Madlenka considered blaming her chill on lack of sleep, caused by two nights of instruction from Anton in how to please him. But there were no laurels to be won in battles with her mother anymore. At the moment she was nothing-no longer a marriageable heiress, not yet a countess. The Church might regard her as Anton’s wife, but in the eyes of the world she was just the count’s bawd. Once she was properly married, she would be able to displace her mother as head of the household and become a somebody, but until then, she was powerless. And by spring she would be hugely gravid.
The door opened and in scuttled Neomi, another of Mother’s gossips. She was fat where Ivana was thin, all butter and smarm.
“Have you heard what happened?” she exclaimed, rubbing fat hands gleefully.
The dowager countess said no she hadn’t, frowning at Neomi’s yellow-fanged leer. Whatever the news was, it must be bad.
“The count’s brother is back! Squire Whatshisname. And several other brothers, with him!”
Madlenka guessed from the sideways glances that the trouble concerned her, and schooled herself to the stoicism of a tombstone effigy. She did not even shrug. What was he to her?
“The count said something to the squire,” Neomi gushed. “Nobody seems to know what… but the squire knocked him flat on his back! Right in the middle of the hall, in front of everybody. Then the other brothers pulled them apart and made them shake hands.”
Mother was looking colder than Mount Naproti in midwinter. “How loutish!” Those two words would be the text for a future three-hour sermon on the theme of See What I Saved You From?
“He was probably upset that he didn’t get invited to the wedding,” Madlenka said sweetly, quite certain she was not blushing the tiniest bit. Wulf was back already! Her heart sang.
Stupid, stupid heart.
Standing at the end of the hall with Anton, Madlenka remembered to add a beaming smile to her appearance. She could gripe at Mother in private, but for outsiders noblesse must oblige. The guests waiting to be welcomed and pay their respects were mostly residents of the town-priests, doctors, a couple of notaries, the wealthier merchants, plus some knights from the backwoods. The day after his accession, Anton had called in his able-bodied vassals to do homage to him and to defend Castle Gallant against the Pomeranian attack. Very few of them had arrived yet, and there had been no time for anyone else to make the journey in the rain, or even be notified. Men greatly outnumbered women.
Give him his due, Anton looked striking in Father’s scarlet, ermine-trimmed robe. Even the absurd upturned mustache seemed less presumptuous when worn under an earl’s coronet, and the golden baldric placed him in the highest ranks of Jorgarian nobility. Life was not turning out as Madlenka had imagined it would, but the unexpected usurper was a more attractive husband than she could have realistically hoped for. So she told herself. She ought to be wonderfully happy by now, and might well have believed she was, had she never met Wulf.
She must not stare too often or too admiringly at the beautiful swelling developing on the count’s jaw. Why on earth had Wulf knocked him down in public? Anton would never tell her, but he would certainly have to banish his brother, so she would never see him again. The scandal would echo around the town for months.
The arrival of more brothers had forced Arturas to tear up two days’ work to rearrange the protocol and seating arrangements. Bishop Ugne still took precedence, of course, pompous popinjay in his glorious robes. After the count and future countess had kissed his ring, he took his place beside them to bless the guests as they came by.
After him came Baron Magnus of Dobkov, future brother-in-law Ottokar, who was a very large man in his thirties with a friendly smile on a tough-looking face. His words were conventional, but she suspected that his eyes saw more than most people’s.
Then Sir Vladislav, the largest man she had ever seen, as tall as Anton and twice as wide. His bristling black beard prickled as he kissed her.
“Understand you’re handfasted with Beanpole,” he boomed. “That’s what we always called him. You’ll find him quite a handful in bed. He’s a terrible rascal with the girls.”
Face flaming crimson, Anton said, “Don’t believe a word of what he says, my dear. Not now, nor ever.”
“Ah, that reminds me-is your ankle all better now, lad?”
“Move along, Vlad,” Anton said resignedly. “The bishop is waiting to hear your confession. This is another brother, Brother Marek of the
… um… Well, he was all our mother could manage after producing Vlad.”
Marek was tiny compared with the others, but he had Wulf’s happy smile and the same twinkle in his eyes. Another clever one, she decided. So those were the four brothers senior, and the youngest did not appear. Of course Wulf should not be presented, for he had already met her and was one of the count’s servants, not a guest. Or possibly he had already been kicked out of the castle gate forever.
The banquet began late, but banquets always began late, and the food was always cold. As was customary, the tables had been arranged in a U with everyone backed against a wall, facing inward. Of course the host presided at the end of the room with his noble guests. Lesser folk sat along the sides of the awkwardly narrow hall, men with their backs to the windows, women facing them. In this case there were enough men to take over half the women’s table also, so the women had to be relegated to the far end, beyond the door, as if they were attending another banquet altogether.
Arturas had completed a frenzy of rearranging. Now the lineup along the head table was Sir Vladislav, Dowager Countess Edita, Bishop Ugne, Count Magnus, Madlenka, Baron Magnus, and then the fireplace. The dais being too short to take more people, Arturas had been forced to improvise even more. Anxious not to insult brothers of the count, he had put Marek at the high end of the men’s table, ahead of the six priests of the town, who were shocked at being thus upstaged by a friar. Wulfgang was directly opposite, next to the corner fireplace, similarly offending the constable and the knights.
Madlenka had endured ghastly banquets before, but never one where she was pinned between a new husband-to whom she must be devotedly attentive-and a brother-in-law she had never even heard of until now, who asked the most extraordinary questions.
Like, “Why did the landsknechte leave, my lady?”
What sort of dinner conversation was that? She rummaged through several possible names-Anton, the count-before settling on the unfamiliar, the unbelievable, “My husband… says that they wanted more money than he could afford to pay.”
“Odd. What does everyone else say?”
“Everyone else was happy to see them go, my lord.”
And so on.
Bishop Ugne kept asking Anton questions he clearly did not want to answer, so he tried to stay in conversation with Madlenka by asking her to name and discuss particular people. She helped prolong the conversation as much as she could by inquiring about his childhood home at Dobkov.
But then the bishop would snatch him away with another question and Baron Magnus-“Do please call me Otto”-would grab his chance again. He was charming, cultured, and wonderful company. He told a few amusing stories about Anton, but otherwise praised him highly, as was to be expected under the circumstances. He spoke affectionately but solemnly of Brother Marek, hinting that he might be having misgivings about his calling. He even apologized for Sir Vladislav’s rough manners, which he blamed on ten years’ campaigning, but he was obviously proud of his brother’s military reputation.
“What did Sir Vladislav mean when he met Anton and asked if his ankle was ‘all better’?” she asked.
The baron rolled his eyes. “That is typical. When Vlad rode off to the Bavarian war two years ago, Anton was going to go with him as one of his squires. The day before they were due to leave, he broke his ankle, so he couldn’t go. Vlad found it amusing to imply that he’d done it deliberately, out of cowardice. That isn’t funny even among family members, all of whom know that Anton is anything but a coward. He nearly went out of his mind because he had to stay home.”