Darnessa nodded. “Good. I see the same things. What about her looks?”
“Pleasing figure. Tightens her bodice too much, though; she looks like she’d spill out of it if she bent over too far.” Sage suppressed a smile. “Her face still has some youthful roundness to it. She’ll thin out in the next few years. Complexion is pretty good, except she styles her hair to cover some pockmarks on the forehead. She’s not naturally that blond, but she looks better than the false red of that girl last month.”
“Anything else?”
“Clubfoot.”
That surprised the matchmaker. “Really?”
Sage nodded. “Hides it with a special shoe. I imagine dancing is somewhat painful.” She chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s the reason for the showy cleavage. When she can’t keep up, she can use the hill scenery to keep suitors hypnotized.”
Darnessa snorted in laughter and gestured for Sage to pull the heavy blanket over the peephole.
Sage tugged the weaving down and turned back. “Perhaps that’s why she’s so short-tempered. She’s afraid someone’ll find out and ruin her chance at getting in.” She frowned. The girl had probably been told her entire life that a high marriage was all she was good for. And since the Concordium was held only every five years, at nineteen she had only one chance at getting in.
Darnessa rolled her eyes. “You’re better at this than you realize.”
Sage shrugged. “It’s just figuring out motivations. Sometimes it’s interesting.” She tipped a thumb at the wall behind her. “They’re almost done in there. How do I look?” She lifted her arms over her simple but pretty dress.
“You look very sweet.” Darnessa reached out to tuck away a strand of Sage’s hair. Sage stiffened a little, but didn’t lean away as she had in the first few months of the job. “Now get back there and be ready.”
Sage lingered in the kitchen until the front bell rang. Then she waited a few more minutes before slipping out the back door into the warm April sunshine. The younger brother of the girl in Darnessa’s parlor leaned against the family’s carriage, tossing his cap in the air. Sage cleared her mind and began making a mental list.
A sword was belted at his waist. Right-handed.
As she walked closer, the polished gleam of the metal hilt caught the sun and nearly blinded her. The scabbard was equally flawless. Rarely used. The boy was only seventeen, though, and under his very rich family’s thumb, so he could be forgiven for not having found himself quite yet.
His embroidered tunic and white linen shirt were neat to the point of fussiness, and he looked a bit uncomfortable in them. The polished but worn boots and tanned face told her he enjoyed being outdoors. Her heart lightened considerably. He had some potential, at least in conversation.
He looked up as she approached, straightening and settling his feathered cap on his sun-kissed blond hair. Sage put on her best smile.
*
Darnessa walked into the kitchen, toweling her wet hair. “You can write Lady Jacqueline down as coming with us to the capital,” she said. “We’ll find her a rich count who hates dancing.”
Sage didn’t look up from her seat at the table, where she wrote notes in a large, leather-bound book. “They certainly waited until the last minute to have her evaluated.”
Her employer shrugged. “With her pedigree, she was pretty much a given, and it’s a long way to travel twice. Her family will stay with relatives nearby until we leave next month. They’re looking over the contract now.”
“Why don’t any of the families come with the brides?” asked Sage, searching for a page she wanted. “That’s a lot of trust they put in you to make a match without them.”
Darnessa lowered herself into a chair and propped her feet up. “We banned them from the Concordium generations ago. The crowding and backdoor attempts to arrange matches defeated the entire purpose.” She pointed and flexed her feet as she spoke, working the soreness out from the fancy shoes she wore for interviews. “Have you finished the letter to General Quinn about our escort?”
“Not yet,” Sage said. “We only got that last confirmation this morning, so I wasn’t able to write out all our planned stops until today. I was waiting for your decision on Jacqueline, too. I thought I’d include all the names. Better too much information than too little.” She tossed the draft of her letter across the table for Darnessa’s approval. “Sister Fernham is expecting me in an hour, so I’ll finish it tonight.”
“I don’t know what the convent will do while you’re gone,” Darnessa muttered as she squinted at the page, but Sage knew she didn’t mind the lessons she taught to the orphans in her spare time. “How did it go with Jacqueline’s brother?”
“Fairly well,” Sage answered. “We went for a walk, and I got him talking about himself pretty quickly. Considerate and attentive, though a bit vacant. I made a joke and it went right over his head.” He was a bit of a flirt, too, but she wasn’t foolish enough to think he was attracted to her. Young men were eager to impress any girl who flattered them, and she’d grown used to turning that to her advantage. “Overall a nice young man. If she wasn’t already coming with us to the capital, I’d say he might be a good match for Lady Tamara.”
“No, but when we get back from Tennegol, I’ll be ready when he comes knocking for his match,” Darnessa said.
“Something he said makes me think maybe his parents have a match planned for him down in Tasmet.”
Darnessa frowned. “Are you sure? Something that big should have gone through me.”
“It sounded like an agreement between families.” Sage had a special section in her book for those matches. Tasmet, like Crescera, was a province of Demora, though it was still adjusting to being part of the country. Matchmakers had been established there for less than forty years—not quite two full generations, but as Tasmet nobility were mostly transplanted from other regions of Demora after it was ceded by Kimisara in the Great War, the practice had taken hold quickly. Every year a higher percentage of the general population used matchmakers. In another forty years, Tasmet would be like the rest of the country in that only the poorest—and most scandalous—marriages were self-arranged.
“Another one? This is getting out of hand.” Darnessa swung her feet down to the floor and sat up straight, shaking her head and grumbling. “It’s not just the loss in my planning. If it doesn’t work out well, people might think I put them together.”