Post by devilinthedetails on Apr 30, 2018 11:22:00 GMT 10
Title: A Woman Scorned
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Bad Romance
Summary: Gary's ill-fated romance with Lady Roxanne.
A Woman Scorned
I The Wager
“Most of the ladies in my mother’s service are beautiful to gaze upon.” Jon, sprawled on Gary’s bed as he pretended to complete a mathematics equation, was glassy-eyed, all his mental energies devoted to mooning over the court ladies, fresh from the convent, in the queen’s service. “Their perfume makes any room they are in smell of the Divine Realms…”
“Does Aunt Lianne realize that you’re lusting after her ladies?” Gary interrupted Jon before he could wax too poetical.
“No, she thinks I’m innocent as a daffodil.” Jon’s smirk was so smug that Gary rewarded him with a sharp kick in the shin. Ignoring the kick, Jon went on smoothly, “She believes I’m a very dutiful son who visits her often because I’m very subtle about staring at her ladies.”
“You’re about as subtle as a slap across the face, I bet.” Gary snorted.
“This accusation coming from someone who just kicked me in the shin.” Jon had stopped ignoring the kick and begun massaging the shin Gary had assaulted.
“Kicks on the shin are subtle.” Gary snickered. “It’s slaps across the face that aren’t. Do try to keep up with the rest of the class, Jon.”
“You’re just jealous that I can admire my mother’s ladies whenever I want.” Jon had resumed sighing over his mother’s ladies. “Her ladies are a feast for the eyes, I assure you. The only shame is that their splendor is marred by Lady Roxanne. She’s as out of place in their glorious company as that ugly duckling was among the flock of swans in that old nursery tale.”
“In the old nursery tale, the ugly duckling is truly a swan living among ducks.” Gary rolled his eyes at his cousin’s butchering of a well-known story. “The theme is that beauty is often mocked as ugly by the close-minded and that beauty is always in the interpretation.”
“I don’t think there’s anyone open-minded enough to interpret Lady Roxanne as beautiful.” Jon elbowed Gary in the ribs. “You couldn’t pay me enough to kiss her.”
“You could pay me enough.” Gary rubbed his chin with a contemplative thumb. “It would have to be for a tidy sum, though. I wouldn’t do it for a copper less than ten gold nobles. I have my standards, after all.”
“I bet you wouldn’t even for ten gold nobles.” Jon shook his head, and Gary thought his cousin should have known better than to bet against him.
“I bet I would.” Gary extended his hand in a challenge. “Is the wager on then?”
“Of course it is.” Jon shook Gary’s proffered hand. “Get ready to loosen your pursestrings, Gary.”
“Prepare to lighten your pockets, Jon,” retorted Gary, pleased that he had the higher ground in this fight since he was gambling on his own actions. Jon would regret betting against him and his iron nerves once he kissed Lady Roxanne.
II The Needle
The sun, shining through a window in Queen Lianne’s solar, burned the back of Roxanne’s neck as she bent over her embroidery, praying for patience from the Goddess for whom they were decorating this altarpiece, which was to be donated to a Corus temple favored by Queen Lianne. Sitting next to Lady Laura of Marti’s Hill was always a more refined but no less vicious torture than that inflicted on the king’s enemies in the dark depths of the palace dungeons.
“It’s a pity your beauty doesn’t rival your dowry, Lady Roxanne.” Laura’s eyes, a cool, breathtaking blue under hair the color of the sunbeams streaming into the solar, contained not a trace of pity.
The savage urge to stab Laura’s eyes out—they wouldn’t be so pretty as bloody, empty sockets staring blankly into forever—with her needle blazed through Roxanne’s veins. Wondering if any queen’s lady-in-waiting had ever blinded another in the history of Tortall or she was doomed to bear the ignominy of being the first, Roxanne wished the cruel comments on her appearance didn’t cut her as much the thousandth time she heard them as they did the first.
