Heartless by Anne Elisabeth Stengl Read Free Book Online Page B

respects?”
    Una’s eyes widened. Felix! she screamed inside but kept her mouth shut in a tight line.
    “To my sister, yes?”
    The court murmured. From his place beside Felix, King Fidel cleared his throat meaningfully. But Prince Aethelbald sat a moment, contemplating his goblet. “None here need pretend ignorance of my purpose,” he said in his quiet but authoritative voice. “I, for one, am not ashamed to announce it.”
    The next moment, to Una’s horror, right there before the entire assembly, before soup had even been served – which somehow made it more horrible – Prince Aethelbald pushed back his chair and got down on one knee beside her. She found herself staring down into his kind, boring face. She looked away, mouth open, for some sign of help, but all the court of Parumvir was watching with held breath.
    “I love you, Princess Una,” Aethelbald said. “It would be my honor and my joy if you would consent to be my wife. Will you have me?”

4
    "You refused him?”
    “Of course I refused him, Nurse!” Una sat once more before her vanity as Nurse undid her work of the afternoon, pulling curls and feathers from their places and letting Una’s hair fall down her back. “How could I do otherwise?”
    “Umph,” Nurse said.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Nothing at all, Miss Princess, nothing at all.”
    Una turned on her seat to look up at Nurse, who was scowling like a storm cloud. “You think I should have accepted him.”
    Nurse stepped back, a bristled hairbrush clutched in one hand like a battle standard. “A match like that, and you up and said, ‘No, thank you.’ ” She shook her head, and the brush quivered in her hand. “The Prince of Farthestshore, by all accounts the greatest and richest kingdom ever heard tell of, asks for your hand . . . and you refused him.”
    Una rose from her stool. A feather still in her hair drifted around to tickle under her nose, and she brushed it aside. “He’s saying he loves me when we’ve hardly even spoken. That doesn’t make any sense!”
    “It’s romantic.”
    “It’s ridiculous.”
    “Look who’s talking.”
    Una frowned, considering the irony of role reversal. Then she shrugged. “I don’t even know him.”
    “He’s prince of a mighty kingdom,” Nurse replied, pointing the hairbrush at Una’s nose. “And you, my dear, are a princess. What more knowing do you need?”
    Una swept away, her dressing gown trailing behind, shedding more feathers as she went. Monster batted at them as they drifted by his nose. “I won’t marry him for his rank, and that’s that.”
    “You are a princess. What else do princesses marry for?”
    Una flung open her tall window door and stepped out onto the balcony. The spring breeze was cool, biting at her face, but she hardly cared. “I won’t marry that man, Nurse.” Her chin rose imperiously. “I won’t marry him, never, and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise!”
    She slammed the door, rattling the glass, and stepped to the rail of her balcony. Her chambers on the third floor of the palace overlooked the gardens, which were edged with the light of a bright crescent moon. She leaned against the rail and took a deep breath, closing her eyes. Standing there in the quiet of the evening, she could almost imagine that she heard the murmur of the sea far below the hill. But when she opened her eyes again, it was not the ocean she saw but the dark expanse of Goldstone Wood, which began at the edge of the moonlit garden and swept its way down the hill and off into acres of impenetrable forest beyond.
    “Meeaaa?” said Monster, sitting at her feet.
    Una looked down at her cat. “I won’t marry him,” she whispered. The wind blew in her face, and she turned once more to gaze at the Wood.
    The dark treetops swayed, rippling the moonlight across their leaves.
    “It’s my choice. And I won’t.”
    Goldstone Wood watched her in silence until at last she gathered up her cat and