Post by Muse on Sept 2, 2013 4:52:43 GMT 10
Title: Possibilities
Rating: PG
Category: Tortall >1,000
Length: 6631
Original: Goldenlake: 1 2 3 4 5 Subsequent Haunts: TKO
Summary: There are so many sometimes, maybes, nevers, always...so many chances and choices might lead Francis and Gwynnen to their Ever After. Five AU 'verses about Francis of Nond and Gwynnen (both minor characters in SotL), and the ways things might have been.
I. Sometimes
Sometimes Gwynnen dreams, and she loves these dreams because they have magic and high adventure and dashing romances like in the stories her nurse told her before she was old enough to go to convent. Surrounded by high stone walls and the do’s and don’ts of being a Court Lady, Gwynnen closes her eyes and dreams of escape and freedom and her blond knight in shining armor offers her his hand.
Her father’s manservant isn’t blond, or a prince, but he offers her his arm just the same when she arrives in Corus, at the palace, and she wonders if this is what freedom feels like. There are princes and squires and knights, just like in the old tales, but no one at court is quite like the blond knight in her dreams.
Sometimes Gwynnen dreams, and she loves these dreams because she can share them with Cythera, her closest friend at Court, behind their hands and giggles while they picnic in the sloping gardens of the Palace. They braid daisy chains, which they drape over the ever good-natured Sacherell and Douglass, and Gwynnen whispers into Cythera’s ear about how her shy blond knight holds her hand gently, smiling just so as he leads her on the dance floor.
“So, he’s more graceful than these?” Cythera remarks, so that Gareth the Younger and Raoul, who sit near their flower bedecked squires, can hear. Gary, who had asked Cythera to dance the night previous, flushed dully as Cythera and Gwynnen gave in to peals of laughter.
“Of course,” Gwynnen informed her friend seriously, “he’s much more like Squire Alan or the Prince, except without Alan’s temper or the Prince’s flair for women!” She dissolves again, giggling madly in the early summer sunlight, and living like this is almost better than her dreams.
Sometimes Gwynnen dreams, and she loves these dreams because they are dreams of Court and of ladies and knights and adventure and romances and Gwynnen finally knows that the tales from her childhood are based on something real. Sometimes, when Gwynnen dreams these things, they’re as real as the life she lives in Corus, but there’s someone else there, in her dream, and she doesn’t know anyone with blond hair and a shy smile. Her knight, no matter how many times he smiles at her, makes her laugh, no matter how many times she teases him until his ears burn dark red against his fair hair or laces her fingers with his, her knight disappears when she opens her eyes and her romance lives only inside her head.
Sometimes Gwynnen dreams, but the paper cut on her finger as she opens the letter beads up red with blood and her stomach sinks. Her mother’s words are light and flowery and dreamless, grounded firmly by her father’s steel will, and for the first time Gwynnen feels sorry for her mother. Gwynnen’s dreams are the same as always that night, her knight romancing her in the slow summer twilight, but when Gwynnen wakes she has no illusions left to her.
She’s slower to laugh with Cythera, and for the first time, she’d rather not chatter about knights and adventure and love and heroic deeds; her knight doesn’t come up in conversation. Gwynnen dreams, but when her father arrives to escort her home, the hoof beats underneath the carriage break up every thought and she isn’t able to retreat to the familiar embrace of her knight in shining armor.
Sometimes Gwynnen dreams, and she wants to love these dreams and she wants to believe in these dreams but romance isn’t only supposed to exist in her head, she reminds herself as she smiles sadly across the dinner table-- her fiancée is old blood and rich and her parents beam happily. She thinks of her knight, her blond knight with the gentle eyes who offered her a single daisy, and she sits straighter while inside her heart crumbles just a bit more.
She’s glad romances exist inside her head, she reminds herself as her father places her hand in the groom’s wrinkled paw. He speaks his vows, jowls wobbling, and Gwynnen bites back her tears before she replies with her own vows, looking beyond the pale skin and clammy fingers clutching at her hands.
Sometimes Gwynnen dreams, and her shy blond knight wraps an arm around her shoulder and whispers romance in her ear and just for a moment, dressed in white, she smiles true.
II. Maybe
Gwynnen can’t quite believe that she has been let to accompany her mother to Court this midwinter. There’s been talk of her heading to the convent, which Gwynnen scoffs at, but never, never had she imagined something like this.
The glow of the candlelight, held in branching candelabras throughout the room, sparkles in Gwynnen’s eyes, and she knows her excitement is causing her cheeks to flush, but she can’t help herself and her giddy hands are creeping out of her velvet covered lap to brush over the ornate silverware and trace the gilt patterns on the plate before her.
Around her, figures in red and gold--such bright colors!--wait at the edges of the room with the first course of the evening. So focused is she on those dazzling people that she jumps at the voice behind her.
“Something to drink, milady?”
Gwynnen forces herself to turn slowly, and sees a page with a glass pitcher at her shoulder. He blushes, a little, under her gaze, but her startled laughter provokes a small smile. He fills her glass carefully and his blond hair flopping into his eyes as he offers her a graceful bow, smiling sheepishly before moving on to the next guest at her table.
The conversation amongst her mother’s friends drifts over the other members of the Court, and Gwynnen cranes her head--be discreet, child!--to see the people that come up in conversation. Prince Jonathan isn’t hard to recognize, in Conte blue behind his father, nor is his cousin Gareth, a squire now. She watches them, and the blond page nods to the both of them during the meal; perhaps they are friends.
She wishes she could find her voice as the meal comes to an end, but several hours of her giggles and his shy smiles have her words stuck somewhere in her throat. Her mother notices only that her daughter is behaving properly, after all this time, and Gwynnen searches the room just once more before she is sent back to her own chambers; the nice page is nowhere in sight.
The Midwinter celebrations are days long, and Gwynnen looks around each evening for the blond page, the one she calls “her” blond page in the recesses of her mind, and sometimes she catches a glimpse of him across the room, bowing to a Lord, or carrying some delicacy to another Lady.
The last evening of the holiday brings a touch of sadness with it, because Gwynnen can’t imagine settling for the drab grey convent after all of this, but at the quiet voice behind her, her face lights up.
“A drink?” the boy offers, and she giggles and smiles her yes, her dancing blue eyes meeting his gentle brown eyes before they both look away; him with the pretense of serving her mother, and her to her plate before her newly pink cheeks can give her away.
She has permission to stay for the dancing following the banquet this evening, and she looks up from under her lashes shyly as the last of the meal is completed. “Will--” she swallows as the blond page’s eyes find hers again, “--will you be, be dancing tonight?” she asks softly.
He flushes, and his hair flops into his eyes again as he ducks his head. “No, miss, pages aren’t allowed.”
Gwynnen flushes at this, and her own eyes drop to her hands. “Oh.”
“But,” he stammers, reaching to take another tray from the table, “in a few years, if, if,” he smiles shyly at her, “I’ll claim a dance then, milady--” he breaks off, and Gwynnen realizes she’s never given him her name.
“Gwynnen,” she tells him, suddenly as shy as he is. “Who--who are you?”
“Francis of Nond,” he bows to her--just to her-- and straightens. “I’ll look for you, Lady Gwynnen.”
And Gwynnen realizes that the convent might not be so bad, if she can learn to be delicate and dance like the other ladies at Court.
The City of the Gods is dull and dry and Gwynnen wonders sourly how anyone can expect the “delicate Court flowers” to grow in someplace that’s this cold and colorless. It’s more than she can stand, she thinks, especially when her memories of court linger like after-images on the backs of her eyelids. It’s easy to superimpose those memories over the Convent’s blank slate-life, so Gwynnen imagines rich tapestries on bare walls and quiet music floating just out of reach in halls that stifle every other sound. It’s hard, though, to focus on her needlework, or her ettiquette lessons, or her never-ending curtsy practice, when she remembers a certain smile, a familiar face, the way Francis of Nond’s hair flopped in his eyes when he smiled at her.
Gwynnen is sure that the size of her stitchery or the degree of her head’s incline when she sweeps her best curtsy doesn’t matter to Francis--not that he’s ever seen her curtsy, she reminds herself--not when he smiled at her laughter, which the cloister nun’s are always tutting over. Not when he blushed when she caught him watching her...But she won’t get out of the Convent if the nuns are not satisfied with her grace and needlework, so Gwynnen tries her best, working at innumerable stitched pillows and the perfect, floating waltz steps, and exactly which fork is for fish, and which is for chicken until she starts coughing.