She knew she was ugly—not merely painfully plain. Everything about her was too sharp—eyes, nose, cheekbones, and tongue—to confirm to the courtly standards of beauty established by Queen Lianne where a woman’s beauty was in her softness, sweetness, and quiet strength. At the convent, Roxanne and the other ladies had been taught to strive to emulate the queen in her grace, charm, and beauty, but Roxanne was well-aware that she failed to live up to this example every time she opened her mouth.
Laura with her delicate features could still be provoked into an unfashionable sharpness of tongue. Taking advantage of that fact, Roxanne observed in the sugary tone she reserved for her most stinging remarks, “It’s the prettiest girls who should be pitied. They are more vulnerable to falling for temptation and shaming themselves before they can be married.”
“You would have been married in a month after leaving the convent if your beauty was as great as your dowry.” The flush on Laura’s cheeks wasn’t entirely from her face paint. “As it is, with your looks, you must be worried you’ll never be wed.”
“You must have the opposite problem.” In her temper, Roxanne pricked her finger with her needle. She wondered if the worshippers at the temple would ever notice the blood stain and decided she didn’t care if they did. “With such a small dowry, you must fear no man will marry you before your looks fade, and once your looks have faded, how will you ensnare a man when you’ve no wealth or lands to offer him?”
“None in this room need fear for their marriage prospects.” Queen’s Lianne’s voice was gentle but powerful enough to silence all squabbling. “My lord husband and I are committed to making good marriages for all my ladies. Lady Laura, be assured that there will always be chivalrous knights who look beyond a dowry for beauty’s sake.”
“Your Majesty is very kind.” Laura’s blonde hair fell around her face in a curtain as she ducked her head over her embroidery.
Queen Lianne’s brown gaze flicked from Laura to Roxanne. She only paused a moment before continuing, and her poise would have rendered her hesitation insignificant if Roxanne hadn’t realized that if was meant to conceal the unfortunate fact that securing a match for Roxanne with her frankly unattractive features would be a challenge to daunt even monarchs. “A seasoned man, perhaps a widower searching for a second wife, might make the perfect marriage for you, Lady Roxanne.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” Roxanne understood that her only hope of marriage was to an older man, probably one too near-sighted to notice her ugliness. Queen Lianne hadn’t pointed that out meanly—she was ever the epitome of the gentle and the genteel—but she had still reminded Roxanne of an inescapable truth that hurt her heart and her pride. “Thank you.”
III The Kiss
“Hide me.” Gary slipped behind Raoul’s bulk as they returned trays laden with empty wine glasses to the kitchens. Raoul was the only squire whose girth was ample enough to conceal Gary from Master Oakbridge’s hawk eyes as they constantly roved the kitchens for any sign of trouble over which to have a hernia.
Once Raoul had obligingly shifted so his broad shoulders screened Gary from Master Oakbridge’s shrewd view, Gary seized a glass of wine from one of the trays waiting to be borne out to the party. According to the praise of the guests Gary had overheard while serving, the wine was an exquisite Tyran vintage, but Gary had no time to luxuriate in the decadent taste. He quaffed down the glass and then a second one until he felt he had enough courage to approach Lady Roxanne for a stolen kiss.
Some unlucky squire was being berated by Master Oakbridge for carrying a tray full of wine glasses in a careless manner that risked spills and eternal disgrace before polite society. Blessing the hapless squire for unwittingly providing the perfect opportunity for him to escape the kitchens without Master Oakbridge noticing his lack of a tray, Gary clapped Raoul on the back. “I go to woo the not-so-fair Lady Roxanne. Wish me luck.”
“You can always back out,” Raoul reminded him, coal black eyes crackling with mischief. “It would only cost you ten gold nobles, I believe.”
Determined to leave the kitchens before Master Oakbridge finished skewering his latest victim, Gary chose not to dignify Raoul’s assertion with a response and sauntered into the ballroom where courtiers danced, gossiped, and politicked in overwhelming swirls of satin and silk. The pretty flirted with the powerful here, but Gary was about to flirt with a lady so ugly rumor had it she could shatter a mirror merely by staring into it. Gary had always regarded that rumor as somewhat malicious fantasy but as he neared Lady Roxanne and saw her scowling at the whirling couples, he almost believed it.
