Lady Eilean

Chapter 56

I shifted my weight from foot to foot, my feet growing tired from standing on the dressmaker's hard platform. I had been standing here, being measured for new gowns for what felt like an eternity. I rolled my neck before settling down and trying to hold myself as stiff as possible. Staring out the window, I tried to distract myself with the scenery, but the weather was sopping and grey — a perfect reflection of my attitude.

The air was heavy. Sticky against my clammy skin. Rain fell limpid and lazy from low, angry clouds. Mist beaded on the windows and ran in rivulets down the glass. Now and then a bright bolt of lightning would split through the sky, the answering thunderclap following after a few heartbeats. Tendrils of my hair stuck to my face and no matter how frequently I pushed them back, they sprang forward again. They coiled in the moist air, unruly and disobedient.

The Standing. My Standing. I hated the idea of it. A fury I couldn't douse burned in my belly. My temper had been on a hair-trigger over the last month as I mulled over the eventuality that my parents would auction me off like a breed mare. Now, staring at its approach only a fortnight away, every minute made me sicker than the last.

I had liberated Ellesmure from this barbaric custom and now I was to be punished with it.

Mother stood a few feet away on her platform, a flurry of maids pinning and measuring her form. Every other minute she looked at me and squinted at my hair, tutting as it slipped further and further into disarray.

Holding her stare, I pulled a luckless hairpin from my head and flicked it across the room at her. It bounced off her skirts and fell to the ground with a dull ping. "I can't do anything about the curls, I'm afraid," I said. My voice was flat and insolent.

Mother huffed and arched her brows. "I do not know about which you speak, Eilean. But, at the very least, you could stand up straight. The seams down your back are going to be all wrong. No one wants a slovenly wife. You'll hardly get bids if you look unkempt."

My laugh was bitter. "Good."

Tutting, she turned herself so that she faced the wall, no longer tortured by my presence.

The Dressmaker had mistakenly assumed that being fitted together for our wardrobe for the Gathering would be a jovial mother and daughter affair. Looking at me apologetically, the Dressmaker doubled her efforts on tacking together a bodice.

"Not much longer now, ladies!" She said a touch too cheerfully.

The maids and the Dressmaker's staff grimaced at each other, tiptoeing around the room and trying to finish their tasks as quickly as possible. A tailor walked in the room carrying a diaphanous mass of white satin and trimmed with enough lace and bows to make even Innis jealous. I knew what it was and looked away from it.

If there was a god, the tailor would trip and cast the hideous thing into the fire.

I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat, choking on the sourness of my disgust. Gritting my teeth, I pushed my hair back — again — with a beleaguered sigh. I scrubbed my face with my hands, once again tallying up the cost and stress of the upcoming events. It wasn't enough to be tortured by the prospect of my upcoming shackling, but to know the cost of it, too... My accounts were in utter disarray.

Considering the festivities thrown in his honor, Father seemed altogether unaware of the flurry of activity around the castle. It concerned me that the excitement and demand of hundreds of guests would do very little to ease his increasingly fragile state. His outbursts had become less frequent, but in exchange for their frenzy, he had become withdrawn and reclusive. Often, I found him sitting in a dark room with the curtains drawn, no candle or fire to illuminate his ruminations. He sat immobile and mute, staring into a void of his own creation. Very little could be done to pull his focus back from whatever terror held his mind in sway. It was heartbreaking to watch. His decreased capacity created a paranoid lens through which I judged my mother's actions.