The Marriage Pact

by Winter Renshaw

Emelie grips the purse strap on her left shoulder before striding to the door.

  “Harrison, please see to it that Ms. Belleseau has my number,” I say before directing my attention back to her. “I already have yours, in case you were wondering. We’ll be in touch throughout the week. If there’s anything you need during this transition, please don’t hesitate to let me know.”

  Emelie says nothing as she makes her way into the hallway with slow, uneasy steps, and when she turns back to me, she gives me the most curious stare, eyes glinting almost.

  I imagine she still wants to hate me, I imagine she still wants to be right about what a monster I am because it would justify all the things she’s silently thinking and feeling about me in this moment.

  Maybe she’s wrong.

  Maybe she’s right.

  All of that remains to be seen.

  Chapter 7

  Emelie

  “As soon as I get settled, I’ll have him fly you out,” I say to Mama and my sisters Friday night as we pack the last of my things into a cardboard box. Everything but my clothes and a few personal items are going into a storage unit. Later tonight I’ll meet up with my girls for a farewell dinner send off. “All of you. And you can stay as long as you want.”

  “Are you scared?” Isabeau asks, perched on the edge of my bed. She hasn’t said more than a few words all night. Out of all of us, she’s the least enthused about this entire thing. Then again, she’s never been one for drastic life changes. We practically had to push her out the door to get her to go to college, but once she got there, she was fine.

  “Scared isn’t quite the word for what I’m feeling. Dread is a little closer … like when you dread going to a new school but you know you have no choice so you just bear down and do what you have to do and know that there’s an end in sight,” I say.

  Even if that end is years from now.

  “I can’t believe our Emelie is going to be a princess!” Mama gives me her dozenth awestruck look of the night, clasping her hands over her cashmere cardigan-covered chest. “Had I known I was raising a future queen, I’d have enrolled you in a few more finishing classes.”

  “She did cotillion, she’s fine,” Luci says, digging her hand into a small bag of sea salt popcorn.

  “Is he going to have someone guide you and teach you proper royal protocols and such?” Mama asks.

  “I imagine there will be someone, yes.” I stack a small box on top of a bigger one and shove them aside before taking a seat on the carpet.

  “What are you going to do when you get there?” Luci asks, brushing popcorn crumbs off her black leggings and onto my carpet like the five-foot two heathen she is.

  I shrug. I’ve been a planner my entire life. I thrive on schedules. I can hardly function when I don’t know what to expect … but strangely, I think I’d rather go into this blind because if I don’t? I’ll talk myself out of it.

  “Do you know where you’re going to be living yet?” Luci asks next. “And did you know they have a castle and a palace? And a ton of cottages that are ten times the size of the house we grew up in?” She turns to our mother. “Mama, why didn’t we ever visit them? Do you know how cool it would’ve been to stay in a castle?”

  “Well, now’s your chance,” Isabeau interjects, her gaze moving between mine and Luci’s.

  “Seriously though. Why didn’t we ever visit them before?” Luci asks.

  My mother drags in a long, slow breath before letting it go. “Your father and Leo had an interesting friendship, and Leo cherished how ‘normal’ he felt when he was with your father. He lived for his summers in North Carolina with us and so we never pressed the issue of spending the summer in Chamont. I suppose we always thought we would one of these days, but time ... got away from us.”

  “I still think it’s strange that he would never invite us out,” Luci picks at a thread on my comforter.

  “Chamontians hate Americans,” Isabeau says, monotone.

  Our eyes collectively dart to her and no one says a word, like the oxygen was sucked from the room with those three little words.

  “Is that true?” Luci asks.

  I shrug. “It’s complicated.”

  “Mama?” Luci turns to our mother.

  “There’s a bit of history between our countries, but it’s in the past. Both sides are moving forward. Sure there might still be some tension, but our Emelie is going to represent our country with dignity and grace, and change minds and hearts all over both nations.”

