I turn from my future husband’s not-so-secret girlfriend and continue my trek forward. “Where are Lady Mei and Lord Aaron?” I ask. Molli is seldom by herself at these gatherings. Not enough social status to gain notice alone. We used to band together—a pair of nobodies. Now I’m happy to bring her along on my unwanted rise in prestige.
Molli flips open her fan and flutters it in front of her face. M.A.R.I.E. keeps the palace’s climate at a perfect, comfortable temperature, but the motion both is decorative and conceals Molli’s words from eavesdroppers with a lip-reading program on their Lens. Which, because such apps are strictly banned, is everyone. “Lady Mei and her sister have been compelled to join their parents for a family moment.”
“I imagine she’s thrilled,” I say, half amused. The marquis and Lady Zhào are rather fond of parading their two daughters about for the marriageable nobility to see. It’ll be another five years at least before either is ready for marriage, but luck favors the prepared, and betrothals can be quite lengthy.
“Lord Aaron slipped out a few minutes ago,” Molli continues. “He’s remarkably out of spirits this evening. He tries to hide it, but I’ve known the boy since he was still wetting his britches.”
I’d sensed his gloomy mood myself but find it difficult to gauge. I haven’t known Lord Aaron as long as Molli has, having only moved into the palace four years ago, and he does tend toward melancholy anyway. I have trouble distinguishing between his passing fits of existential angst and true distress. I’m always grateful for Molli’s insight in these moments.
A feathered fan—lime-green and loud as the grating laugh of its owner—catches my eye. “I suppose that has something to do with it.” I nod subtly in its direction, though I’m referring not to the woman in the frothy confection of a gown but to the lean, handsome young man beside her.
“It’s such a shame,” Molli says, peering after them over her fan. “He and Sir Spencer are so well suited they might have been created for each other.”
“Can you picture it?” I whisper. “Sir Spencer’s golden hair—Lord Aaron’s dark skin. They’d be gloriously striking.”
“I wish they wouldn’t stand on such ceremony. It’s hardly a love match, even on her side. Besides, everyone in the court cheats.”
I don’t have to voice my agreement, as it’s such a naked truth.
“Her father is so old-fashioned,” Molli laments.
Lady Julianna—the young woman with the unfortunately hued fan—is the heir to the Tremain dukedom; the much more elegant man at her side is the Honorable Sir Spencer Harrisford. An American by birth, Sir Spencer inherited his title and shares when his parents—both top Sonoma executives in America, a brilliant match—were killed in a high-speed rail accident. Their son was brought to Sonoman Versailles by Duke Tremain and wed to Lady Julianna a few weeks later, on the very night of his eighteenth birthday. Not in a whirlwind romance, but simply because Sir Spencer was overly biddable in his fragile emotional state and the duke had an agenda. Still does, if dark rumors are to be believed.
It’s exceptionally bad luck on both their parts that Sir Spencer and Lord Aaron fell quite instantly and madly in love at the wedding fête. Unfortunately, with Lady Tremain’s father holding tightly to the purse strings, that means no affairs. For now.
“They should consider having a tryst as a public service,” Molli says.
I pause and turn to her, baffled. “How so?”
She widens her already-luminous eyes. “Their searing glances are in danger of setting the drapes afire.”
Her wry humor strikes my tight nerves just right and I laugh aloud.
“She’s so very vulgar, though,” Molli says, the humor draining quickly from her eyes. Molli has no status save her delightful self to recommend her, but she tries harder than anyone else I know. Certainly harder than I ever did. To see someone like Lady Julianna—so gauche and tasteless, utterly lacking in poise or subtlety, despite her wealth and breeding—who possesses every advantage and has earned none, feels like quite a personal insult.
I’m finding the recent run of very young marriages—including my own impending one—more problematic than any individual plight. Being engaged isn’t what I wanted or expected in my seventeenth year…and eighteen is truly not much older.
Too late I realize that in my distraction I’ve allowed my progress to slow. When I next feel a presence at my shoulder, I’m certain I won’t be so lucky as to turn and find a friendly face a second time.
“GAD, IT’S STIFLING in here.”
My hand is lifted and damp lips brush my knuckles, leaving a chilly, wet spot on my glove that I struggle not to wipe on my skirts. I don’t have to look to identify the oily voice of my betrothed: lord, chairman, chief executive, murderer, the King himself.
I wish I could gouge his eyes out.