She coughs and she coughs and she coughs, and the cloister nuns send her to bed, whispering behind their hands. She spends more time dreaming than she does awake--she’s hot, she’s so hot-- and the whispers reach her bed when they think she’s dreaming... delirious...sickness in the capital...sickness, sweating... The honeyed tea they try to coax her to drink--it’s too thick, choking, she can’t breathe--she can barely swallow, and the shadows in her room creep towards her bed across the floor.
Stopnodon’t...her arms shield her face. Hothothot no can’t comfortable--she pushes at the sheets wrapped around her. Coughing rips at her, and more tea is tipped down her throat.
She lingers, between light and dark with the shadows in her room, shadows of dancers and pages and all around her whirls odd disjointed music that isn’t what she remembers but she can’t, can’t quite...and she’s dancing, dancing around and around and her partner is smiling, his blond hair in his eyes, and she’s flushed warm from their second--third, was it the third?--waltz and he leaves her in her chair to get them something to drink.
She sits up straight in bed when she hears someone saying names, and the nuns think she’s dreaming again, the poor thing, she’s at the mercy of her delirious dreams, but Gywnnen’s listening now. She hears the names, sitting in the chair by the dance floor, and suddenly there are tears making gentle paths down her face. The sickness has claimed its first victims, the nuns whisper amongst themselves, and they look to Gwynnen, noticing her as she shakes silently. They give her something to drink, and she relaxes under its potent taste, sinking back into dreams, but her blond page is nowhere in them now.
Francis of Nond is gone.
III. Never
“War.” Gwynnen tried the word out, tasting it carefully as she rolled it around her tongue. It started off bland, but hid a bitter edge that had her flinching. No, she didn’t care for it at all.
“That’s what Gary said,” Cythera nodded.
Gywnnen made a face. “Sir Gareth has been out riding border patrols all winter; how should he know if we are to go to war?”
Frowning slightly, Cythera argued, “Just because you’re upset that Francis was sent to the border is no reason--”
“If Sir Gareth hadn’t picked a fight with Sir Raoul over darling, precious Delia’s riding glove, Francis never would’ve gotten in the middle of their argument and been sent away!” Gwynnen blew up, and Cythera shot her a dirty look and gathered her skirts.
“Fine, if that’s what you want to believe...”
“Its not just a belief!” Gwynnen shot back hotly, and Cythera huffed, nose in the air.
“If you want to be this way, it’s on your head. Good day.”
“What were you thinking?” Gwynnen wondered, running her thumb over the back of Francis’ hand. “Surely Delia’s glove isn’t--”
“Delia and her glove had nothing to do with it,” Francis turned, bringing Gwynnen’s hand to his face. “I just--”
Gwynnen touched a finger to his lips. “Shh. Its alright.”
Francis kissed her fingertip, then moved her hand so he could kiss her properly.
The door to the Royal Gallery was open when Gwynnen arrived, and the table by the fire already occupied as she slid into what had become her seat.
“I had wondered if you would come this evening,” the man across the table said as Gwynnen studied the chessboard between them, a game already underway. She glanced up, catching the sunken eyes in the lined face of the Lord of Groten before returning to the board in front of her.
Francis had already left for the Drell River Valley.
“Where else would I be?” she asked lightly, her voice belying the twisting, roiling emotions beneath her calm facade as she moved a pawn forward.
He left without saying goodbye.
Her chess partner said nothing as he countered her move deftly, and the room slipped into the familiar silence that had enveloped so many evenings in just this way while pieces paced endlessly around the board, locked in unending combat.
Even Gary said goodbye to Cythera.
Thinking hurt too much, so Gwynnen let habit take over and her hands sent her miniature army around the board, the same as so many other evenings this past, cold, lonely winter.
“Look up.”
Gwynnen giggled at Francis’ odd request, but tipped her head back just the same.
Above them, stars shone brilliantly, tiny specks of light against the dark, crisp winter sky.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, leaning back even further to see the sky better.
She didn’t see Francis’ intense, fierce happiness.
“They are returning!”
The cries came from the battlements, and even in the gardens, the Queen and her ladies heard the message.
“The war is over!”
Queen Lianne’s head came up, eyes no longer on her needlework.
“King Roald and Prince Jonathan have returned!”
Gwynnen held her breath, waiting; silk slid through Queen Lianne’s fingers, taking a fortnight to fall from her lap to the ground as the Queen stood, her pale, thin face alight.
“Come on,” Cythera tugged at Gwynnen’s arm, and Gwynnen happily abandoned the garden to follow the tide of people, pulling her inexorably towards the sounds of shouting, hooves, and metal-on-metal.
She stood on her tiptoes on the steps to the palace as King Roald swung off of his warhorse, gathering his wife into his arms, but Gwynnen scarcely saw the reunion before her as she scanned the amassing crowd.
There.
Francis lifted a hand to her briefly, their gazes connecting across the courtyard. His smile, as soft as ever, sends laughter bubbling up in her throat.
He’s safe--
And she pressed a hand to her mouth, maybe to hold her laughter in, maybe to hold back the unexplained sob that threatened to send tears onto her cheeks.
Gwynnen was floating on air when her father requested her presence in his study, and his words dragged her back to reality.
“He is quite taken by your beauty and charm, and has offered a handsome sum for your hand in marriage,” her father declared from behind his great oak desk.
“But, but I, it wasn’t,” Gwynnen stammered, horrified.
“You accepted his offers of chess, many an evening, if I might remind you, and he has grown fond of your company.”
“But I never—“
“We cannot afford to lose this opportunity, Gwynnen. We will not lose this opportunity.”
“But I don’t--”
“I have already accepted his offer of engagement for you,” her father flipped open a box sitting inconspicuously on his desk, and Gwynnen shrank away from its contents--a ring, bearing the coat of arms of Groten. “I have told him of your willingness and you will not prove me a liar. Now wear it, there’s a good girl.”
The cold, heavy metal sliding onto her finger was her shackles, and the slamming of the box under her father’s unforgiving hand the final closing of her cell.
When Gwynnen woke, the first thing she recalled was that Francis had returned. Her heart leapt, and she reached to brush her hair from her face; her fingers were unusually heavy and tangled in her locks before the rest of the evening returned in a rush, a slap in the face that left her tingling and breathless.
Still there, the ring squatted on her finger as if it belonged there. Throat closing rapidly, Gwynnen shut her eyes against the sight of the dull gold.
She could still feel it.
She stood in the gardens, still twisting the ring around and around her finger--get it off, get it off now-! -- When footsteps ran up behind her. Francis pulled her into his arms, picking her up off her feet as he spun her around and around. His face was alight, his dark eyes intense as they took her in; Gwynnen couldn’t resist, and her right hand found his face, cupping his cheek as Francis gently set her feet back on the ground.
Words fled from Gwynnen’s head, looking up at him, and it is all she could do to swallow and blink back tears.
“Hush, shh...don’t cry.”
Francis’ hand slid down her arm, reaching to tangle her fingers with his own, and Gwynnen’s heart stopped with a thump when he paused.
Cold, hard metal presses between their fingers painfully.
“Gwynnen--” the question wasn’t even out as he looked down, looked at her hand, looked at the ring; his left hand, still behind her back, crushed her closer. “Gwynnen,” his voice, strangled in his throat, “Gwynnen,” she wished he could keep saying her name forever, “...what is this?”
“I’m,” oh gods, I can’t say it.
Francis’ face, so close, pulled back as his disbelief faded into betrayal; she clutched at the fabric of his tunic.
“I’m engaged.”
Gwynnen hated how her voice broke on the last word, hated how suddenly tears cascaded down her cheeks, hated how hurt flashed across Francis’ eyes, his mouth tightened into a hard straight line, and she pressed her face into his familiar shoulder so she would not see anything more.
She knew she had broken his heart; she couldn’t bear to watch it fall to pieces before her.
“I swear, I didn’t want it, I didn’t encourage him, I never—“ Gwynnen bit back a sob, frantically trying to keep herself under control, but Francis took her hands from his shoulders, stepping back so that space suddenly yawned between them.
“I can’t do this,” he murmured, and Gwynnen’s heart clenched.
“Please, you have to believe me!”
