@TheWattys 2022 Shortlist Novel
@HistoricalFiction Top 25 of 2022 For Historical Fiction Awards
@HistoricalFiction Best of Historical Fiction 2022
This is a continuation of @TheWattys Shortlisted Novel, The Ostler's Boy.
(BOOK 2)
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Love. Duty...
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"You dumb fool," Svana said. "The Games are insanely difficult if that was not obvious by Ser Erik's injury in training. You should not have agreed to them so young!"
"I think you're missing the part where I didn't have a choice," I said. "Unfortunately, someone had told her what I'd said after the party, I learned. She was so offended. This... This was your mother's way of leveling the field between us."
"You could have apologized then," she insisted. "Perhaps if you had swallowed that pride, she would have released you from the bet, Candy."
"Be that as it may, I was a very a stupid man. And don't make me regret telling you that nickname."
"You already should, I will now never not call you Can—"
"—I think it's important to note, so that it's clear, I had no idea the wiles of a woman. Let alone what it meant for my ego to be bruised. Up until Eliza, I had never had an ego to put on display, for anyone."
"Again, dumb fool," she sang.
"I find it funny you should say that," I told her. "Your mother once donned me with the very same accusation."
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By this point in our story, I had been honored with being Her Majesty's Knight for a little over a few weeks...
In that time, I never experienced another one of her 'lows.' It was all sunshine and smiles, that disarming thing across her face– and, on one of those mornings, I even witnessed her greeting a cardinal in the gardens.
It wasn't long before I realized the occasional, witty insult was simply her way of forming a connection with somebody. She wasn't trying to be mean. She was just...
Eliza wasn't like the ladies of the court.
While her social calendar remained too bland for any real interest, I did have an ample amount of time to entertain the differences between her nature and those she encountered. That of the Countesses', a particular Duchess', and the random assortment of other parties'. What I found the most prominent fact, lunch after lunch, tea after tea, was that Eliza was exactly as Uncle Dalton had portrayed her.
