The Reluctant Wife Read online

  The Reluctant Wife

  A Retelling of King Thrushbeard

  Nina Clare

  lost&foundStories

  Copyright © 2017 by Nina Clare

  Second Edition 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  www.ninaclarebooks.com

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

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  Also by Nina Clare

  Chapter 1

  ‘It’s a girl, Your Highness.’

  The words hung in the air as heavily as the velvet drapes at the tall windows, as sharp as the facets on the chandeliers above.

  Silence. Had the king heard? The palace attendant who had borne the announcement made a small shuffling step backwards, as though anxious to be as far from the king as possible.

  ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘The physician says so, my lord.’

  The king pursed his lips and gazed out the window at his smooth, green lawns stretching away to the gardens and woodlands beyond.

  The attendant kept his head down. His velvet cap had been pulled down so low it cast his face in shadow. It was said the king never forgot the face of a bearer of bad news.

  ‘I saw that stag again on my ride this morning.’ The king nodded in the direction of the trees. ‘Mighty fine beast. Biggest antlers I’ve seen in years.’

  The attendant glanced at the chamberlain standing behind the great mahogany desk, as though unsure of whom the king was addressing. But the chamberlain merely returned his anxious look.

  ‘There will be some fine hunting this season,’ said the king. ‘You hear, Gerhild? Fine hunting.’

  Gerhild, the king’s long-legged deerhound, lifted her head up from her cushion under the ornate desk, then dropped it down again and resumed her canine dreams.

  ‘Has my nephew’s man been told?’ The king gripped his hands tightly behind his back.

  ‘The duke’s man has not yet been told, my lord. You are the first to be given the news.’

  The king gave a sigh that ended in a groan and turned away from the window. ‘Well, best inform him. Inform them all. Send out the proclamation.’

  The chamberlain slowly unrolled a large scroll. He weighted its corners with malachite paperweights and squinted through his eyeglass at the writing:

  King Ottokar and Queen Ursula announce,

  With great joy and thanksgiving,

  The safe delivery of a prince.

  He dipped the quill in the silver inkstand, wiped the excess ink from the nib, and held the pen in suspension for some moments above the parchment. Making a small sound, as that of a disappointed child, he added the letters ss to the word prince.

  The king moved to the desk and pointed at the second line. ‘Cross that part out,’ he ordered.

  The chamberlain scratched a line through the words with great joy and thanksgiving.

  The ink was powdered and blotted, and the parchment was rolled up with the same slow gravity as it had been unrolled. The attendant stepped forward to take it and hurried backwards out of the chamber to the waiting proclaimer.

  ‘Take Gerhild out,’ said the king quietly.

  Recognising the sheathed edge in his sovereign’s tone, the chamberlain wasted no time in snatching up the leash of the sleepy deerhound and hurrying from the chamber, pulling the dog behind him. He made it out just in time. The moment the door was pulled shut, and the animal deposited on the floor, the roaring began.

  The crashes and thuds resounded through the walls and door. The chamberlain winced as he imagined which items were being thrown against the walls. The silver inkwells? The mahogany chairs? The malachite paperweights?

  The pair of footmen standing as pillars either side of the door paled beneath their caps. Gerhild sat between them, watching the door, and whined at her master’s voice.

  The chamberlain squeezed his eyes shut, hunched up his shoulders, and held his breath for some long moments, then exhaled with relief when the crashing ceased.

  Gerhild gave one last whine, and all was over.

  Even though it was late morning, the heavy curtains were still drawn in the queen’s bedchambers. The attendants moved about softly and quietly, but despite the hush and stillness there was an air of anxiety lingering in the darkened room.

  ‘How is he?’ asked the queen, lifting her head from the bed pillows.

  ‘He is well, Your Highness,’ replied a young maid.

  ‘Did he break much?’

  ‘Not too much.’

  ‘Nothing of mine?’

  ‘No, my lady. Only some inkwells this time. Though the ink did make a terrible mess.’

  The queen let her head fall back.

  ‘And he’s on his way to see you.’

  The queen’s head snapped up again. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘The baby? The wet nurse has taken her to the nursery.’

  ‘Fetch her and dress her in the royal lace.’

  ‘The wet nurse?’ The maid wrinkled her nose in confusion.

  ‘Foolish girl,’ scolded the queen. ‘The baby. Wrap her in the dowager queen’s lace. He will recognise it, and it will make her look pretty. He cannot resist a pretty face. Send Lady Sofia in with her. Hurry, girl. You said he is coming – hurry!’

  The maid scurried away, and a few minutes later, there came the heavy tread of the king. The bedchamber door squeaked open, then the bed curtains rippled as the king brushed against them. The queen smiled gently and held out her hands to her husband who stood under a cloud of dejection beneath the tassels of the canopy.

