been. She was very nearly twelve, the legal age for marriage, though young. She hadn’t expected it so soon: adopted daughter or not, Robert was not yet old, and a marriage might yet be made for him. Heirs of his blood might still be possible, though Lorraine’s favouritism showed no signs of waning, and the queen had flown into tempers before when her courtiers made matches of their own. The man Robert had in mind for her would be without an heir himself, a child bride extending the years it might be possible to get one. If he was old enough, he might die before she caught, and his lands would become Robert’s.
Belinda expected him, then, to be older. Not handsome, but wealthy, with any sons already dead in wars or foolish accidents. She allowed Margaret to dress her without awareness of what she wore. Her dagger caught in the folds of her chemise, pressing uncomfortably against her spine. Belinda straightened it before the stiff fabric of her corset was tightened around her. He would be minor nobility; a duke or an earl was beyond her scope.
“Your boots, my lady.”
Belinda startled, looking down. Margaret knelt, waiting patiently for Belinda to respond and be done with the dressing process. “We’ll want to bring makeup,” the woman said as she slipped first one boot, then the other, onto Belinda’s feet. “It’ll run if we apply it so early, my lady, but you can’t be seen at court without it.”
“Yes, of course. I leave the details to you, Margaret. I know you won’t embarrass me.”
Margaret dimpled and ducked her head in a nod. “I won’t, my lady. I’ll have you packed within the hour. Lord Robert will be waiting for you downstairs now, I think.”
“Yes, of course,” Belinda repeated. “Thank you, Margaret.” Skirts and petticoats gathered, she ran to the great hall, then to the kitchen, where Robert sat on a rough wooden table before the fire, gnawing a goose leg to the bone.
“Margaret says my things will be packed within the hour, Papa,” she said from the door. Robert glanced up, gesturing with his meal. Belinda came in, smoothing her skirts as she sat on the table’s bench, facing the fire. Robert twisted, propping a foot on the table.
“An hour. Worse than I’d hoped, better than I’d imagined. Keep that one, Primrose; she’s efficient.”
“Yes, Papa.”
Robert split a grin, toothy in the darkness of his beard. It was longer than when she’d seen him last, coming to a full lengthy point and trimmed shorter along the line of his jaw. He stroked his hand over it, noting Belinda’s critical gaze. “Does it suit, Daughter?”
“Yes, Papa,” Belinda repeated. Robert’s grin cracked through the beard again.
“‘Yes, Papa, but I would like to know about this man whose fate is entwined with mine,’ is that what I hear you saying?”
Belinda swallowed. “I am sure you’ve made the best choice for me, Papa.” She waited a few seconds, a fingertip tapping against the table, hard-won stillness at war with the opportunity Robert presented her. The latter won out: she blurted, “Yes, Papa!” and Robert threw his head back with a laugh.
“All right. All right, my Primrose, let me tell you of Rodney du Roz.”
“Du Roz,” Belinda echoed. “He’s Gallic?”
Robert nodded. Belinda’s eyebrows drew down. “Papa, an Ecumenic?” Gallic sympathies lay with Cordula, heart of the ostentatious Ecumenic Church in southern Echon. Aulun’s break with Cordula was still fresh, and her people still wounded from it. Lorraine herself followed the Reformation, and her religious passion held Aulun in its sway. Belinda’s faith was in the asture Reformatic God to whom Lorraine declared herself devoted. In all her hours of waiting and considering what she waited for, marrying outside the Church was a thought that had never risen.
“Is he…wealthy, Papa?” she asked cautiously. Religious differences could be put aside when profit was on the line, but Robert’s status as viscount was a gift from Lorraine, and had little money to go with it. Belinda herself was pretty, with wide hazel eyes and soft brown hair that made her pale skin dramatic, but she hadn’t the beauty that would make an unprofitable marriage worth considering, not to a man whose religious trappings were the opposite of hers.
