Time stopped when Erwin slid the ring on her finger. Olive stared down at it. Somehow she hadn’t prepared herself for this moment. The finality of what it meant struck her like a cold blow to the stomach. She’s gone, and she’s not coming back. She’s really gone. You’re wearing her ring. The ring she wore your whole life. Now it’s yours. It was followed by a wave of bitter regret. Why had they fought so much? Why had Olive bristled at each touch, rebuffed each word? Yes, she had been a very different child and grown into a different woman than perhaps what her mother had wanted. But looking back now, from here, Olive couldn’t help but feel that she’d been profoundly unkind to her. Is that how all children feel, she wondered, when they find themselves finally, irrevocably adults?
She was snapped out of her reverie by, of all things, an embrace from Lord Burrows. ”Well done, my dear,” she heard him say, his normally curmudgeonly manner uncommonly tender, ”your father would be so proud.” Before she could quite recover from the shock of it, she was in the arms of Lady Rosengard, sobbing something about her mother. And when she finally emerged from that, she saw the procession of nobles and guests assembled to come and congratulate the newly weds in ones and twos. Olive played her part, politely returning embraces, hand clasps, kind words and thank yous as the line wound its way around the Great Hall towards them.
In fact, she spent much of the rest of the day playing her part, feeling as though she were little more than part of some student production back in the University in Uthlyn. Only on a grander scale. She wasn’t doing these things as herself, as Olive, as Constance Carwick, simply acting out the desired role of the audience: Constance Therrien, blushing bride, newlywed wife, Duchess of Wulfbauer. It had nothing to do with her at all, really. The only time the illusion broke, that she became acutely aware that this was real and most certainly involved her actual life was when the couple mounted snow-white horses and rode slowly, so slowly, through the streets of the town to be congratulated by their people. It was during this exercise – riding at walking pace through the town, mounted high above the crowd – that she became painfully aware that if a single disgruntled soldier, or covert agent of the Church, or any number of actors decided that they would not stand to see a mage Duchess, sent a bullet or a bolt or an arrow soaring through the air, that it would not be only Constance Therrien who’s life be snuffed out, but hers as well. She half expected it as they proceeded through the town, pushing down rising panic in her stomach at each new turn, impossibly vulnerable atop the milk-white mare. Even a mediocre marksman would have no trouble. But it didn’t come. Each turn only brought smiling children, hoisted up in their fathers’ arms to pass her a flower, or an old man reaching up to clasp Erwin’s hand. Then, incredibly, without incident, they were back at the Keep.
For the rest of the day’s festivities, she became Constance Therrien again. It was easier. Constance Therrien could be gracious, happy, demure. Protecting the real Constance underneath. But as the day wore on and gradually became night, the guise wore thin, became more wearisome to keep up, and she was relieved when Lady Rosengard pulled her aside and told her it was time to go upstairs. She didn’t even think about the implications of that instruction. She simply followed Lady Rosengard to the antechamber adjacent to the Duke’s quarters that had, once, been her mother’s dressing room. She looked down again, almost guiltily, at the ring. Grace and two maids were waiting for her. She gratefully let them help her out of the weighty and constrictive dress, glad to be free of it.
Now that she was, though, she found herself increasingly impatient to be alone. If only for a moment. It already felt increasingly impossible to sit patiently still while Grace began to undo whatever she’d done to Olive’s hair, when – to her horror – Grace attempted to broach the topic of a wife’s duties. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and in a flare of temper she knew she would later regret, she dismissed Grace and the bewildered maids from her presence. It turned out she regretted it sooner rather than later, though. Sitting in a simple white slip in front of the mirror, she began to unwork her hair herself and quickly found that whatever Grace had done had involved an unreasonable, she decided, number of pins. The ones she could see were easy enough to remove herself, but there remained an untold number in the back she could not. Swearing each time she pricked her finger on one, she was ready to properly swear at Grace when she heard someone approach at the door.
”Grace, I thought I – “ she began angrily, but stopped when she saw his reflection in the mirror. ”Oh, it’s you.” The anger had dissipated from her voice, replaced with relief, but also trepidation. She gazed at Erwin for a moment in the mirror, forgetting for the moment about the scars exposed by the slip, then turned on the stool to face him. ”Can you help me?” she asked, plaintive and a little embarrassed, and gestured helplessly to the few pins she had been able to extract. ”I think Grace must have used a hundred of the bloody things.”