  “Is that why he chose you?” Isabeau asks me. “Because you’re American? Because he needed a political pawn?”

  Knowing Julian? Probably.

  Julian is a user.

  He used me once.

  Why wouldn’t he use me again?

  “Girls, if Julian wanted an American queen, he could have easily chosen someone else,” Mama comes to his defense. And mine, I suppose. “The two of them have a long friendship, a history. He trusts Emelie. He chose her to be his bride, to take this journey with him. Aside from the particulars, I think it’s a beautiful thing and you should too. It would behoove us all to be happy for Emelie and to celebrate this moment. It’s history in the making.”

  My mother’s spirits are high, something that hasn’t happened since before Daddy passed last year. I knew she was excited about the prospect of me taking Julian up on his offer, but I didn’t know it would make her radiant, sunbeams practically bursting from the hazel of her irises.

  It’s the smile on her face that makes me choose to keep the five-year detail to myself.

  She thinks this is forever.

  Five years with him will certainly feel that way to me.

  Chapter 8

  Julian

  “There’s a bedroom in the back if you’d like to lie down,” I say Saturday morning as Emelie stares out the plane window. She’s said all of three words to me since climbing aboard and the way her fingers flit and toy with the hem of her shirt, you’d think she was knitting a sweater.

  “I’ll be fine, thank you.” She keeps her gaze trained on the happenings on the other side of the glass.

  “Perhaps a celebratory drink would be in order?” I ask, turning to flag down the flight concierge. Of course they’re nowhere to be found when you need them.

  “No, thanks.” She drags in a long, slow breath, and the bag of books and magazines resting against her sneakers remains untouched.

  “I take it you’re just going to sit there like a statue the whole time?”

  Emelie’s attention flicks toward me and her brows meet. “You don’t have to treat me like a toddler. You don’t have to make sure I’m fed and rested and comfortable. If I need something, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  Glad she hasn’t lost her feistiness after all of these years.

  “You seem nervous.”

  “I’m not,” she says without pause.

  “Excited?” I raise an eyebrow.

  She laughs. Once. And then turns back to the window.

  “Your Highness?” Harrison appears from behind a curtain partition. “We’re departing in approximately five minutes.”

  “Thank you, Harrison,” I say. He returns to his section of the plane and I retrieve my phone from my pocket. Once we’re airborne, I’ve got a few calls to make and a few matters to attend to. “Do be sure to fasten your safety belt, Princess. I’d prefer that the future queen of Chamont arrives in one piece.”

  Without saying a word, she reaches for the straps that hang at the sides of her seat and clicks them together. A moment later, she leans back, eyes closed and hands folded in her lap.

  The red-haired concierge with legs up to her neck sashays through the curtain a second later. “Your Highness, is there anything I can get you before we taxi to the runway?”

  “A bourbon would be lovely. Neat please,” I say. “And a glass of champagne for my beautiful bride.”

  The concierge shows no reaction just as she’s trained to do, and she disappears to the mini
bar, returning a short while later with our drinks.

  “Cheers,” I say to my bride-to-be as I lift my crystal tumbler and take a sip.

  She says nothing, her delicate fingers wrapped around the thin glass flute in her hand, little golden bubbles hitting the liquid’s surface.

  “You’re not going to let a perfectly good glass of Cristal go to waste, now are you?” I tease.

  The plane begins to roll and the trucks and laborers below grow smaller in the distance. A moment later, we’re cutting through the late morning air, en route to my homeland.

  “They’re going to love you, Em,” I say.

  Especially one person in particular.

  Chapter 9

  Emelie

  Of all the online photos I’ve seen of Knightborne Palace, not a single one of them has done it justice. It’s a massive estate, daunting and glimmering even at this ungodly hour. With the ten-hour flight and the time difference, we landed at four AM local time.