“Enjoying the party, fair lady?” Gary asked in his cheeriest tone.
When she glowered at him as if he were some monster from the Realms of Chaos summoned solely to torment her, he went on, favoring her with a winning grin, “No, I thought not, but you shouldn’t leave all the fun for the pretty ladies. Some fellows are smart enough to look past surface appearances to see the true beauty inside you, Lady Roxanne.”
“Am I to hope that you are one such fellow, squire?” Lady Roxanne arched an eyebrow but she wasn’t scowling at him any longer, which he took as encouragement to kiss her before the wildness in the wine departed from him.
“You’re welcome to hope for whatever you wish, my lady.” Gary pressed his lips across hers so quickly that he couldn’t feel or taste hers. “I only hope to fulfill them.”
He had half-expected the world to stop and speculate when he kissed Lady Roxanne but it went on spinning all around him. Couples continued dancing without a misstep, and courtiers carried on their conversations without interruption. In the next heartbeat, before Lady Roxanne could recover from her shock enough to slap him, he fled, not wanting to discover whether she would rebuff him, or, worse, try to return his kiss, and intending to hunt down Jon to force him to pay the ten gold nobles.
IV The Revelation
“Vivenne, pardon the boldness of my question, but has your betrothed ever kissed you?” Roxanne asked with lips that still burned from young Gareth of Naxen’s kiss as she and her roommate, Lady Vivenee, also in the queen’s service but already engaged to a valiant young knight who had won many tournaments, prepared for bed.
“Only on the fingers.” In the flickering candlelight, there was an almost wistful expression on Vivenne’s face as she sat before the mirror, combing out her long, dark hair. “Sir Wyldon is a very proper gentleman.”
Vivenne was a very proper lady, which Roxanne supposed made them well-matched though young Gareth of Naxen’s kiss had emphasized to her how ignorant she truly was in matters of romance despite the courtly love poetry and songs she had been compelled to memorize at the convent.
“A kiss has to mean something, doesn’t it?” Roxanne chewed on her lower lip, wondering whether she had felt anything for young Gareth of Naxen when he had kissed her. The kiss had happened in an eye blink, and he had disappeared before she could understand what had occurred, nonetheless how she felt about it. “Especially if it’s on the lips?”
“I trust you know how I hate to gossip, but there is a distressing rumor that I think you should hear.” Vivenne set her comb down with a clap of wood on wood and turned away from the mirror to fix her serious gaze on Roxanne.
“Is it about me?” Roxanne tried to make a quip though her mouth was as dry as the Bazhir desert, and her stomach was as knotted as a failed embroidery. “I sometimes believe the court grapevine would wither and blow away in a breeze without me watering it.”
“Yes, I’m afraid it is about you.” Vivenne took a deep breath before explaining, “I’ve been told that young Gareth of Naxen bet ten gold nobles that he would kiss you.”
“That’s all I am to him?” Roxanne felt as if every part of her were trembling: her lips, her hands, and her knees. Betrayal ripped through her. “A means of winning a bet?”
She was so infuriated that the price that had been put on her dignity was only ten gold nobles that she wanted to weep, scream, and throw things, but she was a lady so she suffered in silence until she could cry into her pillow after Vivenne drifted off to sleep.
"I'm sorry." Vivienne spoke to the anguish Roxanne couldn't voice.
“You don’t need to apologize for telling me the truth.” It hurt to speak with a broken pride but that was what manners required of Roxanne. She was expected to be gracious no matter what turmoil tore her inside.
“I do if it hurts you.” Vivenne reached out to squeeze Roxanne’s shaking fingers between her own. “I’m sorry for your pain, and I would take it away if I could.”
