The Spare Princess
Chapter Three: The Unexpected Champion
Their wedding was magnificent, the like of which had perhaps never been seen. The Prince ballroom was turned out in silver and pale green, the meal lavish, the music ensemble in the corner nearly an orchestra, the flower arrangements beyond imagination. It was beautiful, utterly fitting of a most beloved and cherished daughter to a noble and deserving man.
It felt like some cruel, ugly joke being played. From the wicked grin on Everard Prince's face, that was exactly as it was intended, though for whom, Walden wasn't entirely sure. He rather thought, though, that he was the butt of the joke; the groom was, in Walden's opinion, enough of a humiliation for Evangeline, and he came quite inexpensively.
Evangeline walked down the aisle, shoulders curled in under the too-wide grins of her family, her face held for forward and her eyes unseeing as she walked the long aisle flanked by a dozen faces lit in mean-spirited glee. She looked porcelain in her pearl-white gown; breakable beautiful, a statuette on his great-aunt's mantle that he wasn't to touch with his rough, clumsy-strong hands. Elliot walked her down, his gaze locked on Walden the entire length of the long silver carpet. Utter loathing was not quite strong enough a word for the hatred Evangeline's father conveyed in his eyes. It was the look of a man who would, without much of a thought—before or after—kill him unpleasantly, if he did not fear the consequences so greatly.
The consequences sat in one of the front seats, looking for the entire world like a proud patriarch. It didn't take much looking, though, to find the spiteful turn to Everard's smile and the devious glint in his sharp black eyes. People called Walden a monster, with his bulk and his axe and his taste for excessive bloodshed in the line of duty, but another sort of devil—a subtler, crueler sort—sat on Everard Prince's shoulder; torturing animals was one thing, torturing your own kin, your own blood was quite another, as far as Walden Macnair was concerned. What good was pure blood if you weren't loyal to it?
Walden stood before this great, cold assembly, in the only robes he'd ever worn that weren't too tight across the shoulders, weren't too short in the hem, and tried to look just as cold and proud as those who watched. He was a pig in a bowtie, paraded for their amusement, but he didn't have to dance.
Elliot's hand was like an icy rock as it found his, guiding it to join Evangeline's with none of the hesitation Walden knew the man was feeling.
Then the man was gone, leaving only Evangeline there beside him, her tiny white hand in his axe-callused ones and the official speaking some disgustingly ironic drivel about love and commitment with his mouth written into an equally ironic line.
Evangeline's eyes were nailed down to the floor. His fingers surreptitiously found her wrist; her heartbeat was fluttering. She had lain calm in this trap, helpless but hopeful; now the hunter came, the end was inevitable, and she flailed silently, frightened and doomed. A vixen with her foot in a trap, and he was the hunter come to claim an ill-won prize.
Her vows were not hesitant. They were spoken in the same steeled voice as she had used that day to bring up the simple subject of their impending marriage. He felt strangely proud of her. His, too, were spoken in as stern and serious a voice as he could manage, his accent burring deeply where Evangeline's soft English accent had slid around the words.
The 'kiss the bride' almost froze him, though. It was only by Evangeline's doing that they were spared an embarrassing hesitation. Her hands did not shake as she reached them up to his jaw, tilting her beautiful diamond face up as her hands gently guided his face down to hers. It probably looked like a very sweet, loving, appropriate kiss. It felt like nothing; Walden liked teeth and pressure, liked little grasping hands pulling at his hair and demanding, he liked things that almost hurt, liked hurting in return. Evangeline might as well have blown a puff of air across his lips for as much as he enjoyed kissing her. But it looked like everything it was supposed to be, and he appreciated the gesture for that.
The cruel joke continued on in the smiles of her family (and her family's friends) as they greeted the guests at the reception. Some held pity in their eyes when they looked at poor, delicate Evangeline and the handsome, rough behemoth that towered next to her, but most just had a sort of malicious amusement in their smoothly delivered congratulations. The compliments on the beautiful bride and the handsome groom seemed somehow backhanded, and there was a certain superiority in their congratulations to him, especially. Congratulations, they seemed to say, you'll find the catch in this bargain soon enough—because there's always a catch, didn't you know. Enjoy what you can, while you can.
Evangeline didn't say much through dinner, and only looked up to meet his eyes a few times. She didn't eat much either; merely picked around her plate with her fork when she needed something to do.
They danced once at their wedding, the traditional opening to the festivities. Evangeline struggled through, her breathing getting labored as the steps added up, and Walden's hand on her waist grew more and more supportive. Hawk eyes surrounded them, waiting with bated breath for Evangeline to make a misstep.
She didn't. She managed through and even managed to reach up at the end and pull down his face for a chaste kiss on the cheek, a flourish at the end of their performance. Her smile was a little wan as they returned to their seats.
A few of her relatives came to ask Walden's permission to dance with his bride. The appropriate answer—'of course'—stalled in his mouth when he looked at the way Evangeline's already-tired face fell, the way the predatory, cruel smiles spread across the men's faces as the music struck up fast. There was no shortage of spite in this family, it seemed; the Princes seemed to subsist on it.
His usually slow temper took hold and sudden, raging, possessive anger boiled through him. Here they stood, at his wedding, seeking to humiliate his wife. Evangeline, for all her weaknesses and failings, was his wife now, and no pampered, useless relative of hers was going to make a mockery of her now. What was his was precious, and Evangeline was the greatest, the most valuable of his possessions.
"No," was his short, rude reply to their politely phrased requests. "I'll be keeping my wife right here where she belongs." They seemed taken aback at his impolitic behavior, their smarmy grins wiped off their faces in surprise, but none had the nerve to press further—Walden's impressive size was good for something.
