The Night Before the Wedding

  “What is it?” Avery stepped back from the door. The familiar-looking woman who stepped through wore a lavender dress festooned with lace and had light brown hair.

  “We are to be married tomorrow, Your Grace,” Sabine whispered, one corner of her mouth quirking up briefly. She did not speak aloud because she feared that her voice might betray her. She had magically painted her face with a replica of Johanna’s, changing every line and curve to match the other woman’s face with a layer of real and physical makeup applied impossibly finely and accurately.

  “Johanna,” Avery said. “Is there something the matter? Have you changed your mind about marrying me tomorrow?”

  Sabine stared down at the floor while she schooled her expression to keep the glee off her face. “I have not changed my mind—though I would marry you tonight if I could. I want to have you as soon as I can.”

  “So, what is the matter?” Avery crossed his arms, leaning back against his desk, his hose-clad legs angled—intentionally or not—at a good angle for viewing. “If I remember rightly, you are first in the queue. Unless that has been changed?”

  Sabine left her gaze where it had stopped, immersing herself in admiration of the well-formed legs before her. “I am worried about you, Your Grace. Last night, you came back quite late, hardly slept, and returned to the city before dawn. I worry that my precious, shining silver groom will be in a poor state when I marry him—nearly dead on his feet and worn to a dull gray.”

  Avery flinched.

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” Sabine whispered, reaching out to take hold of his hand. “I did not mean to sound a scold. You must think me selfish.”

  Avery shook his head. “I deserved scolding. I did not think I might ruin your wedding day—indeed, your wedding night. It is past when I should be seeking rest. But it seems I cannot relax—I am wound up by the attack.”

  “Let me help you relax,” Sabine whispered, holding his hand in both of hers. She bent low, kissing his hand; then, rather than stand up from her deep bow, she knelt, sitting down on her legs as she began to massage his hand.

  “Isn’t it a little improper for you to be alone with me?” Avery whispered back.

  “Nobody noticed—I nearly tripped over a dog in the darkness, but dogs can’t talk—and in any case, I am yours in full tomorrow,” Sabine whispered. “And I should like you to relax; I would not want you nervous and exhausted on our wedding night.”

  Sabine knew her disguise was not perfect. She needed to keep Avery distracted and off-balance if she was to maintain the illusion.

  Johanna

  “People of York! Your duke is married—and again, eight times over. Come and celebrate!” Avery carried Anna into the great hall in his arms, his other brides following close behind. Behind them followed a crowd—everyone from Earl Ricard of Northumbria down to untitled but respectable citizens of York, though the latter knew well enough to politely give way to the former when the entrance to the great hall crowded with people.

  Tables were being set up out on the green to provide a feast for the common people—chipped moonapples, eel pies, and ale in generous supply. Inside the great hall a great feast was already laid, the centerpiece being the unmistakable long-necked shape of a moonsheep brought all the way down from Scotland. Maude had carefully planned out the seating arrangements for the high table, quietly but clearly communicating to each person of importance his or her own precise position and neighbors.

  In the center would be Avery, flanked on either side by his brides, in the order of status, just as in the wedding ceremony. Then Avery carried Anna into the room, setting her down to his right before seating himself. That, as Anna knew, was the position assigned by Maude to Sabine, and she grinned nervously for a moment before Elizabeth spoke, the duke’s smallest bride cutting in to object to Anna’s placement.

  “Anna, you know you should not sit there,” Elizabeth said. “Johanna gave oath first—that is, therefore, her seat.” Elizabeth dutifully circled around to Avery’s left and to the seat assigned to her by Maude. “As she shall have the first bedding, she surely must share a cup with His Grace at his wedding feast.”

  “My apologies,” said Anna, attempting a frown and succeeding but for the bright green smile peering out of her eyes. “Of course Johanna should sit at the duke’s right hand at this feast.”

