Royal Bridesmaids Read online

  As the royal guards poled her gondola through the lazy waters of the canal, she imprinted the sights of buildings and bridges on her mind, saying a particularly woeful farewell in her heart to the great University as they floated past. She was to have begun her classes in the autumn, but it seemed her country needed her to serve another role. She hung her head with a pang.

  But if Papa was willing to give up a leg and an eye for Saardova, this was the least that she could do.

  When her gondola drifted up to the restricted landing behind the royal palazzo, she found the entire wedding caravan gathered there. Everyone who would be traveling to Rydalburg had assembled. The camels were laden with luggage. The royal guards’ Arabian horses pranced in place and tossed their long manes, as if the morning air made them eager to be under way. At least today they wouldn’t be charging into a battle, she thought wryly.

  Near the brightly adorned royal elephant she saw Giulietta surrounded by ambassadors and dignitaries, her royal mother weeping by her side.

  Minerva braced herself to join the fray.

  But then, a familiar face emerged from the crowd: Crown Prince Orsino, Giulietta’s elder brother, abandoned the throng of well-wishers and came to hand Minerva up from her boat.

  Black-haired and fiery-eyed, the Prince of Saardova was the object of countless ladies’ dreams, but privately, Minerva found him a bit of a headache with his touchy pride, his moods—and his wandering hands.

  Saardovan men were known for their passionate nature, which was probably half the reason they went to war with their northern neighbors once a decade.

  Certainly it was why they insisted on taking several wives—at least the nobles. They had, they claimed, needs too powerful for any one woman to satisfy.

  To Minerva, this backward and degrading practice, this excuse for lewd selfishness, was the reason she had privately made up her mind not to marry. One wife, one husband was quite sufficient.

  At least the Rydalburgers had that much right.

  Perhaps it was just as well that she was moving away, she thought as Orsino steadied her on solid ground. She suspected that the prince had it in the back of his mind to propose to her one day, and if he did, she did not see how she could get out of it.

  He flashed a white-toothed smile. “My lady Minerva.” He kissed her hand before escorting her toward his sister. “It’s not going to be the same around here with you girls gone,” he said with a sigh. “Who will I get to tease?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you will find someone,” she said wryly.

  He stopped and turned to her with the morning sunlight dancing in his black, tousled curls. “You will look after her, won’t you? I know I’ve always been a beastly brother, but I do care about my little sister.”

  “Of course, Your Highness,” she said fondly in spite of herself.

  His gaze caressed her. “You put my mind at ease,” he replied in his effortlessly beguiling tone. “We all feel better knowing the brat will have you with her. Voice of reason whispering in her ear.”

  “Are you sure you won’t come to the wedding, Your Highness?” she asked, changing the subject. “It would mean so much to your sister—”

  “No.” He held up his hand and looked away with a blaze of anger registering in his midnight eyes. “I cannot. Do not ask it of me. If this alliance spares our people, then so be it. But you must excuse me if I cannot bear to stand by and watch my baby sister married off to my mortal enemy.”

  “I understand. Be well, Your Highness.” She curtsied and took leave of the prince, rejoining her royal mistress.

  The eighteen-year-old Giulietta finished her tearful goodbyes to her parents and her brother, then she and Minerva and the other ladies-in-waiting climbed up the dainty little ladder into the howdah perched atop the royal elephant’s back.

  With that, the wedding caravan set out: camels, wagons, horses, all. Gaily festooned as they all were, Giulietta held back her tears as they rode through the streets of Saardova.

  She waved gracefully and with great drama to her people. The citizens, half cheering, half weeping for her, threw flower petals in the air and thanked her for how she was about to sacrifice herself to the barbarian prince.

  In the distance Minerva could see the cobalt waters of the Mediterranean, the white sails of colorful fishing boats and the mighty war vessels that had done her homeland no good whatsoever against an inland foe.

  Ah, well.

  They rode in silence for some time after they had cleared the city and set out across the plain that had been the battlefield. It was quiet now, but grave markers here and there studded the fields where the fallen from both sides had been buried.