Evangeline's hand found his under the table. Though she did not look up at him, her fingers wove themselves through his and squeezed lightly in gratitude. Walden pulled her hand out from under the table and kissed her knuckles. Her eyes flew over to him, her attention captured.
Evangeline smiled beautifully at her unexpected champion, the first expression on her face that was genuine; not polite or expected or choreographed. It looked like some grand accidental victory Walden had stumbled upon with his simple, selfishly motivated gesture. Her happiness was dazzling.
And then Everard breezed up, his cat-eyed wife on his arm. "Ah, the happy couple. Evangeline, dear, won't you thank me for finding you such a wonderful husband? So attentive, everyone's abuzz! Won't even let you out of his sight for a dance or two."
Evangeline smiled, a veneer of placid, long-practiced politeness that crystallized the warm grin she'd graced Walden with. "Grandfather, I am very grateful. This wedding is a dream, truly." She was the picture of deference, but her hand—still wrapped in Walden's under the table—tightened in some unidentifiable emotion, strong but near perfectly veiled.
They didn't stay long at the reception held in their 'honor'. There was nothing really there for them; catty cousins offered Evangeline congratulations that sounded more like smug condolences and more loyal friends filed by in various states of distress and dismay, and Walden heard a hundred sly, thinly veiled references to Evangeline's "fragile" state. The only ones with anything kind to say at all were the few friends she had in attendance; Regina McMillan, a plain friendly girl who, though visibly distressed in Walden's presence, managed to put on the friendliest smile Walden had seen all night as she offered very sincere hopes for their future happiness; Evangeline's elder sister Emmeline too, the newly married Mrs. Vance, had similar wishes.
There was a sad softening of Evangeline's face as she watched her elder sister walk off with a wave and a pitiful smile, across the ballroom to meet her husband. Emmeline and Richard Vance were obviously in love, had been on their own wedding day, that silver-and-black affair where Walden had first heard Evangeline's name. Resigned, hopeless, half-hearted jealousy was written across Evangeline's face as she sat next to her new husband.
A name surfaced like driftwood in his mind; he wondered if that Abbott man who'd offered for Evangeline's hand and been refused was on her mind right then, if he was the light of the quiet regret in her dark eyes.
At a quarter past eleven, Walden carefully broached the subject of retiring. Evangeline, having just been accosted by a near-tearful friend of hers who'd barely managed to wish them happiness, seemed only too eager to escape from this nightmare parody of a wedding.
Walden had only his small, ocean-beaten home on the cliffs to bring Evangeline home to. It seemed symbolic, that strange dichotomy of the palatial ballroom of her grandfather's manor to the warm, lived-in kitchen he Apparated into, Evangeline's arms securely wrapped around him for the Side-Along.
From the joy that shone on her face, though, he might have brought her to the grandest palace instead of his shabby little house in the empty, cold north of Scotland. Only after she'd gone through two of the cupboards did she remember herself and look back for permission, an embarrassed look on her thin face.
He laughed, the sound a little forced. "Go on ahead, it's all yours now, too." She grinned at him and turned back around to poke through the kitchen.
"I've never had anything be really mine," she said quietly, leaning over the sink to look out the window over it, her feet drifting off the ground as she put her weight on the counter. Looking at her, the sentiment echoed in his head. He'd never had anything worth having until Everard tossed her down like a unworthy scrap to a faithful dog.
She looked terribly out of place there; the wrought-silver band, inlaid with diamonds and pearls, she wore in her dark hair was probably worth more than the house itself, maybe even more than the land it sat on, to say nothing of the rest of her jewelry. Her wedding dress was pearlescent, shimmering white amid the battered wood of the cupboards and floor. She was the grand centerpiece of everything he had ever achieved, the pristine pureblood princess who was no longer out of his reach.
Walden Macnair was in the habit of taking what he wanted, and none too gently. But he would be careful with her, he swore to himself as he reached out to brush the fabric of her sleeve, leaned down to press his face into her hair. This was no girl off the street to be treated as he saw fit, this was another creature altogether; his wife. She stiffened, curled her shoulders down in not-quite-surprise but managed to soften herself out of the unwilling rigidity as Walden's hand curled around her hip, crushing and snagging the delicate silk of her dress with his work-roughened hands. Evangeline seemed to know perfectly well what was expected of her and went limp, falling back against him obediently.
"Is the sea truly so beautiful from your bedroom window?" she asked quietly as he pulled the sleek dark hair away from her neck. Her pulse hummed under his mouth where he kissed her throat, panic beating against her obedient shell.
"Not so beautiful as you," he breathed into her ear. "Would you like to see?" She shuddered, a pause before nodding.
And, christ, was she beautiful. She was his great aunt's precious porcelain statuettes made flesh and pressed into his clumsy hands. Evangeline was nothing he was ever intended to touch, just to look at and admire, because she was meant to do nothing but be beautiful and someday break.
But she was his now, and Walden knew how to treat valuable things.
He took her words for what they were: acceptance, permission, surrender. She was light as a china doll in his arms and he would try not to break this toy because he knew he would never ever have another like her and, worse, he knew that was exactly what they all expected him to do.
While going about the first attempted posting of this a few hours ago, my computer froze for the first time ever. James is now (I fear terminally) ill and unable to connect to the internet or run for more than fifteen minutes without freezing up. For the full and tragic story, see my profile. This is probably going to mess with my writing and posting schedule. We'll see how things pan out.
Please review. The lack of response to LiBaW is disappointing--I'm worried that it is disappointing--but I'm hoping that's just because there wasn't much action in the first chapter.