“You can’t.” Roxanne clung to Vivenne as the only warmth in a world that felt even colder than she had imagined it could be. When you were ugly, nobody bothered to show you the beautiful side of life, but perhaps that was just as well since you were destined not to participate in it. “Nobody can but thank you for being the only person who would want to do that for me.”
V The Dishonor
“The Lord of Haryse has accused you of dishonoring his daughter, the Lady Roxanne.” Father glared across his desk at Gary.
Gary blanched at the accusation but protested the phrasing. “I didn’t dishonor her, Father. I just kissed her. It’s not as if I—“
“No need to elaborate on all the outrages you could have committed against poor Lady Roxanne if you were feeling even less chivalrous, son.” Father’s lips thinned into a sword that sliced into Gary. “Your kiss alone was enough to dishonor Lady Roxanne in the eyes of her father. He came to me in a rage, insisting her honor could only be restored if you were betrothed to her.”
“I won’t marry Lady Roxanne, Father.” Appalled, Gary shook his head vehemently several times in rapid succession to call attention to this crucial point. He would be disowned before he married Lady Roxanne, and he might have voiced that defiance if it didn’t seem imprudent to introduce the concept of disownment when his father was in a towering temper.
“Of course you won’t.” Father waved an impatient palm as if shooing away an irksome insect. “People always begin a negotiation with high demands. I talked him down to a more reasonable agreement though I had to make considerable concessions to appease his wounded pride. Ten gold nobles was a rather small price to set on your honor, Lady Roxanne’s, and the concessions I had to offer to her fuming father.”
“It seemed a good idea at the time.” Gary squirmed in the hard wooden chair in front of his father’s desk. Father had never been meant to know about his bet with Jon, but he always managed to find out anything Gary didn’t want him to learn. It was a most uncanny and inconvenient talent.
“You must stop doing things because they seem like good ideas at the time and start doing them because they seem to be wise plans for the future.” Father cracked a nut from the bowl that was ever-present on his desk, and Gary suspected that he did so since the sound was impressive rather than because he was hungry. “To help you learn that most important lesson, you will be confined to the palace for a month. I will also expect you to apologize formally to Lady Roxanne and return your ill-gotten gain of ten gold nobles to me so they may be quietly passed to Lady Roxanne to pay for the wrong you did her.”
“I won the bet, Father.” Gary’s chin lifted. “I should be allowed to keep the money.”
“I hope this will teach you that you gain nothing by dishonoring yourself or an innocent lady. You may give the money to Timon when you have it, and it will be delivered to me.” Father acted as if Gary hadn’t spoken. “Each day I don’t receive the money, I will charge you an extra gold noble in interest.”
“You’ll get the money before the sun goes down today, Father.” Gary bit back a sigh and consoled himself with the reminder that it was truly Jon’s coins that his father would be confiscating.
VI The Reconciliation
Roxanne had cried her sorrow out until her pillow was soaked so when young Gareth of Naxen bowed before her in a formal apology, her tone didn’t waver as she said, “I thank you for the apology and the lesson you taught me.”
“What lesson did I teach you, my lady?” His forehead furrowed.
“That life has no resemblance to a courtly romance and that nobody will treat me kindly when I’m an ugly lady.” Roxanne might have been bitter if all the resentment hadn’t been wept out of her when she should have been sleeping.
“Just because I didn’t treat you kindly, Lady Roxanne, doesn’t mean no one ever will.” That was a lie but not as bold-faced a one as if he had dared to pretend that she was anything less than ugly.
“I think you’re only saying that to atone for the fact that you didn’t treat me kindly.” Roxanne shot him a sidelong glance.
“Maybe.” He paused before adding, “Perhaps kindness doesn’t come naturally to me but neither does cruelty though I would understand if you didn’t believe that.”
“What does come naturally to you then?” Roxanne lifted an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Mischief.” His teeth flashed in an invitation to a truce.
“You certainly created that with me.” She accepted the truth with a slight smile of her own and knew in her bones that this fleeting second of understanding would be the last instance of significance to pass between them.