“Stop it!” Francis’ fingers tightened around her own, and his expression hardened, an iron barrier slamming shut between them. “You’re engaged now, Gwynnen!”
The words stung, thrown in her face, and her hands clenched reactively; at the pressure, Francis looked down and dropped her hands fast, as though her touch burned him. “I can’t do this; don’t—“ he swallowed hard, “Don’t ask me to do this.”
For one long moment, Gwynnen fought the urge to ask him, to beg him. “You can’t think I wanted this,” she gasped finally, even as he turned slightly, keeping his face from her.
“I don’t know what I think.”
His words were sharp, and cold, shattering like glass and sending shards skittering over Gwynnen’s feet. Hundreds of tiny pieces lay between them, and there would be no repairing those words, once promises, now dead and broken.
Gwynnen’s hand, hovering indecisively between them, stretched as if to pluck at Francis’ sleeve but fell short and dropped back to her side.
“You have my congratulations on your upcoming marriage, Lady Gwynnen.”
The words were smooth, each one perfectly calm and Gwynnen’s jaw dropped slightly; gone were his emotions, gone was the knight that she knew, and in his place stood a serene, cold copy.
He bowed to her. “I’m sure you will be very happy.”
The perfect smile appeared on his mouth, a mask that fell into place and smoothed over the deep, angry lines scored across his features, and he sketched the perfect bow, not one degree too low.
“I, I--”
Gwynnen’s mouth shut, and she straightened her back before trying hard to control her voice, to pretend that this, everything--that he was nothing.
“Thank you.”
She turned before she could give herself away, knowing that her own charade was about to slip, and she risked one more glance at Francis’ face; at least she could have this.
His arms fell loosely by his sides, and his blonde hair flopped--so familiar-- over his forehead, but his eyes...none of his acting reached his dark, accusing eyes.
IV. Always
White silk trails behind her when she moves, whispering softly at her elbows and hips; Gwynnen faces the mirror and stares into the eyes wide, unblinking eyes of a scared girl. They’re sunken into a thin, pale face, and Gwynnen can’t hold her gaze. She looks down to the unassuming flowers in her hands.
“Gwynnen?” Cythera pokes her head into the small room. “Come on--it’s time.”
Her stomach lurches and heaves, but all Gwynnen’s had so far this morning is tea, and she pushes down the uneasy rolling sensation in the pit of her belly.
Francis stands at the front of the room, grateful for Raoul’s presence at his back in front of all of the scrutinizing eyes watching him. He glances over his shoulder at his friend, and Raoul gives him a quick grin.
Raoul is dark, sun tanned and wind weathered by his time in the desert, which is where he had just ridden in from days earlier. Francis wonders if he too could’ve been adopted, and he remembers how Raoul was always urging for him to visit.
“You’ve love it out here, Francis--sand and sky as far as the eye can see...”
And maybe he would have. He’s seen the open, easy way that Raoul laughs; he could have had that, could have lived like that...its really no use thinking about it, anyway.
The chapel doors open, and Francis tamps down the thoughts running through his head. Those belonged to another person, in another life, and this—this is his life.
Dreams of the Great Southern Desert run through his fingers like sand, because he’s given his word and his word ties him to the hills of Nond and rocky craigs and oak forests instead.
The first time she lifts her head away from her feet tracing a careful one-two, one-two pattern across the floor, Gwynnen can see the Francis is smiling--isn’t he always smiling?-- but even at this distance its obvious that his eyes and mind are miles away.
Maybe once upon a time she had dreamed of something like this, sitting in the cool, dark rooms of the convent; surely every girl thought about finding a true love and marrying a knight, of being spirited away to a life of ease where her every whim was taken care of…
Gwynnen pushed away the thought of “always” and looked up at Francis, waiting near the alter of the Goddess’ chapel. Always was for people who still believed in love at first sight, whose first loves lasted; people for whom life was easy. People who weren’t looking at the man they had loved and wondering how life was would work out, now.
Gwynnen’s walk down the aisle seems interminable, and Francis can’t help but watch her as she slowly makes her way to him. He could still remember the night he told her goodbye, the night he had made the choice to leave after he had gotten his knighthood…he didn’t like to think of it as the night he broke her heart, but looking at it now, he supposes that that is more or less what happened.
They had shared clandestine kisses in the shadows of some balls, and her laughter had sparked his own for a summer, but he wanted to see the world. He wanted to get away from Nond, from the controlling, upright structure that had been his life for years and years. He would not make her a part of that and run away. And he had intended to run, and to run far.
And then the harvest failed. His mother, turned cold and bitter by years alone on the estate, arranged everything to her liking, and told him to marry, and return home. He shut his eyes against the image of the woman, in her middle ages, that his mother had presented to him.
Sacherell had knocked on his door, late one evening, saying he had been sent by Raoul. Behind him stood Gwynnen, pale and shaking, and she had told him—begged him—and he had agreed.
He had already agreed, so when Gwynnen reached him before the alter to the Great Mother Goddess, he took her hand in his and turned to face the priestess.
The words “for better and for worse” fall through her, rocks tossed into her still pond, and Gwynnen bites her lip. Her hand moves of its own accord, and she clenches her fingers tight before it can touch her stomach. Unwittingly, her hand tightens on Francis’, and surprisingly, he returns the squeeze.
He’s saving her honor and her family’s good name; she caught the pregnancy early but even now the bump begins to show and she daren’t smooth the front of her dress lest the slight curve of her belly is revealed. All his plans, all his travels have shuddered to a halt here before the alter and the Goddess herself.
She’s saving his home, his family’s traditions and landholdings--too proud to admit it until it was almost too late, Nond has fallen to disrepair, and strings of poor harvests have all but devastated his people. He’s selling his hand in marriage in return for her dowry, and she hasn’t spoken against their decision once, even though the word ‘love’ hasn’t crossed either of their lips once in these last months.
Love is for freedom, love is for choice. Love is for those who can afford to be carefree, or who are young enough to believe in its naive ideals.
The words “to have and to hold” cut like a knife, and Francis can’t bring himself to look at Gwynnen even though she shifts slightly beside him. He has her, now, and that alone causes him to wonder.
He remembers the fright in her voice when she told him, and the way she wouldn’t meet his gaze...
He promises himself, under his breath as he speaks his vows, the he’ll never ask her whose child it is, and prays to the gods that the infant will look like her, so he’ll never be tempted to ask.
Always keep your promises… Gwynnen remembers hearing her mother tell her when she was very small, and with her mother’s words echoing in her memory, she only pauses a moment before she promises.
“I do.”
The walk out of the chapel is the longest that Francis can remember; there are too many people watching, too many people that are too happy and too loudand too naïve… they are watching and they are waiting and they will always be around him, from now on.
He tries to tell himself it isn’t a sigh of relief that escapes him as the door behind them closes and the noise cuts out suddenly.
“I won’t begrudge you,” she offers softly in the fleeting moments they have to themselves after the ceremony. Gwynnen’s face is honest, her eyes large over a sad smile. “If you leave, I mean.” She took her hand from his arm to clasp both of hers together. “I know about the ambassadorial position you were offered, and I think you should take it.”
Francis gaped. She was offering...he could--!
His mind filled--
Always escaping, always running away, her eyes sad and heavy on his back as he rode away from a life that should have been his, responsibilities that should have been his, that he was too afraid to have and to hold. Obligation rode his back and wore him down until he could only be a shadow of himself, sharp and cruel, sending a dark haired boy to hide behind Gwynnen’s skirts; cold blue eyes staring at him--not yours, his mind screamed, not yours-- growing older and greyer and unhappier in a cold, dank fiefdom where a sullen young man scorned him--you’re not my father-- and Gwynnen,
Gwynnen, soft and tired and weeping slowly in a weary manner that spoke of years of tears...
“Thank you,” he breathed, gently touching a finger to her cheek, to his wife’s cheek, his wife, who understood... His other hand drifted to her stomach. “But only if you’re alright, if you’re happy. I won’t abandon you.”
Small spots of color bloomed over Gwynnen’s cheeks at his words, and another image ran unbidden across Francis’ mind--
Gwynnen, flushed pink and laughing the way he remembers she used to, so long ago, as she sets down a small, blessedly russet-haired girl, who toddles towards him with sheer adoration in her sparkling brown eyes...
