“Yes,” she murmured, striving to sound overwhelmed rather than entertained. “Very sheltered.”
“In a perfect world, I would have had months to prepare you,” Madame said, reprovingly. “Years. Instead, I have but hours.” She sighed. Heavily. “We will do the best we can.”
“It is just...” Melody paused, because the woman tugging on her hair did something that made her eyes water. She blew out a breath as if that was emotion, not a sting. “The Prince did not say anything about this. He didn’t even tell me there was anything for me to do today.”
That was true, of course. But it was also true that she’d said it that way deliberately, to encourage them all to believe that she enjoyed a great intimacy with the husband she barely knew. The sort a newlywed bride ought to enjoy.
The sort everyone would assume she enjoyed, in all senses of the term, because it was Griffin.
“Prince Griffin enjoys the affection of the nation,” Madame said with another helping of that severity. “He has spent a lifetime cultivating the goodwill of his people. He also enjoys the advantage of having been born royal. None of these advantages are yours, if you will forgive me.”
Melody smiled demurely. “Of course. I am cognizant of my own deficiencies. How could I not be?”
But the joke was on her, because Madame did not rush to assure her that she was in no way deficient, the way regular, sighted people normally did in the face of any direct or indirect reference to her blindness.
“I’m glad to hear it,” the older woman said instead. Stoutly. Forcing Melody to respect her, despite herself. “What you can expect are packs of hyenas, parading about as if they truly wish you might become friends one day. They do not wish this. You will be given no benefit of any doubt. You will be accorded zero room to maneuver or grow. They will come in prepared to eviscerate you. And will take pleasure in the fact that they might do so to your face, without you any the wiser.”
For the first time, Melody felt something inside her...shift. The way it did when she was preparing herself to step into the ring. To fight with Fen, who never gave her any quarter.
“I am not as unaware of what goes on around me as people might imagine,” she said quietly.
“I am thrilled,” Madame replied. “This is the first cause for optimism I have had since I entered your bedchamber.”
And hours later, when Madame was cautiously optimistic but in no way satisfied, she ushered Melody from her own apartments to a set of rooms she and Fen had explored on her wedding night. Her formal reception rooms, she was told today.
For her sins.
“You have forty-five minutes before your first guest,” Madame said briskly. “Is that enough time?”
“For what?”
Melody felt deeply grateful that she’d spent the bulk of her life studying the things she had. With Fen, who had never allowed her the luxury of self-pity. Because she could not imagine, otherwise, how she would have handled the morning she’d had. Madame was not a martial artist. But she was a sensei all the same, and had somehow managed to instill in Melody a deep appreciation for the finer nuances of snooty aristocratic behavior that she’d never before possessed.
It will not be enough to play the innocent, she’d said gravely. And more than once.
But I am innocent, Melody had replied.
Evenly at first. Then, as the hours dragged by, with far less equanimity.
Innocence is blood in the water, Madame had retorted. Do not fool yourself on that score. You will find it is preferable to outswim the sharks than to hope they are taken aback by innocence.
Madame threw open the doors to the reception room and ushered Melody inside, Fen walking silently behind her.
“You must use this time to familiarize yourself with this room. I assume from the way you moved around your bedchamber and the rest of your apartments that you have a system for doing so. The more comfortable you are, the less ammunition you will give your enemies. Do you understand me?”
“Completely,” Melody replied.
She and Fen used their forty-five minutes wisely.
And by the time Madame returned, announcing that the onslaught was to begin, Melody was as primed as if she was preparing to grapple.
Which was good, because grapple she did.
They came at her in order of rank. Something Melody had deliberately not concerned herself with in all her days, because what was the point, though she had received quite a crash course on Idyllian nobility today.
It was a parade of ladies with various titles, all of which they waved about them like taunts. Some were kind. Some pretended to be kind. Still others engaged in actual taunts, as if they did not expect that Prince Griffin’s unexpected bride would be capable of telling the difference.
Melody could tell which ones had sampled her husband. Which ones had only wished they might. And which still intended to get their claws into him, despite his marriage.
She supposed another woman might dislike knowing such things.
But not Melody.
The more these women showed themselves to her, thinking she couldn’t see who they really were, the more power she had over them.
“I cannot imagine how overwhelmed you must feel,” cooed an openly poisonous member of the lesser aristocracy. Married to a minor lord, she nonetheless carried herself as if she had the consequence of a queen. The Queen.
From this, Melody was given to understand two things. First, that Lady Breanna was very beautiful.