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Bad Romance
Summary: Gary's ill-fated romance with Lady Roxanne.
A Woman Scorned
I The Wager
“Most of the ladies in my mother’s service are beautiful to gaze upon.” Jon, sprawled on Gary’s bed as he pretended to complete a mathematics equation, was glassy-eyed, all his mental energies devoted to mooning over the court ladies, fresh from the convent, in the queen’s service. “Their perfume makes any room they are in smell of the Divine Realms…”
“Does Aunt Lianne realize that you’re lusting after her ladies?” Gary interrupted Jon before he could wax too poetical.
“No, she thinks I’m innocent as a daffodil.” Jon’s smirk was so smug that Gary rewarded him with a sharp kick in the shin. Ignoring the kick, Jon went on smoothly, “She believes I’m a very dutiful son who visits her often because I’m very subtle about staring at her ladies.”
“You’re about as subtle as a slap across the face, I bet.” Gary snorted.
“This accusation coming from someone who just kicked me in the shin.” Jon had stopped ignoring the kick and begun massaging the shin Gary had assaulted.
“Kicks on the shin are subtle.” Gary snickered. “It’s slaps across the face that aren’t. Do try to keep up with the rest of the class, Jon.”
“You’re just jealous that I can admire my mother’s ladies whenever I want.” Jon had resumed sighing over his mother’s ladies. “Her ladies are a feast for the eyes, I assure you. The only shame is that their splendor is marred by Lady Roxanne. She’s as out of place in their glorious company as that ugly duckling was among the flock of swans in that old nursery tale.”
“In the old nursery tale, the ugly duckling is truly a swan living among ducks.” Gary rolled his eyes at his cousin’s butchering of a well-known story. “The theme is that beauty is often mocked as ugly by the close-minded and that beauty is always in the interpretation.”
“I don’t think there’s anyone open-minded enough to interpret Lady Roxanne as beautiful.” Jon elbowed Gary in the ribs. “You couldn’t pay me enough to kiss her.”
“You could pay me enough.” Gary rubbed his chin with a contemplative thumb. “It would have to be for a tidy sum, though. I wouldn’t do it for a copper less than ten gold nobles. I have my standards, after all.”
“I bet you wouldn’t even for ten gold nobles.” Jon shook his head, and Gary thought his cousin should have known better than to bet against him.
“I bet I would.” Gary extended his hand in a challenge. “Is the wager on then?”
“Of course it is.” Jon shook Gary’s proffered hand. “Get ready to loosen your pursestrings, Gary.”
“Prepare to lighten your pockets, Jon,” retorted Gary, pleased that he had the higher ground in this fight since he was gambling on his own actions. Jon would regret betting against him and his iron nerves once he kissed Lady Roxanne.
II The Needle
The sun, shining through a window in Queen Lianne’s solar, burned the back of Roxanne’s neck as she bent over her embroidery, praying for patience from the Goddess for whom they were decorating this altarpiece, which was to be donated to a Corus temple favored by Queen Lianne. Sitting next to Lady Laura of Marti’s Hill was always a more refined but no less vicious torture than that inflicted on the king’s enemies in the dark depths of the palace dungeons.
“It’s a pity your beauty doesn’t rival your dowry, Lady Roxanne.” Laura’s eyes, a cool, breathtaking blue under hair the color of the sunbeams streaming into the solar, contained not a trace of pity.
The savage urge to stab Laura’s eyes out—they wouldn’t be so pretty as bloody, empty sockets staring blankly into forever—with her needle blazed through Roxanne’s veins. Wondering if any queen’s lady-in-waiting had ever blinded another in the history of Tortall or she was doomed to bear the ignominy of being the first, Roxanne wished the cruel comments on her appearance didn’t cut her as much the thousandth time she heard them as they did the first.
