Free Web NovelChapter 72: Chapter 72 Ten Men
_Rowena’s POV_
I was forty minutes into my morning training session when Kasper walked in without knocking and dropped a stack of portrait cards directly onto the mat in front of me.
I stopped mid-movement and looked at them.
Small cards, each one carrying a painted image and a name and a family line printed below it in neat careful script. I looked at the stack and then I looked at Kasper.
"Explain," I said.
"Marriage banquet," he said. "Tomorrow."
I straightened up fully. "Tomorrow."
"Your grandmother Seraphine has been organizing it for the past week apparently. These arrived this morning with a note." He held out the note. I took it. Nana Seraphine’s familiar handwriting, explained that arrangements had been made, families had been contacted, and she hoped I would do her the honor of attending and presenting myself well. She had selected twenty young men from distinguished families and suggested I narrow the list to ten for the event itself.
I read it twice.
Then I set it down on the mat next to the portrait cards.
"She didn’t ask me," I said.
"No," Kasper said.
"She planned an entire banquet, contacted families, sent invitations, and didn’t ask me."
"That’s correct."
"The invitations have already gone out."
"Yes." freēwēbnovel.com
I stood very still for a moment and looked at the ceiling briefly. I was not going to be angry at Nana Seraphine. She had opened her door for Kasper, filled a bag with everything he needed to keep me alive without asking for anything in return except tea and my company.
She loved me in the most direct and uncomplicated way of anyone in my life. I couldn’t be mad because I knew she wanted what’s best for me.
I picked up one of the portrait cards. Good face, solid family name, the kind of background that got assembled for exactly this kind of occasion. I put it down and picked up another. Similar idea. I went through five of them before I stopped. freewebnovel.cσ๓
"These men," I said. "Did any of them actually want to come?"
Kasper paused for just long enough.
"They’re doing it for Nana Seraphine," I said.
"She has a great deal of goodwill in certain circles," he said carefully.
"So the banquet is a room full of men attending out of respect for an old woman they can’t say no to, being presented to a woman they’ve never met, for a marriage none of them particularly want." I set the card down. "That’s what we’re doing tomorrow."
"It could lead to something genuine," Kasper offered, without much conviction.
I looked at him.
"You don’t believe that," I said.
"No," he admitted. "But I thought I should say it."
I looked at the portrait cards spread across the mat and thought about Nana Seraphine sitting in her house having organized all of this because she loved me and was worried about me and wanted to see me settled before she got any older. I thought about how she had not once used that love as leverage or made me feel guilty for not giving her what she wanted.
She had just quietly, persistently, and very thoroughly gone ahead and arranged things.
I breathed out.
"Fine," I said.
Kasper blinked. "Fine?"
"I’ll go. I’ll attend and I’ll behave properly and I won’t embarrass her." I started rewrapping my training cloth around my hand. "You go through those twenty cards and pick the ten with the most appropriate backgrounds. Not the wealthiest necessarily. The most genuinely distinguished. Families with actual histories, not just money."
"And you’ll consider them?" Kasper asked carefully. "The men. Actually consider them."
I looked at him. "I’ll attend the banquet."
He had known me long enough to understand exactly what that meant and what it didn’t mean. His expression said so clearly.
"You’re planning to leave after the competition," he said.
I didn’t confirm or deny it. I turned back to my training position.
The competition was five days away. I had been quietly intensifying my preparation for the past week, adding sessions in the early morning before anyone else was awake, focusing specifically on the areas where the injuries had cost me ground.
Kasper had found out and asked and I had explained that I would enter. He didn’t judge and instead supported me.
My left arm was functional again. My ribs stopped complaining too, which I was relieved for.
I was not at my full strength yet. But I was close enough to be confident and getting closer every day.
The plan was simple and I had thought it through carefully. Attend the banquet tomorrow. Be gracious. Give Nana Seraphine nothing to be disappointed about. Then compete. Then leave the city the same evening if possible, the next morning at the latest.
By the time anyone wanted to reconvene the marriage conversation I would already be gone and enough time would have passed that the whole thing would have to be started over from the beginning, which would take weeks to organize, by which point I would have reasons to delay that too.
It wasn’t a perfect plan. But it would work and it would buy me time and time was what I needed.
"Pick the ten, Kasper," I said. "Have the list to me before dinner."
He gathered up the portrait cards from the mat slowly, the way he did when he was thinking about saying something else and deciding against it.
"You know she’s going to find out," he said finally. "Nana Seraphine. When you leave after the competition. She’s going to know you planned it."
"I know," I said.
"She’ll be upset."
"I know that too," I said. "I’ll send her gifts from her favorite shopping mall as compensation.”
He almost laughed. Not quite, but almost.
"Ten names," I reminded him, trying to hide my smile too. "Before dinner."
"Yes, my lady," he said, and left.
I turned back to my training and pushed the banquet to the back of my mind where it could wait until tomorrow.
Right now I had five days and a competition and a body that still needed work.
I got back to it.
