“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Though I have my reasons, I cannot explain them at this time. You are within your rights to feel both angry and offended. I am truly sorry to have disappointed and hurt you. I cannot destroy the album, but I can ensure it remains out of your sight.”
Her eyes looked tired. “Don’t bother. Make a million such albums if you wish. It is not my book. I don’t care what happens to it.”
He walked around the table but did not reach for her. Kunigunde’s stiff posture and beaten expression indicated she would not let him hold her.
But he did not want to leave matters like this. “Will you come and sit with me?”
27
Graham gestured toward the U shape of empty sofas and armchairs on the other side of the salon, far from the offensive album. “Please talk to me. If you want to. I’m ready to listen.”
Indecision flashed on her face. Then she crossed the room and took a seat. In an armchair, not a sofa. So that his body would not be next to hers. But she was still here, with him.
He sat in the next chair. Within arm’s reach if she wanted him…which did not appear to be the case.
“Before meeting my father, my mother was a lady’s maid to one of the queen’s companions,” Kunigunde said at last. “It was one of the highest positions a maid could reach, short of serving royalty directly. Until she married a Royal Guardsman. When she no longer needed to be a servant, her social status rocketed skyward. As the wife of a Guardsman, Mother was allowed to keep small but comfortable rooms at the castle. My maternal grandmother increased her own standing the same way.”
She looked down at her hands, then smoothed an invisible wrinkle from her lap.
“Enviable matches, all of them.” Her gaze snapped to Graham. “But the women were never respected in their own right.”
“I thought you said the marriage improved your mother’s social standing?”
“The wife of a Royal Guardsman enjoys far more prestige and opportunities than most commoners’ wives. But it doesn’t come with a uniform or a title. Or power of any kind. The post is his, the money is his, the wife is his. Possessions he can collect, to show off his own worth. Not hers.”
“It wasn’t a happy marriage?”
“It wasn’t amarriage. Not in any way that mattered. The Royal Guard requires long hours and months of travel. Even when my parents were on the same grounds, Father was more likely to collapse in exhaustion at the guard barracks than to spend his scant free hours coming to see her. Mother used to say the only times she ever saw him werewhen he was begetting another heir.”
“It…doesn’t sound cozy.”
Her smile was wistful. “I worshipped him. As did my brothers. When we were young, we believed Father had come to visitus. Perhaps he did. That was what he told us, anyway. How we relished those hours. Each time, a competition to be the best-behaved child. To be the one he liked most. To be a reason to come home.” She rubbed her face. “I never won.”
“It sounds…lonely.”
“It should not have been. My brothers and I had Mother. We gave her the same consideration she got from anyone else—which is to say, none at all. We ran to the fields whenever the soldiers were practicing and pretended we were training with them. Reinald was first to cease pretending.”
“Because he was grown?”
“Much earlier. Before one is old enough to join the military, there is a program for youths, starting at age eight. It is every bit as demanding as the training for adults. How well you perform as an adolescent can determine your opportunities once you are eligible to be part of the real military.”
“Your brothers are both Royal Guards. They must have acquitted themselves well.”
“Of course they did. They would rather have died than be anything less than the best. It’s part of being a de Heusch. They hoped that being in the military also meant they could see Father. Or rather, that he would keep a watchful—and hopefully proud—eye onthem.”
“I assume this military apprenticeship is not available to girls?”
She snorted. “I was sent off to be a companion. My mother wanted me to make a good match, too, and this was my best chance to achieve it. If I applied myself, I could even reach higher than she had.”
“But you didn’t want to be a companion.”
“Not even for a moment. I would have traded all the dolls and lace in the world to be out there on the field training with the soldiers.”
Not just with the soldiers, Graham realized. With herfamily.
“I had to hike up my skirts to achieve the proper range of motion. It is why I slit my underskirts to just above the knee whenever I wear a knife strapped to my thigh, or even just to march with my hands and arms in their proper positions instead of holding up a long skirt. Gowns can be very inconvenient.”
“How much marching can be done from behind a window?”
