like that, Angelica had no choice. “I would be happy to, your majesty.”
“Your happiness is not my primary concern,” the Dowager snapped back. “The well-being of my son and the safety of this realm are. You will not jeopardize either one, or there will be a reckoning.”
Angelica didn’t have to ask what kind of reckoning. Right then, she could feel the thread of terror running through her. She hated that. She hated this old hag who could make even something she wanted feel like a threat.
“What about Sebastian?” Angelica asked. “From what I saw at the ball, his interests are… elsewhere.”
With the red-haired girl who claimed to be from Meinhalt, but who didn’t behave like any noble Angelica had met.
“That will no longer be a problem,” the Dowager said.
“Even so, if he’s still hurt…”
The other woman fixed her with an even gaze. “Sebastian will do his duty, to both the realm and his family. He will marry who he is required to marry, and we will make it into a joyous occasion.”
“Yes, your majesty,” Angelica said, lowering her gaze demurely. Once she was married to Sebastian, perhaps she wouldn’t have to bow and scrape like this. For now, though, she behaved as she had to. “I shall write to my father at once.”
The Dowager waved that away. “I have already done so, and Robert has been delighted to accept. The arrangements for the wedding are already underway. I understand from the couriers that your mother fainted at the news, but then, she always was of a delicate disposition. I trust that it is not a trait you will pass to my grandchildren.”
She made it sound like a disease to be expunged. Angelica found herself more annoyed by the way everything had just been put in place without her knowledge. Even so, she did her best to show the gratitude she knew was expected of her.
“Thank you, your majesty,” she said. “I will strive to be the best daughter-in-law that you could hope for.”
“Just remember that becoming my daughter buys you no special favor,” the Dowager said. “You have been selected to perform a task, and you will do so to my satisfaction.”
“I will strive to make Sebastian happy,” Angelica said.
The Dowager stood. “See that you do. Make him so happy that he can think of nothing else. Make him happy enough to drive thoughts of… others from his mind. Make him happy, give him children, do all that the wife of a prince should do. If you do all that, your future will be a happy one as well.”
Angelica’s temper wouldn’t allow her to let that go. “And if I do not?”
The Dowager looked at her as if she were nothing, rather than one of the greatest nobles in the land.
“You are trying to be strong in the hopes that I will respect you as some kind of equal,” she said. “Perhaps you hope that I will see something of myself in you, Angelica. Perhaps I even do, but that is hardly a good thing. I want you to remember one thing from this moment on: I own you.”
“No, you – ”
The slap wasn’t hard. It wouldn’t leave a mark that would show. It barely even stung, except in terms of Angelica’s pride. There, it burned.
“I own you as surely as if I had bought the indenture of some girl,” the Dowager repeated. “If you fail me in any way, I will destroy you for what you tried to do to my son. The only reason you are here and not in a cell is because you are more useful to me like this.”
“As a wife for your son,” Angelica pointed out.
“As that, and as a distraction for him,” the Dowager replied. “You did say you would do anything. Just let me know if you have changed your mind.”
And then there would be the most horrific death Angelica could imagine.
“No, I thought not. You will be the perfect wife. You will be the perfect mother in time. You will tell me of any problems. You will obey my commands. If you fail in any of these things, the Mask of Lead will seem tame in comparison to what will happen to you.”
CHAPTER SIX
They dragged Sophia outside, pulling at her even though she was walking under her own power. She was too numb to do anything else, too weak to even think about fighting. The nuns were delivering her on her new owner’s orders. They might as well have wrapped her up like a new hat or a side of beef.
When Sophia saw the cart, then she tried to struggle, but it made no difference. It was a big, gaudy thing, painted like the wagon of some circus or troupe of players. The bars proclaimed it as what it was though: the holding wagon of a slaver.
The nuns dragged her to it and opened up the back, pulling back big bolts that couldn’t be accessed from the inside.
“A sinful thing like you deserves to be in a place like this,” one of the nuns said.
The other one laughed. “You think she’s sinful now? Give her a year or two of being used by every man with the coin for her.”
Sophia had a brief glimpse of cowering figures as the nuns threw the door open. Frightened eyes looked up at her, and she saw half a dozen other girls huddled on the hard wood. Then they shoved her inside, sending her tumbling among them with no room to gather herself.
The door slammed shut with a clang of metal on metal. The noise of the bolts was worse, proclaiming Sophia’s helplessness in a scrape of rust and iron.
The other girls scrambled back from her while she tried to find a space there. Sophia’s talent gave her their fear. They were worried that she would still be violent, the way the dark-eyed girl in the corner had been, or that she would scream until Meister Karg beat all of them, the way the girl with the bruises around her mouth had.
“I’m not going to hurt any of you,” Sophia said. “I’m Sophia.”
Things that might have been names were murmured back to her in the half light of the prison cart, too quiet for Sophia to catch most of them. Her power let her get the rest, but right then she was too wrapped up in her own misery to care much.
A day ago, things had been so different. She’d been happy. She’d been ensconced in the palace, preparing for her wedding, not locked in a cage. She’d been surrounded by servants and helpers, not frightened girls. She’d had fine dresses, not rags, and safety rather than the lingering pain of a beating.
She’d had the prospect of spending her life with Sebastian, not being used by a succession of men.
There was nothing she could do. Nothing but sit there, looking out of the gaps in the bars now, watching as Meister Karg walked out of the orphanage with a smug expression. He sauntered to the cart, then hauled himself up into the driving seat with a groan of effort. Sophia heard the crack of a whip, and she flinched instinctively after everything that had happened to her at the hands of Sister O’Venn, her body expecting pain even as the cart rumbled into life.
It crawled through Ashton’s streets, the wooden wheels jolting as they found the holes between the cobbles there. Sophia saw the houses passing by at barely the pace of a walking man, the wagon in no hurry to get to its destination. That should have been a good thing, in a way, but it seemed then just like a way of drawing out her misery, taunting her and the others with their inability to escape the wagon.
Sophia saw people passing by, moving out of the way of the wagon only in the way that they moved aside for other large carts capable of crushing them. A few glanced at it, but they made no comment. They certainly made no move to stop it or to help the girls within. What did it say about a place like Ashton that this counted as normal?
A fat baker paused to watch them pass. A couple stepped back away from the tire ruts. Children were pulled close by their mothers, or ran up to stare inside on dares from their friends. Men looked in with considering expressions, as though wondering if they could afford any of the girls there. Sophia forced herself to glare back at them, daring them to meet her eyes.
She wished