The Bride of the Unicorn

“I’ve just come to check on my charge, my lady Dulcinea,” she said, approaching the bed. “I do hope you’ve been treated in accordance with your exalted rank. Otherwise there is nothing else for it but to sack the servants. Every last lazy one of them. Although I must say they have been extremely cooperative thus far, even going to the trouble to cut my meat for me when I found the chore beyond my strength.”

Caroline giggled and threw her entire upper body forward, pressing her forehead against the mattress, then rolled onto her back, her arms and legs spread wide as her sleek curtain of hair splayed out on the coverlet. She began sliding her limbs back and forth across the coverlet, in much the same way she could remember making angels in the snow at the orphanage when she was a child.

Then, looking up at Miss Twittingdon, her green eyes twinkling with mischief, she exclaimed, “Aunt Leticia! Can you believe this? Can you honestly believe any of this? Look at me! I’m reaching as far as I can in every direction, and still I’m miles and miles from the edge. We could fit six other people in this bed. Maybe eight!”

“My lady! To think such a thing! You are virginal,” Miss Twittingdon pointed out.

“Oh, pooh!” Caroline exclaimed, deliberately teasing the old woman with her own saying. She scrambled from the bed, not even noticing that her bare feet might be chilled by the cold floor, and began racing around the room. A generous amount of the material of her overlong nightdress bunched in one hand so that she wouldn’t trip, she pointed out one treasure after another to Miss Twittingdon until she happened to catch sight of herself in the tall freestanding mirror placed in front of one of the curtained windows. She released her grip on the material and stood rigidly still, looking at the stranger who grinned back at her. “Oh, my!”

Her smile slowly faded as she approached the mirror, one hand to her cheek as the other pressed against the cool glass, to confirm the evidence of her eyes. “Is this me, Aunt Leticia? Is this really me?”

“Of course it is you, my lady,” Miss Twittingdon stated firmly, if only slightly deferentially. “Surely you have seen yourself before this. You look as you have always looked every day of our acquaintance. Beautiful. Sweetly, heartbreakingly beautiful. However, you are barefoot, which I cannot approve, any more than I can like the notion of you remaining under this bachelor roof. I would be shirking my responsibility as your chaperon if I did not admit that. Have you had any of the apricot soufflé I was served earlier, my dear? It was supremely satisfying.”

Caroline began to gnaw on one side of the tip of her little finger, then abruptly dropped her hand, whirling to face the old lady she had cared for, the dear woman who had shared her comfits and her clean water and her faintly scrambled knowledge with her. “Aunt Leticia, you—you’ve always seen me as looking like this?”

Miss Twittingdon smiled, looking almost motherly. “Always, my dear. My beautiful Lady Dulcinea.”

“Lady Caroline,” Caroline corrected apologetically, turning back to the mirror. She took her disheveled hair in her hands, twisting it around and around itself, and pulled up the long blond coil against the back of her head so that it looked vaguely like one of the styles she had seen depicted on Miss Twittingdon’s fashion plates, then tilted her small chin and looked down her nose at her own reflection. “You must remember to call me Lady Caroline, Aunt Leticia. It is very important to the marquis’s plans.”

And then she crossed her eyes and grinned.

“Sons and fathers, fathers and sons;

Do you e’er wonder which are the ones

Who, siring, or born through transient lust,

First turn family love and honor to dust?

Father and son, son and father;

Living and lying are such a bother.

The days keep turning, the hate burns bright,

And the only peace is in endless night.”

MORGAN CAREFULLY PLACED his wineglass on the table beside him and looked at Ferdie Haswit, who was perched elflike on the center cushion of the overstuffed couch. “Maudlin little beast, aren’t you?” he inquired casually while idly wondering why he had thought to pour himself a glass of wine when it had only gone eleven—he, who never drank before three.

Ferdie grinned, showing even but widely spaced small teeth that reminded Morgan of a monkey he had seen once at a local fair. “Not really, my lord. I encountered your father this morning at breakfast. You had just finished and gone, although I noticed that you had left your plate all but untouched. The duke promised to say a prayer for me. Do you think he believes he can ask the good Lord to make me grow?”

“Now, why do I find it difficult to believe you expect me to answer that particular question?” Morgan put forth, feeling vaguely embarrassed for his father.

Ferdie waved one short arm as if in dismissal of Morgan’s words, his pudgy fingers spread wide. “You’re right. Never mind that last bit. His grace was most solicitous, offering to have one of the servants fetch me a pillow so that I might be more comfortable at table. A very agreeable man, your father. So tell me, if a confirmed although recently liberated lunatic might be allowed to inquire—why do you two dislike each other?”

“I have always considered it a mistake in judgment to overeducate infants,” Morgan said, staring piercingly at Ferdie. “They ask such impertinent questions.”

“Sorry,” the dwarf apologized quickly, holding up his hands as if the marquis had just produced a pistol from behind his back and leveled it at him. “At least your father acknowledges you. I imagine I’m just jealous, when I should be grateful that you allowed Caro to convince you that she couldn’t bear to leave her dear friends behind if she tossed in her lot with you. You aren’t going to hurt her, are you? I’d have to kill you if you did, and I rather like you.”

“Maudlin, impertinent, and bloodthirsty. You have quite a lot of vices stuffed into that small body, don’t you, Ferdie?”

“See? I told you I liked you!” Ferdie maneuvered his body forward and hopped down off the couch. “You couldn’t care less whether or not you insult me, when most people either stare at me like they’re seeing something that just climbed out from beneath a rock or look at me with pity in their eyes—like your father. And yet you treat me like I have a mind—as if I can think! You can’t imagine what it is like to have people talk above you, as if you can’t understand plain English, or yell at you, as if you’re deaf as well as stunted, or hate you—call you names or throw stones at you—because you scare them, because your very existence reminds them that God still makes mistakes. But you—you don’t hate me or pity me or look down on me.” He shook his large head, tears standing in his eyes. “You treat me like I was just anybody.”

“Which is not the same as saying I like you,” Morgan pointed out, beginning to smile. “You can be as obnoxious as all hell, you know.”

Ferdie clambered back up onto the sofa cushions, then turned to wink at Morgan. “Yes, my lord. I know. I’ve had considerable practice at it. But I’m not short of a sheet. I’m just short.”