“Thank you,” she whispers, a tiny, careful smile breaking through, and maybe if... Francis leans down and kisses her smiling lips chastely, drawing back to see the smile grow.
Perhaps they’ve always had a chance.
V. Ever After
“Come, Gwynnen, you must dance with someone, if you love it so much,” Cythera wheedles, but Gwynnen tugs her hand from Cythera’s.
“I can love dancing and not want to dance with anyone at the same time,” she mutters, wishing that her friend would just leave her be; Cythera could go dance by herself.
“For goodness’ sake, Gwynnen, it’s Midwinter!” Gwynnen, hearing this particular sentiment multiple times over the evening, just keeps shaking her head.
“Hush. I don’t want to dance with any of them,” she admonishes, still glancing around the ballroom.
“Who are you looking for?” Cythera asks again, craning her neck to try and catch a glimpse. “Oh look, there’s the prince, surely you’ll dance with him!”
Gwynnen’s eyes pass right over Jonathan of Conte, even as he moves in their direction. “I told you—“
“Fine. Then I’ll dance with him myself,” Cythera sweeps off in a whirl of silk skirts, which is just as well. She’ll be back, she and her questions both. At least now Gwynnen can have a quiet moment to look…
A quiet voice catches her attention, drawing her out of her thoughts.
“Does something ail milady, that you choose not to dance?”
A knight offers his hand, and Gwynnen is about to politely refuse his offer when she notices his small, shy smile and his ears burning dark red against his fair hair.
“You—Midwinter, years ago—“ she stutters, and the blond knight’s smile grows a little more.
“So you do remember,” he remarks, his brown eyes dancing. “I believe I owe you a dance, milady Gwynnen.”
“I believe you do,” she replies, her surprise wearing off as Francis directs her out onto the dance floor, and as he spins her, Gwynnen throws back her head and laughs.
A sudden change in the weather catches Corus by surprise, and almost overnight the winter wonderland melts away into the first blushes of spring. The grass still sparkles like it’s been touched with diamond dust in the mornings, but weak, new sunshine melts it away as the first flowers spring up, dressed in fashionable pale pinks and violets like the Court blossoms that spill out onto the Palace grounds like a tumbled basket of petals.
Gwynnen wears blue, thank you very much, even though Cythera’s intent on getting her into one of the new gowns that had been shipped in recently from Elden.
“We’re of a size, Gwynnen, and you simply must try this one that I’ve picked out--”
“If it’s pink, Cythera, I shan’t.” She shakes her head, tossing her bright hair over her shoulders.
“But what if it’s yellow?”
Gwynnen jumps; it isn’t Cythera that speaks, continuing their playful banter from just a moment ago, but someone else, someone with a deeper voice—
She glimpses a spray of yellow out of the corner of her eye and turns towards the brilliant color: a daffodil, offered to her by…
Francis smiles, ducking his head down before Gwynnen’s laughter, as bright as the yellow flower, brings his eyes back up to her face.
“If it’s yellow, my dear knight, then I simply and gladly must accept!”
Cythera takes this as acceptance of the newest dress from Elden as well, which Gwynnen only half-heartedly protests, because the yellow just matches the shade of the flower sitting the table by her window.
Gwynnen looks at Francis with large eyes from across the garden, and Francis sweeps in to bow, asking her to accompany him on a short walk, even as Gary looks up at the blonde knight indignantly, spluttering.
When they are far enough away that Gary can’t overhear their conversation, Gwynnen breaks their silence, smiling up at Francis.
“You must never leave me to endure Sir Gareth on my own again,” Gwynnen informs him seriously, and Francis clasps her hand, resting on his forearm.
“Was it terrible?” he asks, eyes searching hers before she breaks his gaze and looks down briefly.
“His grasp of poetry is perfectly awful,” she states, her solemn expression lasting only moments before they are both laughing.
“He was reciting his poetry to you?” Francis manages to get out between bouts of laughter, and Gwynnen finds herself leaning on him for support as she wiped tears of mirth from her eyes.
He doesn’t quite manage to keep the upset tone from his voice, and Gwynnen giggles even harder as she realizes that Francis is being slightly possessive. “He’s practicing—“ she gasps, “—for Cythera.”
“The poor girl,” Francis hands a handkerchief to Gwynnen, who blots her face with it. “I always wondered why she looked so pained when she and Gary were sitting in the gardens together…”
Gwynnen’s smile threatens to blind him with its brilliance. “I feel bad if I don’t warn her, but then she has to sit through it again after, and he always botches it by stuttering, so he has to repeat himself and makes it ten times worse…”
Francis tugs her forward. “We should escape before he finds Cythera and starts all over again!”
Gwynnen laughs as Francis leads her down the garden path and away.
The evening softens the brilliant colors of autumn and teases rosy pink color onto Gwynnen’s face as the crisp air weaves its way through her hair. Francis loves how it falls, dark auburn, across his hand as he steers her to a balcony outside of the ballroom.
He loves—
Gwynnen turns when she reaches the balustrade, looking up at him. “Tired of dancing already?” she teases, the flush of excitement leaving him a tad breathless.
“I wanted to show you something,” he returns, moving just a step closer but hearing the hitch in her breathing as he does so anyway.
“What?” she whispers, her voice dropping.
“Look up,” he mentions softly, and she tilts her head back, giggling just a bit as she does so, before her mouth drops open in a soft “o” and she takes in the stars shining, clear against the black velvet night.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, leaning further back to see the sky better, and Francis’ hands came up to catch her as she wobbled, balancing her gently against his own body.
“It is,” he agrees, and she doesn’t notice that he’s not even looking up at all, and she misses the intense, fierce happiness in his eyes as he watches her.
Twinkling lights and whirling colors catch the Palace up in its Midwinter finery again before Gwynnen realizes it, and it delights her when Francis shows up to escort her to the Longnight celebration.
His tunic is red as winterberries, and her dress is raw silk, as green as holly leaves, and she feels as though they have stepped right out of some kind of storybook as she descends the ballroom staircase on his arm.
Francis finds himself unable to look away from her twinkling eyes as they dance; she makes a face when she catches him staring too long, and he flushes and glances anywhere but at her until her attention is drawn elsewhere.
He starts when he catches her staring at him, her face open and inquisitive, and she flushes and mutters something about being thirsty.
Gwynnen waits by one of the large windows that frame the room, perched on the cushioned seat as Francis goes to get refreshments. When he returns will two glasses of mulled wine she sips the drink and sighs happily.
“This is wonderful,” she mentions quietly over her glass, still watching the swirling dancers move about the dance floor. “Its like something out of a story, something with high adventure and daring deeds…”
Francis hands off his empty glass and hers to a passing squire, shifting and offering her his hand again. “Like a fairytale, Gwynnen? Shall I whisk you off your feet?”
Gwynnen frowned a bit, wrinkling her nose as she stated, “But fairy tales always have princesses, and I’m no princess.”
Francis laughed softly, “Good, because I’m no prince.”
Smiling, Gwynnen corrected him. “No, you’re a knight in shining armor.”
“And you’re my own true lady love,” Francis told her softly, pulling her close so she had to tilt her head up slightly to see his face.
“Does that mean the story can still end with ‘happily ever after’?” Gwynnen asked, watching through her lashes as Francis draws their entwined hands up and places a soft kiss on the back of her knuckles.
She holds her breath as he looks her in the eyes, a deep smouldering expression flickering its way across his face as he kisses her knuckles again, his lips lingering.
“Well, I don’t know about the end,” Francis teased gently, his voice husky and his cheeks as pink as Gwynnen’s, “but ever after…”
And he opens his other hand, offering her a golden band with a small diamond clasped in its setting, asking everything with his eyes while he swallows nervously.
Gwynnen’s eyes are big as she looks from his hand to his face.
She bites her lip, then nods mutely, her throat tight with emotion. She watches Francis’ eyes as he gently takes her hand and slides the ring onto her finger, suddenly shy.
He draws back, studies the ring on her finger, then kisses her fingertip.
She giggles, and he covers her mouth with his own smiling lips, cupping her face gently and drawing her in. She tastes of promises and happiness and sunlight, and his heart beats even faster.
When they break apart, they pull back just enough to catch their breath and try to calm their racing hearts. Francis leans down and presses their foreheads together, and Gwynnen’s eyes flutter shut for a moment before looking back into his again.
