In Chains by C. Noble (easy readers .TXT) 📖

in mind, we will be providing each of you full use of our palace tailors. You will most likely need them…”
Hadrian looked away, disgusted by his father’s crass speech. Of course it was true, but that didn’t make it less tactless or embarrassing. Darcey’s face flamed red and she turned to look out her window. What he would have given to usher her into one of the private rooms of her plane and just talk her through this.
Suddenly, with a voice as cool and calm as ice, she turned back to her offensive future father in law and spoke. “On behalf of the dignitaries attending to this trip with my family and myself, I offer you our sincerest gratitude. I only hope that they are up to such a job. Providing so many nobles with such grand clothing must be a trial on even the best of workers. I would not wish to overstrain them, as they so clearly have their hands full already.”
Hadrian’s anger dissipated instantly. He worked with difficulty to sustain the smile playing at the corners of his mouth. While his pudgy father hadn’t figured it out, he had been neatly insulted. It was just and fair payback for the dumpy insult he had so cavalierly tossed on Darcey and her entourage.
Julian’s face showed no comprehension of the contempt his son’s bride exhibited for him. Jolene was embarrassed, but not angry at Darcey. She seemed to understand her husband’s faults aplenty. It clearly showed in all of her movements, even the minutest flitter of her amethyst eyes that she desperately wanted her husband to stop talking and sit down.
The rest of the party smirked in acknowledgement of the deserved impudence but said nothing. Twenty thousand feet above the ocean was not the place to start up a brawl, no matter how justified. In any event, they would be landing in a few hours and it would be unwise to rile tempers just yet.
Darcey got up and slid through the narrow divide between the living area of the luxury jet and the bar room. Hadrian followed her after several minutes had passed. The older travellers smiled knowingly, which irritated him. His opinion of society was not high, and this sample of nobility was not improving it any.
Hadrian silently closed the Japanese style pocket doors and turned. His dark haired fiancée was sitting hunched on a bar stool, head on her arms. She wasn’t crying, but instead sitting perfectly still, which unnerved him more than tears ever could. Even her back didn’t slowly rise and fall with her breathing. It sent a shiver down his back. He had never known, even as a child, how to comfort someone. This was a new and scary experience. But then, hadn’t everything been new and scary the past few months?
“Darcey…are you alright?” Hadrian winced at his own words. They were blunt and stupid; the words of someone who did not care enough to ask a proper question. He did care – he loved her. He just couldn’t verbalize it.
Silence met his inquiry. He stood in the middle of the small room awkwardly, hands in pockets. Slowly he shifted from one foot to the other, trying to think of something to say. This was uncomfortable, to say the least. He would have given anything to know what to say. Eventually he just wrapped his arms around her and rocked her slowly back and forth.
Hadrian could see the tear stains on Darcey’s cheeks. They smudged her mascara and ran down her chin and neck. He rubbed his thumb back and forth over her chin, breaking the flow of tears. He bent his head forward and kissed the crown of her head. Slowly Darcey began to move. She drew a broken breath and heaved herself off of the bar counter.
Hadrian scooped her up in his arms and sat down on the silken settee in the corner of the small compartment, gently placing her on his lap. Darcey turned her head into his chest, burying her nose in the folds of his shirt.
She smiled and breathed deeply, taking in his sweet smell. Hadrian looked down and saw her grin, but kept his straight face. He pulled his head up and rubbed the back of her neck gently with a hand. The other wrapped around her waist and rested on her back. He tried desperately to keep a straight face, lest Darcey see and figure out his plan.
Hadrian kept rubbing the nape of her neck and back in a slow, circular motion, for several seconds before he tightened his muscles and closed his arms around her. Darcey squealed and looked up, caught in his embrace. For an instant their eyes met, and he loosed his grip. Darcey took hold of this moment of weakness and pushed off his chest, tumbling to the floor. She laughed at the adorably confused look on his face.
Darcey jumped up and walked backwards toward the bar. Hadrian seemed to realize just what was going on, and launched off the settee. He grinned and reached out for her, but she ducked. Sliding back to the pocket doors, she winked and slipped through before leaving him alone in the bar compartment. Amused and bewildered, he poured himself a drink and sat down on a bar stool to think. His solitude did not last long. Shortly after his fiancée left, his father came rumbling in.
“Well, well, son! How is your princess doing?” King Julian thundered. He slapped his son roughly on the back and turned to see what varieties of liquor his contemporaries stocked. Satisfied, he chose one and, not bothering to pour it into a glass or even a decanter, pulled out the stopper and threw back his head. The amber liquid drained quickly from the bottle.
