Bride Behind the Mask

Chapter 10: Butter Butter

Dedicated to a random commenter: Thanks for the support @PiaVasquez7 <3

Chapter 10: Butter Butter

What in the demonic hells just happened?

With a deep flush of pink, Amelia dropped Drake's hand and raced out of his bedchamber, ignoring his outreaching hand and whatever he was calling out to her. Bounding down the spiralling flight of stairs, she almost tripped over her own legs, but her pace didn't slow until she reached the safe domain that was her bedchamber, and slammed the door shut with a loud bang.

"My lady?"

Amelia yelped in fright, then spun around to see Marge sitting in the corner of the room, paused in her needlework to look up at her with wide eyes. Putting a hand to her chest, Amelia tried to calm the wild beating of her heart with heavy intakes of breath.

"What happened, my lady?" Marge moved to stand up, but Amelia gestured for her to remain as she was. The maid continued to look up at her with a worried expression. "Is my lord––"

"He is fine, he has awoken." Amelia stalked over to her bed and planted herself face down into the pyramid of pillows. "But I am not fine. I need another plan."

"A plan for–– Oh, dear," Marge sighed and put her needlework to the side. "You are not done with that yet? I thought you were through fighting this when you started watching over him like a mother hen."

"I won't stop fighting until this whole farce is over," Amelia grumbled into the pillows.

"This 'farce' meaning your marriage?"

"Papa needs me, Marge," she responded on a soft whine.

Marge may be getting old, but she was neither blind nor deaf just yet. She could tell when the young lady's resolve was weakening. Hiding a small smile, she asked, "Would you like my advice, my lady?"

"Only if it's about how to get myself unmarried," Amelia mumbled back.

Too preoccupied with burying her face in the pillows, Amelia missed the impish gleam of wisdom that flashed in her maid's eyes. "Why not just ask my lord himself?" Marge suggested.

Amelia turned onto her side so she could slant a glare of indignation in her direction. "Are you out of your mind, Marge?" She puffed an exasperated sigh before launching into a rattling rant. "Of all the useless things that my tutors taught, the chauvinist marital laws of our kingdom was something they emphasised as much as they could—the Gods-damned laws that allow husbands to lash their wives in public to effect on her the same humiliation he suffered from her disloyalty, whether that be adultery or otherwise. And breach of a betrothal contract between the families—"

"All that depends on the husband taking some sort of action, does it not?"

"Marge, I've met enough noblemen to know that they cannot stomach any damage to their pride," Amelia snapped with a roll of her eyes. "The higher their status, the bigger their ego, and papa just had to marry me off to one of the highest nobles in the North."

"Yet how many of those arrogant noblemen would want the world to know of their wives' lack of desire for them?"

Amelia tilted her head slightly in thought and her brows crossed in deliberation. "B-but my tutors told us about the cases of Baron Roger Lamine, who delivered five lashes to his baroness in the Temple of Lyons, and Viscount Vermont—"

"Both of which occurred more than half a century ago."

"But my tutors—"

"I never knew you for such a good student, my lady!" Marge teased. "They told the stories to scare little girls like you."