“Ever after,” she agreed merrily, reaching up to kiss him again.
Rating: PG
Category: Tortall >1,000
Length: 6631
Original: Goldenlake: 1 2 3 4 5 Subsequent Haunts: TKO
Summary: There are so many sometimes, maybes, nevers, always...so many chances and choices might lead Francis and Gwynnen to their Ever After. Five AU 'verses about Francis of Nond and Gwynnen (both minor characters in SotL), and the ways things might have been.
I. Sometimes
Sometimes Gwynnen dreams, and she loves these dreams because they have magic and high adventure and dashing romances like in the stories her nurse told her before she was old enough to go to convent. Surrounded by high stone walls and the do’s and don’ts of being a Court Lady, Gwynnen closes her eyes and dreams of escape and freedom and her blond knight in shining armor offers her his hand.
Her father’s manservant isn’t blond, or a prince, but he offers her his arm just the same when she arrives in Corus, at the palace, and she wonders if this is what freedom feels like. There are princes and squires and knights, just like in the old tales, but no one at court is quite like the blond knight in her dreams.
Sometimes Gwynnen dreams, and she loves these dreams because she can share them with Cythera, her closest friend at Court, behind their hands and giggles while they picnic in the sloping gardens of the Palace. They braid daisy chains, which they drape over the ever good-natured Sacherell and Douglass, and Gwynnen whispers into Cythera’s ear about how her shy blond knight holds her hand gently, smiling just so as he leads her on the dance floor.
“So, he’s more graceful than these?” Cythera remarks, so that Gareth the Younger and Raoul, who sit near their flower bedecked squires, can hear. Gary, who had asked Cythera to dance the night previous, flushed dully as Cythera and Gwynnen gave in to peals of laughter.
“Of course,” Gwynnen informed her friend seriously, “he’s much more like Squire Alan or the Prince, except without Alan’s temper or the Prince’s flair for women!” She dissolves again, giggling madly in the early summer sunlight, and living like this is almost better than her dreams.
Sometimes Gwynnen dreams, and she loves these dreams because they are dreams of Court and of ladies and knights and adventure and romances and Gwynnen finally knows that the tales from her childhood are based on something real. Sometimes, when Gwynnen dreams these things, they’re as real as the life she lives in Corus, but there’s someone else there, in her dream, and she doesn’t know anyone with blond hair and a shy smile. Her knight, no matter how many times he smiles at her, makes her laugh, no matter how many times she teases him until his ears burn dark red against his fair hair or laces her fingers with his, her knight disappears when she opens her eyes and her romance lives only inside her head.
Sometimes Gwynnen dreams, but the paper cut on her finger as she opens the letter beads up red with blood and her stomach sinks. Her mother’s words are light and flowery and dreamless, grounded firmly by her father’s steel will, and for the first time Gwynnen feels sorry for her mother. Gwynnen’s dreams are the same as always that night, her knight romancing her in the slow summer twilight, but when Gwynnen wakes she has no illusions left to her.
She’s slower to laugh with Cythera, and for the first time, she’d rather not chatter about knights and adventure and love and heroic deeds; her knight doesn’t come up in conversation. Gwynnen dreams, but when her father arrives to escort her home, the hoof beats underneath the carriage break up every thought and she isn’t able to retreat to the familiar embrace of her knight in shining armor.
Sometimes Gwynnen dreams, and she wants to love these dreams and she wants to believe in these dreams but romance isn’t only supposed to exist in her head, she reminds herself as she smiles sadly across the dinner table-- her fiancée is old blood and rich and her parents beam happily. She thinks of her knight, her blond knight with the gentle eyes who offered her a single daisy, and she sits straighter while inside her heart crumbles just a bit more.
She’s glad romances exist inside her head, she reminds herself as her father places her hand in the groom’s wrinkled paw. He speaks his vows, jowls wobbling, and Gwynnen bites back her tears before she replies with her own vows, looking beyond the pale skin and clammy fingers clutching at her hands.
Sometimes Gwynnen dreams, and her shy blond knight wraps an arm around her shoulder and whispers romance in her ear and just for a moment, dressed in white, she smiles true.
II. Maybe
Gwynnen can’t quite believe that she has been let to accompany her mother to Court this midwinter. There’s been talk of her heading to the convent, which Gwynnen scoffs at, but never, never had she imagined something like this.
The glow of the candlelight, held in branching candelabras throughout the room, sparkles in Gwynnen’s eyes, and she knows her excitement is causing her cheeks to flush, but she can’t help herself and her giddy hands are creeping out of her velvet covered lap to brush over the ornate silverware and trace the gilt patterns on the plate before her.
Around her, figures in red and gold--such bright colors!--wait at the edges of the room with the first course of the evening. So focused is she on those dazzling people that she jumps at the voice behind her.
“Something to drink, milady?”
Gwynnen forces herself to turn slowly, and sees a page with a glass pitcher at her shoulder. He blushes, a little, under her gaze, but her startled laughter provokes a small smile. He fills her glass carefully and his blond hair flopping into his eyes as he offers her a graceful bow, smiling sheepishly before moving on to the next guest at her table.
The conversation amongst her mother’s friends drifts over the other members of the Court, and Gwynnen cranes her head--be discreet, child!--to see the people that come up in conversation. Prince Jonathan isn’t hard to recognize, in Conte blue behind his father, nor is his cousin Gareth, a squire now. She watches them, and the blond page nods to the both of them during the meal; perhaps they are friends.
She wishes she could find her voice as the meal comes to an end, but several hours of her giggles and his shy smiles have her words stuck somewhere in her throat. Her mother notices only that her daughter is behaving properly, after all this time, and Gwynnen searches the room just once more before she is sent back to her own chambers; the nice page is nowhere in sight.
The Midwinter celebrations are days long, and Gwynnen looks around each evening for the blond page, the one she calls “her” blond page in the recesses of her mind, and sometimes she catches a glimpse of him across the room, bowing to a Lord, or carrying some delicacy to another Lady.
The last evening of the holiday brings a touch of sadness with it, because Gwynnen can’t imagine settling for the drab grey convent after all of this, but at the quiet voice behind her, her face lights up.
“A drink?” the boy offers, and she giggles and smiles her yes, her dancing blue eyes meeting his gentle brown eyes before they both look away; him with the pretense of serving her mother, and her to her plate before her newly pink cheeks can give her away.
She has permission to stay for the dancing following the banquet this evening, and she looks up from under her lashes shyly as the last of the meal is completed. “Will--” she swallows as the blond page’s eyes find hers again, “--will you be, be dancing tonight?” she asks softly.
He flushes, and his hair flops into his eyes again as he ducks his head. “No, miss, pages aren’t allowed.”
Gwynnen flushes at this, and her own eyes drop to her hands. “Oh.”
“But,” he stammers, reaching to take another tray from the table, “in a few years, if, if,” he smiles shyly at her, “I’ll claim a dance then, milady--” he breaks off, and Gwynnen realizes she’s never given him her name.
“Gwynnen,” she tells him, suddenly as shy as he is. “Who--who are you?”
“Francis of Nond,” he bows to her--just to her-- and straightens. “I’ll look for you, Lady Gwynnen.”
And Gwynnen realizes that the convent might not be so bad, if she can learn to be delicate and dance like the other ladies at Court.
The City of the Gods is dull and dry and Gwynnen wonders sourly how anyone can expect the “delicate Court flowers” to grow in someplace that’s this cold and colorless. It’s more than she can stand, she thinks, especially when her memories of court linger like after-images on the backs of her eyelids. It’s easy to superimpose those memories over the Convent’s blank slate-life, so Gwynnen imagines rich tapestries on bare walls and quiet music floating just out of reach in halls that stifle every other sound. It’s hard, though, to focus on her needlework, or her ettiquette lessons, or her never-ending curtsy practice, when she remembers a certain smile, a familiar face, the way Francis of Nond’s hair flopped in his eyes when he smiled at her.
Gwynnen is sure that the size of her stitchery or the degree of her head’s incline when she sweeps her best curtsy doesn’t matter to Francis--not that he’s ever seen her curtsy, she reminds herself--not when he smiled at her laughter, which the cloister nun’s are always tutting over. Not when he blushed when she caught him watching her...But she won’t get out of the Convent if the nuns are not satisfied with her grace and needlework, so Gwynnen tries her best, working at innumerable stitched pillows and the perfect, floating waltz steps, and exactly which fork is for fish, and which is for chicken until she starts coughing.
