Alice held up an arm’s length of periwinkle fabric to a mannequin that already had a strip of orange, red, and purple fabrics pinned over its shoulders. Seamstresses and tailors were all around the room, a handful for each of the members of the royal ‘family.’ Maud’s were the least frustrated, of course. They already had many dresses to choose from and were mostly deciding which alterations and accessories would be appropriate for the festival. It was the King’s and the Regent’s groups who were becoming soaked in beads of sweat and furrowed brows.

  The long table in the middle of the room, crowded with lengths of fabric and patterns, already took up most of the room, which frustrated them even more. The floor was a chaotic array of scraps, scissors, shavings, and ribbons of a variety of colors. There were still the shelves on the walls and desks to contend with, all filled the papers and books that belonged on them. Alice reassured them when she acquired the room from Captain Gerard that this was the largest in the Fort. It was. But it was still cramped.

  Periwinkle? He did look good in periwinkle on his coronation day, but the Regent is still mourning. Hers will be a lavender unless she can finagle it out of the stubborn woman. Aurie might concede if she tells her it's for Draka, though, Alice mused.

  “Confound it, woman!” One of the tailors growled through pins sticking from his teeth when a seamstress pinning a dress on a neighboring mannequin bumped him. He was on his knees trying to chalk a line for the stripe on trousers that now had a crooked mark. He gave Alice a pleading look. “Can we not find better accommodations? He’s a king, isn’t he? If he expects anything better than a horse blanket, then he should allow us somewhere that isn’t part of a stables!”

  Alice tilted her head at the periwinkle as she held it over the mannequin shoulder again. Those hazel eyes were less gold during his coronation, too. What color were they? Hazel changes color mostly by what the person wears, albeit subtly. Wonder what color makes his eyes match Aurie’s? Alice bit the side of her lip at the thought.

  To the tailor, she said, still eyeing the fabric, “I doubt our King would mind a horse blanket any more than you would mind fine wine, Master Louis, but that does not change the fact that you are being paid based solely on the quality of your tailoring for a Royal.” No, she decided with a tug of the fabric off of the mannequin, that won’t do. She turned a raised brow on the tailor, “So, if you want what you were promised, it best be of the quality warranted.”

  “I expected better conditions. I am not used to such…” He tucked his chin, smudging the chalk line away as he said under his breath, “barbaric provisions.”

  “He’s a simple man, consider it a blessing that I’m not asking for tassels and gilding while still offering the same commission,” Alice moved around him. Purple, perhaps, she lifted a sheet and held it up. His coat must be complimentary to Aurie. “Miss Druon?”

  “Madame?” One of the seamstresses turned from helping others pin a petticoat to a gilded bodice on a mannequin at the other end of the long table with a bow. She had her hand through a wrap with a plush ball that was stuck with pins over top of her hand another seamstress was plucking pins from.

  “What is the color of the Regent Aurelie’s sash?”

  “We decided on the lighter sky blue one, you said it matches her eyes, Madame,” the seamstress called. She returned to pinning.

  “Blast it,” Alice let the purple fall. If she matches his outfit to the sash, it would indicate they were engaged and that would be catastrophic. They needed to compliment each other, not match or be too color coordinated. The blue sash goes along with the flag, it’s proper. His outfit must be…similarly proper. What are the colors of his Paladin Order?

  “Does anyone know the colors of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher by any chance?” Alice looked about the cramped room.

  “White, gold, and red,” Master Louis said through the pins still in his teeth. He was holding a green ribbon to black trouser legs when he tilted his head to look up at her, “Please tell me you’re not about to make me change to those colors.”

  Alice frowned at that. “Well…”

  He pulled the pins from his teeth and stood. After a calming breath, he said, “Madame, if you don’t make a decision on what the king is to wear, then I’m going to take the pins from those trousers and use them to gouge out my eyes.”

  The calmness and near cheerfulness in the way he said it was what made Alice’s eyes widen.

  He gave her a tight-lipped nod and stepped past her. As he went out the door, he called, “I’m getting a pint. When I come back, you better have the colors chosen!”

  When Alice turned, it was Aurie standing in the doorway, a cocked brow and worried look on her face. Alice frowned. She used to be so much better at this. Of course, she also was running a palais that had been run that way for generations, too. This was a new kingdom with new everything.

  “Bad timing, I presume?” Aurie winced.