  Sitting down heavily upon the embroidered bedcovering, he took her outstretched hands. ‘I am glad you are well,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘I am well, my dear.’

  She squeezed his hands. ‘Would you like to see her?’ she asked in a soothing tone, as though addressing a child.

  He shook his head. ‘Not yet. The shock. The disappointment. I was so sure…’

  ‘I know, dear. But next time we will have a prince, I am certain.’

  The king met her eyes – even at the end of her fourth decade he still often told her she had handsome eyes, though she knew there were now fine lines radiating out from them. She saw in his gaze that he was not blind to what her mirror showed her: the slight droop of the eyelids and cheek, the silver about her temples, and that one streak of grey in her otherwise dark hair. He looked down at their clasped hands, his own skin faintly mottled and creased with age, and she knew as well as he did that this unexpected child, born to them in the latter half of their lives, had been one last miraculous chance.

  ‘It was too much to hope for a prince,’ he said glumly.
‘All the Guardians of the fair-folk kingdom could not promise such a thing, even if they could be persuaded to try.’

  The queen squeezed his hands again.

  ‘Perhaps I will see her,’ he said, in a tone of resignation. ‘Where is she?’

  The queen called for her young lady-in-waiting.

  Lady Sofia emerged from her position in the dressing chamber. In her arms, she bore a cascade of exquisite lace that floated, from the bundle she carried, down to the floor like a trail of May blossom. Lady Sofia smiled sweetly and bent down to carefully lay the lacy bundle on the bed before the king.

  ‘Mother’s lace,’ said the king.

  Nestled within the ivory lace was a pink face with a tiny fist pressed against a mouth the colour of wild strawberries.

  The king leaned forward, and with his little finger, he parted the lace further and peered in. At that exact moment, the baby opened her eyes, seeming to look directly up at her curious sire with a bold gaze. She put out one flailing little hand, took hold of his finger, and gripped it.

  The queen and her lady-in-waiting held their breath.

  A small, slow movement passed over the king’s disappointed countenance. The lines on his forehead began, almost imperceptibly at first, to soften. The tightness about his mouth began to loosen by degrees. His jaw relaxed. His eyebrows unknitted. His mouth lifted at one corner.

  ‘Pretty little thing,’ he murmured. The other corner of his mouth lifted slightly. ‘She has your eyes, Ursula.’

  The queen released her breath. Lady Sofia clasped her hands together as though in a prayer of thanks. The child’s eyes peeked out from the lace as a newborn fawn peering through white meadow flowers. The king looked entranced.

  ‘I thought we could call her Elena,’ suggested the queen.

  ‘Elena,’ repeated the king. ‘Mother’s third name.’

  ‘Yes, dear. I do not think she looks like a Lyudmila or a Smiltsena, but your mother’s third name is very pleasing. And I do believe she has your mother’s nose, look at the way it turns up just a little at the end. Do you see, dear?’

  The queen had dealt her full hand. She watched her husband’s face carefully, hopefully. She was not disappointed.

  A slow, wistful smile came over the king. ‘So she does.’

  Chapter 2

  Leopold, Duke of Meissenhaus, always knew he was destined to be king.

  It had been a cruel jest of the fickle powers of fate that his father should have been born just nine minutes later than his brother – just nine minutes – a cruel jest indeed! But so it had been. Had his father been the firstborn twin, he, Leopold, would now be on the throne. Cruel!

  Leopold paid his courier handsomely for his good tidings – paid him a whole gold mark. Three months’ wages, no doubt, but the words he had brought him were pure gold. A daughter. A girl. A princess! He, Leopold, was still the heir!

  His time would come. He felt it through the silk braiding of his velvet doublet. He felt it in his royal bones! And he laughed at the jest the fates had now dealt his uncle and that noddlesack of a wife of his. At last, it was Uncle Ottokar’s turn to be the object of the fates’ mockery!

  The footmen did not so much as blink at their duke striding past them, his hands waving triumphantly in the air, and his shrill bursts of laughter echoing about the stone walls. The duke put a hand upon one fat stone column and laughed jubilantly at the thought that when he was king he would have columns and floors of marble, not stone. Oh, the cruel injustice of being the poor one of the family – because of nine minutes.

  The guards outside the doors to his mansion did not so much as glance at their duke as he skipped down the sweeping stairway to the grounds, whooping for joy. When he was king he would have not a mere and measly estate, but all the woods and forests and fields of Boheme, which were rightly his!

  When his excess glee was spent, he turned back to his mansion, for he must prepare to make a visit to the palace. He would be required to attend the ceremonies in honour of the new princess, and he would not miss the joy of gloating over his uncle’s disappointment. Not for all the gold in all the kingdoms.

  Well...perhaps he would.

  A movement at one of the windows caught his eye, and he frowned. His own genealogical disappointment was pressing her very small nose against the glass of her nursery window and looking down on him with that irritating gaze of longing she was wont to bestow upon him.