  The princess leaned on the edge of the howdah and gazed off into the distance. “It’s so unfair. I’ll never again stand out on my balcony and watch the sunset gild the waves and turn the gardens pink.” She turned to Minerva, pouting as only a princess could pout. “Why would he not come to Saardova?”

  She shrugged. “He can do whatever he wants. He won. We lost.”

  “And I am to be the virgin sacrifice to the barbarian for this treaty’s sake?” she asked bitterly, gazing homeward again. “Doesn’t anyone care what I want?”

  “They say he is handsome.”

  “Big, blond, blue-eyed. Aren’t they all? I can’t even tell them apart. He doesn’t have a soul. None of them do. None of them have any feelings!”

  “Come now, dearest. Our views of them are probably as inaccurate as their beliefs about us. This is a chance for both sides to learn the truth about each other. You’ll be starting a whole new chapter in Saardovan history.”

  “Pfft,” she said.

  Minerva laughed. The other ladies-in-waiting smiled uneasily, slowly getting over their fear as she made light of it.

  “Try to think of it as an adventure,” she said for all their sakes. “And don’t forget, Your Highness, those mountains over which you will be queen are packed with jewels.”

  Giulietta sent her a sideways smile. “You always know just what to say to me.”

  Soon the road climbed from the fertile lowlands of Saardova toward the mountain kingdom of their enemies. Great peaks loomed in the distance; around them, the colors changed from vibrant summer jewel tones to the dreamy watercolors seen in spring. Likewise, the temperature dropped by several degrees, and the ladies began to shiver in their delicate, flowing silks.

  At the border, they were met by an elite contingent of Horse Danes, sent to escort them the rest of the way to Rydalburg. The Horse Dane cavalry officers wore smartly tailored indigo uniforms with gold epaulets and shiny gold buttons down their chests, red plumes on their gleaming helmets. They rode in perfect, precise formation—and Giulietta was right. None of their square, pale faces showed the slightest degree of emotion. They informed the wedding caravan that the journey was but three more hours.

  Right on schedule (the northerners were always prompt, she’d heard), the caravan approached the walled castle-town of Rydalburg.

  The ladies stared in openmouthed amazement at the white castle with its tall, fairy-tale spires.

  The prince’s home was nothing like the sumptuous palazzos of the lowlands, full of striped-marble columns and ogee-windows.

  Its soaring lines and steep angles took Minerva’s breath away, the turrets like the tips of lances thrusting at the pale Alpine sky.

  They were received right away upon their arrival. The Saardovan ambassador hurried ahead of the princess and her retinue to announce Her Royal Highness to Their Majesties.

  Arrayed across the dais at the far end of the great hall, waiting for them, stood the royal family of Rydalburg. King Hakon and Queen Ingmar greeted them. Princess Katarina curtsied.

  Giulietta curtsied back. The two princesses looked about the same age, but were opposites in appearance. Not much could be seen of her behind her veil, but Minerva knew Giulietta’s complexion was tanned, her brown hair filled with golden streaks from the sun; her dark, thick eyebrows expressed e
very shade of emotion she felt.

  Princess Katarina’s emotions were concealed behind a serene smile on her lips and the perfect curtain wall behind her pale blue eyes. Minerva sensed the steel in her and knew at once this girl was a great deal stronger than her delicate appearance would suggest. Katarina had the porcelain complexion of all the northern ladies; her silvery-blond hair was pulled back in a sleek bun like her mother’s. Both women wore high-necked, long-sleeved gowns of somber, dark-toned velvet. Minerva was rather awed by their air of dignity.

  But as hard as she was trying not to look him, inevitably, her gaze wandered over to the fourth member of the royal family present: the Crown Prince, Tor of Rydalburg.

  Her heart beat a trifle faster as she tried to assess him with a purely scientific eye. The broad-shouldered specimen stood well over six feet tall, towering over mere mortals like some rugged mountain rock formation. What on earth were they feeding these northern brutes to make them grow so strong and tall?