  “Perfect timing, actually,” Alice felt light in her step. She turned back to the other seamstresses and the remaining tailors, “Take a break, we’ll come back in an hour…no, two. Okay?” And she rushed out the door to Aurie’s side, shutting it behind her. With a touch of Aurie’s arm to turn her toward the door at the end of the hall out onto the balcony, she said, “Please tell me good news.”

  Aurie winced again as Alice pulled her, “The sun’s up?”

  Alice stopped. “What happened?” She looked Aurie over. Cotton shirt, some dastardly looking wool thing to cover her…and pants! No, no, no, no! Alice pulled Aurie’s arms wide. Boots with buckles as high as her knees? And a belt…

  “What are you…?” Aurie blinked at her.

  Alice turned her around. They can see the shape of her buttocks! “Why aren’t you in a dress?”

  “I was training,” Aurie frowned at her when she was finally turned back to facing her. Alice tried to turn her around again but she stopped her. “Will you stop? Alice!”

  “No,” Alice tucked her hands at the point of her bodice and petticoat. “I will not. I told you. When you are in official Regent duties, you must look like it. When you are a Paladin, you can look like a Paladin. When both, we will dress you in attire that suits both at that time, but only after you are officiated. Until then, publicly, you will keep the two separated.”

  Aurie’s jaw stiffened. She took in a breath. It pulled back.

  Alice quickly stopped her, “Not a word.” She turned and called to the many inside, “Tailors, go until you are summoned again.”

  “Is this necessary? I really need to…” Aurie stopped when Alice held up a finger at her.

  Several of the tailors were already filing past them, shaking their heads as they set their pin cushions on the table along the way. A few of them muttered curses that made her glare after them.

  “It is unlawful to fraternize with a Paladin trainee,” Alice reminded her.

  She clapped her hands at a pair of men hurriedly trying to pin a sleeve to a white breast strip hanging over a different mannequin than the one Master Louis had been working on. They leapt around the table and out the door.

  “Really?” Aurie held out her hands. “This is important!”

  “No.” Alice turned from her, her chin raised toward the door of the room she had just left. “I will speak with the Regent when the Regent is appropriately present.” She snapped her fingers at the group working on a nearly completed gown. Their heads whipped towards her.

  “Come,” she shut the door behind them now that all the men had left and turned the lock. “Dress the Regent properly in…” she looked over the few finished dresses draped over an armchair, “the plain one with the green petticoat.”

  She could hear Aurie’s exasperation as her maids began pulling her training outfit apart. “You are being ridiculous.” But at least she was doing it while raising her arms and lifting her feet, allowing the maids to pull those sweat stained atrocities off her. If only they had enough time to bathe her. Aurie must have noticed. “I was distracted.”

  As Aurie stepped into stockings and a linen shift was pulled over her head, Alice looked over the underpetticoat that the seamstress held up for her with a crinkled brow. It was too green for the lavender bodice.

  “The boy that is staying with Draka,” she corrected herself with a cough, “The King—his father was very dear.” Aurie’s arms dropped before the corset was fully over her, making one of the maids nearly fall over.

  “What is wrong with you?” Alice tsked her while helping the girl regain balance.

  “I’m training,” Aurie growled. “My arms are tired.” Her breathing changed halfway through ‘tired’ as the maid gave a special yank to the corset lace. “I deserved that,” then, over her shoulder, “Sorry, Senna.”

  “It was my mistake, my Lady Regent,” the maid laced while curtsying with her knees.

  The seamstress held up another underpetticoat that was vibrant as the last, with a tint on the yellow side. It would make her look like a cake topping with how gold her hair was. Alice stepped up on a chair and lifted Aurie’s arms while glaring at the seamstress and shaking her head.

  “Anyway,” Aurie began, looking up to Alice for once, “After Maud’s reaction to his adoption proposal…”

  “Did she decide on Clevlan-Luminis or is she willing to take on the Luminis House name entirely?”

  The seamstress held up one that was a bit more subtle a hue. Alice let Aurie’s arm drop before her sleeve was fully laced to a thumping ‘Ouch!’ from Aurie and a squinching hiss from the maid who kept an iron grip on the laces. Alice pointed, “That one.”

  “Are you even listening?” Aurie had her arm raised back up to Alice’s hand by Senna. “Alice?”

