Page 57 of Songs and Spun Gold
Tobias’s eyes slid sideways to Axel, but he only took another sip of his drink.
“Yes, my father has promised a certain young lady that she and I will wed if she meets the three challenges set before her. As she has already completed two and the third is of similar difficulty, I deem it likely that she will succeed tonight as well.”He paused to lift his eyes to the ceiling and sigh wistfully. “Ah, that such courage, such sweetness, should be—”
“Excuse me,” Lady Ilse interrupted, looking slightly green. “I believe my father is motioning me over.”
“I thought you didn’t know anything about the girl,” Tobias commented calmly once she was out of earshot.
“I don’t,” Axel replied cheerfully. “Father hasn’t even told me her name. But it was effective, wasn’t it?”
His friend smirked into his glass. “I’ve never seen her flee so quickly.”
After a quick glance around, Axel began to edge toward the doors. He’d been at the party long enough; it was about time to make a subtle exit and escape to the gardens again.
“You’ve resigned yourself to the match, then?”
He looked over at his friend, who was casually swirling his glass. “Why do you ask that?”
“The way you told Lady Ilse of it,” Tobias shrugged.
“That was simply to chase her off,” he answered with a careless wave of his hand. “As my mother has told me that the young lady does not wish to marry me, the barest hope resides in my breast that together, she and I may be able to change Father’s mind.”
Tobias snorted. “You’d do better at changing the tides.”
“Yes, I know,” the prince sighed. “That is why it is the barest hope.”
“You would really go through with it?” His friend stopped and watched him through narrowed eyes. “If she succeeds and the king won’t bend, you’ll marry her? Even though neither of you want it?”
Looking away, Axel said, “What choice do I have? He’s the king.”
“Even though you’ll have to give up on Heidi.”
Axel breathed into his jaw muscles to loosen them. “I haveresigned myself to the fact that she never was, nor will she ever be, mine. Our brief relationship was doomed from the start.” Throwing on a smile, he nudged his friend’s arm. “Come, fill your glass once more, and let us be off before another beautiful young vulture comes seeking what she hopes will be easy prey.”
~
“You are serious?”
Lotti’s low voice seethed with anger, though Axel couldn’t guess why. As long as he continued to come and sing with her, what difference did it make what he did when not at the theater?
Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he paced about the small room they were in. He hadn’t felt like sitting around the castle while the poor, unnamed village girl was attempting to spin straw into gold, so he’d dragged Otto to the theater for an evening session. The cast was preparing for their next production, so meeting on the stage was out of the question this late.
“I admit to being surprised by his willingness to offer her the deal, regardless of how impossible he thought it was. And I am frustrated by him not asking for my approval before offering it.” He stared up at the low ceiling. “I must marry someday, and my father was likely to choose for me if I failed to choose for myself. However…” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “If he was willing to risk me marrying a penniless peasant girl, I wish he would have let me pick her out myself.”
“Yes. The girl you met opening night.” The irritation in her voice increased. “You said you were never going to see her again. But she came back.”
He shrugged. “Can I help it if she is delightfully unpredictable?”
“Yet you will marry another.”
“I wish everyone would quit saying that,” he grumbled. “As if I can refuse an order from the king.”
“Yet you are here.”
Axel shifted uncomfortably. Lessons with Lotti were a grey area that primarily continued because he’d kept them secret from his father.
“There are some areas in which I can find more flexibility than in others,” Axel mumbled. Scowling, he scuffled his way to the other side of the room and whirled to face the direction from which Lotti’s voice came. “I am weary of discussing this subject. Are we not going to sing?”
He heard the rustle of Lotti’s cloak and caught a brief flash of the lamplight reflecting off her flute before its sweet sound filled the air. She had chosen a militant song of action this time, rather than one of the love songs at which he excelled, but he didn’t mind. This song would challenge him more; hopefully, it would also prove more successful in freeing his mind from his troubles and thoughts of the poor village girl, alone and probably scared, sitting in a room someplace in his castle while attempting to spin a room full of straw into the finest gold.