She coughs and she coughs and she coughs, and the cloister nuns send her to bed, whispering behind their hands. She spends more time dreaming than she does awake--she’s hot, she’s so hot-- and the whispers reach her bed when they think she’s dreaming... delirious...sickness in the capital...sickness, sweating... The honeyed tea they try to coax her to drink--it’s too thick, choking, she can’t breathe--she can barely swallow, and the shadows in her room creep towards her bed across the floor.
Stopnodon’t...her arms shield her face. Hothothot no can’t comfortable--she pushes at the sheets wrapped around her. Coughing rips at her, and more tea is tipped down her throat.
She lingers, between light and dark with the shadows in her room, shadows of dancers and pages and all around her whirls odd disjointed music that isn’t what she remembers but she can’t, can’t quite...and she’s dancing, dancing around and around and her partner is smiling, his blond hair in his eyes, and she’s flushed warm from their second--third, was it the third?--waltz and he leaves her in her chair to get them something to drink.
She sits up straight in bed when she hears someone saying names, and the nuns think she’s dreaming again, the poor thing, she’s at the mercy of her delirious dreams, but Gywnnen’s listening now. She hears the names, sitting in the chair by the dance floor, and suddenly there are tears making gentle paths down her face. The sickness has claimed its first victims, the nuns whisper amongst themselves, and they look to Gwynnen, noticing her as she shakes silently. They give her something to drink, and she relaxes under its potent taste, sinking back into dreams, but her blond page is nowhere in them now.
Francis of Nond is gone.
III. Never
“War.” Gwynnen tried the word out, tasting it carefully as she rolled it around her tongue. It started off bland, but hid a bitter edge that had her flinching. No, she didn’t care for it at all.
“That’s what Gary said,” Cythera nodded.
Gywnnen made a face. “Sir Gareth has been out riding border patrols all winter; how should he know if we are to go to war?”
Frowning slightly, Cythera argued, “Just because you’re upset that Francis was sent to the border is no reason--”
“If Sir Gareth hadn’t picked a fight with Sir Raoul over darling, precious Delia’s riding glove, Francis never would’ve gotten in the middle of their argument and been sent away!” Gwynnen blew up, and Cythera shot her a dirty look and gathered her skirts.
“Fine, if that’s what you want to believe...”
“Its not just a belief!” Gwynnen shot back hotly, and Cythera huffed, nose in the air.
“If you want to be this way, it’s on your head. Good day.”
“What were you thinking?” Gwynnen wondered, running her thumb over the back of Francis’ hand. “Surely Delia’s glove isn’t--”
“Delia and her glove had nothing to do with it,” Francis turned, bringing Gwynnen’s hand to his face. “I just--”
Gwynnen touched a finger to his lips. “Shh. Its alright.”
Francis kissed her fingertip, then moved her hand so he could kiss her properly.
The door to the Royal Gallery was open when Gwynnen arrived, and the table by the fire already occupied as she slid into what had become her seat.
“I had wondered if you would come this evening,” the man across the table said as Gwynnen studied the chessboard between them, a game already underway. She glanced up, catching the sunken eyes in the lined face of the Lord of Groten before returning to the board in front of her.
Francis had already left for the Drell River Valley.
“Where else would I be?” she asked lightly, her voice belying the twisting, roiling emotions beneath her calm facade as she moved a pawn forward.
He left without saying goodbye.
Her chess partner said nothing as he countered her move deftly, and the room slipped into the familiar silence that had enveloped so many evenings in just this way while pieces paced endlessly around the board, locked in unending combat.
Even Gary said goodbye to Cythera.
Thinking hurt too much, so Gwynnen let habit take over and her hands sent her miniature army around the board, the same as so many other evenings this past, cold, lonely winter.
“Look up.”
Gwynnen giggled at Francis’ odd request, but tipped her head back just the same.
Above them, stars shone brilliantly, tiny specks of light against the dark, crisp winter sky.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, leaning back even further to see the sky better.
She didn’t see Francis’ intense, fierce happiness.
“They are returning!”
The cries came from the battlements, and even in the gardens, the Queen and her ladies heard the message.
“The war is over!”
Queen Lianne’s head came up, eyes no longer on her needlework.
“King Roald and Prince Jonathan have returned!”
Gwynnen held her breath, waiting; silk slid through Queen Lianne’s fingers, taking a fortnight to fall from her lap to the ground as the Queen stood, her pale, thin face alight.
“Come on,” Cythera tugged at Gwynnen’s arm, and Gwynnen happily abandoned the garden to follow the tide of people, pulling her inexorably towards the sounds of shouting, hooves, and metal-on-metal.
She stood on her tiptoes on the steps to the palace as King Roald swung off of his warhorse, gathering his wife into his arms, but Gwynnen scarcely saw the reunion before her as she scanned the amassing crowd.
There.
Francis lifted a hand to her briefly, their gazes connecting across the courtyard. His smile, as soft as ever, sends laughter bubbling up in her throat.
He’s safe--
And she pressed a hand to her mouth, maybe to hold her laughter in, maybe to hold back the unexplained sob that threatened to send tears onto her cheeks.
Gwynnen was floating on air when her father requested her presence in his study, and his words dragged her back to reality.
“He is quite taken by your beauty and charm, and has offered a handsome sum for your hand in marriage,” her father declared from behind his great oak desk.
“But, but I, it wasn’t,” Gwynnen stammered, horrified.
“You accepted his offers of chess, many an evening, if I might remind you, and he has grown fond of your company.”
“But I never—“
“We cannot afford to lose this opportunity, Gwynnen. We will not lose this opportunity.”
“But I don’t--”
“I have already accepted his offer of engagement for you,” her father flipped open a box sitting inconspicuously on his desk, and Gwynnen shrank away from its contents--a ring, bearing the coat of arms of Groten. “I have told him of your willingness and you will not prove me a liar. Now wear it, there’s a good girl.”
The cold, heavy metal sliding onto her finger was her shackles, and the slamming of the box under her father’s unforgiving hand the final closing of her cell.
When Gwynnen woke, the first thing she recalled was that Francis had returned. Her heart leapt, and she reached to brush her hair from her face; her fingers were unusually heavy and tangled in her locks before the rest of the evening returned in a rush, a slap in the face that left her tingling and breathless.
Still there, the ring squatted on her finger as if it belonged there. Throat closing rapidly, Gwynnen shut her eyes against the sight of the dull gold.
She could still feel it.
She stood in the gardens, still twisting the ring around and around her finger--get it off, get it off now-! -- When footsteps ran up behind her. Francis pulled her into his arms, picking her up off her feet as he spun her around and around. His face was alight, his dark eyes intense as they took her in; Gwynnen couldn’t resist, and her right hand found his face, cupping his cheek as Francis gently set her feet back on the ground.
Words fled from Gwynnen’s head, looking up at him, and it is all she could do to swallow and blink back tears.
“Hush, shh...don’t cry.”
Francis’ hand slid down her arm, reaching to tangle her fingers with his own, and Gwynnen’s heart stopped with a thump when he paused.
Cold, hard metal presses between their fingers painfully.
“Gwynnen--” the question wasn’t even out as he looked down, looked at her hand, looked at the ring; his left hand, still behind her back, crushed her closer. “Gwynnen,” his voice, strangled in his throat, “Gwynnen,” she wished he could keep saying her name forever, “...what is this?”
“I’m,” oh gods, I can’t say it.
Francis’ face, so close, pulled back as his disbelief faded into betrayal; she clutched at the fabric of his tunic.
“I’m engaged.”
Gwynnen hated how her voice broke on the last word, hated how suddenly tears cascaded down her cheeks, hated how hurt flashed across Francis’ eyes, his mouth tightened into a hard straight line, and she pressed her face into his familiar shoulder so she would not see anything more.
She knew she had broken his heart; she couldn’t bear to watch it fall to pieces before her.
“I swear, I didn’t want it, I didn’t encourage him, I never—“ Gwynnen bit back a sob, frantically trying to keep herself under control, but Francis took her hands from his shoulders, stepping back so that space suddenly yawned between them.
“I can’t do this,” he murmured, and Gwynnen’s heart clenched.
“Please, you have to believe me!”
