An arranged marriage is a fairly common historical romance trope, and one I’ve used before. Apart from The Prisoners of Wyvern Castle, I haven’t attempted the challenge of turning an arranged marriage with a very young couple into a love match. Most couples of mine who find themselves in that situation are immediately separated and have to find their way back to one another again. Could I write a naive but reckless young woman and her somewhat more experienced but equally young husband, and make it fun for modern audiences? Challenge accepted. Here’s my hero of The Sincerest Flattery, a story inspired by the Goose Girl.

“Ride on ahead, Lance,” Percy begged. “Let them know I have been delayed.” At least, that is what he intended to say, though his stuffed up nose and raw throat garbled the words.

His brother apparently understood, for he shook his head. “I shouldn’t leave you, Percy. I won’t leave you, at least until after I’ve spoken with the physician.”

“Can’t keep a lady waiting,” Percy insisted, but he might have saved himself the trouble. Lance might be nearly five years his junior, and mostly content to go along with his old brother’s plans and schemes, but when he dug his toes in, there was no moving him.

A knock on the door. Perhaps it was the physician? It was the innkeeper’s wife, with a tray. “Some chicken soup for the young lord,” she offered.

Percy didn’t want food, but Lance said the innkeeper’s wife insisted that he would recover more quickly if he kept up his strength. So he succumbed to having his pillows plumped so that he could sit up, at least enough to have the tray put on the bed.

But his head hurt to much to lift it, and the spoon felt as if it was made of granite and ten times the size. In the end, Lance fed him, a spoonful at a time, until he covered his mouth after the sixth spoonful. “Enough. Let me lie down, Tris. There’s a good chap.”

The innkeeper’s wife, who was hovering, asked, “Did you understand him, my lord?”

“He has had enough, and wants to lie back down,” Lance explained. “I daresay your head hurts, old chap.” He had picked up the tray and handed it the woman, and was supporting Percy with one arm, while rearranging the pillows with the other. “You should let me stay and nurse you, Percy.”

Percy shook his head, a slow and tiny movement from side to side, so as not to burst his pounding head right open.

Another knock on the door, and this time it was the physician. Lance hustled the innkeeper’s wife away and fetched Martin while the doctor did his examination. That was a relief. If he had brought Martin to listen to instructions for Percy’s care, then Lance intended to follow his brother’s instructions.

The brothers were on their way to meet the girl to whom Percy was betrothed. It would be rude to keep Lady Aurelia waiting, and Percy could already tell—was unsurprised to hear the physician telling his brother—that he would be a week or more in bed with this wretched cold.

This ague, rather, which is what the doctor called it. It didn’t seem to matter. Nothing did except for the wretched head, the throat, the blocked nose, the cough that seemed to twist his ribs inside his chest and tear his muscles.

The doctor droned on, and Percy heard bits and pieces in between bouts of coughing and musings about Lady Aurelia. Her miniature was pretty. His father had met her and said she was a comely chit. She had never had a Season, but then she was only seventeen, just a few months younger than Percy’s sister Gwen.

Their parents had signed the marriage agreements. The wedding was to be in six months. No one seemed to think it necessary for the two principals to the marriage to actually meet before the betrothal was announced, which would be before Lady Aurelia arrived in town with her parents for the Season.

And once the betrothal was announced, of course, the wedding must follow, or there would be scandal.

When Percy came up with the scheme to ride north and introduce himself to the lady and her family, the duke his father did not object. All he said was, “Comport yourself like a Versey, Thornstead. And take young Lance with you.”