A Husband for Deva

Grey Is for Mourning

Deva's stomach churned with anxiety and hunger.

Ashlen had left hours ago, to talk to the Queen and have a meal sent up. They'd agreed it would be best for Deva not to go downstairs, under the circumstances, at least until different clothes could be found to fit her.

But no one came.

Deva waited. She paced around the small suite she and her sisters had once shared for meals and lessons and needlework, sometimes resting briefly at her desk or on the window seat of what had once been the schoolroom, now her library and sitting room. She'd turned the hourglass twice. Couldn't settle to a book or needlework. Acutely alert to every noise from outside the room, she waited. Mother will come soon, she told herself. She won't be happy, but she'll know what to do.

No one came.

She avoided her sleeping chamber, dreading to look at the mirror - dreading, but wanting to go to it. To see him again. To tell him? My brother Brialach, Ashlen had said. Brialach. Not just dreams.

At last Deva did hear footsteps, and steeled herself to accept her mother's censure - but it was only Jenia, who staggered in with both arms around a basket piled full of folded smoke-grey fabric.

"What's this?" Deva asked, as Jenia lowered the basket to the ground.

"Your clothes, Princess Deva." The lady-in-waiting would not meet Deva's eyes. "Would you like to dress in here, or shall we go to your sleeping chamber?"

"But... it's all grey! No one has died!"

Jenia continued to avoid Deva's gaze, looking out the window instead, but her expression of disapproval softened a little. "I'm awfully sorry, but there's no mistake. Her Majesty has decreed that these are to be your clothes from now until you're wedded."

Staring at the basket of mourning garments, with not even a ribbon or ruffle among them, Deva felt hot tears welling up in her eyes. "It isn't fair," she choked out, as the tears spilled over and ran down her face. She mopped at her cheeks with the hem of her pinafore.

"Please do let me dress you," Jenia offered at last, the disapproval in her face melting a bit further. "You can't go around all day bursting half out of your bodice, with your pinny unbuttoned down your back. You know Her Majesty wouldn't like to see you like that. And my sister says smocks are really comfortable."

At first, Deva made no response. Then, as Jenia unfolded first one garment then another, shaking them out and holding them up for inspection before draping them over a chair, Deva couldn't help casting a few covert glances at her new wardrobe. The smocks did look comfortable, and the skirts had extra pleats at the front to accommodate a growing midsection.

Deva struggled out of her pinafore without asking for help, and then fumbled with the laces of her too-tight bodice, groaning in relief when it sprang open. Jenia glanced over at the sound, got a good look at the unconstrained round bulge of Deva's abdomen, blushed, and looked sharply away. "What did they tell you, Jenia?" Deva asked, with overwhelming weariness eating into her soul.

"No one has told me anything, Princess Deva," Jenia replied, pursing her lips as though she'd eaten something tart, "but I've got eyes to see with, and my sister has been blessed twice. I know how a swelling belly looks, for all that you've been doing your best to hide it - go on, get your blouse off now, and let's get your new things on you."

"My blouse? Why?" Deva shook her head in refusal. "It still fits me; there's no need for one of those when mine will do as well."

"It's white," said Jenia, her voice both pitying and scornful. "You can hardly go on wearing white sleeves now, can you?"

Burning with angry humiliation, Deva put on the plain grey blouse that Jenia handed her. She stood in silence as Jenia helped her step into the new fuller skirts that tied above her waistline. She raised her arms automatically as her lady-in-waiting drew the grey smock over her head. "Nobody died," she muttered into cloth the color of mourning.

Jenia's gossip-sharp ears heard her. "Your reputation did." Deva popped her head out the neck opening of the smock in shock, only to see the lady-in-waiting give an unrepentant shrug. "Well, didn't your lover warn you what would happen if you were caught?"

Deva had been poised to trust Jenia, to tell her the truth: that she had not meant to do wrong, that she had thought herself to be dreaming, that she hadn't known until Ashlen had told her. But in the face of this disdainful insolence, something stubborn within Deva stood fast, and her tiredness and desire for comfort and acceptance faded away. "My lover is a magical pro-haunt from the Western Isles," she spat out, "and he has taught me things you couldn't begin to imagine!"

Jenia's gasp of scandalized disgust was echoed by another from the doorway behind Deva. Then a shocked-angelic expression pasted itself across Jenia's face, as the lady-in-waiting folded herself into a deep curtsey, and Deva knew she was in the presence of her mother.

"Deva, there is no need to compound your shame by inventing blasphemous stories about it," said the Queen, as Deva whirled around to face her, realizing with a stab of pain that - for the first time since she'd left the nursery - her mother had not given her the courtesy of knocking before entering.

"Have I ever been in the habit of inventing stories?" It could almost be a joke.

"One form of deceit is much the same as another."

Deva felt as though her mother had struck her. "Please, mother! Didn't Ashlen explain? I had no intention of... I thought I was dreaming!"

"Ashlen relayed your tale of being visited by a blasphemous haunt, though I doubt she believed it any more than I do. All it tells me is that your partner in iniquity has no intention of taking responsibility for your condition." When Deva would have spoken, would have begged for understanding, the Queen raised a hand to stop her. "No. Don't speak. Be still and listen. You may sit down."

Grateful for the small mercy of being permitted to sit, Deva sank onto the chair that her mother indicated. She awaited judgment with folded hands and suitably bowed head, fighting tears and stricken to the heart.

"Deva, you are confined to these rooms until your marriage day," the Queen informed her erring daughter in an icy voice. "Jenia has already brought you your clothes for the duration, and she will bring you your meals."

"It is my pleasure to serve, Your Majesty," Jenia murmured with a curtsey.

"My... marriage day? But I..."

Her mother shot her a silencing look. "Your father does not doubt that he can find someone to take you; royal blood is always in demand."