Luckstones Read Online Free Page B

to the
conservatory and see if you can agree about flowers for your bridal posies. I
think they should each carry the same, don’t you?” The Cindiese turned back to
Deira do Morbegon, and the two mothers were lost in discussion at once. Taigna
rose from her chair and led Ellais to the back of the house and the large,
draughty conservatory.
    Ellais examined a pot of scentless flowers.
    “Well.” Taigna’s voice echoed.
    “Well. Are you—happy?” Ellais asked.
    “Happy?” For the first time Taigna me Caudon met Ellais’s gaze
straight on. So far from being pleased, she looked furious. “Happy! I have made
it perfectly plain to my parents for years that I had no wish to marry, at
least not until I had finished my schooling, and perhaps a year or two of study
at the University in Hadsilon. Happy to be married at nineteen, without so much
as a first degree to my name? Are you mad?”
    Ellais gaped. “A first degree? You want to be a scholar?”
    “I always have. And Papa promised me that I needn’t think of
marriage until I had at least that, and then your brother dies and suddenly
Papa and your father are in a great hurry to marry us off, lest one of us die and stall their plans to unite
our fortunes forever. Mama is saying I must stop attending classes—that it’s
not suitable for an affianced woman. Well I never wanted to be affianced, and I—”
    “You don’t mind it’s me ?”
Ellais broke in.
    Taigna blinked. “Is there something wrong with you?”
    Ellais stamped her foot so hard that her dark curls danced
around her face. “You don’t mind that we are both women?”
    Taigna considered. “I suppose you might be rather less…
intrusive than a man. But Mama says once we’re wed I’ll have to give up
studying, so it hardly matters, does it.”
    “If you’re Cindiese, oughtn’t you to be able to do as you
like?” Ellais asked. A flower, pinched between her thumb and forefinger, came
off its stem in her hand.
    “ When I’m
Cindiese—but Papa may live for years .
All that time I’d be falling behind in my work.”
    Taigna was not Ellais’s idea of a scholar; until now she had
assumed that all such were elderly men with braided white beards and heavy
black robes, wandering through the corridors of the university with abstracted
airs, or scurrying about Meviel to tutor the children of great families. Her
own schooling had been intended only to make her literate enough to read
romances, of which she had consumed many, and numerate enough to keep a set of
household books.
    “What can we do?” Ellais asked.
    Taigna blinked nearsightedly. “Do?”
    Ellais looked about her for a chair, saw a wrought-iron
loveseat, and dragged her betrothed to it. When they were seated knee to knee
she leaned forward conspiratorially. “You do not wish to marry me.”
    Taigna shrugged. “I don’t want to marry at all. If I must, I
suppose you’re—”
    “ I don’t wish to
marry you !” Ellais whispered
fiercely. “I want to have a regular sort of life, with a man and babies and
everything I ever expected. I know better than to expect romance, but at the
very least I want the possibility that I might—I might—” words failed her.
    Taigna frowned, her sandy brows drawing together. “Well,
what are we to do?”
    Neither had an answer for such a question. The two girls
sat, knee-to-knee and dark head to light, considering, until a servant came to
summon them back to the drawing room. When asked if they had agreed upon
flowers for their bridal posies Ellais suggested freesias at the same moment
that Taigna asked for daisies, and the two mothers shook their heads and
decreed roses and balm with ivy. Madame do Morbegon swept her daughter away
with every assurance of kind wishes, echoed by the Condiese. Ellais parted from
her betrothed with a look of despair.
    ~o0o~
    Once the Writ of Exception had been granted and the
engagement made public, neither Ellais nor Taigna could escape whispers or
speculative nods