Liam bowed. “Inglewood is always at your service, Your Highness. We thank you for the favor you have bestowed,” he said as he straightened. Which was Cameron’s cue to rise and walk over to stand beside Sophie. He bowed to Eloisa, searching her face one last time for any clue that she had any regret about this at all before he turned to take Sophie’s hand, schooling himself to calm, to not react to the flare of pleasure he was growing to expect whenever they touched.
“It is our will that Cameron Mackenzie and Sophia Kendall shall wed,” Eloisa said. “And our will is law. In light of the present circumstances, we wish that this wedding be sanctified to show our appreciation to the goddess for her gifts of magic as soon as possible. Therefore the wedding will take place on first day next week.”
Sophie’s hand tightened in his. He had been expecting haste, but two days after the coronation itself was giving new meaning to the word. Judging by the tension he could feel in her grip, Sophie hadn’t known about Eloisa’s timetable either. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed by the speed. Not when just the joining of their hands made him as hungry for her as a man starved for years. So, as the court began to chatter in earnest around them, he merely smiled at Sophie and escorted her back to sit beside him for the rest of the audience.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
For Sophie the next few days flew by so quickly she wasn’t quite convinced that someone wasn’t winding forward the hands of all the palace clocks whenever her back was turned.
The preparations for the coronation were relentless. Hour after hour of carrying notes or writing notes or attending the queen-to-be in endless meetings and meals and gatherings. Helping Eloisa change clothes, helping her get ready for bed, helping her rise in the morning. Waiting on her every whim. And then there were the fittings. Eloisa’s coronation dress was to be even more elaborate than the one she’d worn for her first audience. Pure golden silk, the Fairley blue coming from sapphires and embroidery curling in delicate waves around the hem of the skirt and sleeves. An entire fleet of seamstresses were working around the clock to finish it.
That didn’t leave them much time for the dresses for the ladies-in-waiting, which were to be made of pale gold silk, embroidered with the same curling sea waves and the quartered circle of the goddess.
The seamstresses spared to that task were no less relentless than those making Eloisa’s dress. Sophie and each of the ladies-in-waiting kept being called away for fitting upon fitting.
On top of which, Sophie had a wedding gown being made as well. Her mother, always prepared, had brought her own wedding dress with her from their estate. The seamstresses she had hired had exclaimed over the heavy satin fabric, not quite white, not ivory, but a shade that glowed somewhere in between. The dress was trimmed with pearl-studded lace, but the seamstresses declared that the style was too old-fashioned and that the gown needed to be remade, just not refitted. Sophie, other than requesting something not too frilly, decided to let her mother deal with design choices. She simply didn’t have the time. And, truly, she didn’t care what the dress looked like.
The wedding was a few hours of her life. The marriage was a lifetime.
In the whirlwind of coronation preparations, she had barely seen Cameron for more than a minute or two as they passed in corridors or outside Eloisa’s rooms. They had shared one too-short formal lunch in the Inglewood apartments when Liam and Jeanne had invited her parents to dine with them. She and Cameron had been seated at opposite ends of the table, she next to Liam and Cameron next to her mother. She had made polite conversation with Liam—whom she was coming to like even though she wasn’t entirely certain of him or the depths of his ambition yet—and kept an eye on her parents. Liam, who seemed to be taking on the mantle of erl easily, had spoken to her of the Inglewood estates, and she had nodded and smiled and tried not to let her eyes stray too often to Cameron. She should pay attention to what Liam was telling her. After all, she was joining the Inglewood family. She should understand their holdings. One day Cameron would be expected to take control of one of them.
She wondered which Liam had in mind. He had formerly been living at the Loch Kenzie estate, the seat of the Inglewoods, running things for his father who stayed at court most of the year. Did he intend to return or stay in Kingswell and take on his father’s political role? And if he stayed, would Alec and Lucy move to Loch Kenzie? Or did Liam think Cameron would leave the Red Guard and step into that role?
She had no idea if Cameron wanted to leave the guard. With the attack so fresh, it didn’t seem likely the commander would want to relinquish any of his men, though he would if the queen-to-be ordered him to, Sophie supposed. As for herself, well, she would be happy to leave Kingswell, to settle back into estate life, albeit it on a grander scale than at her parents’ home. But she had no idea whether Eloisa would allow her to go, either.
The whole situation seemed complicated and somehow academic. Like the wedding itself. With things whirling around her so quickly, it was hard to shake the sensation that perhaps she was merely dreaming the whole thing and would at any moment find one of the maids waking her for her birthday.
The only thing that made her believe that she actually was betrothed, a witch, and about to be married—apart from the continuing daily lessons in earth magic at the temple—was the constant unfamiliar weight of the betrothal ring that Cameron had placed on her hand during the ceremony at the temple. The stone was a huge sapphire in a shade so dark it appeared nearly black in some lights, set in an old-fashioned gold setting that clasped the stone in a stark gold outline and unadorned band. Sophie loved it, despite the fact it was heavy. Something about the simple stark shape and the deep-blue stone reminded her of Cameron.
It was what it was. Honest. Solid.