I Accidentally Slept With My Future Brother In Law novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: Midsummer Again

"He won't cook it," I said.

"How do you know?" said the tea boy.

"Because if he does, I'll tell the whole court."

Nobody believed me, least of all me.

The great hall was still hung with the midsummer roses, gone a little brown at the edges.

Nobody had the heart to take them down.

This time the benches were full of people the court had never let in.

The cook sat in the front row in a hat with a cherry on it.

The porter sat beside her, and the two blending girls, and the tea boy with his hair flattened down with water.

The scullery maids sat on the end and held hands.

The foreman was there with his stick, his wife and the little girl, who had a new shawl that fitted.

The fishwife in the red shawl had got in somehow. Nobody asked how.

Blanche and I walked up the middle of the hall together, side by side.

There was nobody to give us away.

We'd decided we didn't need anybody.

She wore pale green with a maidenhair fern stitched on the bodice, upside down.

I wore ivory silk with a green ribbon at the waist, and no gloves.

My fingers were brown to the second knuckle. I'd been blending until eight that morning.

At the top of the hall the two princes stood waiting in front of the dais.

Bertrand in black, with his silver chain.

Alistair in the cream and gold coat he hated, with his hair already falling in his eyes.

Bertrand saw the fern on Blanche's dress.

He stopped breathing. I watched him do it.

Then his whole stern face came apart, and he smiled.

A real one. Wide and helpless, in front of four hundred people.

A woman on the back benches said, "Oh," out loud.

"Write that down," Alistair murmured to me as I reached him. "Nobody will believe us."

The vows were short.

Bertrand said his like he was reading them into the record, every word exact.

Then he said Blanche's name again at the end when he wasn't supposed to, just to hear it.

Alistair said his too fast and had to start the second line twice.

I said mine like I was naming a leaf.

Clearly, so nobody could argue.

Then it was done.

The right couples, this time.

The King stood up from his throne.

He had his stick in one hand and a footman behind him carrying a brass spirit kettle on a tray.

His late wife's blue teapot, the one from Alistair's hearth, sat beside it.

The whole court leaned forward.

"Sit still, all of you," said the King.

He lit the spirit lamp.

He spooned the leaf into the pot himself. River green. My river green, from my shop.

The kettle began to sing.

He took it off the flame.

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