  Alice nodded as the seamstress moved her finger over petticoats, “That one first…second…not that one…third…get rid of that one, I never want to see it again…and the fourth. It’s been cold all day and she will be wearing this into the night.” She was still holding Aurie’s arms as she said, “Of course I’m listening. You still haven’t answered.”

  “Neither,” Aurie looked up to meet her eyes, her arms held outward, with such irritated sorrow that Alice found it hard to look away.

  “No panniers. This isn’t a courtly appearance, this is governing,” Alice swallowed. Now her arms were getting tired.

  “My sleeves are laced, Alice.”

  Alice let go of them and stepped down from the chair. Her hands were folded where her bodice met the folds of her petticoat. She motioned with a nod for the maids to finish and stepped back. Maud refused. Why? She loves Draka. He treats her as any man would his daughter. The people see her as his daughter. She is his princess.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “I wonder if you’re taking it worse than he is,” Aurie chuckled with a crinkled brow at her as her underpetticoats were raised and fastened by ribbons on the back of her corset. The green looked a little sickly as the final one.

  Alice shook her head at it. “I’m just surprised, that’s all.” She had misjudged with that suggestion. The green, too. But mostly with the adoption. She needed to find a way to spend time with Maud in between those dreadful studies with Pierre and Father Hagen’s monks. With the festival and the train to Nancy for Michaelmas…perhaps that will be her chance. She will have to organize the carriages so that she is placed in Maud’s for that purpose, then. The girl was an enigma to her. She must remedy that if she is to understand the Clevlan House properly.

  As Aurie’s petticoats were raised to her hips and fastened, she lifted her arms for the coat being pulled over her head by Senna and the other maid—Senna’s younger sister, Alice was suddenly aware. They both looked so alike. Nameless until she realized how familiar they were to Aurie. Another misjudgment that needed to be remedied.

  “What is your name?” Alice looked at the younger one.

  “Esme,” she curtsied with a set of toe-knuckles to the floor. A commoner’s idea of a courtly bow.

  “When I speak to you, you will always call me ‘Madame,’” Alice eyed her.

  “Alice,” Aurie gave her the exact same look.

  “Sorry, Madame,” Esme gave the same terrible curtsy again, but never stopped helping lace the bodice over the coat.

  “Alice, stop,” Aurie frowned at her. “They’re just girls. This is their first time. You said you needed seamstresses and their needlework is as good, if not better, than any I’ve seen from your people.”

  Alice grinned, never taking her eyes from Senna and Esme. “If I may, my Lady,” she gave Aurie a quick look, then back to the girls, “How old are you? Both of you?”

  Esme, still lacing the bodice beneath Aurie’s arm, “Fourteen, Madame.” Curtsy.

  “Don’t curtsy again until I teach you properly. That one is terrible and announces your upbringing distastefully. I will teach you better. You,” Alice turned to the other, ignoring Aurie’s heated glare, “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen,” Senna replied, lacing the bodice on the other side. She didn’t curtsy or bow. Really, she kept on lacing. Finally, she said, as if it were an afterthought, “Madame.”

  “Do you intend to dance the ribbon at the festival?”

  Senna stopped and looked up to Aurie with worry.

  Aurie shot Alice a fiery glare, “I don’t think that’s any of our business, Alice. Now, back to what is actually important…”

  “It depends, my Lady,” Alice took a step back. Senna and Esme went to the other seamstress, who handed them the gown, and they began helping pull it over Aurie’s arms and shoulders as Alice continued with her hands folded in front of her, “Do you trust them enough to discuss important matters in front of them?”

  Aurie furrowed her brows. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Everyone but Senna and Esme, out,” Alice waved.

  The other seamstresses, who had been working at the far end of the room in silence on the mannequins, bustled their ways around them, along with the seamstress who had been helping dress Aurie in her gown.

  Once they were gone, Alice said to Senna, “Take your sister and step outside the door and wait for me to summon you.”

  Alice looked her over with a quick glance. Aurie’s gilded lavender bodice came to a ‘V’ beneath her hips, where her dress split to reveal that underpetticoat. It was a damp green that didn’t brighten the sight nor draw attention to that area yet and had just enough blue in it to blend well with the lavender. Her coating beneath the bodice covered her bosom, shoulders, and arms to the nape of her neck. She made sure to hide that hideous scar of hers, but Alice would never allow her to hide the long slenderness of that neck.