“Merely a baron,” Robert replied. “Landed, but not extravagantly. You, barring blood of my blood, are heir to more.”
“Then-” Belinda traced a half-circle on the table’s surface, thoughtful motion. “Then I am a good match for him,” she said slowly. “With land and a title, if you should have no children of your own. And…with a father who has the queen’s ear.” She looked up to see Robert’s smile, so pleased that he hid it behind another bite of goose.
“That’s a clever lass.” The smile faded into drawn-down eyebrows, making his expression unusually dark. “And this is how it shall go, Primrose. Heed me well.”
Belinda listened, her arms drawn around herself as if for warmth, despite the heat of the kitchen fire turning her cheeks pink. She listened, and learned what it was she had been waiting for all her life.
BELINDA PRIMROSE
14 February 1577 Alunaer, Aulun; the Queen’s Court He was younger than she expected.
Belinda stood at her father’s elbow, studying du Roz across the gathered court. In his twenties and thin- cheeked, he might be handsome if his disposition were choleric, but standing in the court, speaking with a courtier dressed far more expensively than he, du Roz looked mild to Belinda’s eyes. His hair, like his cheeks, was thin; his hands, in motion as he spoke, were long and elegant. There were worse matches to be made, if a glance could tell her anything.
But it had not yet been made. The queen’s approval came first, and that could not be granted until Belinda had been presented to her. Only after that would the nominal steps of courting be taken and permission to wed asked of Lorraine.
Trumpets blared, half a dozen courtiers nearby flinching into squared shoulders and sucked-in guts. Belinda smoothed a hand over her skirts, watching du Roz. He straightened, but not in startlement, and turned to the far end of the hall with calculated smoothness. Belinda, guided by Robert’s hand on her shoulder, turned as well.
The doors swept open with a rush of warm wind that carried the sound of the queen’s footsteps down the length of the silent hall. Seconds passed before Belinda saw her clearly; the room from which Lorraine entered was dark, making her entrance all the more dramatic. From darkness into light; Belinda, despite her own excitement about being at court, could not help a rise of amusement at the deliberate pageantry behind the staged arrival. Then, fighting down laughter, she admonished herself for the thought that Her Majesty, queen of all Aulun, had to earn her, Belinda’s, approval for how she manipulated her court. Belinda shifted forward a little to see beyond the barrel chest of the courtier beside her.
Titian hair fell loose, bloody curls against translucent skin. A crown, gold and understated, nestled among the curls. Lorraine bucked fashion-or, more likely, set it-with a gown of stiff brocade that pushed her breasts high and left her throat and shoulders exposed, sleeves set further out than fashion dictated, just at the curve of shoulder. Thin grey eyes, a high forehead, and a proud chin, lifted in expectation of received adoration.
Thunder pounded through Belinda’s veins, narrowing her vision to pinpricks, until she saw no one but the queen. Motion of bodies nearby told her to curtsey deep and slow, as the men and women around her did, and she did, black gaze fixed on the floor. When she straightened again, Lorraine had moved beyond them, and Belinda could stare openly at the queen’s fine, slender shoulders. Robert had not told her.
It must not be found out. Belinda closed her eyes, letting Robert’s chuckle wash over her. “Beautiful, isn’t she?” he murmured above her. “Fear not, Primrose. Very few, upon their first visit to court, are affected differently.”
The very lowness of his voice itched through her, making it seem as though he spoke from much farther away. Through a distance of comforting grumbles, perhaps; through a barrier of red-tinged warmth so familiar it wrapped around the edges of her dreams. It seemed extraordinary that she had never quite known it before, not the way she knew it now. Her vaunted memory had not abandoned her, but neither had it offered the puzzle piece that she now recognized. Heat burned her cheeks, a thing so unusual that she had not yet learned to control it with the stillness. It was something to work on, as she’d worked on keeping her breathing steady and her presence unremarkable even when, as now, astonishment and curiosity sparked through her like the promise of a blaze.
