This is an excerpt from my novella for a Dragonblade anthology that will publish next year. My hero and heroine are substitutes for their older siblings in an arranged marriage. Here’s my bride.
When Mima woke on her wedding day, she was not miserable.
She had met her groom. Pel was someone she thought she might have liked, had their families not been at war, and had they met under different circumstances. Their marriage, she cautiously hoped, might not be as terrible as she feared.
Then her best friend Isabelle, one of her female cousins, arrived with the maid carrying the breakfast tray. “You are not getting married without me, Mimmie,” said Bella, “even if you are marrying an ogre.”
“He is not an ogre,” Mima protested, and found herself telling her friend about the night-time visit.
Bella took a predictably romantic view of the encounter. “Oh, I could swoon,” she declared. “He climbed to your balcony, Mimmie! How delicious! Is he handsome? Of course, he must be. It would be a travesty were he not, after he braved all those guards so he could meet you.”
“Do not tell the others,” Mima warned her, as giggles from outside of the door heralded the arrival of the rest of her cousins.
Moments later, she was engulfed in a feminine avalanche, and the next two hours were filled with pampering, primping, praise, and lots of laughter. Almost everything she wore, from the skin out, was new—most of it given by or borrowed from her cousins.
The cream silk gown had been intended for special occasions, and she supposed there were few occasions more special than one’s own wedding. Even so, Bella had declared it needed a little more, and had spent the past two days adding little embroidered flowers to the bodice and hem, each of them a tiny work of art, each chosen to express a suitable sentiment—asters, white carnations, and forget-me-nots for love, myrtle for luck, peonies for a happy life, violets for faithfulness.
One of the other cousins had taken scraps of the fabric and the lace that trimmed it, and made a bonnet to match, decorated with left-over ribbon from the gown and silk flowers that matched those Bella had embroidered.
A third cousin, nearly as deft with her needle as Bella, had embroidered matching slippers for Mima to wear on her feet, and others had searched through their drawers or the local drapery shops for stockings, garters, petticoats, and all the other items Mima needed to do the Ruthermonds proud at the wedding.
Even without her sister’s presence, Mima felt buoyed up on a tide of family love. In fact, if she were to be honest with herself, this way was better. She and Marge had never had more than a cordial relationship, and it had frequently been much less.
Marge seemed to believe Mima was her rival for everything—possessions, talents, parents’ affection and attention. What Marge had, she would not share. What Mima had, Marge wanted.
Marge was the older by three years. Marge was also—at least according to Mama and Marge—cleverer, prettier, and more talented. Mima had to concede the “prettier.” Marge was an English rose—a peaches and cream complexion, golden hair, blue eyes, a heart-shaped face, and a figure that displayed to advantage in everything she wore.
Mima had dark brown hair. Her blue eyes were closer to a faded grey. And she was undeniably… curvy, a charitable aunt put it. Plump, said Mama and Marge.
Today, though, as she examined herself in the mirror, she felt almost beautiful, and the compliments from her cousins lifted her confidence still further. Let Marge sulk in her tower while Mima married Lord Pelham Townswell! Never had Mima been happier to be the recipient of something—or in this case someone—rejected by Marge.