  A surprised Sabine opened her mouth to object, but Avery gave her a sharp look. Her eyes crossed, and she gripped the edge of the table, swaying as a silent growl echoed in her mind.

  “Indeed,” Avery said, beckoning to Johanna and guiding her into her seat, his hand lingering on fabric stiffened with goldwork and his eyes taking a keen measure of the feminine flesh cradled within the emerald-green masterpiece she wore.

  With a delicate pout on her lips and a smile in her eyes, Anna shifted over one place to the right and sat down, beating Althea to her assigned place; with both Helen and Althea shifted over one, Sabine had to scramble over to the opposite side of Avery and sit to Elizabeth’s left. She stood behind the chair for a moment, hesitating. You would put me here? she sent. This as much as proclaims Elizabeth’s primacy over me.

  Last night, you claimed Johanna’s place, Avery replied. I think it is fitting that you sit in her place now.

  Sabine sat down heavily, her mind carefully blank. Once Avery’s mental touch slid away, she consoled herself by thinking privately to herself that wedged between the petite Elizabeth and the oversized Merilda, she would look all the more beautiful, a properly sized blonde woman wedged between a tiny slip of a girl and a woman taller than most men. Additionally, if Lady Maude’s expression was anything to go on, Sabine could expect some kind of apologetic recompense from the half-elven woman for her foster son’s inexplicable snub.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  And while she disliked seeing her newly wed husband carry the lush-figured Anna from the courtyard into the great hall, surely he would have found it tiring enough that he would not likewise carry Johanna through the door for their bedding ceremony.

  Elizabeth

  Sir Giles spared a curious glance at the spotted sheet still draped over the outer battlements of the tower next to the outer door into the old duke’s chamber—a lingering material witness of the fact that its resident was now the chamber of a wedded and bedded Duchess Johanna. The Northumbrian knight continued to the tower’s other outer door, once the servants’ entrance into the old duchess’s chambers. This door was of bright new wood—as the old duchess had predeceased the old duke by a century and a half, the old door had become jammed in place by disuse, the wood swollen and then partially rotted, the fittings rusted in place.

  With the shortage of able servants within the castle, Giles had done much of the work of preparing the old duchess’s chambers for use by his sister Elizabeth, at least the parts involving heavy lifting, rotted wood, and moldy tapestries. The old duchess’s wardrobe had been fully intact, its surface strangely colored and feeling like stone even as its structure showed the grains and knots of cut and carved wood. Most of the contents of the wardrobe had disintegrated at a touch, but some of the long-dead Duchess Jennifer’s clothes had been enchanted with preservation spells that left them fully intact, a bounty that Elizabeth had claimed as hers in spite of the fact that the gowns would need altering to fit her petite frame.

  The other main retained feature of the room had been a well-preserved painting on the wall, a diorama that included a large, detailed, beautiful woman in a strategically torn azure dress bound to a stake on the peak of a hill, a motley crew of assorted smaller, less important figures bearing weapons, a large, detailed, silver-skinned man closely resembling Duke Avery, and a slain dragon with vermilion scales lying at the base of the hill. The silver-skinned man had his foot on the neck of the dragon, posing triumphantly. The torn blue dress matched closely one of the intact gowns from the wardrobe, which had been a decisive factor in retaining the painting; while it did not quite depict Elizabeth and Avery, one could easily pretend it had been commissioned to represent them.

  It was with that painting in mind that Giles had picked out a silver doorknocker shaped like a dragon’s head for the new door. It was an item that Master Lew had on hand from a customer (one Edward Taylor) who had subsequently put the order on hold indefinitely, and accordingly Master Lew had been willing to let it go at little more than the value of the silver once Giles had offered the dwarven jeweler a guarantee of future custom as the heir of Northumbria. The enchantment would have been a loss anyway if it had been remade in a different pattern.

