He stepped forward suddenly, standing right next to her, his head bent close to her own, his protruding eyes fixing on her as if she were a troublesome child. There was a possessive quality in that stare that repulsed and frightened her.
“I think, perhaps, it is you who fail to understand, Princess,” he whispered. “Understand me. I am set upon this match. I am set upon you as my wife, and so you shall be. Do not think for a moment that anything will change this. Not even your father.” He paused. “You will come to realize this soon enough. You will come to accept your duty to me. Things will go easier for you when you do.”
He stepped back a pace, but his eyes were still dangerous. He took hold of her wrist and held on tightly. “No one defies me, Princess. When they do, there are unpleasant consequences.”
Suddenly she thought of his wife and child, both dead, and then of his older brother, dying mysteriously, and his younger, not much older than herself, disappeared and never found. An awful lot of people connected to Laphroig had come to a bad end, and as she stood there facing him she knew with a chilling certainty that this wasn’t by chance.
“My father is waiting for me,” she managed, barely able to meet his gaze now. “I have to go.”
He smiled, releasing her wrist. “Of course, you do. Good day, Princess Mistaya.”
He climbed back into the carriage without giving her another glance, and the entire entourage moved away in a rumble of wheels, a thudding of hooves, and a creaking of harness.
Mistaya waited until they were out of sight, and then she set off for the castle in a white-hot heat.
Ben Holiday was at his writing desk, signing work orders for a project that the crown had approved to build a new bridge spanning the Clash Bone Gorge below the Melchor, when Mistaya stormed in, throwing open the door to his study without knocking and then slamming it shut behind her.
“Why did you give The Frog permission to court me?” she demanded, coming to an angry stop in front of his desk, face flushed and hands on hips.
He blinked. “I didn’t.”
“Well, he says you did. I bumped into him out on the road, and he told me the whole story about his plans for our marriage. He said he asked you if he could court me and you said he could!”
“I said I would think about it.”
Her lips tightened into a white line. “Oh, that’s all right, then. Obviously. What’s wrong with me? Of course, you have to think about it! How can you make an informed decision otherwise?”
“I told him that to buy myself a little time, Mistaya. You know how it works when you’re dealing with the men and women in power. Hasty answers—even when you’d like to give them—aren’t always the wisest way to go. Besides, his proposal caught me by surprise, too.”
His daughter scowled. “I think you made a mistake, Father. A very big mistake. I think you needed to tell him straight out that your daughter isn’t going to marry him on the best day of his life and he ought to just forget about it. Putting him off just encouraged him. He thinks you’re seriously considering giving him permission. He practically hauled me off to his castle right then and there! He thinks the matter is settled in all but deed!”
She leaned over his desk, her anger a bright fire in her green eyes. “I do not appreciate being dragged into court matters. I am not some piece of furniture to be given away to anyone who comes around asking! I don’t care if you are King of Landover! I am not a bargaining chip! If you don’t get that, then maybe you’d better do a quick study on the laws of emancipated women in the twenty-first century. Remember how it works in the world you came from, the one you sent me back into to learn more about life? Well, that’s a lesson I learned early on. You don’t give away young women to rich old men!”
“What are you talking about?” Ben leaped to his feet, anger surfacing in him now, too. “Rich old men? Laphroig? He’s not all that much older than you! Anyway, that’s not the point! I have no intention of ‘giving you away,’ as you put it—not to him or to anyone else! But people like Laphroig don’t understand how things work in my world, so I can’t just drop that on them without exercising some diplomacy—”
Mistaya slammed the flat of her hand on his desk. “You aren’t listening to me! He thinks you have already agreed! He implied that it would be smart for me just to go along with his wishes and not to argue the matter. He threatened me out there, Father! He warned me that he was used to getting what he wanted and that I was going to be his latest acquisition whether I liked it or not!”
Ben straightened. “Threatened you?”
