“Are you all right?”
She nodded.
He paced toward her, his eyes never leaving her form. When he was directly in front of her, he stopped and held out his hand. “Will you marry me, Beatrice?”
She placed her hand in his. “Yes.”
Chapter Thirteen
Before Longsword and the princess stood a huge black tower—the castle’s keep. Longsword advanced upon the tower warily, the princess behind him, but the tower remained ominously quiet. A single huge wooden door stood on the tower’s facade, its surface scarred and charred as if it had withstood some terrible battle. Longsword pulled open the door, and beside him Princess Serenity gasped.
For inside the tower, her father the king lay bound in chains. Around the king flew three dragons, each larger than the last. And the smallest dragon was twice as big as the one Longsword had killed just the day before….
—from Longsword
The freshly turned earth was already frosted over, hard, frozen, and final. Beatrice bent and placed her handful of Michaelmas daisies on the grave. There wasn’t a stone yet, merely a wooden marker. The words jeremy oates had been crudely scrawled on it.
“I’m going to marry him,” she whispered to the pitiful marker.
The words were carried away by the wind, whipping through the small graveyard. As if to emphasize her sorrow, the day was overcast and gray. Jeremy’s parents had chosen to bury him in a little churchyard outside of London proper. It wasn’t even a family plot. Perhaps they thought by hiding him so far out of the way, they could forget him altogether. Jeremy would’ve smiled and reminded her that a tiny graveyard was just as good as a cathedral when one was dead.
Beatrice shook her head and frowned fiercely to hold back the tears. Jeremy wouldn’t have cared, but she did. This was no way to memorialize a good man. She closed her eyes for a moment, simply remembering him, and the tears came anyway, whether she wanted them to or not.
When she finally opened her eyes again, her face was cold and wet, and her head was beginning to ache, but oddly she felt better.
She wiped her cheeks and glanced at the churchyard gate. Reynaud leaned against the stone wall there, waiting patiently for her. The drive here had taken over an hour, and he hadn’t made any complaints. Although he hadn’t visited her room in the week since she’d agreed to marry him, Reynaud had made sure to attend her when he could. Of course, he was a busy man. He was in daily consultation with solicitors about the estate and his title, and he met with his friend Lord Vale very often as well. Beatrice frowned. She wasn’t quite sure what they discussed, but she was glad that they seemed to have recovered from their initial animosity.
She knelt to touch the frozen earth over Jeremy’s grave one last time, and then she stood and dusted her hands. In the spring she’d bring some lily-of-the-valley pips to plant here. That would keep him company. Beatrice began picking her way back to the carriage and Reynaud. The little churchyard was sadly neglected, the stone path overgrown with weeds. The wind blew her skirts against her legs, and she shivered as she neared Reynaud.
“Finished?” He put a hand under her elbow to steady her.
“Yes.” She looked up into his stern face. “Thank you for bringing me.”
He nodded. “He was a good man.”
“Yes, he was,” she murmured.
He handed her into the carriage and then climbed in after her, knocking against the ceiling to signal the coachman. She watched out the window as they pulled away from the cemetery, then looked at him. “You’re still set on a marriage by special license?”
“I’d like to be already married by the time I go before parliament,” he said. “If it bothers you, we can plan a celebratory ball in the new year.”
She nodded. After the passion of his seduction, the practicality of his plans for their marriage was slightly dampening. She remembered Lottie’s words about a gentleman filling a position with his choice of wife. Wasn’t that what she herself was doing? Reynaud needed her as his wife so that he could convince others he was sane. Nathan needed Lottie as his wife to further his career. The only difference was that Lottie had believed her husband loved her.
Beatrice had no such illusions.
She straightened a bit and cleared her throat. “You never told me how you eventually escaped the Indians. Did Sastaretsi give up his hatred of you?”
He flattened his mouth impatiently. “Do you really wish to hear this tale? It’s boring, I assure you.”
His stalling tactics only made her curiosity keener. “Please?”
“Very well.” He looked away and was silent a moment.
“Sastaretsi?” she prompted softly.
“He never did give up his hatred of me.” Reynaud was staring out the window, his long nose and strong chin in profile against the wine-red squabs behind him. “But that first winter was hard, and it was all we could do to simply find enough food to feed everyone. I was an able-bodied hunter, if not a very good one at first, so I think he laid aside his animosity for a little while. We were all weak from hunger anyway.”
“How dreadful.” She looked down at her lap, examining her fine kid gloves. She’d never wanted for food in her life, but she’d seen beggars on the street now and again. She tried to imagine Reynaud with that gaunt face, that glittering, desperate expression in his black eyes. She didn’t like the thought of him suffering so terribly.