“I’m sorry,” I said. I did truly mean it. It was never my intention to make anybody angry, let alone my mother. Willful I might be, but I wasn’t spiteful. “I wish I could be the daughter you want,” I said softly, as Maria unlocked the door to my chambers and held it open for us. “I wish I could be as good at all of this as you.”
She warmed up a little at the compliment, but not very much. Once the door swung shut behind us, she was all flared nostrils and frustrated eye rolls.
“The way you told him off.” She shook her head. “Such disrespect.”
I glanced at a looking glass and met Maria’s eyes. In her expression, I saw that she’d have done exactly what I did. Or worse. But even still, I knew I’d been rude. Not the best first impression to make in front of my new…
The thought of the word husband made me groan yet again.
“What in heaven’s name is wrong with you?” My mother snapped, staring at me. “These noises you make! You must learn to control your emotions. It’s the most important skill a queen can have.”
By way of demonstration, my mother lifted her chin and swished her long hair, side-to-side, raising one shoulder. It was the same face she’d had the moment that she was first crowned. The instant I’d seen that face, that very same expression she had now, I knew the mother that I’d once loved so dearly was lost to me. She had come out from her cocoon into her full, haughty glory. Nothing will ever be the same, I remember thinking, when I saw that look on her face.
And it never was.
Maria stepped forward to help me disrobe, to free me from the confines of my too-tight corset and the dress that weighed as much as a suit of armor. But my mother swatted her hands away.
“I’ll do it. We wouldn’t want your dirty little fingers damaging all this gold thread, now would we?”
With a silent bow, Maria backed away. I felt my face flame hot with anger. I could take just about any amount of cruelty from my mother, but when it came to Maria, things were very different.
“Mother. You need not speak to her that way.”
Again she made an impatient tsk, lifting her upper lip slightly to reveal her front teeth. She yanked on the ribbon of my corset and I gasped as the breath was forced from my lungs. Moving quickly up my back, she looped one finger through each cross tie, pulling the ribbon free.
As the corset began to loosen, I found I could finally breathe. But it also unleashed a torrent of emotions, as if being unbound let my heart feel the full magnitude of what had happened. And what was about to happen to me. In merely two weeks.
My nose stung with a rush of sudden tears. My mother paused her unlacing and stared at me.
“Shame on you. You should be thanking me for arranging such an excellent match for you, not standing here sniveling like a petulant child.”
Rather than finish the sentence, my mother yanked my corset off and stood beside me, fuming at my reflection in the full-length mirror. She pinched my upper arm between first and second finger, the way I’d seen butchers examine hogs.
“Too thin, too stubborn, too everything. You’ve been a spoiled for too long. It’s time for you to grow up. And fatten up. We can’t have the children you give the prince coming out as scrawny as you!”
Children. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind until now. Prince Galen had repulsed me so deeply that I hadn’t even let my thoughts go to the intimacies of marriage. But to think of that man taking me, fathering my children…
I pressed the back of my hand to my lips to keep down a wave of nausea. Hot bile singed my throat.
Now my mother began work on unfastening my skirt, pressing her lips together unpleasantly as she focused on the small buttons that ran down from my lower back. “Your stepfather and I will be going with Prince Galen upon his departure tomorrow. There’s much to discuss about trade and how best to unite our kingdoms. I had hoped that you would be able to come with us. But clearly,” here she popped her head up over my shoulder, looking me in the eye through my reflection in the mirror, “clearly you’re a bigger threat to the marriage if you’re with us than if you stay here.”
That, at least, was a bit of comfort. Two weeks of complete freedom before the gauntlet fell.
But then my mother continued, “After the marriage, you’ll be Prince Galen’s responsibility. And I can assure you,” she said with a knowing chuckle, “he’ll put a stop to all your hunting and wandering. All your foolishness will be a thing of the past. Thank goodness!”