The Hijacked Bride

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

KING ODRAN CHOKED on his wine in a rather undignified manner, one rare for him, but he recovered quickly.

When Alastar was younger, Odran recalled, he'd had a flair for the dramatic. Telling exaggerated stories, playing pranks, singing songs at the top of his lungs. He'd put a frog in his nurse's nightcap once, and shoved her into the courtyard fountain another time.

But the man who sat beside him now was no longer a boy, and Odran recognized when a man had made up his mind.

He usually liked to think that nothing escaped his attention. Yet something had. He had failed to notice Alastar growing closer to anyone, and he hadn't realized that his son had had his eye on a maiden. A maidservant, he corrected himself. This may have slipped past him, but he didn't run a kingdom smoothly with nothing to show for it. He could straighten out this little kink, he could fix what had gone amiss. He just had to be careful and clever about it, and he was always careful and clever.

He glanced at his wife and saw the look of shock and outrage that had taken over her lovely features. She really would look very pretty if her most favoured expressions weren't scowls or grimaces, he thought. He had to stop her from exploding, and quickly. He could handle their son. But Padraigin was impulsive, and self-righteous. He could tell that she did not like Alastar's outspokenness, not one little bit.

He inclined his head toward her. "More wine, my dear?"

She was sputtering, but saying nothing. Her mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. "Did you hear him?" she eventually managed to say.

"I did, indeed," Odran replied. "I think you and I should talk alone," he suggested to her, giving his son a withering glance. "In private, please, Alastar."

Alastar got the hint, but Odran saw his jaw clench. "Discuss whatever you wish to," he told them. "But I have made a decision and a promise to someone, and I will not retract it. I love her."

He pushed his chair back with a loud sound and exited the room. Once his son had left, the king motioned for the guards at the door to leave as well. He wanted this conversation to be in strict confidence, with just him and the woman he had once thought he loved in attendance.

"Padraigin," he begun, but didn't get to continue before the queen released the flood of words she had been just barely holding back.

"See how your son treats us!" she cried out. "Look how he dishonours you! Marry a maid, he says? Marry a maid? He likes to jest, does he?"

"Calm down, darling," Odran ordered, patiently. "The boy thinks he is in love with a girl." He didn't like how that sentence resonated with an older, buried part of him, but he said it anyways. "He will come to his senses."

"And in the mean time?" Padraigin's eyes flashed at him, brown and angry. "He says and does what he likes?"

"Hush, Paddy, hush," he murmured, only just loud enough for her to hear. It had been long since he'd used his affectionate shortening of her name, but he didn't know if she had even noticed. "I have a thought to share."

"What is that?" she questioned.

"Let him make wedding plans. Let him have a dress made for her. Let him think that he is in control."

"Then what?" She asked, insistent and insufferable. Didn't she understand the way his mind worked by now, after all these years? Would he have to spell it out?

"Tragedies happen," Odran said. "Who's to say the girl doesn't go missing, by some mysterious chance?"

Understanding dawned in his wife's eyes, finally. She looked away from him, suddenly lost in thought. "You are wise," she muttered distractedly.