Read Online The Betrothed Sister by Carol McGrath - Free Book Online

frowned Thea.
    Gudrun said quickly, ‘He has fought in battles since he was fourteen summers.’
    â€˜Gudrun, you have done well. If you find out anything else …’
    â€˜My lady, I shall tell you the moment I discover it.’
    On the morning of the ambassadors’ reception, Thea hummed an old English song about love and blackbirds to herself as she bathed in a tub of tepid water carried by servants up two narrow staircases in heavy wooden pails. As she dried her hair with a linen towel by the opened shutters she could glimpse the church steeple and the thatched lower roof of Bishop Vilhelm’s two-storeyed palace building. If she leaned out and peered around the sides of the window opening she could see an image of a cow’s head carved on one gable, a dragon’s head on another, a bird, a stork on another and a golden swan rising up in the distance. Elizaveta said that Russian noblewomen glided like swans. Well if they could, she could also and, after all, her mother had often been compared to a swan. She would be as a golden swan with her gold-red hair, long neck like her mother’s and her mother’s fashionably pale skin. Thea touched her throat. I am like a swan. I am gold, I am rich and I am told that I am handsome. Pray God, I shall win my prince today and he will love me and in return I shall have his children and help him rule his lands as a princess must.
    The pearl-encrusted silk gown and tunic lay across her bedcover. Lady Margaret had neatly and expertly adjusted the gown. Brushed and scented, the old fabric was as well preserved and as bright as it must have been twenty years ago when Grandmother Gytha wore it at King Edward’s court in Westminster. She cherished the hope that the sapphire-coloured material would reveal its subtle sheen in the hall’s candlelight. She touched the silver circlet studded with sapphires and the delicate, transparent veil that lay beside it. Queen Elizaveta had insisted that at this private reception she should not wear a veil. Her hair would be her only adornment.
    In that moment Thea decided that she did not like the idea of being surveyed by strangers alongside the Danish princesses, her tresses loose as if they were in a slave market. Gytha’s shortened veil was delicate and it would frame her hair to advantage. She would wear it.
    Gudrun broke into her thoughts exclaiming, ‘The princesses will never compete with you no matter how they dress this afternoon.’
    Thea dropped the veil on top of the gown. ‘I hope it does not give them any more cause to dislike me than they have already.’
    When King Sweyn had confirmed yesterday that the Russian ambassadors expected to see the recently arrived Saxon princess whom they called Gita, the Danish sisters had been openly rude, repeating that Russian princes liked Danish princesses. Danish princesses knew every household task so that they could oversee their household servants. What did Thea know of bee keeping and cheese-making, brewing and baking cakes?
    Thea had coolly replied, ‘Nothing that cannot yet be learned.’ At this retort the princesses had looked away with scowls on their faces, and she was sure she had heard one of them mutter ‘Shrew,’ beneath her breath.
    When Elizaveta had entered the sewing chamber she admired the embroidery on Thea’s napkin. The four princesses had smiled sweetly at their stepmother and nodded. Ingegerd remarked that, thanks to their help, Thea was improving her embroidery skills. Thea had bit back her angry retort. Elizaveta was blind. How could she not see through her stepdaughters’ behaviour? How could she not see that her own daughter was lying? Thea was teaching herself the colourful Danish embroidery, though any possible enthusiasm for Danish embroidery had been quelled by the Danish princesses’ cruel behaviour.
    â€˜My lady, I am always delighted to learn new skills,’ she said to Queen