  “You think it would look better if I just wrap the petticoat in the buckles of my boots, or should I just stuff it all into them?” Aurie crinkled her nose, lifting one of her feet to wiggle her stockinged toes at Alice.

  “Do you trust them?” Alice was undeterred.

  “Yes, maybe?” Aurie shrugged. “Does it matter? The whole family went to girls, poor things. Only the youngest is a boy and he’s barely seven come spring. I thought they could use the extra pence and you could use the extra hands. Why?”

  “Because I assigned them as your maids. You know them, yes?” Alice fetched her a pair of flat heeled boots.

  “Their entire lives,” Aurie eyed her.

  “Would you trust them to be in the room when you speak to me about whatever it is you want to tell me today?”

  Aurie hesitated. Alice knew that was the question she needed to ask. Finally, Aurie answered, “Senna, no. Esme, yes.”

  “I will dismiss Senna, then. Esme will be moving into your house and I will begin training her while you’re doing yours. From now on, wherever you go, she goes. Except when you’re doing your—you know,” Alice scrunched her nose at it. Hard enough teaching a farmer to be a noblewoman without having to contend with a soldier’s regimen as well.

  “What? No, I’m not taking that girl from her home? What is wrong with you? And dismissing Senna? She’s the best stitcher from here to Alcer, maybe even Nancy! I’m willing to stake a year’s harvest on it,” Aurie’s steps clopped to in front of Alice.

  She folded her hands in front of her and lifted her chin. “If Senna cannot be trusted, then she cannot be a member of the court. I’ll make sure she works with the seamstresses, but I will not have her in a position where she has access to you or yours. And, yes, Esme will need to be properly trained as your Lady in Waiting. She can’t live as low-born and do so. She will be tending your every need. That includes when you travel. She needs to know what that entails before she is at another’s estate, advising a host on your requirements.”

  “That’s what I have you for,” Aurie grinned facetiously. “Not a fourteen year old girl.”

  Alice nodded, “True. But Maud doesn’t.”

  “Maud won’t have to. She’s a Clevlan, through and through. She’s not an infant. She can clean up after herself.”

  Alice drew in a breath. “Just because she doesn’t want to be adopted makes no difference in her or your position in this kingdom. She is a princess. If the King dies without a wife,” Alice caught the twitch in Aurie’s lip, “or an heir, then you are the Regent, and Maud is your daughter, making her the only living claimant. Her contender, by the way, is the man sleeping in Draka’s house.”

  Aure pursed her brow, “Adrian? About that…”

  “I know who Adrian is. I was the Attendee for Baroness Clarissa von Strasse of Strasbourg, remember? I know who all of Cleric King Lord Phillip Taggerty’s children are. I’ve never met them, but I know their names. And as soon as you said his was Adrian and that he was Draka’s ward, I knew. I remember hearing of him being warded out. It was a bit of a scandal at the time. Our—the House Strasse and the Taggerty House were as close to enemies as one can be between sovereign and vassalage.”

  “Phillip was Draka’s family. Adrian came here because he needs to mourn with the only other person who knew and loved his father as he did. So, I’m taking over for a while,” Aurie straightened her posture, lifting her chin. “Draka will not be attending any festival or making appearances until he’s ready.”

  “Very well,” Alice let out a long breath and turned toward the door with a step. “I will inform Valmond that he will need to take everything directly to the King himself.”

  “I just said—” Aurie growled after her.

  “You just gave him another excuse, Aurie!” Alice whirled on her. “What will be the next one? The snow came too early, so he must go hunt again? After that, then it’ll be spring. Draka will have to till his own fields, right? Only he won’t. Because he doesn’t do anything. You do it.”

  “He’s recovering!”

  “From what, Aurie? He just went on a hunt,” Alice bit her lip. “I’ve seen this before. And I will be damned,” she stomped her foot, “if I will be on the side of the beheaded! Do you know what happens to noble families that are idle? Do you have any idea what happens when their people realize that they are being governed by someone who doesn’t wear that crown?” She took a step forward, raising herself on her toes to look Aurie in the eyes, saying through gritted teeth, “I slept on their bones in those dungeons for weeks. I can smell it. Always. It doesn’t go away.” Her lips were trembling. The musk. The squeak of the rats. Darkness. Droplets of water somewhere in the nothingness. Aurie’s widened eyes. “Blood. Never. Washes. Away. Not even from bricks.”

