The Beautiful Pretender (A Medieval Fairy Tale #2)(39)

Footsteps were approaching behind her. She straightened and continued to wander down the path.

“My mother always said,” Lord Thornbeck said, “that a lady could only sleep in a bed and could never sleep in a chair or on the ground. And a lady would never be able to sleep on a dirty mattress at an inn, where peasants had slept.”

Magdalen laughed. “I may not be a lady then. I get a backache if I am not sleeping in a bed, but when forced to it, I can sleep almost anywhere.”

Avelina had slept on the floor many times or on the cot in the little adjoining closet next to Lady Dorothea’s bedchamber. But she already knew she was not nobly born.

“My mother said a lady could feel even a tiny pea if it was underneath her.”

“What did you say to your mother?” Lady Magdalen asked.

“I said that was nonsense. She was only picking up on the fact that ladies generally expect, and are accustomed to, the finest and softest beds, not that they have any sort of special ability to feel lumps in their mattresses. What do you say, Lady Dorothea?”

She was forced to turn and join their conversation. “I say a lady is no different from a peasant. They—we—all have flesh and bones and feelings and desires. The same blood flows through one’s veins as the other’s.”

There she went again, expressing her fanciful opinions that no one else agreed with. Her face heated.

“Perhaps you are right,” Lord Thornbeck said quietly.

“Will you test us, then?” Magdalen said, “and put a pea under our mattresses and see who is able to sleep and who is not?”

“I suppose my mother might have done something of that sort,” he said, “but I would not even try the experiment to discount it. Besides, I do not care about whether or not you can feel a pea under your mattress.”

“But you have been testing us, have you not?” Avelina couldn’t resist asking. “When we were walking through Thornbeck, did you not have those children come and ask us for food? To see how we would react?”

The margrave hung his head. When he looked up, he had a faint smile on his manly face. “You have found us out. Odette and Jorgen arranged to have the children from the orphanage perform that mummery for you all. And only you and Lady Magdalen passed that test.”

“Only Lady Magdalen gave them anything,” Avelina pointed out.

Lord Thornbeck gave her a hard stare. “But you were the one who demanded something be done for them. Were you not?”

Perhaps she was trying too hard to make him like Lady Magdalen.

But then he focused his attention on Magdalen and asked her about Mallin.

Avelina’s heart constricted inside her as she realized Lord Thornbeck might actually be thinking of her as a possible bride. After all, he said she and Magdalen had passed that test, and now he was alone with the two of them. What could she do to make him think only of Magdalen?

Her stomach churned and her head ached. She did not want to think about it anymore now. Instead, in listening to Magdalen speak of her home, Avelina thought about her own little sister and brother. What were they doing? Were they being well cared for? Did they have enough to eat? Were they staying warm at night now that it was getting colder? Did they miss her?

She stayed within hearing while Lord Thornbeck spoke of his older brother.

“He was ten years older, and I came back to Thornbeck because he was making me the captain of his guard.”

It was strange that his brother had brought him back to Thornbeck to lead his guard. Younger brothers were sent away as children, as Lord Thornbeck surely had been, to train as a knight, probably so things like this would never happen—a younger brother being rumored to have murdered the older one to take his inheritance.

“You and your brother must have been very good friends, then,” Avelina couldn’t resist asking, “for him to ask you to be the captain of his guard.”

The margrave turned to her. “You, along with everyone else, have heard the rumors that I murdered my brother to get the margravate and Thornbeck Castle.” He looked away. “The fire happened only a few days after I arrived. I saw the smoke coming from underneath his chamber door. I ran in to save him. I ran to the bed and picked him up. I was throwing him over my shoulder when the bed collapsed on my ankle. I was able to get him out, but the smoke had already overcome him. I did not kill my brother, Lady Dorothea, even though your father seems to believe I did. My brother was the last of my family members.”

Avelina’s cheeks heated again at the mention of the earl’s offensive letter to the king. “I am very sorry.”

A noise came from behind them. When she turned, Fronicka was opening the small iron gate and walking down the path toward them.

“This looks like an interesting group.” She smirked as she picked a rose off a bush and twirled it between her fingers.

Lord Thornbeck’s lips formed a tight line and his brows lowered. Fronicka flitted around him, smiling and asking him questions about the garden and about what they would do today. Lord Thornbeck gave her one-word answers, then said, “I shall escort you ladies back to the castle now. I have duties.”

Avelina and Magdalen walked together while Lord Thornbeck was forced to walk by Fronicka’s side. As soon as they were inside, he excused himself from them and walked away, his cane tapping the marble floor as he went.