Travellers in Magic by Lisa Goldstein Read Free Book Online

other one dirty? Or wasn’t it appropriate for today, for whatever she was going to do today? Without questioning, she put the dress on.
    The prince was already at the table when she came down for breakfast. “Lessons,” he said, popping a muffin into his mouth. “You’re going to have lessons, starting today. You can’t do everything the way you’ve always done it.” He looked at her fondly.
    â€œYes, my lord,” she said, bowing her head to cover her blushes. He had heard, then. Someone had told him about what had happened this morning. Still, he thought she was capable of learning. And if he thought so then she was capable. She would live up to his trust in her. She was eager to learn. “What sort of lessons?”
    â€œMmm,” the prince said. “Etiquette. Manners. What else? What do ladies have to know? Embroidery. Oh, and we’ll have to correct your pretty little accent. We’ll start here, on our honeymoon. That way when we get back to the palace you won’t feel so out of place.”
    She looked at him, puzzled. He did love her, didn’t he? Then why was he so anxious to keep her out of his way during the day? “And you, my lord?” she said. “What will you be doing?”
    â€œOh, the usual thing,” he said. “Fox hunting, falconry. I have my lessons too. I’ll have to learn to be a king someday. But you don’t have to worry about that.”
    She smiled at him. Of course not. Of course he would have more important things to do.
    And so it started. Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the morning was etiquette. She learned how to address people, and she learned how they should address her. She learned where to seat them at dinner. She learned what to wear to which occasions and what the latest fashions were. In the afternoons she learned how to speak like an aristocrat. Her Tuesdays and Thursdays were free, which meant that in the morning she had to embroider with the ladies-in-waiting and in the afternoon she had to deal with the day to day problems of running an estate. Your neighbor Lord So-and-so has just had a son, what should we get the baby? The coachman wants the day off to see his mother. The downstairs maid is sick. On weekends she got to see the prince, but on Saturdays there was usually a dinner or a dance to go to, and on Sundays there was church.
    And she had insomnia. Of course that was to be expected after nearly a lifetime of sleeping on hard stones, but she hadn’t thought that it would happen, and it worried her. She tossed and turned in the large bed, trying to get comfortable, trying not to wake the prince. The prince must never know, never suspect that she was ungrateful. The prince would rise early to go hunting, and she would fall asleep at dawn and be awakened, hours later, by the young servant, her personal maid. “Come, my lady, it’s time to go to breakfast.”
    She never got enough sleep. She was tired doing her lessons, tired doing her embroidery, tired talking to the cooks and cleaning women. “You look very pale,” they would tell her, and shake their heads. She once overheard two of the kitchen maids wonder if she was pregnant.
    Of all her lessons she liked embroidery the best. She was good at it, having had to sew and mend for her stepmother and stepsisters all her life. She liked working with the silk threads and good linen and bright, sharp needles. But the conversation of the ladies-in-waiting, even of the ones who made an effort to be kind to her, flowed over her. She didn’t know the people they talked about, didn’t know why it was important that Lord So-and-so’s cousin had married Lady Such-and-such or that Lord So-and-so’s son had come down with a mysterious disease. She had asked the woman who taught her court etiquette, but the woman, an old distant relative of the king’s, hadn’t been to the palace for years, and all her gossip was