He smiled at me wryly.
“That we have not. Now, can we get back to business? You’re confusing Genevieve.”
“Yes we can. Come and get these from me, please.”
He maneuvered himself so that he was directly next to the ladder. I lowered two different bolts of fabric to him and began to descend the ladder.
Once my feet were firmly on the ground, I turned back to the knight. She was watching us with a soft smile on her face.
“I didn’t know you two were together. Cormac, you should have told me this was your partner,” she chided him gently.
His face turned as red as if he’d spent the full day working in the forge, and he tried to sputter out a reply. I just laughed.
“It may yet happen, but he hasn’t quite caught me yet,” I said with a wink at Cormac. His face got even redder and I smiled.
“I see.” Genevieve raised an eyebrow at both of us. Cormac exchanged a hopeful glance with her, but didn’t say anything before she cleared her throat.
“Now, do you two think that this is actually possible? Mama didn’t think anyone would be able to do it.”
Cormac looked at me, his face glowing with a fierceness that told me he wanted to take on this challenge. I crossed my arms, grinning at her.
“We absolutely do.”
DUKE AVERY OF WOLVINGTON
A series of knocks startled me as I sat on a chaise lounge in the library, nearly causing me to drop the book I was holding. I blinked several times as I tried to focus my eyes on the world around me instead of the pages in my hands.
“You need to see a physician to get some spectacles,” my mother’s voice rang out through the open door, startling me again. I jumped, actually dropping my book this time. “Why on earth is it so dark in here, Avery?”
She lit the lamp next to the door and I grimaced at the brightness of the light.
“It wasn’t dark when I started reading?” I offered in my defense. Sitting up, I adjusted my binder so it would stop cutting into my armpits. If these things weren’t so useful, no one would ever wear them.
“That isn’t an excuse, and you know it, young man.” She placed her hands on her hips. Even though her face was in shadow, I knew she was glaring at me. We’d had this conversation about a thousand times over the course of my life.
“And yet it is my reason for it being dark in my library,” I told her cheekily. “Now, did you actually want something, or did you just come in here to lecture me?”
She stepped forward and I saw her in all her glory.
She wore a simple gray poplin house dress that would have had a less striking person mistaken for one of the servants. Dowager Duchess Celeste of Wolvington was a stunning woman who got even more striking with every year that passed. She had always been tall and even after bearing several children, her waist was almost waspish. Like usual, her curly graying hair had been twined into a series of long, thin braids that were then twisted and pinned away from her dark brown face that was a few shades darker than my own bronzed one. Her brown eyes glinted in the lamplight as she looked at me across the room.
“We’ve received news from the capital. Your brother is throwing a ball in your nephew’s honor and he’s requested your presence at your earliest convenience.”
My eyebrows shot up. That was certainly a surprise.
2
GENEVIEVE
I could feel myself almost bouncing in joy in the saddle as I made my way back to my family’s house in town. I could hardly believe that Cormac and Poppy were going to make the dress I’d dreamed up a real thing.
My mother had arrived in the capital last week for the beginning of the winter social season and my father would be coming in the next week or so with my siblings. I couldn’t wait to see their faces when they saw the chainmail and silk masterpiece that I intended to wear as part of the honor guard.
The prince’s ball was to be the last event of the social season, a move which I suspected was planned strategically for both political and social purposes. Each noble family was expected to have a representative at the ball.
I was in luck, because I knew that gown was going to take a lot of work for Cormac and his apprentice on the front end and a lot for Poppy and their apprentices once the chainmail was complete. It really was a challenge for everyone involved, myself included.
Mama had tested her full range of emotions, starting with delight and pride when I told her I’d been chosen as part of the honor guard and moving quickly to horror when she realized that meant that I would have to wear my parade plate mail.
I’d always known she had a flair for the dramatic, but I was pretty sure if we’d put her on a stage, the performance would have won awards.
“I've been planning to take you to your first ball and introduce you properly to all of the marriageable gentleman. How will I do that if you are wrapped up in plate mail?” she had wailed piteously.
I had had to hold back a snort of laughter that Mama would have declared horribly unladylike.
“Plate mail is well and good for battle and ceremonies,” Duchess Vivienne had said crisply once she’d calmed down. “It can even look quite dashing. But it has no place on an honor guard in the best guarded city, in the palace of Elisade. What will you be able to do that the other guards will not?”
In my mother’s defense, I had to admit that she had a point. The prince was in very little danger at a ball held in his own castle. The palace had been built and warded specifically to keep anywho wished ill on the royal family out of it.
But it did mean that things had been a little awkward when I’d reported for duty. I asked the other knights what they had worn as part of the honor guard, and they had looked at me as if I’d grown a second head. They had all simply worn their ceremonial plate armor and been done with it without a thought to whether their mother would be able to pair them up nicely with a dance partner or not.
