She dug into the voluminous folds of her brocade gown and came forth with a pair of small meat pies. They’d had several when they broke their fast at an inn that morning, or at least Randa and Oscar had, but Ophelia had been restricted to one little pie and boiled milk. Oscar had been clear about that. But Randa handed the pies over to her daughter, who promptly shoved a whole one into her mouth. She was starving.
“Careful,” Randa said quietly. “You do not want it coming back up again. Swallow slowly.”
Ophelia slowed down, but she was so hungry that it was difficult. The tears came as well, and she chewed and wiped tears from her face, finally swallowing what was in her mouth.Everything in her life was such a struggle now. Even eating. She was slower with the second pie as Randa put an arm around her slender shoulders.
“It will all be over soon,” she murmured. “You will be the wife of a de Royans and you can eat all you wish. Those will be good days, my dearest. Very good days.”
Ophelia’s mouth was full of pie. “I will never forgive you for allowing him to do this to me,” she hissed. “You let him starve your child.”
Randa dropped her arm from her daughter’s shoulders. “You do not understand.”
“Nay, I do not,” Ophelia snapped. “How could you let him do this to me?How?”
Randa averted her gaze, looking out the window of the carriage. “He is only doing what he feels is best,” she said, offering a weak excuse. “You are to be married, Lia. No man wants to marry a woman who is carrying another man’s child.”
“I was supposed to marry that man.”
“Yet you did not,” Randa said. “You cannot go to your new betrothed with a rounded belly. He will reject you, you will then give birth to a bastard, and you will grow old a disgraced spinster. Is that what you want?”
Ophelia finished with the pie, licking her fingers of the crumbs. “What I want cannot be,” she said. “Now you are hoping to cheat another man into believing I am bearing his child. I am three months pregnant, Mother. He will not believe the child is his.”
“It is your duty to convince him that he is wrong.”
Ophelia sighed heavily and turned away from her mother. She was feeling a little better with food in her stomach now, and she put her hand on her belly, which was slightly rounded and nothing more. She was wearing a garment that had been specially commissioned by her grandfather, a voluminouslavender-and-blue gown of silk. It had a high waistline, so her stomach was concealed, but it really wasn’t necessary—her stomach couldn’t be seen anyway.
Oscar had seen to that.
The road they’d taken from Sidmouth had wandered through the gentle hills and dales of Devon, but now they were in flatter, more heavily wooded lands. She inhaled deeply, smelling trees and woods and foliage. When they passed by a lake, it was a lovely bit of glistening water in the midst of the wilds. Truthfully, it hadn’t been a terrible journey. Just a long one.
She was looking forward to it being over.
There wasn’t much she knew about her betrothed other than he served at the Blackchurch Guild, whatever that was. She’d never heard of it until her grandfather told her that it was a training school for the finest knights in the world and that her husband-to-be was an instructor. He was from the House of de Royans, a powerful family in Yorkshire, and his brother was a baron. Other than that, she knew nothing. She didn’t know how old he was, or what kind of character he had, or if he was a fair and moral man. For all she knew, he was Lucifer himself. Did it concern her? Not particularly.
She had plans of her own where her marriage was concerned.
The Sidbury contingent finally hit the outskirts of a town named Exebridge and she heard the men around the carriage saying that it was their destination. Her grandfather had brought one hundred heavily armed men with him, one hundred men who were part of her dowry. Oscar intended to turn them over to her betrothed the moment the marriage mass was complete. He’d also brought a chest with one hundred gold marks and another document giving her new husband a landed title. Upon the marriage, her husband would immediately become Lord Yettington, which was the courtesy title for the heir apparent to the Earldom of Sidbury.
Therefore, the man would be gaining a good deal upon the marriage, but that was by design. He was getting a pregnant wife and Oscar was trying to pull the wool over the man’s eyes, hoping that even if he figured out his wife’s child was not from his loins, he would look at all of the gifts he’d received for her dowry and simply accept the situation for what it was.
That was the hope, anyway.
But not if Ophelia had anything to say about it.
“Randa!” Oscar pulled his fat, dappled horse alongside the carriage. “My men tell me that there is only one tavern in town worth visiting and it is called The Black Cock. We will be settling there and I will send word to Blackchurch that we have arrived. Make sure Lia is put in a chamber and kept there. I do not want her wandering around.”
“I will,” Randa said, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked up at her father. “How far is Blackchurch from here?”
Oscar gestured toward the north. “Not far, I’m told,” he said. “It should not take long. Make sure your daughter is presentable. We do not want to give the man reason to reject the contract.”
Make sure your daughter is presentable.
He meantmake sure her stomach isn’t visible. Ophelia thought it was all terribly ridiculous because she hardly had a stomach at all. Oscar had made sure of it. She couldn’t even look at her grandfather, a man she’d genuinely grown to hate, any longer. As they came into the outskirts of the town, she could see a dark stone steeple rising above the tree line.
A church,she thought.
When she told the de Royans knight she wasn’t going to marry him, she had to have a place to go.
Now, she did.
