I Became the Bride of a Grand Duke Who's Obsessed with His First Love novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Terms at the Altar
Mina objects to her own wedding and makes the Grand Duke sign a priced contract on the priest's back; in the carriage he tells her the Empress asked for her by name at the Midwinter Ball, the scene where the book kills her.
The priest asked if anyone objected to this marriage, and I raised my hand.
Four hundred nobles turned around in their pews.
I was holding a sheet of paper folded in four.
"I don't object to the marriage," I said. "I object to the terms."
Three hours earlier I had woken up in this dress, in this body, inside a novel I had read forty times on the commuter train.
In the novel, the Grand Duke's wife got one sentence.
It said she died of winter fever that year, and he did not go to her funeral.
I had decided not to be that sentence.
The priest leaned toward the groom. "Your Grace, is this expected?"
The Grand Duke did not look at me.
He was watching the cathedral door.
"No," he said.
It was the first word he had said to me all morning.
I held out the paper. "Sign it."
"It is my wedding."
"That is why we're doing it at the wedding. Father, a pen, please."
"I will not sign anything at an altar," said the Grand Duke.
"Then after the priest's question, I'll say my answer."
"Which is?"
"No."
The priest made a small noise and gripped his prayer book.
The Duke finally looked down at me. His eyes were grey and very tired.
"The Emperor decreed this marriage," he said quietly. "Refusing it before him is treason."
"I know. The Emperor is in the front pew, waving at me."
He was. He was a round old man in gold, and he gave me a delighted little wave.
"So you can sign," I said, "or you can explain to him why your bride said no in his cathedral, and why you let her."
His jaw moved.
"You would be hanged."
"Probably. But I'd be hanged unmarried, and you'd be the man whose wedding failed in front of the Empress."
Beside the Emperor sat the Empress in pale blue, smiling at me kindly.
The Duke saw her too.
Something in his shoulders gave up.
He took the paper and unfolded it.
"Article one," he read, low. "Separate bedrooms."
"Reasonable," I said.
"Article two. Each time I touch you in public, I pay three gold crowns."
"Three is fair. Two would be charity."
"Article three. I may say the Empress's name twice a day at table."
His voice stopped.
"The whole empire knows about her and you," I said. "I'm not asking you to stop. I'm asking you to budget. Mentions past two are five gold each."
"Article four. The Duchess keeps the pantry key and may be found there."
"I like to be near food."
"Article five." He read it twice. "Divorce at the first thaw. Twenty thousand crowns, and your father's debts paid."
"The thaw," I said, "is when I stop being your problem."
"Mina, you have been my wife for six minutes," said Ansel Rothgar, "and I have already lost this argument."
He had said my name. That was progress.
Behind him, his old steward, Bertram Quill, wrote the five articles into a small black ledger without being asked.
The priest, who had given up, bent forward and offered his own back as a desk.
The Grand Duke of Rothgar signed on a clergyman.
I signed under him, with my right hand. My left stayed gloved, as it had been all morning.
Then came the vows, the ring, and the kiss.
The kiss landed on my cheek, dry and quick.
He paused. He took three gold crowns from his coat pocket and put them in my right palm in front of four hundred witnesses.
"Pleasure doing business," I whispered.
His eyes went to my left hand then, the gloved one, where the ring now sat.
He looked at it for much longer than the ring deserved.
I tugged the hand away.
The Empress reached us at the bottom of the aisle, smelling of lilac and cake.
Empress Odile had already learned the name of my maid, Greta Linde, who had been in the family for one day. She asked after my father's gout.
"Here," she said, and pressed a small parcel into my hands. "Rothgar Hall has terrible drafts, and I won't have you freezing. Wool-lined."
They were white gloves. They were exactly my size.
"Your Majesty is too kind," I said.
She kept my left hand in both of hers a second longer than needed.
"He's a good man," said the Empress. "You'll be safe with him. I promise."
Everyone says that to the throwaway wife in chapter one.
I smiled and said thank you.
In the carriage, I unfolded my own copy of the list I'd made that morning.
Fourteen scenes the book had given the Grand Duchess, in order.
Ansel sat across from me with his gaze on the window.
"One more thing," he said. "Her Majesty has asked that you attend the Midwinter Ball. She asked for you by name."
I looked at my list.
Scene fourteen was the Midwinter Ball.
Cause of death, according to the book: winter fever.
Nobody in a novel dies of winter fever at a party.
I had six months.
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