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Morwen’s face when she left the room was priceless. Shock, yes, and mortification. But also an angry crease to her eyebrows—a look of personal offense that they’d picked a topic she couldn’t pretend to be an expert on. Bless her, but Morwen always acted like she knew everything. This, however, was the one subject on which she had absolutely nothing to say. For Lauren, that look was almost worth putting up with their mother’s ensuing lecture. Almost, but not quite.
Where Morwen was blissfully ignorant, their mother was a master craftswoman. Famously so, if one listened to rumors. Rumors which Duchess Flora now happily confirmed for her youngest daughter. “I regret nothing,” she said, after cataloging her list of lovers, which included King Broderick Gramiren, the man now on the other side of the civil war from them. “A lifetime of experience, distilled for your benefit, sweetheart. I don’t want you nervous on your first night with Wallace.”
Perhaps her intention was to relieve Lauren’s nerves. But she made them much worse. By the end of it all, Lauren’s head was spinning, and she felt faintly nauseous from all the talk of gag reflexes and anal fissures and the horrors of the birth process. And then, naturally, came the discussion of how to avoid pregnancy.
“There are potions, dear, but I don’t recommend them. If you don’t mind a little mess, it’s so much simpler to have the man pull out and then finish him off. In your mouth, if you like the taste of yourself on him, with your hand if you don’t.”
That was bad enough, but even worse was Flora’s lecture on how best to achieve pleasure. And the worst part of it all, especially during the talk of orgasms, was her mother’s faint air of disappointment to learn that Lauren hadn’t discovered any of this on her own. “Honestly, darling, don’t you even masturbate regularly? I thought those little stories you and the princess write might have given you some notions of what to do.”
Ah, those “little stories.” Yes, some of them were a bit risqué, particularly recently, since Lauren’s best friend and coauthor, Princess Donella Gramiren, had gained a great deal of practical experience to draw from. That was something Lauren wasn’t supposed to talk about, though. Any talk of Donella, actually, was frowned upon.
Poor Donella. Lauren would have loved to have her here now. She would have loved to have this talk with her, instead of with her mother. Lauren could have admitted to Donella that she had tried to pleasure herself, but hadn’t succeeded. And Donella could probably have told her what she was doing wrong without making her want to crawl into a hole and die from shame.
But Donella wasn’t here, and she wouldn’t be. Her family was on the other side of the war, now. That was yet another bitter result of the shifting loyalties of Lauren’s family, like this wedding.
Her mother’s lecture couldn’t help Lauren—not all the anecdotes, or the bawdy little jokes, or even the mortifying little diagrams she drew on a slate at one point. They couldn’t help because it wasn’t really sex that was making Lauren nervous. Not entirely, anyway. She’d always quite liked the notion of having sex someday. She’d always enjoyed those parts of Donella’s romance stories that made her feel a little funny. The parts where brave knights received their reward from their ladies fair.
No, it wasn’t just sex. It was sex with Wallace. Not that there was anything wrong with Wallace, as far as Lauren knew. And therein lay the problem. Lauren had no idea who this man was that she would be spending the rest of her life with. She barely knew anything about him.
How strange to think she would be his wife forever after tomorrow. There were men in this castle—retainers, servants, guards—who had known Lauren for literally her entire life, but who would have blushed to hold her hand. Tomorrow, though, she would climb into bed with a virtual stranger and let him touch her in ways no one ever had before. It seemed so odd and wrong.
That night, Lauren slept very fitfully. She woke in the early dawn from a terrible dream, where she had been naked in a wide bed, in front of the whole court, while she was trying and failing to figure out how to get Wallace’s cock into her, using chalk diagrams drawn by her mother. Wallace, looking very annoyed, kept saying, “Didn’t you practice how to do this beforehand?” And only yards away, in the front row, sat her two sisters and her mother. Sophie was saying, “I don’t remember it being this difficult. I just lay there and let him do the work.” And Morwen was saying, “If it had been me, I would have read all the major treatises and compiled notes. This is so typical of Lauren.” “Typical,” agreed their mother.
After that, Lauren couldn’t get back to sleep, and she laid in her bed, worrying, until her lady’s maids came in to start filling her bath. Morwen arrived not long after and took charge—telling the girls the water was too hot, and that they were using too much perfume in the water, and ordering the kitchen maids to bring something light for breakfast, and arguing with the chambermaids about how to lay out the wedding dress. Lauren would have resented the interference, but she was trying hard not to throw up. For once, she felt happy to let her big sister lead her around, happy to submit to Morwen’s orders. She was thrilled that her sister wanted to take charge, and her only complaint was that Morwen couldn’t volunteer to be the bride, too.
The morning passed in a strange, herky-jerky fashion, like a wagon with a broken wheel. Time would stop, and she was incredibly aware of tiny things around her, like the slight imperfections in the lace of her white gloves. Then suddenly things would speed up, and she was at the cathedral door with her father and two brothers with no clear memory of the carriage ride from the castle.
The walk up the aisle took forever, with all the nobility and gentry of Keneshire staring at her. She had been told it would make her feel like a queen, but if this was how queens felt, she wanted to know how to abdicate. Finally, she was at the altar with Wallace. He was lovely, with his velvet surcoat and his sword and...oh, she couldn’t even bear to look at him. Before the two of them stood Wallace’s uncle, the Bishop of Keneburg.
