Marianne turned around.
“No! Elizabeth? Katherine? No, she’s in Wyncliff. I’ve got it! Elinor!” he declared with obvious triumph.
“Edward, I’m Marianne!” she exclaimed, rounding on him. He reacted with a blank look. “Your sister!”
“Ahh, my dear little Marianne. Of course,” he said, a beatific smile spreading across his chiseled face, displaying two neat rows of even, white teeth. “What can I do for you today, Marianne?” he added with a roguish wink that seemed to indicate it was their little joke that he had forgotten she existed.
Marianne also mustered a dazzling smile. “Good-bye, Edward. I’ll certainly miss . . . well, whatever we shared.”
As Marianne retreated, Edward motioned a waiting servant to his side. “See what the kitchen can do for supper.”
Chapter the Second
So this is what it feels like the night before you get married. Marianne studied the view outside her high, open windows. Storm clouds roiled in the wind’s gusts, and thunder claps vibrated her hand on the windowsill. An abrupt knock at the door elicited a jerk of her head and returned her thoughts to the manor. Before she had time to reply, the door was pushed rudely open, and a coldness descended upon the room.
Even without turning around, Marianne knew who the caller would be. She often wondered why she never felt close to her mother. Children in the marketplace were often seen clinging to their parents, but whenever Marianne had tried even to hug her mother, Beatrice tensed as though trying to weather a blow. Marianne had long ago given up hope for affection from her family or any sense of belonging and fitting in. Her sarcastic father, her distant mother, Edward—only five-year-old Cassandra seemed at ease when Marianne was around. This was not saying much, however, because Cassandra often forgot her own name. Still, Marianne intuited that Beatrice had been satisfied with the match to Brantford. Marianne would be the first of the children to wed, and as her parents often brought up, this would greatly enhance the family’s status.
“Why are you not asleep?” came the icy, critical voice behind Marianne.
Marianne turned and there stood her mother’s constricted hourglass figure, the lamplight from the hallway bearing witness to her powdered face. Her long, honey-colored hair was wrapped in the current style so tightly that it looked as though she might have difficulty blinking.
“I wasn’t tired,” Marianne replied. “And I do not love him,” she heard herself continue, with mild astonishment that her tongue could be so bold.
“And whose fault is that?” accused Beatrice. She closed the door behind her with force.
“I . . . I’ve never even met him,” Marianne began, but an overpowering sense of hopelessness consumed her, and she merely sank herself into an overstuffed armchair.
“This is for you,” Beatrice said through closely pursed lips, thrusting a tight fist toward Marianne.
“You want to hit me?” asked Marianne, raising a weary eyebrow.
Beatrice stiffened, then opened her palm. In her hand was a small glass ball, and imprisoned inside was a dragonfly, its deep, faceted eyes shining like pools of rainbows. The gossamer wings seemed stalled in mid-flight, ready to begin fighting the air again at its first chance for liberty. Marianne forgot herself, and a flood of questions poured forth.
“What is it? How was it made? Where did you find it? Did you get it when the elves came through? Is that a real dragon—”
“Enough!” said Beatrice. “I don’t know the answers to these silly questions.”
“How—”
“It is not a gift from us,” she said, handing it to Marianne. “I think it is quite an odd item, myself,” said Beatrice, heading for the door.
Marianne tried to speak, but her waning gratitude mixed with her growing anger got stuck in her throat, and all that came out was a raspy cry.
“Besides, your match with Brantford is not about love.”
Marianne went to her window and closed it. The storm was finally upon Kingbriton Manor, and as the arrows of rain struck against her windows, Marianne watched the lightning reflect on her dragonfly until she fell asleep.
Chapter the Third
Marianne awoke on her wedding day with an aching neck and frozen toes. Pulling the sheets up around her, she took in the room in which she would never awaken again. She winced as her feet met the glacial floor. Is it foolish to say good-bye to inanimate objects? she wondered vaguely as she made her way about her room. The bushel of newly plucked roses she had taken from the twining bushes that scaled her walls seemed to blush with happiness today. Wish I were that excited, she thought. There was a timid knock at the door.
“Come in,” Marianne said distractedly, staring at the green, gently sloping fields stretching beyond her window.
“Begging your pardon, Miss Marianne, but the Lady, er . . . your mother requests that you dress in your finest this morning. She is sending up some other girls to aid you in looking your best,” said the servant girl, staring downward so that only her cap was visible to Marianne.
“Why does the Lady need me so early?” inquired Marianne, fiddling with the window latch.
“She says . . . um . . . she says that,” the girl struggled to find the correct words before they tumbled out, “that your betrothed will be coming to have an audience with you before the wedding.”
Marianne opened the window, and the white curtains yielded to a freezing gust as she stood with her hands on the sill. Outside, the sun’s absence created a bleak morning scene, and the damp morning air chilled Marianne’s fingers. “Tell her,” Marianne cocked her head slightly, “that I shall be down as soon as possible.”
“Yes’m,” the girl muttered before rushing mouse-like out the door.
Marianne moved away from the window. She sat down at her vanity table and scrutinized her image in the mirror. “I’m going to be married,” Marianne said ruefully. What will come after marriage? Will I learn to love him? Will he want children? What a stupid question! Of course, he’ll want a son. But can I be a wife? Maybe it won’t be so horrible. Maybe he’ll be wonderful and let me run through his forests and stay up all night reading. Perhaps I’ll fall in love with him and live happily ever after like all the heroines I’ve read about. Marianne could hear the footsteps of servants making their way to her door. “If you smile, nothing is as bad as you think it is,” she said out loud. But she observed as she got up that anxiety had faded the roses from her alabaster cheeks and strained her reflection’s smile.
Descending the staircase, Marianne concentrated on feeling cheerful. It was an arduous task because she had spent the last hours in misery in order to make a good first impression. If I’m going to be with him the rest of my life, I might as well have him like me. Against her will her feet were crammed inside pointed, high-heeled shoes. Do I really think that Brantford will find it attractive that I can only limp? The corset pinched her hips and repressed her breathing to small gasps. Marianne found it absurdly impractical to minimize her hips and then layer on tiers of petticoats. It’s like refusing to take a bath, then going swimming. Her brocade gown was so unwieldy that Marianne had remarked that it was like wearing a hippopotamus to a dinner party. The only thing she liked about her appearance was her hair. At her insistence, the servants had wrapped fresh roses into the back of her thick black tresses which wound their way down her back in a single braid.
“About time!” barked the impatient voice of her father Neville at the bottom of the stairway. “I’ve been waiting forever!”
“Well, prepare yourself to wait a little longer,” Marianne announced, making her way down. “You and I would both be sad if I broke