“Stop it!” Francis’ fingers tightened around her own, and his expression hardened, an iron barrier slamming shut between them. “You’re engaged now, Gwynnen!”
The words stung, thrown in her face, and her hands clenched reactively; at the pressure, Francis looked down and dropped her hands fast, as though her touch burned him. “I can’t do this; don’t—“ he swallowed hard, “Don’t ask me to do this.”
For one long moment, Gwynnen fought the urge to ask him, to beg him. “You can’t think I wanted this,” she gasped finally, even as he turned slightly, keeping his face from her.
“I don’t know what I think.”
His words were sharp, and cold, shattering like glass and sending shards skittering over Gwynnen’s feet. Hundreds of tiny pieces lay between them, and there would be no repairing those words, once promises, now dead and broken.
Gwynnen’s hand, hovering indecisively between them, stretched as if to pluck at Francis’ sleeve but fell short and dropped back to her side.
“You have my congratulations on your upcoming marriage, Lady Gwynnen.”
The words were smooth, each one perfectly calm and Gwynnen’s jaw dropped slightly; gone were his emotions, gone was the knight that she knew, and in his place stood a serene, cold copy.
He bowed to her. “I’m sure you will be very happy.”
The perfect smile appeared on his mouth, a mask that fell into place and smoothed over the deep, angry lines scored across his features, and he sketched the perfect bow, not one degree too low.
“I, I--”
Gwynnen’s mouth shut, and she straightened her back before trying hard to control her voice, to pretend that this, everything--that he was nothing.
“Thank you.”
She turned before she could give herself away, knowing that her own charade was about to slip, and she risked one more glance at Francis’ face; at least she could have this.
His arms fell loosely by his sides, and his blonde hair flopped--so familiar-- over his forehead, but his eyes...none of his acting reached his dark, accusing eyes.
IV. Always
White silk trails behind her when she moves, whispering softly at her elbows and hips; Gwynnen faces the mirror and stares into the eyes wide, unblinking eyes of a scared girl. They’re sunken into a thin, pale face, and Gwynnen can’t hold her gaze. She looks down to the unassuming flowers in her hands.
“Gwynnen?” Cythera pokes her head into the small room. “Come on--it’s time.”
Her stomach lurches and heaves, but all Gwynnen’s had so far this morning is tea, and she pushes down the uneasy rolling sensation in the pit of her belly.
Francis stands at the front of the room, grateful for Raoul’s presence at his back in front of all of the scrutinizing eyes watching him. He glances over his shoulder at his friend, and Raoul gives him a quick grin.
Raoul is dark, sun tanned and wind weathered by his time in the desert, which is where he had just ridden in from days earlier. Francis wonders if he too could’ve been adopted, and he remembers how Raoul was always urging for him to visit.
“You’ve love it out here, Francis--sand and sky as far as the eye can see...”
And maybe he would have. He’s seen the open, easy way that Raoul laughs; he could have had that, could have lived like that...its really no use thinking about it, anyway.
The chapel doors open, and Francis tamps down the thoughts running through his head. Those belonged to another person, in another life, and this—this is his life.
Dreams of the Great Southern Desert run through his fingers like sand, because he’s given his word and his word ties him to the hills of Nond and rocky craigs and oak forests instead.
The first time she lifts her head away from her feet tracing a careful one-two, one-two pattern across the floor, Gwynnen can see the Francis is smiling--isn’t he always smiling?-- but even at this distance its obvious that his eyes and mind are miles away.
Maybe once upon a time she had dreamed of something like this, sitting in the cool, dark rooms of the convent; surely every girl thought about finding a true love and marrying a knight, of being spirited away to a life of ease where her every whim was taken care of…
Gwynnen pushed away the thought of “always” and looked up at Francis, waiting near the alter of the Goddess’ chapel. Always was for people who still believed in love at first sight, whose first loves lasted; people for whom life was easy. People who weren’t looking at the man they had loved and wondering how life was would work out, now.
Gwynnen’s walk down the aisle seems interminable, and Francis can’t help but watch her as she slowly makes her way to him. He could still remember the night he told her goodbye, the night he had made the choice to leave after he had gotten his knighthood…he didn’t like to think of it as the night he broke her heart, but looking at it now, he supposes that that is more or less what happened.
They had shared clandestine kisses in the shadows of some balls, and her laughter had sparked his own for a summer, but he wanted to see the world. He wanted to get away from Nond, from the controlling, upright structure that had been his life for years and years. He would not make her a part of that and run away. And he had intended to run, and to run far.
And then the harvest failed. His mother, turned cold and bitter by years alone on the estate, arranged everything to her liking, and told him to marry, and return home. He shut his eyes against the image of the woman, in her middle ages, that his mother had presented to him.
Sacherell had knocked on his door, late one evening, saying he had been sent by Raoul. Behind him stood Gwynnen, pale and shaking, and she had told him—begged him—and he had agreed.
He had already agreed, so when Gwynnen reached him before the alter to the Great Mother Goddess, he took her hand in his and turned to face the priestess.
The words “for better and for worse” fall through her, rocks tossed into her still pond, and Gwynnen bites her lip. Her hand moves of its own accord, and she clenches her fingers tight before it can touch her stomach. Unwittingly, her hand tightens on Francis’, and surprisingly, he returns the squeeze.
He’s saving her honor and her family’s good name; she caught the pregnancy early but even now the bump begins to show and she daren’t smooth the front of her dress lest the slight curve of her belly is revealed. All his plans, all his travels have shuddered to a halt here before the alter and the Goddess herself.
She’s saving his home, his family’s traditions and landholdings--too proud to admit it until it was almost too late, Nond has fallen to disrepair, and strings of poor harvests have all but devastated his people. He’s selling his hand in marriage in return for her dowry, and she hasn’t spoken against their decision once, even though the word ‘love’ hasn’t crossed either of their lips once in these last months.
Love is for freedom, love is for choice. Love is for those who can afford to be carefree, or who are young enough to believe in its naive ideals.
The words “to have and to hold” cut like a knife, and Francis can’t bring himself to look at Gwynnen even though she shifts slightly beside him. He has her, now, and that alone causes him to wonder.
He remembers the fright in her voice when she told him, and the way she wouldn’t meet his gaze...
He promises himself, under his breath as he speaks his vows, the he’ll never ask her whose child it is, and prays to the gods that the infant will look like her, so he’ll never be tempted to ask.
Always keep your promises… Gwynnen remembers hearing her mother tell her when she was very small, and with her mother’s words echoing in her memory, she only pauses a moment before she promises.
“I do.”
The walk out of the chapel is the longest that Francis can remember; there are too many people watching, too many people that are too happy and too loudand too naïve… they are watching and they are waiting and they will always be around him, from now on.
He tries to tell himself it isn’t a sigh of relief that escapes him as the door behind them closes and the noise cuts out suddenly.
“I won’t begrudge you,” she offers softly in the fleeting moments they have to themselves after the ceremony. Gwynnen’s face is honest, her eyes large over a sad smile. “If you leave, I mean.” She took her hand from his arm to clasp both of hers together. “I know about the ambassadorial position you were offered, and I think you should take it.”
Francis gaped. She was offering...he could--!
His mind filled--
Always escaping, always running away, her eyes sad and heavy on his back as he rode away from a life that should have been his, responsibilities that should have been his, that he was too afraid to have and to hold. Obligation rode his back and wore him down until he could only be a shadow of himself, sharp and cruel, sending a dark haired boy to hide behind Gwynnen’s skirts; cold blue eyes staring at him--not yours, his mind screamed, not yours-- growing older and greyer and unhappier in a cold, dank fiefdom where a sullen young man scorned him--you’re not my father-- and Gwynnen,
Gwynnen, soft and tired and weeping slowly in a weary manner that spoke of years of tears...
“Thank you,” he breathed, gently touching a finger to her cheek, to his wife’s cheek, his wife, who understood... His other hand drifted to her stomach. “But only if you’re alright, if you’re happy. I won’t abandon you.”
Small spots of color bloomed over Gwynnen’s cheeks at his words, and another image ran unbidden across Francis’ mind--
Gwynnen, flushed pink and laughing the way he remembers she used to, so long ago, as she sets down a small, blessedly russet-haired girl, who toddles towards him with sheer adoration in her sparkling brown eyes...
