Not my favorite bit, for sure.
The overview from last chapter is in italics:
“You try my patience sorely, Mademoiselle Tadstreet. I have saved your life, and pulled you from the brink of ruin. For who would want to marry the prince’s castaway bride? Surely, if her looks are not to blame, there is something wrong with her mind? But I rescued you from that, too. And this, this is my repayment.”
Again, quiet filled the room, and I felt Aimthaer drain slowly from my mind. His work was done.
But milord's was not.
***
The duke gripped a handful of my long skirts, and, as though through sheer power of his rage, he ripped the cloth off, from ankle to waist. It fell down around me like fading ghost, shivering slightly as I shifted my feet. I felt the short and quite transparent skirt of my shift whisper across skin and the marble I was so closely coupled with. If I had not known what he was about to do, I would have blushed most furiously at how little I was suddenly wearing.
But he did not stop there. Taking hold of the back of my collar, he ripped the top of my dress right down to its end at my hips, and then did the same to the sleeves. In a few short moments, the remainder of my gown lay on the ground, and I stood in little more than a long, thin shirt, shivering – from fear or cold, I could not be sure. The familiar hiss of leather upon cloth, and I realized with a jolt that he was going to use his belt.
I rather imagined I was prepared, there as the moments slipped by unseen, imagined that when the searing pain of metal and rawhide connected with my little-protected body, I would not cry out, would not feel at all surprised – but I was quite wrong. I had only once been belted before, when Prince Kharles and I had been found in the Ambassador of Nayinsfen’s chambers, reading his letters and drawing, with stolen chalk, little pictures of his violent death upon the peach walls of his sitting room. It had been a childish vengeance for how he had called Prince Kharles, in sickly jest, a ‘small, skinny little whelp.’
Shunk, as the belt thudded against my skin, and an unearthly shriek clawed itself from my throat. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it.
When Father had beaten me, it had only ever been a weak, calm affair. He hardly ever got angry, but he did know when discipline was needed – he had never been cruel about it, simply businesslike. This was different. This was plain, unchecked rage, and nothing was holding him back from going on forever, until my dead body slumped down beside its rags of clothing.
The duke spoke once, that I remember, during the beating, although never paused, always bringing the leather and metal clasp of the belt back again, stinging, searing pain like a cobra’s bite. He had to yell to be heard over my screaming.
“You know I had this marble put in just for you, milady? Oh yes, the inn was very open to my suggestions when they revised this particular room, how a column with hooks for hats and coats would be just the thing to interest customers. Don’t bother with all the noise – no one will hear you through these newly-thickened walls.”
He was quiet, then, and as blood began to pool in the raw flesh of my skin, darkness crowded in around eyes and into my mind, and I knew no more.
I remember very little of that beating now, except that when I awoke from my faint, my voice was hoarse from screaming, and my face stiff with barely-dried tears. My wrists were red and raw, for I must have tried many times to escape the rope wrapped ‘round them. My shift had been reduced to shreds of bloodstained silk, drying painfully slowly onto the angry red welts and open wounds of my back. The duke had taken me into the blue-green room, and laid me, facedown, on the bed. When I shifted, once, ever so slightly, I felt something smooth and cool flutter above me. A silk sheet, I thought, and hoped it was quite opaque, calling to mind how little I’d been wearing when the duke finished with my gown.
A little later, I attempted to reach for the glass of water on the bedside table, and did not again, for my back at once exploded with pain, as though on fire. I cried into my pillow until it faded away into a dull ache.
For what seemed hours, I considered my options, which I realized later were delirious wanderings of the mind, for I had no options. When I healed – or perhaps before – Duke Warrington would order me to carry through with the wedding. My ring, I knew, would eliminate all hopes I had of defying him.
And then… I would go with him to Jharrim, and manage his household affairs. I would be a dutiful wife, and – here I had to suppress a shudder – bear his children. And then I would die, presumably earlier than most, keeping in mind that if all his beatings were as that one, I would survive hardly long enough to give birth to any children.
All remaining thoughts in such a direction were lost as the door creaked open. A man strode inside and kicked it shut behind him – but not Duke Warrington, no; this man had light ringlets of rich brown hair, and eyes the color of leaves in spring. This man had once held my heart in his incapable hands, had once torn it to pieces with a simple string of words.
May I have this dance?
“Your Highness, I would wish you not to see me in such a state,” I croaked. He ignored me, seating himself in the chair beside the bed and staring at my bloody back. I prayed again that the silk was, at the least, nearly opaque.
“The duke has a quicker temper than I thought, milady,” Kharles remarked, and a silly little smirk tickled his lips. I showed none of the hatred boiling inside, but smiled graciously instead, the polite hostess as opposed to the bedridden miscreant.
“He was not,” I said quietly, “unprovoked.”
Kharles chuckled, seeming to find the idea of my angering the duke and getting violently beaten a somewhat amusing idea. “So you brought it upon yourself, did you? Well, you always were a plucky one…” An odd gleam, almost nostalgic, came into his eyes, and he did not look as though he remembered where he was.
“Is there any particular reason I am graced with His Highness’s presence?” I asked, attempting to sound merely curious, and wondering whether or not he was fooled.
