She's always loved violets. Isabel prefers the ostentatious displays of orange blossom and lilies, but there is something about the way the velvet-purple faces of curious violet-flowers peep above the coarse grass that has appealed to her ever since she was a young child playing about the gardens at Middleham.

There's something fitting about the way she's wearing them today, braided through her hair like a crown as Richard leads her before the altar, as they kneel before the priest to say their vows. His hand is warm in hers as he slips the cool circlet of gold over her ring finger, his grey-blue eyes catching and holding hers tightly. The love in his expression makes her breath rise unsteadily in her throat, because it is finally happening, they are finally married after years of being denied by the schemes of her father.

It is only later, lying together in their marriage bed as he picks them idly out of her tumbling copper-brown locks that she says, "My mother did say that violets were for faithfulness."

The corners of Richard's mouth quirked up. "You could not have chosen better, ma belle."

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