A Bride Outside the Standard

"Lucas. I don't mind you keeping company with the Young Duke of Pembroke, but you must never think yourself his equal. A man must know his place. Only then does he keep from straying off the path."

Marquis Whitmore, a man of stern countenance, delivered the admonition to his second son as a matter of routine: that Lucas attended the Academy solely for the sake of his elder brother, Theodore Whitmore.

It was his habit to repeat this fact whenever the opportunity arose. Otherwise, he reasoned, the succession might one day be muddied by needless noise.

"At least you've been making fewer worthless scandals of late, which is a relief. It's time you began looking for a fiancée as well."

Entering a suitable house as a matrilocal son-in-law would be ideal — but failing that, he was to marry the daughter of a vassal family and remain a Whitmore, serving at his brother's side.

Lucas had heard the speech so many times since childhood that it had worn a groove into his ear. He offered no reaction to the same old words — though, of course, he wore the mask of the dutiful younger son while he did so.

In his green eyes, however, an irrepressible boredom had pooled.

Did his father know? That at some point those words had stopped functioning as indoctrination and become mere tedium? That this was why he had begun to want a bride who fell outside the very standards his father kept reciting?

Probably one of the young ladies I've been seen with, I'd imagine.

Or failing that, even a commoner would do nicely.

He was turning over that crooked, two-faced scheming in his mind when a pair of bright hazelnut eyes flashed unbidden through his thoughts.

Eyes that had nearly faded to a mere outline took shape in an instant, then slowly filled in with flesh and color until they assembled themselves into the face of a woman.

The ears of the woman rising in Lucas's memory burned scarlet. Chewing over that lingering image, which had stayed with him remarkably well, he felt the corner of his mouth curl upward.

It had been unexpected, her softness for Raphael — but that was precisely how he had come to realize that Enya Campbell stepped outside his father's standards, and by his own measure, could not be more perfect.

It was a thoroughly fascinating realization.

Because if he bound himself to her, it would sour not only his father's mood but Raphael's as well.

"So, Lucas — when a suitable candidate presents herself, I'll send word through a servant. Until then, refrain from your vulgar parties."

"Yes, Father."

Honestly, the library sounds more entertaining than any party for a while anyway. Lucas swallowed the words and smiled with a good boy's face.

…Ah. Not the library. The piano room.

On the day of the second Eberdeen lesson, someone stepped into Enya's path as she made for the old building's piano room. She retreated instinctively, but the man concealed none of his heaving breath as he closed the distance by another step.

"Lady Campbell, walk with me a moment."

It was Prince Malik's attendant — the one who had been briefly embarrassed when Enya had spoken Eberdeen during the salon debate some time before.

Studying the man's furious face, Enya surmised that he had since learned the meaning of the words he had failed to translate that day.

She felt a flicker of remorse toward him, yet at how abruptly he had closed the distance, she frowned in pure reflex.

At the sight of her discomfort, the attendant's face crumpled all the tighter.

"A dog's mouthpiece! The very words sicken me to speak. How do you intend to pay for daring to hurl such an insult at His Highness? If the Prince learns of it, rest assured he will not let you be."

Which meant Prince Malik did not yet know.

And if her guess was right, the man before her had no intention of ever informing his master of the fact.

That he had still sought her out here was most likely simple venting.

Having reasoned it through, Enya was about to open with an apology when the man's sharp voice preempted her.

"This is a matter that could fester into a diplomatic incident. There must be a clear accounting of—"

Before the voice could finish, someone slipped into the gap between them. Enya watched the back of the man who had gently eased her a step behind him.

A platinum-blond man of roughly Raphael's height.

Lucas Whitmore.

Before she had time to wonder what he was doing here, Lucas spoke to the attendant, who had frozen in bewilderment.

"Accountability, you say? What manner of accountability, exactly? You'll have heard already, I'm sure — House Campbell is a terribly modest one."

From the way he positioned himself between them, he had evidently overheard the entire exchange.

But his signature drawl was so slyly pitched that she couldn't tell whether he was taking her side or mocking her. Not that it mattered either way.

Lucas glanced back at her just then, saw the blank indifference on her face, and laughed under his breath.

The attendant raised his voice at his flippant manner.

"A weak house makes it worse, not better! Young Lord Whitmore, stay out of this. For a daughter of an insignificant house to insult His Highness is no different from slighting our Kingdom of Morti itself!"

"That's exactly why I'm asking what accountability you want."

"That is—"

"Wasn't the first problem, to begin with, Prince Malik crying for a trade ban in a country he came to for friendship? He argued against commerce with tremendous enthusiasm, as I recall. If there's a genuine diplomatic issue here, wouldn't that be it?"

At the laughter threaded through the voice, the attendant flinched. When his gaze jerked reflexively toward Enya, Lucas lightly blocked it.

Enya stared at the man now openly defending her with something like surprise.

The attendant, tongue-tied and panting for a moment, soon spat out an incomprehensible stream of Mortian and turned on his heel. Judging by the circumstances, it was a curse. Lucas waved cheerfully at the man's stomping retreat, then turned back to Enya with a bright, untroubled face.

His voice carried down the deserted corridor, where only the two of them remained.

"Any chance you're grateful to me?"

It was a shamelessly transparent question — one that made it obvious why he and Raphael were such close friends. Enya felt a prickle of irritation, but she nodded.

At the sight, Lucas tugged the corner of his mouth into a grin.

"Then will you teach me Eberdeen too?"

At the unexpected proposal, Enya's brow narrowed.

"…I'm not that grateful."

"How blatantly you discriminate against Raphael."

Met with the flat refusal, Lucas put on his manufactured sorrowful face once more. His strikingly handsome features turned even more pitiful than the last time.

Enya stared into those green eyes fixed so intently on her and felt utterly dumbfounded. She could see with perfect clarity that he was working his beauty on her.

Why me, of all people? Just as the thought occurred to her naturally, Lucas spoke, his expression unchanged.

"Two people meeting alone is practically struggling to invite a scandal, you know… If that happens to be your aim, I won't intrude. Do feel free to tell me."

A vicious move from a man who had read the whole of her heart.

Being naturally ignorant of such machinations, Enya only scrunched her brow at the phrase struggling to invite a scandal. Perhaps she had been struck where it hurt before he even landed the blow — she did have a history of walking, of her own two feet, straight into Pembroke's tea time.

After a long internal argument with herself over the fact that she had accepted Raphael's request for Eberdeen lessons, Enya finally spoke.

"Not at all. A scandal with the Young Duke of Pembroke is the last thing I want. I only agreed to these lessons in the first place because he promised to guard my path to marriage. Don't labor under any misconceptions — the Duke and I could die and come back to life and never be anything of the sort."

Her voice was ice-cold.

Cold enough to make Raphael, who had been approaching the piano room at that very moment, stop dead in his tracks.

Lucas, watching his friend's eyes twist, turned his gaze lazily toward him.

"Is that so? Then the three of us holding lessons from today would suit perfectly."

At those words, Raphael's face warped further.

And when Enya registered his presence a beat too late, the man already seated himself in a chair with nervous irritation, eyes locked on Lucas's as he recited the previous lesson from memory.

"Idiot. Trottel. Dummkopf. Arrogantes Schwein. …Scheiss Kerl."

Though the last phrase he murmured — son of a bitch — had never been taught to him by Enya.