“I must get away from Eloise, my dear lady. I thought, at first, that pregnancy would quiet her, but it seems to have driven her to more extreme measures of lazing and whining,” he said slowly, perhaps still ‘twixt fond memories of childhood and worries of adulthood, from the confused expression on his face.
“Whining? But she seemed such a mature and good-willed woman to me,” I said, and surprisingly found myself struggling to quench the beginnings of a snicker in my throat.
“At first,” he said, “at first she was. Kind, and helpful, and I had to tell her not to help the cooks with dinner, not to dirty her dress trying to clean our drawing room floor; we had servants to do that, I told her. Yet, when she finally understood that she could get others to do things for her, she was not grateful, but… well, officious. Whenever I reminded her that it was very unbecoming for a princess to throw screaming tantrums if she could not get the exact kind of chocolate she wanted, she would start shrieking about the injustice of her old home, how her sisters- and mother-of-step had always made her do all the work ‘round the house, how she deserved to be treated wonderfully by one and all.” He sighed restlessly, a frown puckering his brow.
“The sweetest berries rot first,” I whispered to myself, and smiled most evilly. How very fitting that the prince’s ‘perfect match’ had turned against him!
“I think I will have her assassinated.”
Shaken from my vengeful reverie, I stared in alarm at the brooding prince. Talk of irony and spoiled princesses was all very well, but murder?
“Your Highness, couldn’t there be better way – a less violent one – to, erm, dispose of the princess? That is, if you must.”
“No,” he said stubbornly, “no, I don’t think so. Besides, ‘twould be so much more drawn-out and complicated to divorce or exile her. Who knows how long we would have to wait to wed?”
My feeling of repulsion, I imagined, could not become any stronger. But as he described the sparing of a life as too complicated to bother his time over, I felt as though I rather wanted to strike him. I almost missed the part where he spoke of we and wed.
“I beg your pardon, Your Highness, but what do you mean by ‘wed’?”
“Oh, did I forget to mention that part earlier? I want to assassinate Eloise so I can marry you, of course,” he said, and a glimmer came into his pale eyes that made my stomach turn over in sudden unease.
“O-of course… but you forget, Your Highness, that I am already betrothed.” For one, ephemeral second, I was grateful for the ring on my finger, and the man who had put it there.
“That can be taken care of. After all, I’m sure your parents would prefer my suit over a duke’s,” he smirked, and for reasons I simply could not explain, I did not like the sneering way he dismissed Duke Warrington.
“If you can plan and execute an assassination before tomorrow, Prince Kharles, then I suppose I shan’t have a choice. But I do not willingly consent to the murder of Princess Eloise, nor to marrying you.”
He stared at me in disbelief, seeming to have thought that, naturally, I would want him over Duke Warrington. At one time, I rather fancy that was true, but no more. Even bringing to mind my recent beating, I preferred duke to prince. I knew them both well enough for that.
The prince had collected himself, and retorted smoothly, “You shan’t have a choice, then. You are not just rich and clever, Miss Tadstreet; you’re dashed beautiful, too.”
I shifted uncomfortably under his gaze, recalling again my helpless state and scanty clothing. “I shall consider your words, Your Highness. If you would be so kind as to close the door behind you, when you leave?”
Kharles nodded, and I felt relieved that there would be no row over his exit. However, instead of turning for the door, he walked to my side, kneeling down to look into my eyes. I could not move, and the power of speech fled me as he pressed his lips against mine. It was a soft, short kiss, but I hated him for it, just as I had hated the other, held against the wall in his chambers.
“Let that mark a beginning to happier times,” he said quietly, and was out of the room and closing the door behind him before I could speak.
I lay, and wondered how such a one-sided romance could ever mark the beginning of ‘happier’ times. It is not unlikely, I thought dismally, that he spoke merely for himself. Why had my affection so evaporated? If anything, the prince was more handsome since I last saw him.
And then, like lightning forking across a pitch-black sky, I suddenly saw myself in the garden, standing as the patronizing words of the duke washed over me. I watched as memory-Mariadelle flung her arms around the duke’s shoulders, and this time, I saw his surprised expression as she kissed his thin lips. There, her eyes had closed, and – he brought his hand up to support the back of her arching neck. But there was a flash of metal as his fingers wrapped around memory-Mariadelle’s dark skin, and I watched her body go slack, falling into his waiting arms. He pulled his hand from her neck, and I saw something small, sharp, and silver – tainted with my blood.
The duke smiled, and kissed her once upon her pale lips. So quietly, so softly that I could not quite believe I had heard it, he said, “I love you, Mariadelle.”
And then he lifted up her limp body and carried it slowly away through Mother’s garden.
My eyes snapped open, and I started, grimacing as my back shot through with pain. It could not have really been a memory; for I was not awake half the time… what was it, then? A vision; a dream sent by the gods to show me the truth? If it was truth.
I believe it was just then, as the pain numbed slightly and I focused on what I had first taken for a pillow, that I realized I was no longer within The Sovereign’s Crown.
The pillow was a clump of moss, and that beneath me was…dirt?
“Oh, gods,” I murmured, rolling to one side and rising slowly, painfully. The trees swayed slightly in a sudden breeze, and from somewhere nearby, there came the croak of a frog.
I was in a forest.
