Chapter Three
“You’re certain she doesn’t mind leaving today?” Dama Isidora asked Konstantin for the second time.
He checked the trunks being loaded into a cart. The stacks were higher now, with Suzana’s things added. “I asked her how much time she would like to prepare, and she said she could leave as early as this morning.” He glanced at the sun. Too high. They should have left already, but an axle on one of the carts had needed repair, and Miladin’s horse had gone lame overnight. Everything seemed to be conspiring to give them a late start. “In truth, I must rely on what she says, because it is difficult for me to guess what she feels.”
Dama Isidora laughed.
“I don’t find the situation amusing.” He was eager to please his betrothed, but he needed a little help from her. She had said almost nothing to him throughout the feast the night before. Perhaps she wasn’t pleased that the marriage would take place at harvest’s end. Konstantin, too, would prefer more time together before the two of them were officially wed, but he wanted money to hire mercenaries before winter. Not more than he wanted Suzana’s happiness, but he couldn’t bend to her preferences if she wouldn’t reveal them to him.
“I am sorry, Konstantin, but to hear you complain of someone hiding her emotions when you yourself are so adept at turning your face to stone . . .” She’d stopped laughing, but a smile remained. “Dama Suzana and I shall have a good chat on our journey, I think. Keep asking her what she wants. In due course, she will trust you enough to answer.”
“I hope you’re right. If you will excuse me, Dama Isidora. I must bid my grandfather farewell.”
His grandfather stood near Aleksander, both of them surrounded by men-at-arms from Sivi Gora. Grooms from Suzana’s villa led out horses, and the men checked the bridles and saddles. So efficient. Why was Konstantin’s departure not so smooth?
“I expected you to leave before me,” his grandfather said.
“So did I.” Konstantin swallowed back frustration. He wanted to get back to Rivakgrad by nightfall, but he’d been willing to take it in two days, had that been Suzana’s wish or had Dama Isidora preferred a more leisurely trip. Two days was not so bad—he would still return home earlier than he’d planned.
“I will see you again for the wedding.”
Konstantin nodded. The wedding had been set for autumn, after the flurry of harvest was done and before winter hampered travel. “I will pray that the snow does not come early and that you have swift roads now and then.”
“I will pray that you and your future bride are ready for a life together by the time I next see you.”
“Thank you for arranging it, Grandfather.”
“You are pleased with her?”
Konstantin glanced at the hall, where her father’s steward had insisted Suzana wait until they were ready to leave. “I am.”
“I am glad.”
The tug over Ivan’s future still hung between them, and Konstantin suspected the matter would come up again at their next meeting, but for now, he felt gratitude. His grandfather had managed to save his lands for him and had brought a woman into his life whom Konstantin wanted to love. “How long did it take for you and Grandmother to love each other?”
Grandfather’s lips twisted in thought. He had few wrinkles for a man of his age, and the motion made him seem younger, perhaps because Ivan sometimes made the same expression, and Konstantin was more familiar with it on his brother’s face. “Love is hard to measure.” He gestured to a nearby pithos of water. “That is water. It is wet, and there is enough there to soak you through. The sea is also water, but it’s much larger and much deeper. Yet just because the sea is larger, it does not mean that a raindrop is not also water. Love is like that. For your grandmother and me, it came quickly, and then it grew. Looking back, what we had at the beginning of our marriage seems small compared to what it became. But that does not mean it was not love.”
Maybe his grandfather wasn’t as cold as he so often seemed. Maybe Sivi Gora and their grandfather wouldn’t be so hard on Ivan when the time came for him to leave Rivak. “Thank you for sharing your wisdom, Grandfather. If you have any suggestions on hiring mercenaries, I would be grateful for your advice on that as well.”
“I will think on it and bring candidates to the wedding with me.”
“Thank you. Godspeed, Grandfather.”
His grandfather gazed across the chaos of the courtyard. Konstantin felt his neck heat. The disorder seemed one more sign of Konstantin’s inability to do anything right, and no doubt Grandfather could pick out all Konstantin’s mistakes, even the ones Konstantin himself couldn’t yet pinpoint. But rather than criticize, he simply clasped Konstantin’s shoulder. “Godspeed to you as well.”
By the time Župan Đurad and his men had left the villa and forded the nearby river, Konstantin’s own group had made significant progress. The carts were packed, and half the horses were saddled, including Konstantin’s palfrey, so he could escort his future bride to the coach she would share with Dama Isidora. Perhaps today he could draw her into more of a conversation than they’d had yesterday. Regardless, the prospect of seeing her again was pleasant. Perhaps what he felt for her was only a raindrop at the moment, but he could imagine it growing into a sea.
He met Suzana’s father on his way to the hall. The man’s face was pale and his jaw tense.
Konstantin clasped his hands behind his back. “We’re nearly ready. Am I free to collect your daughter?”
“She . . . she’s disappeared. I don’t know where she is. Neither do any of the servants.”
Shock kept Konstantin quiet for several long moments. “Did she run away in the night?”
“No, she was in the hall this morning.”
Konstantin tried to breathe through the tension. “Perhaps she returned to her bedchamber. Or went to bid someone farewell.”
Baldovin shook his head. “We’ve searched all the rooms, even the stables and other places she never goes. She’s not in the villa.”
“Has this ever happened before?” Perhaps his bride-to-be had a habit of disappearing.
“No.”
Maybe she didn’t want to get married, so she’d run away. It seemed odd to wait until morning when she could have left during the night, but it was blazingly apparent that he knew nothing of how her mind worked. In hindsight, her reticence the day before seemed clear evidence of her reluctance to marry a stranger.
A shout sounded from the top of the wall. “There’s a body in the river.”
“What?” Baldovin bellowed. “Whose body?”
“A woman. In a red dress.”
Baldovin’s face grew even paler. “Suzana.”