  He had long golden hair that flowed back from his hard, square face like a lion’s mane. His eyes were an interesting shade of stormy blue, but much too serious, of course. His nose was too big, his jawline too hard.

  But his lips, well, she supposed she could find no flaw with his lips. They were nicely sculpted enough to cause an alarming stir in her spicy Saardovan blood.

  Minerva tamped down the ridiculous reaction with an inward hiss at herself.

  For one thing, he was about to marry her best friend. For another, he had cut off her father’s leg.

  And for a third, he had ruined her plans for an education, thanks to the bullying demands in his treaty.

  She’d never trust him. She’d never like him. And she’d certainly never admit to finding him attractive. She was glad it was Giulietta marrying him, not her.

  Yet, to be sure, there was nothing like him in Saardova.

  Unless you counted the heroic marble nudes that graced the statuary niches in the piazzas and fountains back home.

  His formidable physique was clearly made for warfare. But she refused to take any notice of his physical perfection. Under that polished gleam and impeccably tailored dark blue uniform coat, the man was still a Viking-bred barbarian.

  Poor Giulietta.

  Her Highness seemed nonplused. Giulietta offered her betrothed a begrudging curtsy; Minerva and the rest of ladies-in-waiting followed suit.

  They kept their heads down and stayed silent. All the girls remained veiled, of course.

  “Your Highness, I bid you welcome to our home,” Prince Tor announced in clipped tones formal enough to match his ramrod, military posture. “Thank you for agreeing to our treaty. I look forward to familiarizing you with your new people and your new home once the marriage has been settled.”

  What poetry! Minerva mentally scoffed. Well done. You really know how to sweep a lady off her feet. Did you practice that little speech for long? Or did your advisers write it for you?

  “My thanks for your mercy on our people,” Giulietta replied, just as STET the ambassador had instructed, except that her tone bristled with haughtiness.

  Tor’s eyebrow lifted.

  Minerva caught the glint of cynical amusement in his eyes when he looked at his spoiled bride-to-be.

  He smiled at Giulietta with cool, knowing indulgence.

  It was then Minerva realized rather uneasily that this warlord was a man of serious intelligence and exquisite self-control. She remembered her father’s warning. Prince Tor had the chance to kill me when I was on the ground; he did not. Remember that. Maybe Papa was right.

  Tor could have smashed Saardova into ruins but had chosen not to—and yet, here was the princess whose city and clan he had spared, treating him like some muddy farmhand.

  Here was a man, she got the feeling, who was not going to be blinded by Giulietta’s beauty once he saw just how beautiful she was beneath that veil.

  Minerva glanced over at her friend, suddenly wondering if this was the perfect man for Giulietta, after all. One look at that hard face made it clear he was not going to put up with any nonsense. The royal brat may have just met her match. And from the look of things, she didn’t like it.

  “Well, that wasn’t as awful as I’d expected,” Tor said that night to his closest friend and fellow soldier, Rolf, after the first meeting with his exotic bride and her people in the great hall. “I’d say it all went smoothly enough.”

  “Yes, but what does she look like under that veil?” Rolf retorted as he poured them both a draught of vodka. “Wouldn’t show her face, I hear. That can’t be a good sign.”

  Tor smirked at him. “That’s just their custom. An unmarried young lady of high birth does not appear unveiled to any male outside her own family.”

  “Wonder why!”

  “Apparently, it’s to avoid tempting the lusts of Saardovan men.”

  “Ah, they wouldn’t be able to control themselves?” Rolf drawled in amusement.

  “Apparently not.”

  “Well, I hope that’s all it is and that your bride doesn’t look like a monkey under those seductive, shimmering veils.”

  He clinked glasses with him ruefully. “I’ll find out soon enough.”

  That night in the opulent apartments assigned to the princess and her ladies, everyone was tired from the long day’s journey. Fatigue had done nothing to dispose Giulietta to embrace her fate. If anything, it had only made it worse. “I hate it here. He’s terrifying.”

  “You did not think him beautiful?” one of the other ladies whispered.