She knew she was ugly—not merely painfully plain. Everything about her was too sharp—eyes, nose, cheekbones, and tongue—to confirm to the courtly standards of beauty established by Queen Lianne where a woman’s beauty was in her softness, sweetness, and quiet strength. At the convent, Roxanne and the other ladies had been taught to strive to emulate the queen in her grace, charm, and beauty, but Roxanne was well-aware that she failed to live up to this example every time she opened her mouth.
Laura with her delicate features could still be provoked into an unfashionable sharpness of tongue. Taking advantage of that fact, Roxanne observed in the sugary tone she reserved for her most stinging remarks, “It’s the prettiest girls who should be pitied. They are more vulnerable to falling for temptation and shaming themselves before they can be married.”
“You would have been married in a month after leaving the convent if your beauty was as great as your dowry.” The flush on Laura’s cheeks wasn’t entirely from her face paint. “As it is, with your looks, you must be worried you’ll never be wed.”
“You must have the opposite problem.” In her temper, Roxanne pricked her finger with her needle. She wondered if the worshippers at the temple would ever notice the blood stain and decided she didn’t care if they did. “With such a small dowry, you must fear no man will marry you before your looks fade, and once your looks have faded, how will you ensnare a man when you’ve no wealth or lands to offer him?”
“None in this room need fear for their marriage prospects.” Queen’s Lianne’s voice was gentle but powerful enough to silence all squabbling. “My lord husband and I are committed to making good marriages for all my ladies. Lady Laura, be assured that there will always be chivalrous knights who look beyond a dowry for beauty’s sake.”
“Your Majesty is very kind.” Laura’s blonde hair fell around her face in a curtain as she ducked her head over her embroidery.
Queen Lianne’s brown gaze flicked from Laura to Roxanne. She only paused a moment before continuing, and her poise would have rendered her hesitation insignificant if Roxanne hadn’t realized that if was meant to conceal the unfortunate fact that securing a match for Roxanne with her frankly unattractive features would be a challenge to daunt even monarchs. “A seasoned man, perhaps a widower searching for a second wife, might make the perfect marriage for you, Lady Roxanne.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” Roxanne understood that her only hope of marriage was to an older man, probably one too near-sighted to notice her ugliness. Queen Lianne hadn’t pointed that out meanly—she was ever the epitome of the gentle and the genteel—but she had still reminded Roxanne of an inescapable truth that hurt her heart and her pride. “Thank you.”
III The Kiss
“Hide me.” Gary slipped behind Raoul’s bulk as they returned trays laden with empty wine glasses to the kitchens. Raoul was the only squire whose girth was ample enough to conceal Gary from Master Oakbridge’s hawk eyes as they constantly roved the kitchens for any sign of trouble over which to have a hernia.
Once Raoul had obligingly shifted so his broad shoulders screened Gary from Master Oakbridge’s shrewd view, Gary seized a glass of wine from one of the trays waiting to be borne out to the party. According to the praise of the guests Gary had overheard while serving, the wine was an exquisite Tyran vintage, but Gary had no time to luxuriate in the decadent taste. He quaffed down the glass and then a second one until he felt he had enough courage to approach Lady Roxanne for a stolen kiss.
Some unlucky squire was being berated by Master Oakbridge for carrying a tray full of wine glasses in a careless manner that risked spills and eternal disgrace before polite society. Blessing the hapless squire for unwittingly providing the perfect opportunity for him to escape the kitchens without Master Oakbridge noticing his lack of a tray, Gary clapped Raoul on the back. “I go to woo the not-so-fair Lady Roxanne. Wish me luck.”
“You can always back out,” Raoul reminded him, coal black eyes crackling with mischief. “It would only cost you ten gold nobles, I believe.”
Determined to leave the kitchens before Master Oakbridge finished skewering his latest victim, Gary chose not to dignify Raoul’s assertion with a response and sauntered into the ballroom where courtiers danced, gossiped, and politicked in overwhelming swirls of satin and silk. The pretty flirted with the powerful here, but Gary was about to flirt with a lady so ugly rumor had it she could shatter a mirror merely by staring into it. Gary had always regarded that rumor as somewhat malicious fantasy but as he neared Lady Roxanne and saw her scowling at the whirling couples, he almost believed it.
