“How convenient,” Bella fired back.“Tell me, Jean, which of those coins is a crown, and which is a shilling?Which is a furthow, and which a windling?”She made up the last two, but Jean would not know.
A moment of panic crossed his visage before he smoothed it over.“Worry not your pretty head over such matters.I shall handle the sums.”
“How can you handle that which you have never beheld?How many shillings in a crown?Please, do inform me with your superior knowledge.”
Jean turned back to her father.“I cannot.She is insufferable.”
Bella laughed, but it held a bite to it.“Funny how only intelligent women are thus named.Could it be insecurity on your part, I wonder?”
“Bella!”her father barked, then turned to Jean.“Please.You can be wed in an hour.”
“Over my dead body.”Bella glared at both men, and they glared at her.After a tense moment, she addressed her father.“I have a literal prince watching over me, and you think a bride price from a cooper’s son paid with coinsI earnedwill win me over?Jean’s own father finds him unfit as a tonnelier and wishes him off to the military.”
“Brave men join the military,” Jean said, his tone defensive.
To that, Bella crossed her arms and cocked out a hip.“You know what?You should absolutely join the military.The death rate is fantastic these days.”
“Bella!”
She’d never seen her father so angry.Bella almost feared he’d strike her, which he’d never once done.She settled her expression as her mind whirled, still delivering knife-like glares to Jean.“If you insist, Papa, as long as you are fine wasting your only daughter on a commoner instead of a prince.”
“There is no prince,” Jean scoffed, but the doubt widened his eyes.
“Where do you think the coins came from?”she asked.“Only a well-traveled prince could have collected coins from so many countries to give as a prize.”
At his continued unease, Bella added, “His name is Prince Riven Helmworthy of Aigues-Mortes.His father is insufferable, his mother angry.Clearly, they were another arranged marriage, as they despise each other.”She ensnared both males with her anger in this sentence.
Before her father could rebuke her, Bella said, “As you both are clearly incapable of seeing good sense and intend to do with me what you will, I shall need Mother’s gown.And privacy to change.”
She watched them exchange glances, then slowly nod to each other.
Her father sent Jean away with instructions to meet in the village square.Bella watched her father open the large chest in his corner of the room and remove a pale blue gown from the paper that contained it.With reverence, he crossed the room with the item draped across both forearms.Bella wanted to snatch it, but knowing her mother happily wore the item forestalled her angry moves.She lifted it gently and placed it on the bed.
“Your mother and I were happily married,” her father said.“I wish to see the same for you.”
“Then you should have found a better candidate.But if marriage is what you wish of me, marriage is what you shall have.I make no promise of happiness, for none of the women in town have aught good to say about Jean’s demeanor.Bottom of the barrel for Bella, it appears.I hope the coins serve you well.”She whipped the curtain closed between them, effectively silencing any rebuttal.She waited, unmoving, for a long moment.Finally, her father moved away from the drapes.
Bella flung off her peasant garb, donned the precious gown, then stuffed her feet into her heavy boots.Her father tinkered with something on the table, the sounds of instruments getting lifted and dropped a familiar and soothing backdrop.As carefully as possible, Bella pulled out her chair from the desk and stuffed her coin pouch into her pocket by the sugar cube.Before she escaped, she opened one drawer on her desk and collected her treasured letter from the king, tucking that into her pouch for safekeeping.It had been her mother’s sole prize possession, and she had given it to Bella just hours before death had claimed her.Bella patted it carefully into place, then climbed onto her desk and eased open the window.Bella swung her legs through and dropped outside, already sprinting toward the stable.
Neighbors saw her and frowned at the spectacle, but Bella paid them no heed.She hauled open the stable door, eased up to Nocturne, and gave him the last sugar cube.As quickly as possible, Bella knocked off his blanket, bridled and saddled him, and had just backed him into the aisle when her papa appeared in the doorway.
“I thought you would pull something like this when you gave in too quickly.”
She stared at her father for a moment.“I love Prince Riven, Papa.I’m off to tell him so.”She swung into the saddle as her father lunged for her, but one kick of her heels and Nocturne slipped past him in a blur.
“You are the best of horses,” Bella said, patting his neck as the world smeared by.“Can you find your way home at this speed?”
Nocturne whickered underneath her and lowered his head, picking up the pace.The river undulated beside them for an hour, the ever-long journey through Europe reduced to a fraction again.She recognized some of the landscapes she had passed yesterday and gave a tiny tug on the reins to slow Nocturne, but he shook his mane and grabbed the bit, taking away her control.Part of her panicked, but she knew horses raced homeward, so she reasoned they must be close.
Nocturne eventually slowed on his own accord, and within a few steps, Riven’s pond came into view.
She gasped in joy at the wondrous creation floating in the center.
“Riven!”She slid off the saddle and ran to the pond.“Riven!I am here.”She stood and gaped at the structure he had clearly built with his wee hands.“This is magnificent.”
Awumat her feet had her looking down into the shallow water.“Riven!”
“I...you...you look marvelous.”