  Giles balanced the tray in one hand, grasped the dragon’s head knocker, and banged it seven times in a syncopated rhythm. Then he spoke directly at the knocking plate—once activated, the enchantment should transmit sound well through the door unless it had been disabled or muffled from the inside. “Hey, sis, I brought you breakfast. Are you awake?”

  “I wish I wasn’t.” Elizabeth’s soprano came out clearly but through the knocker. “One minute,” she added.

  Giles waited for several minutes, the tray seeming to grow heavier as he waited. Then the door swung open, his petite blonde sister standing there with a bright orange dress mostly donned.

  “Come lace me up, will you?” Elizabeth turned in place in the doorway, facing her back to her brother.

  Giles set down the tray with an exasperated sigh before stepping forward. “You didn’t have to change out of your nightgown just for breakfast,” he said as his broad fingers fiddled with the tiny little strings. “We can just eat in your chamber.”

  “No,” Elizabeth said, glancing over at the closed interior door between her room and Johanna’s. “My neighbors have been noisy this morning, I can hear them through the door.”

  Giles’s mind went back to the stained bedsheet as he finished lacing up his sister’s bodice. “Oh?”

  “Yes. Twice already since dawn, and I’ve no mind to wait and see if they’ll repeat again. The duke is still in there.” Elizabeth spun in place once, checking the fit before she shouldered past Giles and past the outer door into Johanna’s chamber. “Thank you for bringing it all the way up with you, but I would rather we ate breakfast downstairs.”

  Giles picked up the tray again. “Well, at least you know your new husband is in good working order,” he quipped nervously.

  “Every ordinary man has his limits,” Elizabeth said tartly as she started down the stairs. “I’ve talked to enough old wives to know that, and I don’t know which makes me more nervous—the possibility that he will have worn himself out on Johanna entirely, or the possibility that his inhuman heritage makes him completely and painfully insatiable. In either case, today’s date is the date scheduled for my bedding night, and I’m not pleased that it’s Johanna’s day before it becomes my night.”

  “You’ve only one in front of you and six behind,” Giles said. “I expect Sabine will feel as jealous of you tomorrow as you do of Johanna today.”

  Elizabeth stopped. “Worse,” she said. “I played a part in snubbing her at the wedding dinner. She may not have shown it, but I am sure she felt terribly hurt by the maneuver.”

  “Angry at the duke for allowing it, more like,” Giles said. “Our mother gets angry at me whenever my wife crosses her.”

  “Still, she deserves an apology. We should call on her,” Elizabeth said.

  Elizabeth hesitated, her hand lifted in a fist to knock on the door to what had once been Lady Maude’s favorite sitting room and now housed Sabine de Lancaster. Then the door silently swung open, a tall shaggy wolfhound seated watchfully on the other side. Sabine, unawares, was seated on the bench next to her harpsichord, holding up what looked to be a hand mirror—except the surface was black. Then a face suddenly appeared in the mirror—not Sabine’s face, but the face of one of Sabine’s maids, wooden rafters in the background, her lips moving.

  “Hello?” Elizabeth hesitated in the open doorway, not having been invited in.

  Sabine startled, then quickly put the mirror down face-first on the top of the harpsichord before turning. “Oh! Good morning, my fellow duchess. What brings you to my chamber?”

  “I thought perhaps you might like to breakfast together,” Elizabeth said. “If you have not already?”

  “No, not yet—I wanted fresh mint from down in the bailey. A servant should be up with that and food shortly. But not enough for the hound that’s followed you in.” Sabine frowned. “There wasn’t one earlier.”

  “But…” Elizabeth stepped into the room and suddenly hesitated, her brother bumping into her from behind. It was clear to her that Sabine was in a fragile mental state, with some difficulties connecting to reality. “Giles, see the hound out, would you?”

  Giles looked down at the hound. The hound looked back up at him, mouth open in a friendly toothy sort of expression. Balancing the tray in one hand, he picked up a sausage, and the hound sat, watching eagerly; then Giles tossed the sausage down the hallway.

