keylimecliche decided to challenge me with a request for one-sided Jane/Cuthbert.
Four years is a considerable age gap when one party is eight and the other twelve. It is somewhat less insurmountable when one is eighteen and the other twenty-two. It is nothing at all when one is twenty-four and the other twenty-eight.
No, the difference in age was not what kept them apart. Other things did, certainly. His station in life, and hers. His duty, and hers. The importance of him marrying well, and the inconsequence of her marrying at all.
His lack of feelings for her.
Jane could not place the moment when it all began. When her straight-forward plans in life wobbled off their course, slowly at first, until suddenly they were careening wildly downhill with no means of correction, no method of arresting the momentum.
No, Jane was volunteering for royal guard duty and throne room service long before she realised, and by then the damage was done. No matter how many nights she spent laying awake, examining the workings of her own mind, the conclusion drawn was always the same.
She loved Prince Cuthbert.
It was a painful realisation, one that filled her with disbelief.
How could this be? How had he worked his way into her affections, so duplicitously, so effortlessly, so . . . unintentionally.
He was not a handsome man. Jane could not say that she had been swayed by his looks, caught off-guard by a miraculous post-pubescent blossoming. He was still too red, too pimply, too awkward.
He was not generous. A life spent watching his father haemorrhaging resources like a wounded beast at the end of a hunt had made him tight-fisted, over-correcting for the king's generosity by reacting with scorn towards anyone asking for help.
He was not fair. He still envied his younger sister whenever their parents showed her any kindness or affection, still deflected the blame for his mistakes onto others.
He was not brave. Many a time Jane had shielded him from imagined danger while he cowered on the floor. The fateful day she had rescued him from Dragon had simply been the first of many that she would come to his aid, and he resented her for all of them.
Oh yes, he resented her. Jane was under no illusion that he felt any kindness towards her. If he saw her as a woman at all it was not as one worthy of his notice, only his contempt.
Which made the erratic beating of her heart whenever he drew near an even greater mystery.
There was no sense in making any effort with her appearance, no point at all in patting down her hair or tugging at her tunic before entering his presence. And yet she found herself doing so each time, as though she would somehow catch his notice that day when she never had before.
Cuthbert would have his choice of beautiful, accomplished, delicate women, and had in fact already rejected two princesses as not being 'good enough' for him.
If her fellow knights noticed her preoccupation with her looks around the Prince they remained silent, although Jane suspected that they would never imagine her harbouring such feelings.
Not for the prince who snorted when he laughed and sneered at Jane for doing the same. Not for the prince who insisted on addressing everyone by occupation rather than name. Not for the prince who had, in his late teens, gone through a phase of calling her it.
Yet there she was, helplessly, hopelessly in love. With that prince.
It was humiliating, to say the least. She could do well enough, if she had the inclination. Several young men had approached her over the years, and some did not even object to her choice of profession.
But no. Jane had eyes only for the prince, as much as admitting it made her want to pluck said eyes from her own head.
It was not that he was entirely without redeeming qualities. In her defence he could be a decent person when he chose to be.
The castle was filled with cats now. There was often one settled upon his lap whenever he sat down. They twined around his feet wherever he walked, meowing loudly over his conversations to demand the food from his plate or a scratch behind the ears. He knew them all by name and never, ever lost his patience with them.
In fact, Jane had never seen him show anything but kindness to any animal since the long ago incident with Smithy's Pig.
He was protective of Lavinia, in his own way. When their parents first raised the subject of marrying her off to a neighbouring prince, Cuthbert had protested as loudly as his sister, insisting that she was too young, and not at all ready.
He was not entirely unsympathetic towards the plights of others. Although he curled his lip whenever a farmer or businessman came seeking financial aid, Jane had spied him on more than one occasion slipping a coin into the hand of a hungry child or destitute mother. It had surprised her, the first time, until she remembered how much he hated to see suffering. It seemed he felt even the commonest of people deserved better.
He was desperately insecure, far more aware of his own shortcomings than Jane would ever have given him credit for. He had been well in his cups one night when he had let it slip. They had been alone at the time and he had confided in her, slurring so drunkenly that it had taken Jane several moments to process his words.
He knew he was not handsome, or brave; that he was jealous and selfish. That no princess would find happiness with him, nor could he ever deserve one. He was desperately afraid of failing as king, convinced his people would hate him, if they didn't already.
It was a knife in Jane's heart, hearing him speak so badly of himself. If there was one thing Jane had always had on her side it was confidence, the belief in her own abilities.
She had done her best to restore Cuthbert's confidence, lowering her guard at the risk of revealing her own feelings as she told him all that she admired in him.
There was no way of telling how much, if anything, he remembered the next day. By the time she had escorted him to his chambers and handed him over to the care of his servant he had scarcely been concious. But it seemed to Jane in the days and weeks following that he was just a little kinder, a little more polite, and perhaps even a little more patient with her.
She did her best to quash the fragile hope that bloomed in her chest, reminding herself that she was the opposite of everything he desired, and that he was so far from her reach that he might as well have been the moon.
But she never quite got past the stabbing pain in her heart when he smiled in her direction, never stopped delighting in the sound of his laugh, never ceased to enjoy his excitement when he found a new litter of kittens.
Because Jane loved Prince Cuthbert, she was his most loyal knight, and she could never quite convince herself that it was an entirely bad thing.