“Well, Lord Foxhaven is the heir, but Lord Grey does thrill me to the bone every time with just one look.”
Madelaine wanted to silence Grace’s viperous tongue, but the way she had in mind wouldn’t garner her in any better favor with the queen. Proper ladies did not resort to violence. Oh, how she wished she didn’t have to be a proper lady.
Lady Elizabeth sighed. “Fine. I’ll post a letter to Grey tonight.
“That’ll do nicely. Yet I require one more thing.”
“What is it?” Lady Elizabeth’s shoulders slumped and her voice shook.
Grace gave Madelaine a narrow-eyed look. “No more speaking to her, unless it’s to insult her, of course.”
Madelaine’s pulse shot from a simmer to a boil, but she struggled to keep her face relaxed. She ignored Grace’s stare and instead looked at Lady Elizabeth and tried to convey with a quick smile that it was all right. It wasn’t at all, but she’d never let Lady Elizabeth know that. A tear trickled down Lady Elizabeth’s cheek which she quickly dashed away. “I understand,” she whispered, dropped her arms and walked out the door.
Grace stared at Madelaine from across the room. “I’ll expect your allowance in my hands by nightfall.”
“I’d expect no less from the likes of you,” Madelaine replied. A small sense of satisfaction filled her as Grace opened and closed her mouth. No doubt the ninny struggled to find some nasty words to say. Too bad she wasn’t quick-witted. Grace settled on a glare, turned and departed the room.
Madelaine stood for a moment with nothing but the crackle of the fire as her company. It seemed worse somehow to have found a possible friend and then lost her so suddenly than to have never had a friend at all. At least before, she had become numb to the cruelty of the other ladies-in-waiting.
She hated this place. But she couldn’t begrudge her father. He’d done what he thought best for his odd daughter. He wanted her married and had judged she needed all the help she could get to finally learn to be a proper lady since she’d failed miserably to become one when her mother was alive. If only she had tried harder, not caused her mother so much heartache. Her heart twisted with memories.
A commotion at the door drew her attention back to the area. The chambermaid with the red hair swept in. “I need to draw the curtains.”
Madelaine glanced at the windows and frowned. The curtains were all drawn wide.
The chambermaid laughed. “Sorry, my lady. I meant I need to straighten the pillows.”
To Madelaine’s eye not a single pillow in the room was out of place, but she waved the woman into the room. “Constance, correct?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Were you lingering outside the room this entire time?” She hated to be accusatory, but she needed to be pragmatic. Silence may need to be bought. Her skin crawled at her thoughts. She was becoming a true member of this wretched Court.
“Certainly not, my lady.” The woman’s voice held indignation, but her eyes darted with her lies. It was on the tip of Madelaine’s tongue to offer Constance coin, but then Madelaine remembered she now had no coin to offer. It was all due to Lady Grace. This was awful.
She pasted a sweet smile on her face, though she felt like screaming. “If you did happen to overhear anything, I hope you know howgratefulI’d be, how willing to help you it would make me, if you kept your silence.”
Constance cleared her throat. “I didn’t hear a thing, my lady.”
Madelaine clenched her fist. Falsehoods. This entire Court was filled with people who had been raised to lie.
The all too familiar sting of hurt pierced Madelaine’s heart. She had to get out of here before she became someone she did not recognize in an effort to simply defend herself from those around her. The problem was she had to have an offer of marriage before her father would allow her to leave the Court, and as far as she could tell the men at Court with their freely roaming hands and whispered innuendos wanted a whore—not a wife.
Three
After a week of being locked up in the castle because of constant rain and bitter cold, Madelaine was giddy when she awoke on the seventh day to sun and warmer temperatures. Neither the queen’s glare nor Grace’s continuing campaign to make Madelaine look foolish in front of the queen could dampen Madelaine’s spirits today. They were to spend time outside and the promise of riding her horse, though it would not be as fast as she liked, lightened her heart and added a bounce to her step.
As she raced down the stairs to meet the queen and the other ladies-in-waiting she found Grace at the bottom of the steps.
“You’re dressed rather oddly for sketching,” Grace said.
Madelaine’s spirits plummeted. “Are we no longer riding?”
“Did I forget to tell you of the queen’s change of mind?” A wicked smile flittered across Grace’s face. “You better hurry if you don’t want to anger the queen by being tardy.”
Madelaine wanted to throttle Grace, but unfortunately that would have to wait. She raced up the stairs and quickly changed while categorizing the different ways she’d like to take her revenge on Grace. By the time she returned to the courtyard, she had ten solid retaliation methods in mind, and she would have gladly employed method one, pushing Grace into the fountain when no one was watching, but the queen and all the ladies had already gone outside.
Fuming, she trudged in the direction the guard pointed her, kicking stray pebbles as she walked. Why had she fought her mother so? If only she’d paid attention and learned how to do at leastonething normal ladies did. Her mother had been right—Madelaine was willful and her father was too soft. A reluctant smile tugged at her mouth. How easy it had always been to get Father to take her side. A few well-placed tears and she would be practicing archery with him instead of inside with her mother trying to master embroidery. A gentle reminder about how long he had been gone to see the king, and she could easily escape practicing pianoforte for the much more pleasurable experience of racing him on horseback across their wide expanse of land or having a dagger-throwing contest.