  The hound sat patiently.

  “Two, but that’s my final offer,” Giles said. He set down the tray on a table and picked up a second sausage, holding it in the air.

  The hound padded out of the doorway in a dignified fashion, then sat on the opposite side of the threshold.

  Giles tossed the second sausage and closed the door. Moments later, there was a knock on the door, and Giles pulled it open. A maidservant carrying a basket with a hand mirror tucked into an apron pocket bustled into the room.

  “Milady, I seed you the whole time, but—”

  “Quiet,” Sabine said sharply, looking away from the woman. “Breakfast shall be laid out and arranged for the three of us around the chess table. Unless Sir Giles has business elsewhere?”

  “I hope not,” Elizabeth said. “For the other night, I wanted to apologize. It wasn’t kind.”

  Sabine smiled wryly. “You did think it was right, though, didn’t you?”

  “It was, well, the romance of it.” Elizabeth sighed as one of Sabine’s maidservants set a plate in front of her. “I wasn’t meaning to put you down.”

  “You did,” Sabine said. She produced a fork with a flourish, then speared a mushroom and a sausage, sighing with satisfaction. “If you can help me convince the duke to adopt the use of forks at his table—now that Lady Maude isn’t in charge of house etiquette—I will consider forgiving you the insult.”

  “Are you serious?” Elizabeth eyed the taller blonde incredulously.

  “I will have to forgive you in any event,” Sabine said. “You saved me from the worse spectacle of the duke putting me in my place. Did he ask you to do it?”

  “Of course not,” Elizabeth said. “You were right there—you would have heard him.”

  “Not if he spoke directly into your mind,” Sabine said. “I know you didn’t believe me when I told you before, but surely he has shown you his talent by now.”

  Elizabeth’s mind skittered over the kiss she had shared with Avery in the wedding ceremony, when she thought she had heard Avery’s voice while still kissing him. Rationally, the memory of the kiss was simply so strong it had seemed to linger longer than it had, Avery breathing the words to her softly while she was still reeling from the unfamiliar sensation, drunk on his scent. “No,” she said. “Not that again. Giles, please tell her that there is no such thing as speaking mind-to-mind.”

  “I’m no wizard,” Giles protested through a mouthful of beans, his hand hastily rising to cover his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, and continued. “I know that you’re a skilled wizard—I know better than to put myself in the position of second-guessing an expert in his domain. Um. Her domain, I mean, sorry.”

  “It’s not wizardry,” Sabine said. “If it were, I would understand it better. No. It’s something else, something unnatural.”

  “Oh.” Giles glanced over at Elizabeth, winking with the eye that Sabine couldn’t see before he continued in a loud reassuring voice. “Yes, you’re surely right about that. Anyway, I’m just glad you aren’t upset at my little sister for her kindness to Johanna last night.”

  “I certainly was upset,” Sabine said. “However, only one bride could be Avery’s first—and that most matter is already settled.”

  Nine Nights is complete, Book 3 of Accidental War Mage goes to active consistent writing and a properly-sized sequel to The Duke's Decision goes on deck. Which means I should start outlining it very soon. I'm curious what you want to see more of in Book 2, so I'm posting a poll.

  Amazon (eBook exclusive, including Kindle Unlimited), (audiobook exclusive), and paperback . Yes, even your , perhaps even your friendly local game store if they double as a bookshop.

  Jay Aaseng. It follows Mikolai, a Ruthenian mechanic of no special importance or unusual talents of any remarkable sort as he dons a borrowed dress uniform & winds up on a journey that will take him far outside of Ruthenia to Wallachia and beyond the reach of the Golden Empire, accompanied by various other persons, such as his sticky-fingered friend Vitold, a dog who isn't especially talkative, a lovely red-headed woman with particularly good aim, and an alleged illusionist who seems only capable of modest sleight-of-hand tricks.

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