, in fact, that Caroline fretted they’d walk into any one of the marble columns that lined their path.
Oh, but she was envious, filled to the very brim with envy. In England, she rarely gave marriage any thought except on those occasions Beck complained she ought to settle on someone, anyone, and relieve him of his duty. But he didn’t really mind his duty, his protestations notwithstanding. Caroline rather suspected he liked having her underfoot. So she flitted from one party to the next, happy to enjoy the attentions of the many gentlemen who crossed her path, happy with her freedom to do as she pleased.
But looking at Eliza, Caroline realized that she did indeed want one day to be in love with a man who would be as devoted to her as Prince Sebastian was to his bride. She wanted to feel everything Eliza was feeling, to understand just how that sort of love changed a person.
Prince Leopold and Hollis passed by Caroline and Beck. Hollis’s face was streaked with happy tears. Prince Leopold happened to look to the guests as they passed, a polite smile on his face. His gaze locked on Caroline’s—well, not locked, really, as much as it skimmed over her—but nevertheless, she smiled broadly. She began to lift a hand but was suddenly jostled with an elbow to her ribs. She jerked a wide-eyed gaze to her brother.
“Stop gawking,” he whispered. “You’ll snap your neck, craning it like that.”
Caroline haughtily touched a curl at her neck.
Beck turned his attention to the procession. The king and queen were passing them now. Beck leaned toward her and whispered, “He’s a prince, Caro, and you are just an English girl. You’re indulging in fairy tales again. I can see it plainly on your face.”
Just an English girl? She very much would have liked to kick Beck like she used to do when she was just a wee English girl. “Better to dream in fairy tales than not dream at all.”
Beck rolled his eyes. He stood dispassionately as the archbishop and his altar boys followed the king and queen.
Just an English girl, indeed.
Copyright © 2020 by Dinah Dinwiddie
Keep reading for an excerpt from Captured by Her Enemy Knight by Nicole Locke.
Captured by Her Enemy Knight
by Nicole Locke
Chapter One
Spring 1297—England
It was the stink of the port that she hated the most. A cross between a hacked cadaver whose entrails had been exposed too long to a blistering sun, the vigorously repeated discharge of urine and the crisp, salted sea air that carried a promise of a better life somewhere else.
Those promises were a lie. Cressida Howe knew there was nothing better. Which served her well most days. Today wasn’t that day.
Today she needed fortune or fate to give her some grain of luck. She knew they wouldn’t, however, and not because she’d stopped praying, but because six months ago she’d prevented an obsessive mercenary from completing his intended murder.
A person whom he ordered she kill, but she hadn’t. Not that she had failed. She never failed. She’d simply...disobeyed orders. And now that exacting mercenary wanted her punished.
Evading his wrath wasn’t an option because he was hired by the Warstones, the most bloodthirsty of families; thus, he had unlimited resources and unlimited hate. He was also her father. Her only family.
Weaving her way through the throng of commerce and vagrants, she balanced between the uneven planks of the walkway, all the while keeping her hood sufficiently tucked to hide any chance of recognition.
Her being a woman wasn’t why she feared discovery. If any dared attack they’d realise their fatal mistake soon enough. No, what she had to hide above all else was who she was.
The Archer. The sole weapon and creation of her father, Sir Richard Howe... The Englishman. Years of training with every weapon save a sword. But she didn’t need that iron when she held her bow and a quiver of arrows, especially the ones she had carved herself in the hours spent alone. Which were more frequent as she went from being a child to a woman and her father’s commitment to hiding her intensified. Until her face wasn’t seen by anyone unless he chose it.
Everything was as he chose it. She was raised to be a weapon without thought, without questioning the rights and wrongs of what he ordered. She obeyed him at all costs.
Thus, it was shocking to both of them when she’d disobeyed him, shooting the arrow that stopped him killing his target. The look on his face... Her utter wretchedness could not have been worse than when God banished the angels from heaven.
And banished she was, for he left her behind. He was everything to her: life, death, survival. Her only contact with him now was through messages
. He gave her tasks to do. It had been that way for months. Her loyalty to him in question, she obeyed his every command now.
Except...except the last message, the last task, came with a terrible rumour—that her father had kidnapped a child to raise. It had to be a lie, one she meant to discover the truth of for herself, so, between tasks, she’d followed her father’s trail here to the docks. To find him, to confront him and demand to be taken back.
Until then, she needed to find a sufficient hiding place for the day. One from which she could freely observe, but not be seen. Fortunately, she knew just where to observe the ships and the people. It was the same place she went yesterday and the day before that and the day before that because for a sennight she’d been climbing one of the port’s last remaining copse of trees.
She didn’t know why the trees survived the copious amounts of building around the docks. Perhaps it was for shade, perhaps for a landmark, but for now she would take advantage of it.
First circling her tree to test the crowd and determine if she was being followed, she waited one heartbeat more to be satisfied no one watched before climbing quickly to a secure branch, one where she could wait in relative comfort. It was half-hidden with foliage, low enough to jump from and not break her legs, but high enough to see passengers boarding and disembarking from the merchant ships to France. Dover was a Cinque Port, one which was required to provide ships and crew to the King should he need it. When she had arrived, she’d spent much time scanning each of the faces around her. But it had been like this for days and now she was exhausted.
So very tired of the games, of the travel. Of hiding and, when she couldn’t hide, she was tired of fighting. Her father was punishing her. First with exile, then with mercenaries who attacked and whom she couldn’t kill. She knew this to be the truth for the messages the mercenaries carried told her so.