  Giulietta fixed her with a quelling stare. She dropped her gaze and mumbled an apology.

  Minerva did her best to soothe her fretful mistress, sitting down beside her a little apart from the others and offering a sisterly hug. “It’s going to be all right,” she assured the younger girl. “He will give you strong, healthy children. At least there can be no question of that.”

  She scoffed with a look of disgust. “I don’t want that beast to touch me. Who does he think he is?”

  Minerva strove for patience, she knew better than to try to speak to her of duty. “You’ll get used to him before long. I’m sure he has a good side. You just have to find it. Be patient. One day at a time.”

  Giulietta frowned.

  “Try to smile, dearest,” she cajoled her. “Tomorrow is your wedding day!”

  Giulietta shrugged Minerva’s hand off her shoulder and rose. “I’m going to bed.”

  Everyone curtsied as the Princess Royal retired.

  The ladies exchanged a look that silently agreed her attitude had not made things any easier. Then the Saardovan maids saw to their final duties and wearily bedded down for the night.

  Exhausted as she was, Minerva could not fall asleep for the longest time thinking of all the details of the wedding tomorrow. Something she had seen tonight in Giulietta’s eyes worried her, a glitter of anger, a flash of hard resolve, almost as if the princess had something up her sleeve.

  No doubt, Giulietta had noticed that her future husband was not the sort of man she would twist around her little finger. But the very strength that Minerva had seen in Prince Tor gave her a cautious, newfound hope that someone else might eventually take over her long-held responsibility as Giulietta’s minder—namely, him.

  This just might work, after all, she mused. Who could say? A bit of structured Rydalburg discipline might be good for the brat. If Giulietta got settled into her new life more quickly than expected, then maybe she could return home to her father’s villa and take up her classes in the autumn, just as she had planned.

  At last, she drifted off to sleep, but her dreams were uneasy that night, haunted by a pair of stern blue eyes . . . and sculpted, but unsmiling lips.

  “Wake up, wake up! Lady Minerva!”

  Someone was shaking her. Someone who was sobbing.

  “Oh, please, hurry, Minerva, we need you!”

  “What?” Drawn from the depths of sleep and still groggy, Minerva opened her eyes a
nd sat up in bed, still blinking in confusion.

  Chaotic noises from the other room registered. Though barely awake, she jumped to her feet and hurried out into the sitting room, where she found the maids and the other ladies-in-waiting running about in a state of hysteria and crying.

  “What’s wrong? What’s going on?” she exclaimed.

  “She’s gone! She’s gone!”

  “What?”

  “We cannot find the princess! Giulietta’s missing!”

  Minerva looked at them in horror. She clapped a hand over her mouth and felt her stomach plunge all the way to her feet. But there was no time for panic. And there was no one else here to take charge. She lowered her hand from her mouth, but she felt slightly dizzy at this news, and was still not entirely awake. “Are you sure?”

  “See for yourself! Her room is empty!”

  She marched across the sitting room and flung herself into the doorway to the opulent bedchamber the bride had been assigned.

  Empty. She gasped at the confirmation. Yet for a moment longer, she could do naught but stare in disbelief at the empty bed where Her Highness was supposed to be waking up to her wedding day. As if a part of her hoped her friend might magically reappear and this was all a bad dream.

  It wasn’t. The evidence was real. There was barely a dent in the pillow, nor a wrinkle on the coverlet. The splendid white wedding gown hung waiting on a metal maiden-form—abandoned.

  Meanwhile, the maidservants ran about the gilded apartment, wailing in a panic. “Gone, gone! She is gone! The Horse Danes will blame us! We’re all going to die!”

  “No, we’re not.” Minerva clutched her chest, leaned in the doorway, and struggled to think what to do. But she had an awful feeling they were right. “Has anyone seen her since last evening? Did anyone hear anything during the night?”

  “No, nothing, my lady!”

  “Who could have done this?” one of the others sobbed. “Cursed Rydalburgers! What sort of fiend would steal away our poor princess before her wedding? To wreck the treaty?”