Hadrian watched his father in disgust. He was so vile, so unrefined. Hadrian wondered how his mother had ever chosen the blacksmith’s son as her husband. It was just incomprehensible to Hadrian that his father had ever had anything to offer Jolene. But of course, he would be told the story. Every time his father had the chance, he would rampage on and on of how the good princess Jolene met and married poor Julian. And when the liquor was gone, that was exactly the story he was told.
“Well then, my boy! You seem to have won over the fair princess Darcey, have you not? Ah, you take after your old man. Say, that reminds me of a story! A story about how your mother came to be my wife.” The fat old man garbled, spitting as he talked. Hadrian got up and moved farther away from his father. This did not faze the aging monarch, as he merely turned his head slightly to look at his son while he began.
“You see, my boy, back when I was your age, my father was a baker. He would deliver rolls and such to the palace kitchens. He was so very good, in fact, that old King Sanchez hired him to work as head pastry chef. Of course, lad, this was quite an honour back then. Not everybody who applied got the job! But he was the best there was. Not a slacker, no sir. Your granddad worked harder than any man there ever was.
“Now, he had been working in the palace for a little over a year when I came to apprentice as a groom there. I would spend half my free time wandering the grounds and hiding behind trees, trying to watch the nobles pass. I hadn’t a clue that Jolene even existed. She wasn’t much of a people person, you know. Preferred to stay in her room. But one fine afternoon, her folks dragged her outside and made her take a spin in the garden. It was meant to be good for her.
“Well, son, I was hiding up in a tree when she came out, and I almost fell out of it! I had never seen an angel so beautiful as your mother. She was stubborn, and clearly not enjoying herself, poor dear. She hadn’t done her hair, and her dress was old. But still, she was a sight. I knew right then and there that I had to have her.
“Of course, my boy, you’re lucky. You are a prince, so you can choose whoever you want. I, on the other hand, had limitations. I was a mere groom, and she the future ruler of Marseille. I had no chance, I knew that. But I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could pass for something more.” Julian sighed and clanked a bottle of Madeira against a cut glass decanter. A minute passed as he poured himself another drink and downed it. When he continued, it was with the same fluidity, albeit moderately altered due to his alcohol intake. “So I changed. I became Count Julian Dontez. I pretended to be a visiting noble from some distant land. And for some time, it worked. Until the grand banquet, of course.
“That night I shall never forget. My father, who I hadn’t seen in the three months I had been in the palace, came bursting through the doors from the kitchen to the dining hall, leading the dinner parade. He didn’t know what I was up to. Poor old man, I gave him quite a shock. He saw me sitting there, at the right hand of the crown princess Jolene, and came rushing up to me. The old boy had tears in his eyes. He came right up and started hugging me and saying that he was so worried…all the while, I sat there torn between anger and embarrassment.
“To make a long and painful story short, they found out. Everyone found out my little secret. That I was really the peasant son of Juan Dontez, that I was a groom in the royal stables, and that I had been masquerading as a count. I think that the only one who didn’t hate me at that moment was your mother,” Julian looked into his son’s eyes and held them. Hadrian was shocked to discover that, in his disgust of his father, he had never looked him in the eyes. They were a shocking green, almost unearthly. But unlike Darcey’s heaven sent eyes the color of polished emeralds, these were dark and hard. They reflected no light, emitted no emotion. They were cold and silent. A dark pit, they welcomed nobody and betrayed all. Looking into his father’s eyes was like looking into a darkened mirror. They had no lustre, no quality. They were just green. A haunted, despicable green. Hadrian had to look away.
“Well. Your mother came and found me in the dungeon and broke me out. Said that the last few months were the greatest she’d ever had. The plucky lass then went and petitioned her folks, and we were married then and there. But there was a downside. There always is in these tales. My father went missing. To this day, I’ve never heard a word from him. He’s probably off getting drunk and enjoying life, as he always used to want to. Well, cheers to him, the old coot.”
With that, the lumbering king staggered to his feet, worse for wear and smelling of old alcohol, wandered back to the main area of the plane. Hadrian remained behind, contemplating about everything he had heard. His father could not have possibly pulled it off for long. And his mother…Hadrian was sure that his mother wouldn’t have agreed to such a thing. She was forever being shamed by her husband. It was clear that he was an unrefined, considerably rotund fool, but whether or not he was capable of putting on such a masquerade for three months was not to be seen.
Of course, that was quite a condensed version of Hadrian’s parents’ marriage. He knew