I almost longed to not have to worry about getting married the way many of my fellow knights did, but at the same time, I wanted a partner even more. The Goddess knew I was tired of living alone in the town house when I was stationed in the capital, which had been most of the time for the year I’d been a knight.
And perhaps… perhaps it would even help me do what I hadn’t managed yet - to catch the attention of the man I’d been crushing on ever since I first met him at my younger sister’s graduation five years ago. Duke Avery of Wolvington.
Part of the problem I’d had was that I was a very different person from my younger sister. Where Alys was bright and cheerful and loved to be the center of attention at a party, I had always been more comfortable with the much simpler rules of etiquette on the dueling grounds and practice fields. I knew that I could fight with any weapon I put in my hand without a second thought, but I also knew that there were other conversational weapons that I was woefully unprepared to deal with.
The other part of the problem was that he was third in line for the throne after King Bayard’s children, Prince Julian and Princess Cecelia. He was King Father Victor’s oldest son from his second marriage, and I was a junior knight from the duchy next to his mother’s.
Even if Duke Avery wasn’t interested, perhaps I would be able to get Mama to introduce me to someone interesting. I knew most of the young noblemen and women in the country, thanks to serving alongside them or their siblings as a knight, but surely an event like this would draw some interesting foreign nobles.
Mama would know, and would be able to help me prepare for it, I thought. Much like her younger daughter, Duchess Vivienne was a skilled socialite. At the very least, I would have to get used to dancing in a dress again. Asking my mother for help might make the next two months a little bit more stressful, but I thought that it might be worth it to put some effort into a skill I needed.
Blinking, I realized that I could see our home. I had been so caught up in my thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed where I was going.
My horse slowed to a canter and
then to a halt at our stables. One of the stable hands waited inside the doorway, taking the reins from me. Swinging out of the saddle, I walked into the house with a mission. It was time to ask my mother for her help.
AVERY
My mother spent the entire trip talking to me about this and that noble whose daughter was looking for an arranged marriage, most of whom were significantly younger than me. Marriage for people of my stature was rarely a love match, but she had always promised me that I would have as much input on who I married as she had, especially since she wasn’t worried about heirs. Since I would never be able to get anyone pregnant and had no interest in becoming pregnant, it was unlikely that I would ever have children of my own, which was fine by all of us. It did make a difference to the families of some of the other nobles, though, and my marriage prospects. Mother took that into consideration with all the matches she considered.
“We’re almost there, son!”
Father, known to the rest of the world as King Father Victor of Elisade, called out from the front of the carriage. I could imagine the wide grin on his face that he always wore when he traveled. He had been riding up front with the driver for most of our travels. He said he loved to feel the open air on his face, and that might have been true, but I also knew that it helped with his motion sickness to sit up front.
Even though we had only been traveling for three days, I felt like I had lived an entire lifetime in the carriage by the time we spotted the outline of Elisade’s capital city in the distance from the carriage window. The blue gray stone of the walls that encircled the city nearly blocked out the view of the ships that had docked at the largest naval port in the country.
I wondered how Father felt returning to the city again. He avoided the capital at all costs now that he was no longer in charge of the realm and I had taken over the majority of the ducal duties from Mother. The city where he and his first wife, Amelie, had ruled together was full of hard memories for him after her assassination many years ago, but I knew he wouldn’t want to miss his eldest grandson’s first ball, either. Even if said grandson was less than a decade younger than me.
Julian was a pretty cool kid now that we were grown, though I had often found him rather irritating on the summers he spent in Wolvington. I suppose that was normal when there were eight years difference between two children who were expected to spend time together when they had basically nothing in common other than family. Especially when one of them was always running around and getting into the other’s schoolwork and experiments. Now we had enough common ground to stand on and could actually stand each other’s’ company for long enough to make it through a family dinner or an extended weekend visit. I was grateful for that since we would all be staying in the palace for this visit at Bayard’s insistence. He had a habit of doing that, insisting on things that made the rest of us uncomfortable, which I supposed was not unusual for a king, but it was very annoying for a family member.
“Do we have any plans once we reach the palace?” I asked my mother, who was still looking out the window. She jumped as if she’d forgotten that I was there.
“Hm? Oh, no. I will be asking for a piping hot bath for myself and your father. Even though we’ve been in the carriage, I feel like I’m coated in road dust and I can’t stand it.”
I could certainly understand that feeling. A hot bath sounded perfect to work out the aches that spread through my lower back and legs. That would go a long way to making me feel more human than I did at the moment. It would also mean I’d have to put on my binder again and refresh the spells that helped me transition, which was less exciting, but made me feel better about the way I was presenting myself to the shark-infested waters that were the palace gossips. They could be vicious when they wanted to be, and a ball like this was sure to have them smelling blood. Mother turned back to me, an eyebrow raised.
“Why? Did you have something you wanted to do when we arrived?”
“Oh, no. Not at all. I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t anywhere else we needed to be, what with Bayard’s tendency to overschedule everyone.”
