Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

She wore a blue silk dress.

That he did see from the corner of his eye, once she stood beside him.

She had only the kind of scent he would have expected, if things were straightforward, cleanness and youngness, expensive perfume from a bottle.

When they had had their hands joined, hers was small and slender, with clean short nails, and two or three little scars.

“And now, say after me—”

He had to look directly down at her then. Not to do so as he swore the marriage vows would have been the action of an insulting dolt — or a coward. So he did. He looked.

Thena Proctor, now in the very seconds of being made over as Thena Seaton, was only about three inches shorter than he.

She was tanned brown, as most of the Farm Family daughters were, unless kept from learning on the land — brown as Matt. Her eyes were brown too, the color of cobnuts.

She was attractive enough. She had a thinking face, with a wide, high forehead, arched brows, straight nose, a full but well-shaped mouth with white teeth in it. Not that she showed them in a smile.

She met his eyes steadily with her own.

How did she then reckon all this? Oh, marry him for the Seaton-Proctor alliance, the benefit of extra land and power for her clan. And then, when bored, kill him one night out in the fields or forest, with a single swift blow of her puma paw — pretend after, with help from her pa, some other thing had done for him.

Matt had shocked himself.

He felt the blood drain from his face.

That was when her cool hand, so much smaller than his own, gave his the most fleeting squeeze. She shut her right eye at him. So quick — had he imagined — she winked ?

Taken aback, yet she’d steadied him. He thought after all she was real. Or was it only her animal cunning?

Her hair was arranged in a complicated fashion, all its gilded length and thickness braided and coiled, part pinned up and part let fall down — like corn braids made for Harvest Home.

Matt liked her hair, her eyes, the way she had winked at him. He liked her name, the full version of which the minister had said — Athena. Matt knew from his books Athena was the wise warrior goddess of the Ancient Greeks. It might have been fine, really fine, if everything else had been different.

They ate the Wedding Breakfast in the prayer house Goodwill room, among more bunches of flowers.

Here Matt finally met Joz Proctor, an unextraordinary, rangy, dark-haired man, who shook Matt’s hand, and clapped him on the back, and said he had heard only worthy and elegant things of Matthew Seaton, and welcome to the Upland Folk.

There was wine. Matt was now like a pair of men. One of whom wasn’t unhappy, kept glancing at his new young wife. One of whom, however, stood back in hollow shadows, frowning, tense as a trigger.

Joz had given them a house, as the head of each Family generally did with the new son-in-law. Chanter’s house was like that too, gifted by his Anne’s father. So after the Breakfast, under a shower of little colored coins of rice paper, Thena and Matt climbed into a beribboned Proctor trap, and Matt snapped the whip high over the heads of the beribboned gray horses, and off they flew up the hill, in a chink of bells and spangle of sunlight. Just he and she. They two.

“I guess you’d like to change out of that.”

This was the first real thing she said to him since they’d been alone — really since they’d met by the altar.

“Uh — yeah. It rubs on my neck.”

“And such smooth silk too,” she said, almost. playful.

But anyhow, they both went up the splendid wooden staircase and changed in separate rooms into more everyday clothing.

When he came down, one of the house servants was seeing to the fire, but Thena, Athena , was lighting the lamps. The servant seemed not to mind her at all. But then, even wild animals, where they had gotten accustomed to people, might behave gently.

They ate a late supper in candlelight.

“Do you like your house, Matthew?” she asked him, courteously. This was the very first she had spoken his name.

“Yes.”

“My father spent a lot of thought on it.”

A lot of money too, obviously. “Yes, it’s a generous and magnificent house.”

“I’d like,” she said, “to alter a few small things.”

“I leave that to you, of course.”

“Then I will.”

The servant girl came around the table and poured him more coffee, as Maggie would have at home. But this was home, now.

“Tomorrow I’ll ride out, have a word with the men, take a look at the land,” he said in a businesslike way.

“No one expects it, Matthew, not on your first day—” she broke off.

Indeed, nobody would, first morning after the bridal night.

He said, “Oh, well, I’d like to anyhow. Get to know the place.”

He had already seen something of the grand extent of it as he drove down in the westering light. Cleared from the surrounding woods and forest, miles of fields awaiting the new-sown grain, tracts of trees kept for timber, cows and sheep and goats. Stables and pigpens, orchards with the blossom flickering pink. The house was called High Hills.

There was an interval after the brief discussion. A log cracked on the hearth. But the servants had gone and let them be. Over the mantel, the big old clock with the golden sun-face gave the hour before midnight.

“Well,” she said, rising with a spare seamlessness, “I’ll go up.” Then she made one flamboyant gesture. She pulled some central comb or pin from her braided hair and it rushed down around her, down to the backs of her knees, as promised. As it fell, it frayed out of the braids like water from an unfrozen spring and seemed to give off sparks like the fire.

She turned then to look at him over her shoulder.

“No need for you to come up to me yet, Matthew Seaton.” She spoke level as a balance. “Nor any need to come upstairs at all. If you’d rather not.”

“Oh but I—” he said, having already lurched to his feet as a gentleman should.

“ Oh but . Oh but you don’t want me, that’s plain enough. I have no trouble with you . You’re a strong, handsome man, with very honest eyes. But if you have trouble with me, then we can keep apart.”

And so saying she left him there, his mouth hung open.

It was nearly midnight, his coffee cold on the table and the candles mostly burned out, when he pushed back his chair once more and went after her up the stair.

At her door he knocked. He thought perhaps she was asleep by now. Did he hope so? But she answered, soft and calm, and he undid the door and went in.

The big bedroom, the very bed, were of the best. White feather pillows, crisp white linen sheets, a quilt stitched by twenty women into the patterns of running deer and starry nights.

Thena sat propped on pillows. Her hair poured all around her like golden treacle. She was reading a book. She glanced at him. “Shall I move over and make room, or stay put?”

Matt shut the door behind him.

“You’re a splendor,” he said, coloring a little at his own words. “All any man’d want. It isn’t that.”

She looked at him, not blinking. In the sidelong lamplight her eyes now shone differently. He had seen a precious stone like it once — a topaz. Like that.

“Then?” she quietly asked.

What could he say?

Something in him, that wasn’t him — or was more him than he was — took a firm sudden grip on his mind, his blood, even perhaps his heart. He said, “I’d like it goodly if you would move over a little, Thena Seaton.”