I Saw the Ending Before My Wedding novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Clean House

Matthias is brought before the council and denies the kidnapping; Ilse sets her own terms and signs, and he promises her a lock she will keep the key to.

Matthias Kell came into the Reinholt library at noon with a green ring on his right hand and nobody at his back.

The elders had moved the hearing there so the guests downstairs would not hear.

Two council men stood over Thea at the window.

Lukas had put on a shirt and a jacket.

His mother had arrived in pearls and stood with one hand on his sleeve.

Her name was Brigitte, and she was the head of the Reinholt house.

She had called me "my dear" in three different letters.

Now she looked at me with great pity.

"The poor girl is in shock," Brigitte said. "Somebody get her tea."

Nobody got me tea.

Matthias stopped in front of the eldest and did not look at Lukas once.

He was a tall man in a dark coat, with a plain, tired face.

He looked at me first.

"Did they hurt you?" he asked.

It was the first time anyone had asked.

"No," I said.

"Good."

He turned back to the elders, and that was all.

I put it down as a performance.

A man who wants something asks after the thing he wants.

"Matthias Kell," the eldest said. "Three days ago Anton Brandauer's daughter was taken on the church road."

"The men who took her wore your ring," he went on.

"Every man in my house wears this ring," Matthias said. "So does any man who can pay a jeweler. Ask her if she saw a face."

Every eye in the room came to me.

"No," I said. "I saw hands. Green rings, on the right."

"She saw rings," Lukas said. "Gentlemen, that's all anyone needs."

"If I'd taken her, she wouldn't have walked out of the cellar," Matthias said.

"Convenient," Lukas said.

"What's convenient is that her wedding was the one day a bride could be swapped," Matthias said. "Who swapped her?"

Thea made a sound by the window.

Lukas smiled at nobody.

His mother squeezed his arm.

"Enough," the eldest said, and tapped his cane on the floor.

"Here is the law, and I will say it once, for everyone."

He looked at me when he said it.

"A Brandauer share travels with the bride's hand. It does not pass by gift or by theft."

"If Ilse marries the clean house, the share stays with her family's name. If she marries no one within three days, the council gives it to whichever house it finds clean."

Brigitte did not move, but her mouth softened a little.

I understood that face.

A bride who came home to her would put the Reinholts back on that list.

"So you see, the girl's choice is easy," Brigitte said. "Come home with us, Ilse. Lukas will forgive a confused bride, and we'll say no more about the suite."

"The suite is on the record, Brigitte," the eldest said.

"Then we'll rewrite the record."

"No," I said.

It came out loud, and everybody looked at me again.

I turned to Matthias Kell.

"Do you want to marry me?" I asked.

"No," he said.

"Why not?"

"I don't take a bride at a hearing, with the people who sold her still in the room," he said. "And you'd spend every night wondering if I was the one who locked that door."

He said it plainly.

I hated that it was true.

"I will wonder," I said. "But I'll do it in my own name, with my own shares."

"Name your terms," the eldest said.

"Separate rooms," I said. "My own lock and my own key."

"Granted," Matthias said.

"My dock share stays in my name. Nobody signs for me. Not you, not the council."

"Granted."

"No hands on me unless the families are watching."

"I wouldn't have asked," Matthias said.

"It ends in a year, or when the Reinholts are finished, whichever comes first."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth.

"Finished is a high bar," he said.

"I'm aware."

Lukas stepped forward.

"You can't be serious," he said. "She's going to put her name beside a Kell man's because I made a mistake?"

"Your mistake had a bed in it," I said. "And my veil on the pillow."

Somebody in the room laughed once and stopped.

The eldest wrote the terms himself, in a thin black pen, on the back of the council's seating chart.

It took him four minutes.

He turned the sheet toward me.

My hand shook as I took the pen.

My father had taught me my signature before he taught me the alphabet.

I signed it the way he showed me.

Ilse Brandauer.

Matthias signed under it, a small clear name with a flat line beneath the last letter.

Then he looked at the lock on the library door, and then at me.

"I'll have one put on your bedroom door tonight," he said. "On the inside."

"Thank you."

"The key is yours. I won't ask for it."

"I'll keep it," I said.

It was the only promise in that room I believed.

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