Cora returned to her chambers to be greeted by her two maids and one of her sisters. Odette was the middle daughter of four. They had three brothers as well, but they were all away from the castle for the next week since it was not thought that the party from odoriferous Odeira. She laughed mirthlessly to herself at the thought of her sister becoming Lady Odette of odoriferous Odeira. Poor thing probably wouldn't even get the joke. She was quite smart about some things but hopelessly lost about others. She was, after all, a teenager.
“What did you think about them?” Odette was never one for pointless small talk and tended to get to the point rather quickly, if a bit bluntly. “I thought the Black Prince was rather handsome, don't you?”
Cora hadn't actually thought about it. She frowned a bit, remembering his haughty boot click and condescending tone with her father. She pursed her lips and shrugged. He was cold and smug and looked to her like a highway robber from one of her stories, though she didn't have the heart to say that to her sister who was obviously intrigued. Odette shared much of her coloring but where Cora's eyes were lighter brown with gold flecks, her sister's were much darker and ringed with impressively long eyelashes. They both had similarly gold blond hair, though Odette had a cooler and lighter shade. Cora shook her head again, trying to clear his image from her mind.
“Even if he is here to discuss trade routes through our kingdom, which I doubt very much, he's not something that either of us should give much thought about. He's the bastard son of their king and not someone any of us should even consider. If he's here to arrange marriage to anyone it's probably for one of his brothers.” Cora was looking at it as clinically as she possibly could. She was the eldest, and since her father was not the most apt dignitary it fell to her to try and make sense of the situation.
“True... but still.” Odette fanned herself dramatically while draping her small frame over the side of a low chair, pretending to faint. “That dark hair that caught the sun just so... and his tall figure. I even liked his beard. Oh, and Cora... my dear Cora, did you see his hands?” Cora sat at her dressing table, removing some of the pins from her hair and raised her eyebrows at her sister through the mirror who wasn't paying attention. She'd resumed her dramatic drape over the back of the chair and was staring at the ceiling. “He had gorgeous eyes too, don't you think?”
She tried to see him from her sister's perspective but the only emotion Cora could raise was contempt for the bastard who'd come to broker the hand one of her sisters to a bloodthirsty kingdom far away for a prince-ling without the balls to come get one of them on his own. His reputation was one of a faithful lapdog to his king and a rabid dog when it came to enemies of his kingdom. She couldn't remove one element from the other but she also didn't have the heart to crush the girlish fantasies of her teenaged sister.
Her sister continued musing about how different their kingdoms were. How exotic his kingdom must be. How strange his culture and ways. How passionate their every endevour. While Odette continued to prattle on about their differences, Cora systematically removed her pins and thought about the strange man with his beautiful eyes like ice. They made her shiver with their cold contempt. She wondered what his war enemies saw in those eyes before he cut them down with a deadly passion.
The princesses were left to their own devices until that evening when an impromptu gala was being held in the honor of their guests. She would have preferred to turn down whatever they were here for, but formalities and decorum were what kept peace between kingdoms. She would smile politely, use her table manners and even dance with one or two of them if she absolutely had to do so. But she would not engage in any conversation more involved than remarking upon the weather.
Her maids had returned with ample time before the gala to dress her and cluck their tongues about her pulling all of the pins out of her hair. She hated the pins. She hated the corsets and the stockings and the heavy jewelry and all the makeup and finery. She wished she could just be Cora with out all of the paint and lace. Odette had returned to her own room hours ago when it was obvious that Cora wouldn't titter with her about the 'handsome' brute visitors.
Cora wore her light chocolate lace dress with a v neck that plunged lower than she would have preferred. Her mother had insisted that she should have a dress such as this for exactly this occasion. There was cream lace dotted with champagne pearls lining the neckline so that it looked more modest than it was, unless someone was truly paying attention, and the sleeves brushed the tops of her shoulders and then hung down along the sides of her skirts. The bodice was more snug than her usual attire and forced her pale bosom up to hug the lace. She wore matching pearls on her necklace and large teardrop pearls dangling from her ears. There were even a few pinned into her hair which was now half up and half trailing down to the small of her back. Clara put on her mother's blue topaz ring on her right hand over her long cream colored gloves. She examined herself in the mirror. If it had been anyone else she would have thought it was completely adequate for the occasion. She, however, felt like a living piece of wedding cake.
Odette and their youngest sister Evalynn came in while she was still staring in the mirrors. Odette actually gasped.
“Oh, Clara, you're a vision!” She giggled and started dancing around her sister. Eva, the more reserved of her younger two sisters merely smiled kindly and nodded her approval. Celeste would probably already be waiting by the door of the gala for her sisters to join her. She didn't share Clara's reticence when it came to strangers. She wanted out of their small, sheltered kingdom, and she didn't particularly care who it was or what the details might be. If there was any sort of chemistry between herself and the visitors, their sister would jump at the chance to abandon them.
Before they could leave for the gala, Clara reviewed a few protocols with her sisters and made sure that they remembered their polite, noncommittal responses to questions that a strange man might ask them. It was all part of the training that they'd received from their mother, but she had been gone for a few years now and the younger girls looked to her for their good manners. Clara had been a little younger than Eva was now when their mother had been thrown from her horse.
The sisters ranged in age from twenty three to fourteen years old. Evalynn was only a few months from her fifteenth birthday, Odette had just turned seventeen, and Celeste was nineteen but seemed to be fast approaching thirty. Their brothers, Armand, Sigmund and Wyatt were twenty, eighteen and twelve, respectively. They would be away for another week unless the weather turned, however. She had made sure that her father sent a messenger to try and find them to get them home earlier, but she would just as soon have the hostile kingdoms men leave before they got the chance.
Wyatt was an easily influenced young boy as yet and might want to emulate some of their aggression. She couldn't have that of her baby brother. He would have enough challenges in his life, having grown so much without his mother's care and in the shadow of an ailing father.
Clara did a final check of her young sisters much more modest dresses and made sure than they had handkerchiefs hidden in special folds of their dresses. She reminded them, one last time, not to pick at their hair or lift their skirts. If they needed help they were to find her or one of their attendants and not to try and fix something on their own, no matter how tempting.