“Enjoying the party, fair lady?” Gary asked in his cheeriest tone.
When she glowered at him as if he were some monster from the Realms of Chaos summoned solely to torment her, he went on, favoring her with a winning grin, “No, I thought not, but you shouldn’t leave all the fun for the pretty ladies. Some fellows are smart enough to look past surface appearances to see the true beauty inside you, Lady Roxanne.”
“Am I to hope that you are one such fellow, squire?” Lady Roxanne arched an eyebrow but she wasn’t scowling at him any longer, which he took as encouragement to kiss her before the wildness in the wine departed from him.
“You’re welcome to hope for whatever you wish, my lady.” Gary pressed his lips across hers so quickly that he couldn’t feel or taste hers. “I only hope to fulfill them.”
He had half-expected the world to stop and speculate when he kissed Lady Roxanne but it went on spinning all around him. Couples continued dancing without a misstep, and courtiers carried on their conversations without interruption. In the next heartbeat, before Lady Roxanne could recover from her shock enough to slap him, he fled, not wanting to discover whether she would rebuff him, or, worse, try to return his kiss, and intending to hunt down Jon to force him to pay the ten gold nobles.
IV The Revelation
“Vivenne, pardon the boldness of my question, but has your betrothed ever kissed you?” Roxanne asked with lips that still burned from young Gareth of Naxen’s kiss as she and her roommate, Lady Vivenee, also in the queen’s service but already engaged to a valiant young knight who had won many tournaments, prepared for bed.
“Only on the fingers.” In the flickering candlelight, there was an almost wistful expression on Vivenne’s face as she sat before the mirror, combing out her long, dark hair. “Sir Wyldon is a very proper gentleman.”
Vivenne was a very proper lady, which Roxanne supposed made them well-matched though young Gareth of Naxen’s kiss had emphasized to her how ignorant she truly was in matters of romance despite the courtly love poetry and songs she had been compelled to memorize at the convent.
“A kiss has to mean something, doesn’t it?” Roxanne chewed on her lower lip, wondering whether she had felt anything for young Gareth of Naxen when he had kissed her. The kiss had happened in an eye blink, and he had disappeared before she could understand what had occurred, nonetheless how she felt about it. “Especially if it’s on the lips?”
“I trust you know how I hate to gossip, but there is a distressing rumor that I think you should hear.” Vivenne set her comb down with a clap of wood on wood and turned away from the mirror to fix her serious gaze on Roxanne.
“Is it about me?” Roxanne tried to make a quip though her mouth was as dry as the Bazhir desert, and her stomach was as knotted as a failed embroidery. “I sometimes believe the court grapevine would wither and blow away in a breeze without me watering it.”
“Yes, I’m afraid it is about you.” Vivenne took a deep breath before explaining, “I’ve been told that young Gareth of Naxen bet ten gold nobles that he would kiss you.”
“That’s all I am to him?” Roxanne felt as if every part of her were trembling: her lips, her hands, and her knees. Betrayal ripped through her. “A means of winning a bet?”
She was so infuriated that the price that had been put on her dignity was only ten gold nobles that she wanted to weep, scream, and throw things, but she was a lady so she suffered in silence until she could cry into her pillow after Vivenne drifted off to sleep.
"I'm sorry." Vivienne spoke to the anguish Roxanne couldn't voice.
“You don’t need to apologize for telling me the truth.” It hurt to speak with a broken pride but that was what manners required of Roxanne. She was expected to be gracious no matter what turmoil tore her inside.
“I do if it hurts you.” Vivenne reached out to squeeze Roxanne’s shaking fingers between her own. “I’m sorry for your pain, and I would take it away if I could.”