  “I—I’m…”

  Alice took a step back, calming herself. “As a friend,” She was shaking. She folded her hands in front of her. She couldn’t lift her chin. If it were anyone other than Aurie, she would never have done that. “I have yet to see you do anything other than sleep and govern and take care of everything that he neglects; his home, his land, his kingdom, his people. You…treat him as if…” Alice winced. She needed to word this delicately. “You’re acting like a Queen, not a Regent. A Regent governs when he is unable to or is dead interregnum until a king is declared in order to keep peace.”

  Aurie sheepishly rubbed the sides of her petticoat. “When I lost my husband and son, I broke. I slept for three months, leaving Maud to fend for herself. She had to go to Draka, who had only been in our lives a week—maybe three, I think. I abandoned her when she needed me the most. That boy,” Aurie pointed as if he were standing next to her, “traveled all the way from wherever he came from to find Draka because that’s the closest thing he has to a father left. So, I’m not asking, Alice. They’re being left alone. Period. And I’m sorry about what you went through, I am, but that doesn’t change the fact that that boy needs him and he needs that boy right now. Just a little time.”

  Alice lowered her eyes. “If I may speak as a friend, not as your Madame?”

  “Yes, always.”

  Alice met her eyes with a look full of disappointment. “Do you plan on picking his wife for him and fathering his children, too?”

  Aurie’s mouth gaped.

  “You are the Regent of Alcalia, not I. But if he doesn’t start at least appearing to be ruling Alcalia, then he will be killed, followed shortly thereafter by you and your daughter and then my husband and I. Because any king that doesn’t rule his own kingdom is either killed by an assassin or his own people. And there are a lot of foreigners in Talkro. There are accents in the streets I’ve never heard. Nina will know them, though. You should ask her.”

  “I’d rather send her back to Geneva than ask her anything, personally,” Aurie grumbled.

  Alice shook her head. “Aurie, if Draka doesn’t start showing everyone he’s the king by being one, then Nina will be our only defense. Just because they won’t declare war on us, doesn’t mean they’re not our enemies.”

  “He needs to heal.”

  “He needs to rule. He doesn’t have the privilege of letting his personal life interfere with his duty any longer. He’s a King, not a farmer. And you’re a Regent. When Clarissa had a stillborn son, we hid it from the court for six months—she appeared in court that month with a milkmaid on our train and an orphan baby from a remote village—in order to keep her father from annulling her marriage with Christophe, to marry her to a Luxembourgois Prince. I had to listen to her crying every night.”

  Aurie’s brows pressed together as she listened. Her eyes crept wider and wider.

  Aurie blinked in awe when she heard, “But she was laughing and telling stories of playing with little Louis von Strasse every day in court.” Alice lifted her chin. “Now, Regent Aurelie Beauvais Clevlan, you have two choices. Either you throw off the mourning colors and tell that man how you feel so that you can continue enabling his laziness or you can go over there and give a good Alcrois thumping and make that man rule his kingdom properly.”

  Aurie nodded with a gulp after looking herself over. Her pale cheeks reddened when her pale blue eyes finally peered into hers, pleading. “I’m worried about him. He’s…”

  “Taken long enough. And so have you. You’ve been distracting yourself for too long,” Alice grinned proudly as she took a step toward Aurie with her chin lifted high, “Time for you to breathe, my Lady. You’ve done well, but maybe you should take some time for yourself, too. You overcame your loss by running this kingdom. Let him see if that’s what will do the same for him.”

  Aurie beamed with curiosity.

  Alice wanted to wink, but that would be too unbecoming. “Perhaps, you are just the right person to show him how…with Valmond and I at your sides, of course. But I’m having him fetched for his fitting and you’re going to make certain it happens. Then, you’re going to make him speak—write—with his council. Distract him. And think about what colors you’d like to present yourself in at the Treatise in Nancy.”

  “In Nancy…”

  “Yes,” Alice shrugged at her, nearly laughing. “You won’t be in bright colors that will attract suitors, but you will be in colors that will say you are sociable. And, if you are so willing, open to an eventual companion in the future.”

  “Right,” Aurie nodded jerkily.

  Alice raised a brow. “Problem?”

  Aurie’s eyes shifted. “Do you remember Cardinal Thomas?”

  “The one who coronated the King,” Alice shrugged.

  “How can I get a letter to him in secret?”