At Our Wedding Feast, My Husband Introduced His Mistress, So I Asked the Bishop for an Annulment novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Almond Syrup

Isaline's father had forty guests to supper that night.

He had sent the invitations from the palace steps before the throne room had even emptied.

A welcome home, he called it. My girl, free at last.

The king's justiciar sat on his right hand, a grey dry man in black, because Isaline had asked for him.

"He was kind to me in the gallery," she'd said, on the steps. "May he come?"

Her father had been delighted. A justiciar at his table, on this of all nights.

She sat on his left, where she'd sat at her wedding.

The countess was there. The judge.

Half the guildmasters from the last supper had come, though they didn't quite meet his eye.

He was a count, and his daughter had fifty thousand crowns again.

The candles were new. The soup was leek.

Her mother laughed down at them from over the mantel.

Her father stood when the pear tart came in.

He picked up the decanter himself and filled Isaline's glass with red wine.

"No servants for this," he said to the table, smiling. "A father pours for his own girl."

He raised his glass.

"To Isaline. Who has come home."

Forty glasses went up.

Isaline lifted hers.

She breathed it in.

Plum. Oak.

And under it, a thread of almonds.

Her father was watching her over the rim of his glass with tears in his eyes.

She drank it.

All of it, the way Lothaire had drunk the chocolate.

She set the glass down.

"Thank you, Father."

"Darling."

The talk came back up around the table. Somebody asked the judge about the duke.

Isaline counted under her breath.

At fifty, she put her hand to her chest.

At sixty, she tried to stand and caught the edge of the cloth.

The tart and the blue china came down with her as she fell.

Somebody screamed.

She lay on her mother's carpet with her cheek on the wool and her eyes half open.

She breathed as little as she could.

Chairs crashed back.

"Isaline!"

Her father was on his knees beside her.

He gathered her up in his arms. He smelled of bergamot.

"No," he was saying. "No, no, darling, no."

He was weeping.

Real tears. They fell on her face.

"Fetch a physician," someone shouted.

"It's too late," the count said brokenly. "Look at her. Oh, my girl. I should have seen."

He reached inside his coat with a shaking hand.

"She gave me this in the carriage," he said. "She made me promise not to read it until tonight. I thought it was a thank-you."

He held a folded paper out to the table.

The justiciar took it.

He read it aloud in his dry voice.

"I can't bear to come home a cast-off wife. Forgive me, Father. Isaline."

Somebody was sobbing. Isaline thought it was the countess.

"The ink's still soft," the justiciar said.

The room went quiet.

"My lord Count," he said. "When did she give you this?"

"In the carriage. This afternoon. I told you."

"It was written within the hour," the justiciar said.

Isaline opened her eyes.

She sat up in her father's arms.

He made a sound.

He dropped her.

She caught herself on one elbow on the carpet, in the wreck of the tart, and got to her feet.

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