A true Luna princess

Planning their wedding

*Isolde*

When a carriage bearing the Alpha crest finally turns into Clarges Street, my father takes up a position at my right shoulder, while my mother sits beside me, her profile to the door, and twitches her skirts into place.

The Alpha enters the room without allowing our butler to announce him. In fact, the Alpha of Howlstone is not the sort of man who would ever allow another man… other than royalty… to precede him. He looks like what he is, a man given to labeling ninety-nine percent of the world’s population insolent upstarts.

A particularly observant person… such as myself… might notice that in reality the Alpha’s nose enters the room first. He has a magnificent proboscis in the front, a doorknocker of a nose. But he makes it work. I rather think that it is the way he holds his head high and his chin forward.

He looks as if his presence is the only thing that makes other people visible, though even I have to admit that this particular notion is more than unusually far-fetched on my part. “‘A Luna does not stoop to fanciful notions,’” my mother would say, quoting, naturally, ‘The Maggoty Mirror’.

Alas, fanciful notions are all that seem to run through my head, even as I curtsy with consummate grace and give the Alpha a smile nicely calibrated between awe and respect.

Rupert, on the other hand, gets a smile pitched between familiarity and respect… the latter entirely feigned.

“There you are!” Rupert says, with his usual enthusiasm.

I curtsy again and hold out my hand. Since he reaches only to my shoulder, Rupert doesn’t have to bend far to kiss my glove. It is unfortunate that he has inherited his father’s nose but not the Alpha’s dominating personality; his nose just seems to force one to pay more attention to his mouth. Which invariably hangs open, his lower teeth visible in a glistening pout.

I am never happier to wear gloves than when receiving Rupert’s salutations. He invariably leaves a wet spot on the back of my hand.

“There you are,” he repeats, straightening with a huge smile on his face. “There you are, there you are!” Rupert is given to statements that mean nothing at all.

In fact, as I agree with his statement… indeed, here I am! … I puzzle over the differences between Rupert and his father.

The Alpha of Howlstone is very intelligent. What’s more, he is ruthless. It is my considered opinion that most people allow feelings to get in the way of logic. Howlstone doesn’t.

Given that level of clear thinking, it is rather odd that his son is not only patently disadvantaged when it comes to thought, but also given to excesses of emotion. Rupert makes people think uneasily that he is about to burst into song… or worse, into tears. You definitely think twice about mentioning a recent funeral… even for an elderly great-aunt… if Rupert is assigned to sit beside you at a meal.

“And here’s Lucy!” he says, even more enthusiastically. Lucy is a very small, rather battered-looking dog whom Rupert found abandoned in an alley a year or so before.

Lucy looks up at me with an adoring expression, her thin, rather rat-like tail whipping from side to side like a metronome set to ’molto allegro’.

“No meat pies today,” I whisper, leaning down to pull up one of Lucy’s long ears.

Lucy has the best manners of them all. She licks my hand even given that disappointment, and then trots after Rupert.

He is bowing and scraping before my parents, which gives me an excellent view of his potato-shaped nose and pendulous lower lip. It occurs to me, not for the first time, that I am set to marry the sort of man whom people wish were invisible. Or if not invisible, at least silent. I swallow hard.

“Now,” the Alpha announces, “I would never be clear in my conscience if I wasn’t absolutely certain that Miss Darkwood wishes this union with my son as dearly as we do. A promise between schoolboys should not force a young person into holy matrimony.”

“Told him that myself,” Rupert says, with palpable satisfaction. “No one could force me into marriage. My own decision. Clippings don’t answer...”

“No one is trying to clip your wings,” his father snaps.

My father and my mother look at their prospective son-in-law with identical expressions of alarm and confusion.

“My son means to say that he is deeply enthusiastic about marrying Miss Darkwood once he has returned from his military service,” the Alpha clarifies.

My mother’s eyelashes flutter madly.

“First I’m going to do our name proud,” Rupert puts in. “Glory, and all that.”

The Alpha clears his throat, glowering at his son. “The question of the moment is not your intent to prove your military prowess, Son, but whether Miss Darkwood cares to wait for you until you have returned. The poor girl has been betrothed to you for some time.”

Rupert’s face twists into an almost comical expression of anxiety. “Must win glory for the sake of the family name,” he says to me. “What I mean to say is, I’m the last of the line. The rest all killed in the Culleron Door.”

“Culloden Moor,” his father says. “The Jacobite rising. Fools, every one of them.”

“I completely understand,” I say to Rupert, resisting the impulse to draw my hand away from his.

He hangs on with a tight grip. “I’ll marry you as soon as I come back. Trailing glory, you understand.”

“Of course,” I manage. “Glory.”

“There is no need to worry in the slightest about my daughter,” my mother tells Rupert. “She will wait for you without a second’s thought. For months, nay, for years.”

I think this is a bit much, but obviously I am not in charge of the timetable. If my parents have their way, I will indeed wait another five years for Rupert to wander back to England, wreathed in glory… or, more likely, ignominy. The idea of Rupert in a war is distinctly frightening: men of his type should not be handed a penknife, let alone anything as lethal as a sword.

“Now, now, my dear Mrs. Darkwood,” the Alpha says to my mother. “One can hardly trust a mother to plumb the depths of her daughter’s heart.”

My mother opens her mouth to dispute this statement; without question, she considers herself to have plumbed the depths of my heart and found there nothing but an engraved plaque that reads ‘Future Luna of Howlstone’.

But the Alpha raises a hand, politely but firmly. Then he turns to me. I drop another perfectly calibrated curtsy.

“I shall speak to Miss Darkwood in your library,” the Alpha announces. “Meanwhile, Rupert…” he all but snaps his fingers, “…do inform Mr. Darkwood about the situation in France. My dear sir, the future Alpha has been studying the situation with some fervor, and I’m sure he can enlighten you as to the grave dangers posed by the debacle on the other side of the Channel.”