A Kiss for Queens

“And now it is time to get them to act,” Angelica replied. “Make them a part of this from the start. The Dowager’s death is already rumor for the city, and it will be announced formally soon enough. Things must move quickly now.” She drew him to his feet. “All kinds of things.”

“Which things?” Rupert asked. Angelica put it down to the shock.

“Our wedding, Rupert,” she said. “It must happen before people have a chance to argue. We must present them with a stable front, a settled royal dynasty to follow.”

Rupert moved surprisingly quickly when he grabbed her by the throat, the anger there rising up again with dangerous rapidity.

“Don’t tell me what I must do,” he said. “My mother tried to do that.”

“I am not your mother,” Angelica replied, trying not to wince at the strength of the grip. “But I would like to be your wife before the day is done. I thought we’d discussed that, Rupert. I thought it was what you wanted.”

Rupert let go of her. “I don’t know. I don’t… none of this is what I planned.”

“Isn’t it?” Angelica asked. “You planned to take the throne. Surely you knew what sacrifices that would involve? Although I’d like to think that marrying me is hardly that much of a hardship.”

She moved back from him. “If you like, it is not too late to call things off. Tell me to leave, and I will vacate Ashton for my family’s estates. Choose to wait, and we will wait. Of course, then you would not have my family’s strength, or their allies. And there would be no one to help you to contain all those… difficult rumors.”

“You’re threatening me?” Rupert demanded. Angelica knew how dangerous a game that was. Even so, she was going to play it, because the real game she was playing was far more dangerous.

“I’m simply pointing out the advantages you gain by going through with it, my love,” Angelica said. “Marry me, and I can make all of this so much easier for you. It is better to do it today than a month from now. If I can act as your wife, I have a reason to protect you from the world.”

Rupert stood there for several seconds, and for a moment Angelica thought she might have misjudged all of this. That he might walk away after all. Then he gave a single, terse nod.

“Very well,” he said. “If it matters to you, we will do it today. Now, I’m going to get some air and start contacting our allies.”

He turned and walked out. Angelica suspected that he was more likely to seek out wine than their allies, but that didn’t matter. It was probably even to their benefit. She would soon have them doing all that they should, sending messages on behalf of her husband.

She rang the bell for a servant.

“See that the clothes Prince Rupert was wearing when he came in are burned,” she said to the girl who came in. “Then fetch a priestess of the Masked Goddess, and invite the members of the Dowager’s inner council to meet at the palace. Oh, and send someone along to my dressmaker. There should be a wedding dress waiting for me by now.”

“My lady?” the girl said.

“Am I not speaking clearly enough?” Angelica asked. “My dressmaker. Go.”

The girl went. It was strange how stupid people could be sometimes. The servant had obviously assumed that Angelica would have made no preparations for her own wedding. Instead, she’d begun sending messages out for the preparations almost as soon as she got the idea to have Rupert marry her. It was important that this wedding looked as much like one as possible given the short notice.

It was a shame that there would be no opportunity to have a bigger ceremony later, but there was one obvious impediment to that: Rupert would be dead by then.

Today had shown the necessity of that more clearly than Angelica could have believed. She’d thought Rupert a man as much in control of himself as she was of herself, yet he remained as changeable as the wind. No, the plan she’d put in place was the way to go. She would marry Rupert tonight, kill him by morning, and be crowned queen before his body was even in the ground.

Ashton would have the queen it needed then. Angelica would rule, and the kingdom would be better for it. Everything was going to turn out right. She could feel it.

CHAPTER THREE

Sophia could only wait as the fleet advanced on Ashton. As her fleet advanced. Even here and now, after everything that had happened, it was hard to remember that all of this was hers. Every life on the ships around her, every lord who sent men, every piece of land from which they came, was her responsibility.

“There’s a lot to take responsibility for,” Sophia whispered to Sienne, the forest cat purring as she brushed against Sophia’s legs, winding around her with her own impatience.

There had been a fleet’s worth of ships anyway as they left Ishjemme, but since then more and more vessels had joined them, coming in down Ishjemme’s coasts or from the small islands along the way, even coming out from the Dowager’s kingdom as those loyal to her came to join in the assault.

There were so many soldiers there with her now. Enough soldiers to maybe win this war. Enough soldiers to wipe Ashton from the map, if she chose it.

It will be all right, Lucas sent across to her, obviously sensing her disquiet.

People will die, Sophia sent back.

But they are here because they choose to be, Lucas replied. He walked up to put a hand on her shoulder. Honor them by not throwing those lives away, but do not lessen what they offer by holding back.

“I think it’s one of those things that’s easier to say than to do,” Sophia said aloud. She reached down to ruffle Sienne’s ears automatically.

“Possibly,” Lucas admitted. He looked ready for war in a way that Sophia did not, a blade by his side and pistols set at his belt. Sophia guessed that she just looked impossibly round with the weight of her unborn child, unarmed and unarmored as she stood there.

But not unready, Lucas sent. He gestured to the rear of the ship. “Our commanders await.”

Mostly, that meant her cousins and her uncle. They held this together as surely as Sophia did, but there were other men there too: clan chiefs and minor lords, hard men who still offered bows as Sophia approached, her brother and her forest cat by her side.

“Are we ready?” she asked, looking over to her uncle and trying to look like the queen that they all needed her to be.

“There are still decisions to make,” Lars Skyddar said. “We know what we are trying to achieve, but now we need to decide on the specifics.”

“What’s to decide?” her cousin Ulf demanded, in his usual bluff tone. “We get the men together, pound the walls with cannon, then charge in.”

“This explains a lot about the way you hunt,” Ulf’s sister Frig said, with a wolf-like smile. “We should encircle the city like a noose, closing in.”

“We need to be ready for a siege,” Hans said, cautious as ever.

It seemed that everyone had their own idea of how it should go, and a part of Sophia wished that she could stand back, leaving all of this to those with wiser heads, more knowledge of war. She knew she couldn’t, though, and that the cousins would argue forever if she let them do it. That meant the only way to do this was to choose.

“When will we reach the city?” she asked, trying to think.

“Probably dusk,” her uncle said.

“It’s too late for a simple assault then,” she said, thinking of the time she’d spent in the city at night. “I know Ashton’s streets. Trust me, if we try to charge through them in the dark, it won’t end well.”

“A siege then,” Hans said, seeming pleased by the prospect, or maybe just that his plan was the one being chosen.

Sophia shook her head. “A siege hurts the wrong people, and doesn’t help the right ones. The city’s old walls only protect the inner part of the city, and you can bet that the Dowager would starve the poorest to feed herself. Meanwhile, every moment we wait, Sebastian is in danger.”

“What then?” her uncle asked. “Do you have a plan, Sophia?”

“We will anchor in front of Ashton when we get there,” she said. “We will send out messages for them to surrender.”

“They won’t do it,” Hans said. “Even if we offer them quarter.”

Sophia shook her head. She knew that much. “The Dowager won’t believe that anyone else would have more mercy than her. But the illusion that we are giving them time to surrender will buy us time for half our men to move around to the landward side of the city. They will take the outskirts quietly. The people there have no love for the Dowager.”

“Do they have any more for an invader?” Lucas asked.