He had been the one who had arranged the marriage, apparently. Something or other to do with the war and her mother needing an ally in the church or something. Oh dear. Lauren couldn’t remember anymore, and she was feeling a little lightheaded now. Why had the lady’s maids laced her bodice up so blasted tight?
She repeated her vows, barely even thinking what she said. The bishop could have been reciting the poems of Claudius, for all she knew. She only noticed the tone of his voice, which seemed quite unnecessarily severe. Like maybe he wasn’t sure anymore, having seen her up close, that she was cut out for this marriage thing. She was certainly having her doubts.
The bishop pronounced them married. She was Baroness Urcard now, not Lady Lauren Byrne. Somewhere nearby a choir broke into a thunderous hymn. Lauren turned to look up into the blue eyes of her new husband. He was smiling. She tried to smile back.
“Who are you?” she thought, as he leaned down and kissed her.
They rode back to the castle together in an open carriage. Half the town—half the world—seemed to have turned out to cheer them on. People threw streamers and confetti, and every couple blocks, there would be a different little orchestra of minstrels, or the brass band of some guild or other, playing their hearts out in return for a weak smile and a wave.
“Awfully loud, isn’t it?” Wallace observed.
She didn’t mind the noise. It gave her an excuse not to talk. The trouble would come later, she knew, in the quiet night when they were alone together. Just thinking of it made her feel sick again.
The feast seemed to take forever. The servants kept bringing an endless parade of dishes and wines. Lauren hardly ate anything, and drank even less. Her stomach couldn’t take it. There was roast boar and peacock in wine sauce and spiced puddings. On a different day, she would have tried everything, just for fun. At the lower tables, she could see her cousins and school friends laughing and enjoying themselves. Even King Edwin, here in Keneburg while his usurping cousin sat on his throne in Formacaster, looked like he was enjoying himself. She would have given anything to be smiling and eating, while some other girl sat up here.
As people got drunker, they gave speeches and toasts. At least she wasn’t called upon to give a speech of her own; that was a small mercy. Wallace got up and said some very complimentary things about her that couldn’t possibly be sincere, because he didn’t know her at all. Her father, who was very drunk, got a bit weepy. The Earl of Hyrne, King Edwin’s uncle, who was even drunker than her father, spent most of his speech complimenting Lauren’s mother, which gave Lauren sudden and alarming thoughts about the nature of her mother’s relationship with the earl.
Then, without warning, it was near midnight. Had the time really gone that quickly? Some of Wallace’s army friends threatened loudly to take the bride and groom upstairs and give them a good, old-fashioned Kenedalic “bedding.” Luckily, the custom had mostly died out, and no one seemed disappointed when Wallace told them all to shut up and leave him alone with his wife. She took his hand, and they left the hall to cheers and laughter and whistling.
“Sorry about my knights,” he said, as they climbed the stairs. “If it means anything, they did all chip in to buy you a new tapestry loom. I’ll...um, show it to you...er, tomorrow.” He was looking away from her; his voice was soft. Was he as nervous as she was, or was he embarrassed by this whole business? Embarrassed of her?
Her lady’s maids were in the chamber to help her undress. She almost begged them to stay, but that would have been childish. Then Wallace returned in his nightshirt, and the lady’s maids filed out of the room—every one of them smirking.
Wallace took her hand and helped her up into the huge bed, like he was helping her into a carriage. “Would you like some wine?” he asked.
She nodded, and when he brought her some, she finished two thirds of the glass in a single swallow.
He gave her a dubious look. “Listen, if you’d prefer to, um...wait a bit....”
She almost said “yes,” but she knew that was no good. Unpleasant things, like a visit to a physician or a test in school, only got worse if you put them off. She tugged the front of his nightshirt, pulling him close, and tried a kiss. He kissed her back, with more passion than he probably felt. He was making an effort; so should she.
He undressed her, and started kissing her all over. And using his fingers, too. Sometimes it felt quite nice, but then it reminded her of her mother’s lecture the night before, and that made it difficult to concentrate on what Wallace was doing down there. So difficult, in fact, that he noticed, and stopped to look her in the eye. “Are you alright?”
“Mm-h’m,” she said, shivering slightly.
He pulled up the blanket and lay on her, between her legs. According to her mother, the notion that a girl’s first time always hurt was “a stupid old wives’ tale.” But it certainly wasn’t. She let out a croaking gasp and gritted her teeth.
“Is this alright?” he asked. “Should I stop?”
Again, she would have said “yes,” except for the knowledge that things would be worse later. She turned her grimace into a smile and kissed him. “No, dear. Please, keep going.”
It hurt less after that, and there was a moment near the end when she remembered that she was supposed to be enjoying this. But then he was done, and it was too late.
He fetched the washbasin, and they both cleaned up a bit. They kissed, and he helped her back into her nightgown, and she almost felt like a wife at last.
The feeling faded later, though, when he had fallen asleep, and she lay there in the dark, by his side. She couldn’t help comparing what had happened with her mother’s lecture, and the comparison was not very flattering to her.
“I must have done something wrong,” she thought, as tears started welling up. “He must be so disappointed in me.”