“Thank you,” she whispers, a tiny, careful smile breaking through, and maybe if... Francis leans down and kisses her smiling lips chastely, drawing back to see the smile grow.
Perhaps they’ve always had a chance.
V. Ever After
“Come, Gwynnen, you must dance with someone, if you love it so much,” Cythera wheedles, but Gwynnen tugs her hand from Cythera’s.
“I can love dancing and not want to dance with anyone at the same time,” she mutters, wishing that her friend would just leave her be; Cythera could go dance by herself.
“For goodness’ sake, Gwynnen, it’s Midwinter!” Gwynnen, hearing this particular sentiment multiple times over the evening, just keeps shaking her head.
“Hush. I don’t want to dance with any of them,” she admonishes, still glancing around the ballroom.
“Who are you looking for?” Cythera asks again, craning her neck to try and catch a glimpse. “Oh look, there’s the prince, surely you’ll dance with him!”
Gwynnen’s eyes pass right over Jonathan of Conte, even as he moves in their direction. “I told you—“
“Fine. Then I’ll dance with him myself,” Cythera sweeps off in a whirl of silk skirts, which is just as well. She’ll be back, she and her questions both. At least now Gwynnen can have a quiet moment to look…
A quiet voice catches her attention, drawing her out of her thoughts.
“Does something ail milady, that you choose not to dance?”
A knight offers his hand, and Gwynnen is about to politely refuse his offer when she notices his small, shy smile and his ears burning dark red against his fair hair.
“You—Midwinter, years ago—“ she stutters, and the blond knight’s smile grows a little more.
“So you do remember,” he remarks, his brown eyes dancing. “I believe I owe you a dance, milady Gwynnen.”
“I believe you do,” she replies, her surprise wearing off as Francis directs her out onto the dance floor, and as he spins her, Gwynnen throws back her head and laughs.
A sudden change in the weather catches Corus by surprise, and almost overnight the winter wonderland melts away into the first blushes of spring. The grass still sparkles like it’s been touched with diamond dust in the mornings, but weak, new sunshine melts it away as the first flowers spring up, dressed in fashionable pale pinks and violets like the Court blossoms that spill out onto the Palace grounds like a tumbled basket of petals.
Gwynnen wears blue, thank you very much, even though Cythera’s intent on getting her into one of the new gowns that had been shipped in recently from Elden.
“We’re of a size, Gwynnen, and you simply must try this one that I’ve picked out--”
“If it’s pink, Cythera, I shan’t.” She shakes her head, tossing her bright hair over her shoulders.
“But what if it’s yellow?”
Gwynnen jumps; it isn’t Cythera that speaks, continuing their playful banter from just a moment ago, but someone else, someone with a deeper voice—
She glimpses a spray of yellow out of the corner of her eye and turns towards the brilliant color: a daffodil, offered to her by…
Francis smiles, ducking his head down before Gwynnen’s laughter, as bright as the yellow flower, brings his eyes back up to her face.
“If it’s yellow, my dear knight, then I simply and gladly must accept!”
Cythera takes this as acceptance of the newest dress from Elden as well, which Gwynnen only half-heartedly protests, because the yellow just matches the shade of the flower sitting the table by her window.
Gwynnen looks at Francis with large eyes from across the garden, and Francis sweeps in to bow, asking her to accompany him on a short walk, even as Gary looks up at the blonde knight indignantly, spluttering.
When they are far enough away that Gary can’t overhear their conversation, Gwynnen breaks their silence, smiling up at Francis.
“You must never leave me to endure Sir Gareth on my own again,” Gwynnen informs him seriously, and Francis clasps her hand, resting on his forearm.
“Was it terrible?” he asks, eyes searching hers before she breaks his gaze and looks down briefly.
“His grasp of poetry is perfectly awful,” she states, her solemn expression lasting only moments before they are both laughing.
“He was reciting his poetry to you?” Francis manages to get out between bouts of laughter, and Gwynnen finds herself leaning on him for support as she wiped tears of mirth from her eyes.
He doesn’t quite manage to keep the upset tone from his voice, and Gwynnen giggles even harder as she realizes that Francis is being slightly possessive. “He’s practicing—“ she gasps, “—for Cythera.”
“The poor girl,” Francis hands a handkerchief to Gwynnen, who blots her face with it. “I always wondered why she looked so pained when she and Gary were sitting in the gardens together…”
Gwynnen’s smile threatens to blind him with its brilliance. “I feel bad if I don’t warn her, but then she has to sit through it again after, and he always botches it by stuttering, so he has to repeat himself and makes it ten times worse…”
Francis tugs her forward. “We should escape before he finds Cythera and starts all over again!”
Gwynnen laughs as Francis leads her down the garden path and away.
The evening softens the brilliant colors of autumn and teases rosy pink color onto Gwynnen’s face as the crisp air weaves its way through her hair. Francis loves how it falls, dark auburn, across his hand as he steers her to a balcony outside of the ballroom.
He loves—
Gwynnen turns when she reaches the balustrade, looking up at him. “Tired of dancing already?” she teases, the flush of excitement leaving him a tad breathless.
“I wanted to show you something,” he returns, moving just a step closer but hearing the hitch in her breathing as he does so anyway.
“What?” she whispers, her voice dropping.
“Look up,” he mentions softly, and she tilts her head back, giggling just a bit as she does so, before her mouth drops open in a soft “o” and she takes in the stars shining, clear against the black velvet night.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, leaning further back to see the sky better, and Francis’ hands came up to catch her as she wobbled, balancing her gently against his own body.
“It is,” he agrees, and she doesn’t notice that he’s not even looking up at all, and she misses the intense, fierce happiness in his eyes as he watches her.
Twinkling lights and whirling colors catch the Palace up in its Midwinter finery again before Gwynnen realizes it, and it delights her when Francis shows up to escort her to the Longnight celebration.
His tunic is red as winterberries, and her dress is raw silk, as green as holly leaves, and she feels as though they have stepped right out of some kind of storybook as she descends the ballroom staircase on his arm.
Francis finds himself unable to look away from her twinkling eyes as they dance; she makes a face when she catches him staring too long, and he flushes and glances anywhere but at her until her attention is drawn elsewhere.
He starts when he catches her staring at him, her face open and inquisitive, and she flushes and mutters something about being thirsty.
Gwynnen waits by one of the large windows that frame the room, perched on the cushioned seat as Francis goes to get refreshments. When he returns will two glasses of mulled wine she sips the drink and sighs happily.
“This is wonderful,” she mentions quietly over her glass, still watching the swirling dancers move about the dance floor. “Its like something out of a story, something with high adventure and daring deeds…”
Francis hands off his empty glass and hers to a passing squire, shifting and offering her his hand again. “Like a fairytale, Gwynnen? Shall I whisk you off your feet?”
Gwynnen frowned a bit, wrinkling her nose as she stated, “But fairy tales always have princesses, and I’m no princess.”
Francis laughed softly, “Good, because I’m no prince.”
Smiling, Gwynnen corrected him. “No, you’re a knight in shining armor.”
“And you’re my own true lady love,” Francis told her softly, pulling her close so she had to tilt her head up slightly to see his face.
“Does that mean the story can still end with ‘happily ever after’?” Gwynnen asked, watching through her lashes as Francis draws their entwined hands up and places a soft kiss on the back of her knuckles.
She holds her breath as he looks her in the eyes, a deep smouldering expression flickering its way across his face as he kisses her knuckles again, his lips lingering.
“Well, I don’t know about the end,” Francis teased gently, his voice husky and his cheeks as pink as Gwynnen’s, “but ever after…”
And he opens his other hand, offering her a golden band with a small diamond clasped in its setting, asking everything with his eyes while he swallows nervously.
Gwynnen’s eyes are big as she looks from his hand to his face.
She bites her lip, then nods mutely, her throat tight with emotion. She watches Francis’ eyes as he gently takes her hand and slides the ring onto her finger, suddenly shy.
He draws back, studies the ring on her finger, then kisses her fingertip.
She giggles, and he covers her mouth with his own smiling lips, cupping her face gently and drawing her in. She tastes of promises and happiness and sunlight, and his heart beats even faster.
When they break apart, they pull back just enough to catch their breath and try to calm their racing hearts. Francis leans down and presses their foreheads together, and Gwynnen’s eyes flutter shut for a moment before looking back into his again.
“Ever after,” she agreed merrily, reaching up to kiss him again.