  A black Range Rover picked us up the second we disembarked from Julian’s private jet, and forty-five minutes later we were pulling through enormous wrought-iron gates that led to a long drive that curved around fountains and manicured greenery that seemed to go on forever, and finally we came to a gentle stop in front of a palatial monument of a building with hundreds of windows on the frontside and all sorts of chiseled stone lions and family crests and other Chamontian symbolisms.

  I should be exhausted by now, but I’m buzzing with livewire energy. I couldn’t sleep if I tried.

  The driver gets my door first, assisting me out.

  I have to say, normally I’m all about traveling in comfort, but now that I’m here, I’m starting to think my jeans and t-shirt and sneakers get-up is leaving me a bit underdressed.

  Julian climbs out from his side, meeting me by the rear of the car where the driver is carefully removing our luggage. A few uniformed staff members appear from the front door, all of them grabbing suitcases and briefing Julian and flitting around like elegant worker bees.

  A moment later, I follow the horde through a set of double doors so massive I’m guessing they’re at least a story and a half tall, and once inside, I feel the way Alice must have felt when she fell down the rabbit hole.

  Taking it in, I stop and gawk at the ornamental gold, the elaborate woodwork, the hall of oil paintings, the three-story ceiling encrusted with a myriad of chandeliers.

  “You must be Ms. Belleseau,” a young woman says as she approaches me. She gathers a small amount of fabric from her uniformed dress and does a small curtsy. “I’m Araminta, your royal aide. It’s my pleasure to serve you.”

  She smiles, though her lips quaver as if I make her nervous. Her auburn hair is pulled back into a tight chignon and the spray of freckles across her nose make her seem younger than she likely is. If I had to guess, she couldn’t be more than twenty or twenty-one.

  “Please call me Emelie,” I say. I don’t know what to do with my hands and it's not like I can curtsy back to her, so I grip the strap of my purse tighter, smile, and nod.

  I glance at Julian who’s standing a few feet away, surrounded by people. It’s the strangest thing, watching him be somebody.

  Growing up, sure I knew he was a prince, but in North Carolina, he was never treated like one. There was never anyone following him around, taking orders from him and ensuring his every need was satisfied. In fact, I recall his mother making him help with dishes most nights, and at breakfast his father would always ask him if he made his bed that morning.

  Looks like he has people who do that for him now.

  “While the prince settles in, would you like a brief tour?” Araminta asks. There’s a hint of contained excitement in her tone and I have to admit I’m curious to see the rest of the place. If the foyer is this magnificent, I can’t imagine how stately the rest of the place must be.

  I steal another look at Julian for a moment before turning back to Araminta. “That would be great. Thank you.”

  “Wonderful. If you’ll just follow me ...” Araminta folds her hands in front of her as she leads me down the hall, past oil painting after oil painting, sculpture after sculpture. Her shoes make no sound, but the soles of my sneakers squeak against the polished marble floors. We both pretend not to notice. “I’m sure you’re exhausted from traveling, so I’ll show you the main living quarters first. We can tour the rest of Knightborne after you’ve had some time to sleep. And believe me, you’ll want to be well-rested. It’s quite the jaunt.”

  “Do you give a lot of tours here?” I ask.

  “No. I’m afraid Knightborne is not open to the public. Prince Julian prefers privacy at all times,” she says. “Though four times a year, the King and Queen allow public tours of Grandmire Castle. There’s a lottery system and a wait list. Some people have been waiting for years. You’re very fortunate to get to peek behind the royal curtain, so to speak.”

  Araminta glances back at me and offers a polite smile before pointing to a doorway on the right.

  “Here we have our sitting room,” she says. “The prince does his casual entertaining and less official discourse here.” We keep striding forward. “Next is the formal dining room. This is where the prince takes all of his meals. He sits at the head of the table. You will likely sit to his right, but I need to confirm that. I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  Good. God forbid I accidentally sit on his left.