Her eyes glinted with mirth. She knew well my preference for keeping my own company whenever possible, even when I was with family.
“We made sure to set the remainder of today and tomorrow to ourselves to recoup from the journey, aside from family dinners. After that, we’re more or less at Bayard’s mercy. I’ll be sure to make your excuses if you find more pleasing companions to spend time with.”
The carriage slowed to a halt. Peeking out the window, I realized that we were already at the city’s gates. It was time for the spring season to begin with us as a part of it.
GENEVIEVE
I took my time walking into the house, looking around at the houses around me. They were nowhere near as sprawling or as decadently decorated as those that we nobles resided in on our estates, but they were hardly small, either.
All of them looked similar, which made sense since they were all builds of the same tan brick and dark slate roofs. The home that I had spent half of my life in always brought a smile to my face when I saw it.
My mother had always made sure that there was no chance of anyone mistaking it for another noble family’s house from the exterior by decorating with cream and navy curtains in every room and hiring a craftsman to create a bronze leaf pattern on the outside of each window. The fence that marked our lawn off from the road had the same leaf pattern worked into the iron. I’d always found it beautiful and comforting, and today was no different.
The front door, which held a carving of the house crest, swung inward, revealing the butler who had been around since before I could remember.
“Welcome home, Ser Genevieve,” Ernest called to me, his voice gravelly and kind behind his gruff exterior. As I got closer, I could see he was smiling underneath the dark beard that he kept cropped close to his pale face.
“Thank you, Ernest. I’m glad to be home. Is the Duchess home?”
“I believe you will find her in the master study. She has been dealing with the accounts all afternoon and could probably use the company… and perhaps a pot of tea?”
He winked a green eye at me and I grinned. The man must have been blessed by the goddess to always know what the family would need. Mama was always a grouch after dealing with the accounts all day. I couldn’t blame her, given that accounts for a duchy of our size were an ordeal at the best of times.
I made my way to the kitchen where the staff was busy working on our late supper. It smelled of roast turkey and the yeast of dinner rolls. I couldn’t wait to sit down and eat with everyone.
Eating alone had always been something I detested, so I avoided it whenever possible. Once I had taken up semi-permanent residence in the town house, I’d made it the household policy that any of the staff who wanted to sit down and eat together would be able to, whether I was home or not. It meant some things got delayed in the evenings, but it was worth it to spend time with the people of our household on a regular basis.
“Betsy, might I trouble you for a pot of tea for Mama?”
“Sure thing. Put together a tray and I’ll have it sent up for you in a jiffy,” the jovial older woman said, never turning to face me. She didn’t need to. She knew all of our preferences almost better than we did, and I knew my way around the kitchen.
I pulled a wooden tray off of the shelf near the open doorway, setting it on the end of the solid slab of granite that served as the counter top.
Grabbing two ceramic mugs from the second shelf, I nestled them into the indentations that had been worn into the tray from years of use. According to etiquette, we should have been using teacups and saucers, but we didn’t care about silly things like that when there was no one watching. I settled a porcelain teapot into the center of the tray and looked for the sachets of tea leaves I had prepared earlier in the week. Finding several, I nestled them into the bottom of the pot and waited.
Around me, the other workers ignored me, chopping veg
etables and prepared the fruit for the evening’s dessert - Mama’s favorite apple charlotte, made with homegrown apples from the estate.
“Out of the way,” Betsy called. I stepped away and she swooped in, filling the pot with boiling water and leaving a cloud of steam behind her. “Now, do you think you can manage take that up the stairs without spilling it, or should I send one of the maids up with you?”
I flushed, knowing that her question was a sincere one, and that she had reason to ask. I had been very clumsy when I was younger, something that had only been cured by years of fighting practice. However, I also knew that if Mama saw me carrying my own tea tray, she’d have a fit.
“I would appreciate a maid’s help,” I told her. “The Duchess and I will be in the master study.”
Betsy nodded and put the cauldron back over the fire.
“I’ll have a maid up in just a moment. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do, and your mother will want to talk to you.”
She bustled away without another word, which is exactly what I needed to do. I made my way out of the kitchen, trying to figure out exactly how I would ask my mother for her help to flirt appropriately with a Duke.
I made my way up the stairs to the third floor, one hand lightly trailing the floral carved wooden banister as I went.
Because she and my father were no longer living in the house as often, they had insisted that I take the master suite instead of staying in my childhood bedroom on the second floor. The master suite was the only one equipped with a study of its own, which wasn’t usually a problem.
When I reached the third floor landing, I paused to get the lay of the land. I couldn’t hear my mother, but that wasn’t surprising, since the study was still several rooms away.
Turning right into my bedroom, I tossed my satchel onto the table alongside the other letters and miscellaneous things I’d never managed to put away. A few pages scattered to the floor and I sighed. I really needed to deal with all of that. But it had waited this long without being dealt with. It would last another day or two as it was.
A Knight to Remember Page 2