  Children were such disagreeable things, especially two-year-old girls that lisped and whimpered and were good for nothing. Perhaps he could arrange to have her sent to Uncle Otto and Aunt Ursula to be a companion for the new princess in a few years’ time? The thought cheered him even more, and he took the stairs of the manor entrance two at a time and strode gleefully through the hall to his wife’s sitting chamber.

  ‘Have you had some good news, my lord?’ asked the duke’s wife in a tentative voice. She hurriedly stuffed her needlework behind the cushion of the chair she was sat upon. No doubt it was more of that wretched plain sewing she liked to do. Whoever heard of a duchess doing plain sewing!

  ‘I saw the man arrive,’ said his wife. ‘Was he from the palace?’

  The duke gave an exclamation of glee and slapped the top of the nearby cabinet so hard its drawers rattled. The duchess’s dachshund began growling.

  ‘There, there, Rudolph,’ soothed the duchess, picking the dog up and seating it on her lap. ‘Is it good news?’ she asked again.

  ‘Wonderful news!’ cried the duke. ‘A girl!’

  ‘A girl?’ His wife put her linen-capped head to one side in a questioning manner. ‘Do you mean the queen has had a girl?’

  ‘Of course, that’s what I mean, you dullard! What else would I mean?’

  The duchess shrank back into her chair, and her dachshund’s growling turned to angry yips.

  The duke strode about the chamber, rapping on furniture, slapping the backs of chairs, and emitting a cry of triumph at regular intervals.

  ‘And mother and child are well?’ asked the duchess, in between her attempts to hush her dog.

  The duke swung an arm in a wide gesture of dismissal. ‘Don’t know, don’t care. All that matters is that it’s a girl, and I will be king. Hah!’

  ‘You’ll be going to the palace soon? There will be feastings and ceremonies?’

  ‘Yes,’ cried the duke, coming to stand before the gilt mirror hung upon the wall above the fireplace. He turned his head of thinning hair from one side to another before the glass, imagining how much nobler it would look once the crown of Boheme was placed rightfully upon it. He also considered how shabby it was to have just one mediocre mirror hanging on his wall. Uncle Ottokar had twenty-four full-length mirrors in his banquet hall alone.

  ‘May I come? I should like to see the baby and dear Ursula too.’

  The duke looked at his wife in the reflection of the glass. He tried to imagine the queenly coronet upon her head instead of the paltry linen caps she insisted on wearing that made her look like a kitchen maid. But he saw only her mild, brown eyes in her mild, simple face looking hopefully at him, and he wondered for the countless time what moment of madness had possessed him to marry such a plain woman. The daughter of a mere merchant!

  ‘No. You have not the right clothes for court,’ he said flatly and turned and strode out of the chamber.

  ‘Let me see the list again,’ the queen demanded.

  The royal secretary handed her the long scroll.

  ‘We must not miss anyone,’ she said. ‘The Archduke of Ramone nearly instigated war because we forgot to invite his first wife’s cousin to the king’s fiftieth birthday celebrations.’

  She scanned the list carefully, counting on her fingers the correct numbers of offspring, siblings, cousins, nephews, and nieces of each guest to ensure that no one had been left out.

  ‘The Earl of Dorten?’ she queried. ‘I do not see his name here.’

  ‘I understood we were only inviting the most senior royal famil
ies from the neighbouring kingdoms, Your Highness,’ replied the royal secretary.

  ‘We are. But Fritz is such a dear. He jollies up the king no end, and it does the king good to go out hunting with him.’

  ‘Very good, Your Highness. But if the Earl of Dorten is invited, should not the earls of Havena and Bodenburg be invited also?’

  The queen frowned as she considered this. ‘We cannot invite all the lesser nobility of the neighbouring kingdoms, where would we put them? No. Fritz is an exception. He is a family friend. Let me see the invitations for the Guardians.’

  The secretary carefully handed her seven gilt-edged letters written with illuminated gold script on thick, pressed paper.

  The queen looked closely at them and read, ‘To the lady Faerlith, Fey Guardian of the Air. Mimosa, Fey Guardian of the Land. Terebellum, Fey Guardian of the Hidden Earth. Celeste, Orionis, Corona, Aurora.’ She nodded. ‘Very good. These are the most important of all the guests. The most important of them all. The princess will need them. Our daughter must have all their blessings.’

  The door of the queen’s morning chamber opened.

  ‘The Duke of Meissenhaus waits upon you, Your Highness,’ announced the liveried footman.

  The queen tried hard not to look as displeased as she felt at such news. ‘Show him in.’

  ‘Aunt Ursula,’ gushed the duke, sweeping the ground with his feathered cap as he bowed low. ‘I came as soon as I received word. A princess – what excellent news!’