  Continuing on, she stops outside another doorway, and when I peer in, I spot an entire uniformed kitchen staff hustling and bustling around an industrial-sized kitchen outfitted in floor-to-ceiling stainless steel. The smell of fresh bread and cinnamon fills my lungs and my stomach begins to rumble. Other than the champagne on the flight and an old cranberry almond Kind bar that I dug out from the bottom of my purse, I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast yesterday.

  “This is our prep kitchen. All of the palace’s meals are prepared here by a staff of seven,” Araminta explains. “We have a second, private kitchen that the prince uses. It’s the next door down.” She leads me to Julian’s kitchen, which looks like something straight out of an architectural magazine with its painted green cabinets, brick walls, matte black light fixtures, and cognac leather bar stools. It’s sexy and masculine while still looking like it was dreamed up in another era. “I’m going to show you to your room next. We have several stairways throughout the palace that will bring you to the second level, but this stairway off the kitchen is the most direct route from here. It’s also the private stairway mostly used by the prince and his personal aide.”

  I follow her through an arched doorway in the back of Julian’s personal kitchen, and a second later we’re climbing a narrow stairway that winds and turns until it stops at the top of a small landing. Leading me down a dark hallway peppered in glowing candlelight sconces, she stops outside the third door on the right.

  Fishing a key from a pocket in the front of her dress, she unlocks the room and steps inside.

  “This is where you’ll be,” she says, “for the time being.”

  I wonder what she means by that, but I don’t ask. I’m not sure what Julian has told them about our arrangement, so I’m better off staying quiet until I know for sure.

  I step inside and take a hard look at my surroundings, but I’m distracted by the behemoth four-poster canopy bed so massive it requires a stepstool to climb in. Centered along one wall, it’s buried in mountains of silk pillows and layers satin-soft blankets—truly a bed fit for royalty.

  Araminta makes her way around the room, clicking on lamps and illuminating the dark space with a hint of soft light. All of the curtains are drawn, and while the sun is just coming up outside, it still feels like midnight in here. The dark wood furnishings and rich magenta wallpaper don’t help, but I have to admit they do bring a bit of warmth and coziness to an otherwise elephantine bedroom.

  “Your private lavatory is this way,” Araminta makes her way across the room to another door, and I follow her, s
ilently taking note of how tall these doors are. They must be nine or ten feet, at least? And the ceiling goes several feet beyond them.

  She flicks on the light, and I almost choke on my spit.

  I was expecting a standard bathroom, but after seeing what the bed alone looks like, I should have known better.

  Wrapped in floor-to-ceiling marble and accented with an enormous clawfoot tub, this “lavatory” is the stuff that bathroom dreams are made of. A polished nickel chandelier dances in the light overhead and a sizable bouquet of fresh red roses rests in a cut crystal vase on the counter by the makeup vanity.

  This is quite the step up from the standard five-by-eight foot bathroom back in my townhome with its Formica countertops, laminate floors, and acrylic shower-tub combo.

  “You have a closet and a dressing room this way,” Araminta says, heading to another set of doors. “Oh! I almost forgot to show you the steam shower.”

  What sixteenth-century palace wouldn’t be complete without a modern steam shower?

  When we’re finished touring the en suite, she leads me back out to the main room to show me how to operate the fireplace, only mid-lesson Araminta lifts on her toes and peers past me, waving at someone in the doorway.

  “Yes, bring them in, please. Right there is fine. Thank you,” she says.

  A gentleman deposits my suitcases next to the door before giving me a nod and showing himself out.

  “If you have no other questions, I shall leave you to it,” Araminta says, hands clasped in front of her. “If there’s anything you need at all, there’s a phone by your bedside. Please dial star seven and you’ll be able to reach me any time, day or night.”

  Fighting a yawn, I thank Araminta for showing me around, and I walk her to the door. Turning back, I take a look at my three suitcases, trying to remember which one holds my pajamas.

  I’m rifling through the second one a moment later when a light rap at the door sends my heart lurching into my throat, and when I turn around, I find Julian standing in the doorway.