For King and Country

Josephine and the Ducklings

Chapter 8

The floor that Elijah lead me to was plush and extravagant, with huge paintings in gilded frames, marbled vases with flowers arranged three feet into the air on carved tables. He stopped in front of a huge pair of white carved doors, nodding to the two men who guarded them.

"I'm sorry about," He reddened slightly, "about Duke Couran." I assumed he was talking about the man who suggested marriage to Elijah.

I rolled my eyes, "I trust you," I said. "I don't understand you very well, but I do understand that you're loyal to your country. Don't get any ideas about me marrying you though." He chuckled.

"Believe me, you're far from my type." His words stung slightly, but I just laughed as well. "Well, Josephine is a handful, so good luck and Godspeed, my Princess." Then he nodded to the guards, and they opened the grand oak doors to an even grander parlor. I took a breath and stepped into my new life.

The doors had barely closed behind me before a tall exuberant blonde in a bright coral colored dress came in, followed by half a dozen women.

"Oh good lord, you're an absolute mess." She tittered. "Well, but you're quite pretty." She said, circling around me like a hawk. "Under all the country grime, of course. Good lord, your father should've kept you here. Granted I don't think it would have turned out any differently. He raised you like a boy. Now quick, the bath chamber with you." She grabbed my arm, dragging me through several rooms until we reached a huge marbled bath chamber, the ladies following us like little ducklings. The walls and floor were all the same white marble. There was a huge basin in front of a mirror that spanned across the wall. In every corner, there was a table with bowls and glass bottles of oils, in the center of the room was a huge porcelain bath. Water trickled into it from above, falling from a drain on the ceiling. One of the ladies hurriedly closed it, sticking her hand in the bubbly water to make sure it was warm.

"This dress has to be burned," murmured one of the ducklings, a snotty blonde with brown eyes and stern eyebrows. "It's filthy, not to mention cheap." I turned to look at her fully, snatching my dress away indignantly. Her eyes went wide when I whirled on her, stumbling back a few steps.

"My mother spent three weeks and half of her savings making this dress." I snapped, "And it's stitching is finer than those pathetic stitches your dressmaker uses. Besides, I can undress myself. I'm not a child." I waved them all back, Josephine clucked disapprovingly.

"You're a princess, princesses don't undress themselves." That was Josephine's favorite line to me, you're a princess and princesses don't do this.

"Well this one does, and this one can bathe herself too." I snapped. "So you all can wait outside until I'm done." I told her. The ladies looked to her and then to me, trying to decide what to do. "Go." I snapped raising my eyebrows at them. They scurried away, whispering, but Josephine remained.

"I was there when you were born, you know." She began, checking her pile of curls in the mirror, her back to me. "I was your mother's lady in waiting. She was prim and proper. She balanced your father's rebellious, unorthodox ways well. You clearly take after him." I rolled my eyes.

"I don't see the point in letting a bunch of noble daughter's insult me because I was raised differently." I said, "And I don't know your customs, but the ridiculous ones, like letting someone take every piece of clothing off my body then place me in a bath, I wont follow." She froze in the middle of her primping.

She sniffed, turning back to me, "Well, at least let me undo your laces," She said, "And you best hope that those ladies don't run off and spread how backwoods and incompetent you are to the rest of your court."