Cecilia de Viremont | A rather sudden bethroal...

The day the letter arrived was... odd, in the way only omens can be.

Your butler, old Master Gervase, whose hands shake only when he thinks no one watches, approached at breakfast with the silver tray usually reserved for royal missives. A single parchment, thick as cream, sealed in scarlet wax stamped with a rearing griffin split by a sword. He cleared his throat twice before speaking.

"From the de Viremont estate, my lord. Rider came at dawn. Nearly killed their horse."

The letter read:

My Lord, The border winds carry tidings of peace, yet a man’s hearth remains cold without kin. My niece, Cecilia, only child of my late sister Isolde, has reached the age where empire and Church alike demand settlement. I would not see her bartered to wolves in velvet.

Your house is spoken of with honor in the northern marches. I send this not as petition but as soldier to soldier: take her to wife. The dowry is the land itself, three hundred hides of good barley soil, a mill, and the fealty of men who followed me through the Breach at Caer Veyl.

Refusal would grieve me. Acceptance would bind us closer than blood.

Ride when the roads dry.

Alaric de Viremont Baron, late Captain of the King’s Third Lancers

Before you could frame a reply, your aunt, Lady Margery, whose tongue cuts sharper than any blade, swept in, snatching the letter with a crow of triumph.

"How long will you remain un-married? She's clearly a superb match for you! Besides, it would be very rude to deny a war-hero's request!"

And so the wheels turned. Tailors, stewards, priests with dispensation scrolls. Your protests drowned in silk and ceremony.

---

Three months later.

The De Viremont estate rises from the mist like something remembered rather than seen. No soaring turrets or gilded grotesques, only honest grey stone warmed by ivy, windows tall enough to drink the sky. The gardens spill downhill in gentle terraces: lavender hedges clipped into soft waves, apple espaliered against sun-warmed walls, a dovecote whose inhabitants coo like mourning widows. Nothing screams wealth; everything whispers care.

You have been here a fortnight. The guest chamber smells of cedar and dried rosemary; the bed curtains are embroidered with tiny running stags, her work, a maid confessed, blushing. Meals are simple but perfect: brown bread still crackling from the ovens, trout pulled from the estate’s own stream, honey from hives kept by the chapel wall.

This morning the sky is the color of pewter just before rain. You walk the gravel path that curves behind the orangery, boots crunching softly. The air carries woodsmoke and the sweet rot of fallen apples.

There, beneath the arched colonnade where climbing roses bleed petals onto the stone bench, she sits.

Cecilia.

She has not seen you yet. Her face turned towards the duck pond, where a drake trails three ducklings in perfect formation. Sunlight, thin but determined, slips between the columns and strikes her full.

The gown is emerald silk, darker than forest moss, cut square across the bosom in the modest fashion of the northern provinces. It clings to the generous swell of her breasts before falling in heavy folds over knees pressed primly together. One sleeve, cream linen, embroidered at the cuff with tiny silver leaves, has slipped slightly down her forearm, revealing skin pale as fresh cream and dusted with the faintest gold freckles. Her hair, that warm chestnut shot through with hidden threads of honey, is braided low and coiled at her nape; a few tendrils escape to curl against the damp at her temples.

She lifts a hand, not in greeting, but to shade her eyes, and the motion parts the neckline just enough to show the shadowed hollow between her breasts, rising and falling with breath you suddenly notice is quick.

Then she turns.

Hazel eyes, green near the pupil, amber at the rim, meet yours. For three heartbeats the garden holds its breath. A duck quacks; somewhere a bell rings for sext (not that kind of sext, the other one). She does not startle, only lets her hand fall slowly to her lap where a half-finished square of knitting rests like a sleeping cat.

Her voice, when it comes, is soft as the dust motes dancing in the light.

"The roses are late this year," she says, as though you have been conversing for hours. "Uncle blames the frost, but I think they simply waited for kinder company. Tell me truly, does the country air sit well with you, or do you miss the city’s clamor already?"

She tilts her head, the smallest motion, and the sun catches the silver crucifix at her throat, rising, falling, waiting.

The day the letter arrived was... odd, in the way only omens can be.

Your butler, old Master Gervase, whose hands shake only when he thinks no one watches, approached at breakfast with the silver tray usually reserved for royal missives. A single parchment, thick as cream, sealed in scarlet wax stamped with a rearing griffin split by a sword. He cleared his throat twice before speaking.

"From the de Viremont estate, my lord. Rider came at dawn. Nearly killed their horse."

The letter read:

My Lord, The border winds carry tidings of peace, yet a man’s hearth remains cold without kin. My niece, Cecilia, only child of my late sister Isolde, has reached the age where empire and Church alike demand settlement. I would not see her bartered to wolves in velvet.

Your house is spoken of with honor in the northern marches. I send this not as petition but as soldier to soldier: take her to wife. The dowry is the land itself, three hundred hides of good barley soil, a mill, and the fealty of men who followed me through the Breach at Caer Veyl.

Refusal would grieve me. Acceptance would bind us closer than blood.

Ride when the roads dry.

Alaric de Viremont Baron, late Captain of the King’s Third Lancers

Before you could frame a reply, your aunt, Lady Margery, whose tongue cuts sharper than any blade, swept in, snatching the letter with a crow of triumph.

"How long will you remain un-married? She's clearly a superb match for you! Besides, it would be very rude to deny a war-hero's request!"

And so the wheels turned. Tailors, stewards, priests with dispensation scrolls. Your protests drowned in silk and ceremony.

---

Four months later.

The chapel bells toll the hour of none, bronze voices rolling across the valley like slow thunder. Every bench is filled: generals in dress armor, the eldest prince on the groom’s side, the younger prince opposite, Etienne’s smile a blade sheathed in courtesy. Lord Alaric stands behind Cecilia like a scarred oak, hand on the pommel he refused to remove even for the sacrament.

The prime minister’s voice is parchment-dry as he binds you in Latin older than the stones. Rings slide home, plain gold, no gems, her choice. Then the kiss: a breath held between two strangers, lips brushing soft, lingering just long enough for the scent of rosemary water in her hair to reach you before duty pulls you apart.

Feast. Toasts. A blur of faces.

Night.

Servants hustle you through corridors lit by guttering cressets. “Carriage axle cracked on the south bridge,” they mutter. “Horses lamed. Three days at least.” Your aunt’s satisfied smirk lingers in memory.

The bedchamber door closes with the finality of a crypt. Tallow candles on the nightstand throw pools of gold across the quilted counterpane. The fire has burned low; only embers breathe. Cold air snakes in from the cracked window, stirring the heavy damask curtains.

She is already there.

Cecilia sits on the bed’s edge, knees together, nightgown of fine linen the color of moonlight on snow. It clings to the swell of her breasts, the soft curve of her waist, then falls in modest folds to her bare feet. One hand clutches the ribbon at her throat; the other presses flat to her sternum as if to still a frantic bird.

She does not look up at first. A murmur, half prayer, half apology, escapes her.

"...forgive me if I shake. The maids said wine helps, but it only made my stomach turn."

She swallows, the small sound loud in the hush, and finally meets your eyes. Candlelight trembles in the green-amber of her irises.

"I know what is owed tonight. Only... be gentle with me, if you can. I-I have never—"

Her voice cracks, not from fear of you, but of the vast unknown between childhood’s end and whatever morning waits beyond these walls.

"Just... begin with my hand, perhaps. The rest will follow when my heart remembers how to beat."