“You can’t.” Roxanne clung to Vivenne as the only warmth in a world that felt even colder than she had imagined it could be. When you were ugly, nobody bothered to show you the beautiful side of life, but perhaps that was just as well since you were destined not to participate in it. “Nobody can but thank you for being the only person who would want to do that for me.”
V The Dishonor
“The Lord of Haryse has accused you of dishonoring his daughter, the Lady Roxanne.” Father glared across his desk at Gary.
Gary blanched at the accusation but protested the phrasing. “I didn’t dishonor her, Father. I just kissed her. It’s not as if I—“
“No need to elaborate on all the outrages you could have committed against poor Lady Roxanne if you were feeling even less chivalrous, son.” Father’s lips thinned into a sword that sliced into Gary. “Your kiss alone was enough to dishonor Lady Roxanne in the eyes of her father. He came to me in a rage, insisting her honor could only be restored if you were betrothed to her.”
“I won’t marry Lady Roxanne, Father.” Appalled, Gary shook his head vehemently several times in rapid succession to call attention to this crucial point. He would be disowned before he married Lady Roxanne, and he might have voiced that defiance if it didn’t seem imprudent to introduce the concept of disownment when his father was in a towering temper.
“Of course you won’t.” Father waved an impatient palm as if shooing away an irksome insect. “People always begin a negotiation with high demands. I talked him down to a more reasonable agreement though I had to make considerable concessions to appease his wounded pride. Ten gold nobles was a rather small price to set on your honor, Lady Roxanne’s, and the concessions I had to offer to her fuming father.”
“It seemed a good idea at the time.” Gary squirmed in the hard wooden chair in front of his father’s desk. Father had never been meant to know about his bet with Jon, but he always managed to find out anything Gary didn’t want him to learn. It was a most uncanny and inconvenient talent.
“You must stop doing things because they seem like good ideas at the time and start doing them because they seem to be wise plans for the future.” Father cracked a nut from the bowl that was ever-present on his desk, and Gary suspected that he did so since the sound was impressive rather than because he was hungry. “To help you learn that most important lesson, you will be confined to the palace for a month. I will also expect you to apologize formally to Lady Roxanne and return your ill-gotten gain of ten gold nobles to me so they may be quietly passed to Lady Roxanne to pay for the wrong you did her.”
“I won the bet, Father.” Gary’s chin lifted. “I should be allowed to keep the money.”
“I hope this will teach you that you gain nothing by dishonoring yourself or an innocent lady. You may give the money to Timon when you have it, and it will be delivered to me.” Father acted as if Gary hadn’t spoken. “Each day I don’t receive the money, I will charge you an extra gold noble in interest.”
“You’ll get the money before the sun goes down today, Father.” Gary bit back a sigh and consoled himself with the reminder that it was truly Jon’s coins that his father would be confiscating.
VI The Reconciliation
Roxanne had cried her sorrow out until her pillow was soaked so when young Gareth of Naxen bowed before her in a formal apology, her tone didn’t waver as she said, “I thank you for the apology and the lesson you taught me.”
“What lesson did I teach you, my lady?” His forehead furrowed.
“That life has no resemblance to a courtly romance and that nobody will treat me kindly when I’m an ugly lady.” Roxanne might have been bitter if all the resentment hadn’t been wept out of her when she should have been sleeping.
“Just because I didn’t treat you kindly, Lady Roxanne, doesn’t mean no one ever will.” That was a lie but not as bold-faced a one as if he had dared to pretend that she was anything less than ugly.
“I think you’re only saying that to atone for the fact that you didn’t treat me kindly.” Roxanne shot him a sidelong glance.
“Maybe.” He paused before adding, “Perhaps kindness doesn’t come naturally to me but neither does cruelty though I would understand if you didn’t believe that.”
“What does come naturally to you then?” Roxanne lifted an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Mischief.” His teeth flashed in an invitation to a truce.
“You certainly created that with me.” She accepted the truth with a slight smile of her own and knew in her bones that this fleeting second of understanding would be the last instance of significance to pass between them.
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!