It also troubled him that she’d begun to cry now, great heaving sobs that might soon become wails to bringeveryone within earshot running to see what might be the matter. Only to stifle her ridiculous display, he took her by the elbow and tried to keep his voice as soothing as possible.
“Very well, Hortense, do what you will in regard to the coronation and ball. ButIwill have the final say as to whom I will marry, do you understand?”
Damp, fluttering eyelashes and hiccoughs greeted his pronouncement,but that was all Valentin would allow her. He released her arm and left her staring after him, while Robert fell into step behind him once again.
“A wise move to indulge her, my lord,” came his valet’s low voice, though he could not suppress a chuckle.
In a way, Valentin thought it all comical, too, and he might have chuckled as well if he didn’t know how frighteningly tenacious Hortense couldbe once she set her mind upon a task.
Like insisting upon redecorating many of the rooms in the castle once his mother had died, her father throwing up his hands and giving in to her after constant emotional outbursts and plaintive requests.
Like Hortense insisting that their father be buried next tohermother, Annelise, as the first wife of Prince Renaud, instead of his mother, and going sofar as to badger Bratavia’s most senior judge to support her request.
And now this…her stubborn insistence upon helping him to find a bride.
He would not put it past her to attempt to find some way to overrule him, if she found herself displeased by his choice. He may be the sovereign prince, but he didn’t doubt Hortense might be among those plotting to control him and his choices in mattersconcerning Bratavia…
“Enough!” he muttered to himself, the doors to the council room opening before him.
As the seven older gentlemen rose to greet him, he could not help wondering if any might prove untrustworthy or secretly plot to undermine him due to his relative youth and inexperience, though hopefully not. Several had been imprisoned as well, and all of them handpicked by his father aweek before his death as men Valentin could trust, but he would be wise to be alert and wary.
Indeed, no truer words were written than Shakespeare’s, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”
