The Pre-Nuptial Agreement
"Be still sad heart and cease repining;
Behind the clouds the sun is shining" – Longfellow
Ermelian sat alone in the lady's domain: a silver backed hairbrush and a polished hand mirror set down amongst the clutter of perfumes and face paints on her dressing table. The last cluttered space in a boxed away room. She's finished braiding her hair for bed now and yet she continues smearing the maquillage across her face: thick, red lines smudging her lips, eye shadow in blue on the left and green on the right and tracks of charcoal dripping down her cheeks.
Outside it's raining again, the sound muffling her snuffles from the lady's maids still busy in the hall. So Ermelian is free to remember Cleon's proposal. His eyes slowly taking in her small figure, glancing over her sweet face and somehow finding it wanting. Perhaps he could see through her practiced charade. Gods knew she saw through his crude attempt at sincerity, saw the girl he wished she was and the life he kept dreaming of. Saw a letter, penned neatly on thick velum by the shaking hands of his elderly mother, had destroyed him inside.
Two naïve hearts violated by a marriage of convenience.
But it is clear, even through Ermelian's bloodshot eyes, Cleon is not ashamed of his grief. He flaunts it. His mother has not humiliated him by dragging him out of the court eye to be holed away on a backward estate in the lowlands while it rains. His romance is over but that is all he has lost. It's just love. No talk of honour defiled, a family ruined, of dirt and sin.
Ermelian's tears fell thick as her mother raged – pulled her own hair from it's roots and sent spittle flying as she screamed – and her father refused to see her. Until she fell on the floor, sent down by remorse and shame.
"Shush, my darling," Her mother had cooed then, "It can be fixed, possum, it can be hidden." She patted Ermelian's head and dried her cheeks, "My girl has such a pretty face, so young.
"You were always meant for Cleon: such a nice boy and with Celina running about with a sword, in breeches, with the Queen's Ladies they're hardly going to be finicky about these kinds of things. It'll all be swept under the rug. It will all be forgotten, my darling baby." She said.
Her mother promised and so it came to be. Ermelian threw herself onto her childhood bed, too short now and narrower than the lady's bed she had kept at the palace. But comfortable, like the smell of hot toast, the feel of her favourite teddy's matted fur and all the simplicity of innocence. A woman, she had thrown innocence from herself in rage and passion and so now she would be torn from simplicity, her last night in her nursery bedroom.
What was Cleon's bed like? Long probably, for he was tall and would want to protect his feet from the draft in Castle Kennan, all that stone and there was always a draft, hopefully soft. And smelling like a man.
Had Cleon taken his love to that bed? Ermelian didn't know. Led her in there slowly, leaving the door ajar slightly to assure her it was fine to be alone together. The pair drawing close together as he strummed a dulcimer and whispered sweet ballads in her ears, taking her hands and teaching her to pluck the strings, his arm around her waist now. Setting the instrument aside to hold her closer, kissing her neck and singing sweetly that he loved her. Pulling his tunic off with ease and tugging gracefully on the ribbons of her corset, all skill and practiced finesse. Hands everywhere making breath come quick and chests heave. Moans and kisses and whimpers.
And suddenly it's not Cleon she's imagining. It's Arran's floppy brown hair, his slant pale body and courtier's foppish clothes and silken tongue. Always murmuring honeyed words that came to nothing when she needed solid promises and loving vows fulfilled.
Ermelian knows Cleon would not woo a lady with cunning words and calculated manoeuvres. He's all muscle bound valour and steadfast virtue and unruly red curls. He's stiff with her still, as they meet to finalise wedding plans like guest lists and the removal of all Ermelian's belongings to a bedroom she has never seen. Yet sometimes, the light takes his eye.
When they had fist begun their meetings, just days after the proposal, "If this wedding did not have to be so soon, if it were not so contrived, who would you be inviting?" Ermelian's voice takes on that trained lilt that made her the belle of her debutante year.
"My page friends, I suppose, Sir Inness of course, some of the men I met up north last year. Just some of the blokes still tied up at the moment. I might consider crossing my sister off the list…"
Ermelian giggles perfectly, "And your best man?"
"Neal." Cleon pauses and then realises that Ermelian was looking for more than a name, she'd probably never even met Neal, "Sir Nealan, I should say now, was a page a couple of years below me, but he started old. He was good to talk to, with father gone, um, he was good to talk to." Cleon coloured slightly and Ermelian enjoyed watching him blush, knowing for just a moment his guard had faltered. And Ermelian felt she could fairly well fill in the rest of that sentence.
They had laughed sometimes, too, and that gave Ermelian the most hope. There was no honourable way out of this marriage for her. Her family would save Kennan but Cleon was her personal saviour. The most innocuous things – overhearing the cook's bawdy jokes as they sat at the back of the kitchen, at the practical jokes of the young guardsmen of Kennan, often with her nephews.
'He'd be a good father.' The thought flits into Ermelian's head gently, slowly, just brushing it's wings against her consciousness. But the children she imagines for him have nothing of herself – they are miniature redheaded, rosy cheeked giants; boys playing at heroic battle and tall, confident girls who know their duty to their family and the realm. Cleon would not approve of the mouse-ish child she had been or the flighty lady she had become. He was not tempted by her girlish giggles, did not understand the subtle, suggestive gestures of the fan or appreciate her small waist. Ermelian had no doubts she was pretty. A success story of the convent. But she feared she was not matched to Cleon. This marriage would fail.
Ermelian slept fitfully that night, the eve of her wedding, on the cusp of a new adult life. The last night of childhood.