He Dropped Three Women in One Night, Then We Took His Estate novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Betrothal Ball
Aldric dissolves his marriage, ends his mistress's lease and hands his ward to an old earl in one speech; Calista signs her own dissolution and walks out, and finds the mistress's carriage in the ditch at her gate.
The Marquis of Voltraine tapped his glass with a spoon, and four hundred guests turned to look at his wife.
Calista Voltraine stood at the foot of the ballroom stairs with her hands folded and her keys at her belt.
She had been the Marchioness for three years.
She had counted the silver for this ball herself, because the steward could not be trusted with the spoons.
"My friends," Aldric said, from the top of the stairs. "I have joyful news."
He was handsome in the candlelight, golden-haired and sure of being liked.
He had been sure of it since he was a boy.
"Her Highness the Princess of Halvar has honored me by accepting my hand. We will be wed at the Thaw Festival."
The guests cheered and clapped.
Calista clapped too, because her hands knew how.
His mother, the Dowager Marchioness Hildegarde Voltraine, sat in a gilt chair beside the stairs with her cane across her knees.
The cheering softened.
Aldric looked down at her and said, in the same warm voice, "And so my marriage to Lady Calista must be dissolved."
The ballroom went silent.
"Three years without an heir," he said. "The kingdom needs one."
"I will not insult a good woman by keeping her in a house that needs more than she can give."
Somewhere behind her a woman gasped, and a man said "Poor thing" quite loudly.
Calista did not move.
She looked up the stairs at her husband and thought, very clearly, that he had rehearsed this in front of a mirror.
"There is more,"
Aldric said, because the room was his now.
"The Gilded Swan playhouse has been a pleasure to this house, but its lease ends tonight."
"The lady who manages it will not trouble my table again."
At the long wall, in a scarlet gown cut too low for the company, stood Ottilie Dunmere, the actress.
Everyone in Corbel knew she was his mistress.
Calista had known for two years, and had never once said so aloud.
Ottilie's black curls shook once.
Her face did not.
"And my ward, Lady Elowen Tarn, is to be married tomorrow morning to the Earl of Wescote, who has asked for her most kindly."
Calista saw a small blond girl in a borrowed grey gown standing beside a pillar.
The Earl was sixty-one and stood next to her, patting her hand.
The girl's mouth opened, and nothing came out.
She was nineteen years old.
Calista breathed in slowly.
She had a choice, and she had perhaps half a minute to make it before the room decided for her.
She could weep, as they expected.
She could beg, as they hoped.
She climbed the stairs.
Aldric's smile slipped a little when she reached him.
"Calista," he whispered. "Please. Not here."
"You chose here," she said.
She turned to the room and spoke in the voice she used on the mill floor.
"My husband has asked for a dissolution, and he will have one. I have the pen."
A footman stood beside the stairs with the dissolution act already laid out on a silver tray.
It had been prepared days ago.
She read it through, standing, while four hundred people watched her read.
The pension was fine print on the third page.
It was eight hundred crowns a year, paid so long as she lived out of the county.
She crossed that line out with his own pen.
"I take nothing from the Voltraine house," she said.
"By my marriage settlement the dower house at Larkmoor is mine, with the Fenrow Mill and my mother's portrait."
"I will fetch the portrait by daylight."
She signed her name.
The pen scratched very loud in the quiet.
She handed the paper to her husband, and he took it without looking at her.
"I wish you and the Princess a long life," Calista said. "I hope you read what she signs."
Someone laughed, a short, startled sound, and then stopped.
She walked down the stairs and out through the doors into the first night of the Long Frost.
She had her ball gown on and no cloak.
The snow was a hand deep on the east drive.
A footman ran after her with her cloak, and she took it without a word.
She walked the whole mile to the east gate of the dower house, her mother's house.
Her keys were cold in her hand.
At the bend a carriage lay on its side in the ditch, one wheel still turning.
A woman in a scarlet gown was climbing out of it, swearing in a very fine voice.
She stood up in the snow and saw Calista and stopped.
The two of them looked at each other, the wife and the mistress, with nobody watching.
"Open the gate, Marchioness," said Ottilie Dunmere. "Or whatever you are now."
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