you're too young & eager to love

I love royalty! And trios.

Trying to flesh Abigail out some more.


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“What does it mean?” She has that ache in her voice, a strained metal-on-stone sound. Abigail has not slept and her eyes are heavy, but their blue tone still matches the depth of the sapphires spread across the table. She has wrapped the necklace in velvet, as though they are already precious to her, and her hands twitch on her lap when her father lifts the jewels to inspect their quality.

Thomas Hudson is not a young man, but his hands and voice are as sure and steady as the day she was born. “Don’t be so dull-witted. It’s a message of his intentions … and an invitation, I presume.”

Abigail bites her bottom lip, curling her fingers into the heavy fabric of her winter skirts. “I can’t possibly accept. He is bound to marry. I will be nothing once that happens. And there is-”

“My dear, you are hardly anything now,” her father scoffs, interrupting, but not with the intention of being unkind. “We’re lucky that prince of yours even sanctioned your affair with a proper arrangement considering how obliging you were to him. By the grace of god, he has not married either. No matter, we learn, yes? We learn and we strive. Although I do hope your sentiments are not distracting you from the larger, more prosperous picture.”

Jane Hudson, in comparison to her husband, is younger but more clearly affected by the passage of the years. She has the withered, frail look of an autumn leaf. She does not look up from her needlepoint, seated beside her daughter, and her voice threatens to quaver. “If you had married before any of this, you would have a husband to return to after the affair has run its course. Your reputation would not be a point of discussion at all.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“What?” Her mother’s mouth twists with disapproval.

“If it doesn’t? Run its course?”

For this, Jane lowers her needlepoint and stares at her daughter, a girl turned into a young woman more capable of brazenness than she would have assumed. “If you can keep him, you mean? For years? Even if he marries? What makes you presume to know him so well? This new King of ours has an even worse reputation than the old one for being fickle with his … heart.”

“No,” Abigail corrects, softly so as to not cause her mother’s ire or holy judgment to show, and leans forward, taking the necklace from her father’s curious hands. “I do not believe it is his heart that changes with the tides. His heart is constant.”




Gerhard had offered her a servant or two, her own Ladies in Waiting, but the idea had seemed distasteful to her at the time. Like putting on airs. So now she brushes her own hair, lulled by the rhythm and pressure, stroking and stroking until the luster returns and shines as pure as gold. She rubs herself with creams from earthenware pots until her skin glows and smells of distant summer nights. Her gown for dinner is an imperial blue, shameless in its association, but she understands the rewards boldness reap. She lets the neckline plunge, leaves her hair free and unveiled, applies rouge to her swollen lips and powder to her cheeks.

The cluster of sapphires hangs heavy, like a burden or a noose, around her thin neck; her collarbones look sharp beneath it.

Her reflection in the polished mirror on her vanity seems vulgar and gaudy – a cheap imitation of something royal and predestined for greatness.

That was the trouble with Kings and Princes, wasn’t it? Their inability to contextualize what it meant to strive for something greater, to struggle with the paradox of being an honest woman in an impure role, to sacrifice more than just the gap between her thighs.




He has her by the waist, and she can smell the wine from dinner on his breath. His eyes are swollen with it. She can feel his mood in his pulse: his anger and confusion. The anguish and betrayal at the center of it all, burning a pathway to his heart.

Gerhard pushes her hair away from her face, wipes her red mouth with his fingers, smearing away the rouge. He does not recognize her. Cannot fathom her, this woman in front of him, so uncharacteristically desperate to remove herself from his embrace. “I have no choice,” she sighs with that ache-voice he rarely has heard, speaking through clenched teeth, straining her neck to peer down the long corridor of the castle’s west wing. “He can take what he pleases. He’s the King.”

“And my brother,” Gerhard groans, his frustration and heartache encompassed in that single admission. “Is nothing mine? You could not even give me a fortnight, a chance …?”

Abigail turns into him for the first time since he caught her, since he took her drunkenly by the wrist and pulled her into the hall. Her eyes are red but tearless and her bottom lip trembles but her voice is steady, severe. “We all have our duties.”

“Was that it then? I was one of your duties.”

He has an angry, disgusted tone. She has not heard it before and the direction of his disgust makes her empty stomach pitch and roll. It is her turn to shake her head, to clutch at him with her thin fingers, to protest. “No, never, please. You cannot think that.” They are still in the hall, the stone walls cold and damp with the season. She’s shivering, more from emotion than from the frigid air, and the thought of him believing he was hers to pursue for mere personal gain only causes panic to blossom in her chest. She whimpers, wounded, desperate to keep the days of their warm year together intact. Whole.

Abigail lets herself kiss him, messy as it is, public as it is, with her back pressed against the wall and his pianist’s hands groping along her bodice, gripping at her hips. He makes a noise not unlike her own animal cry, a sound she drinks into her mouth and allows to turn her hollow insides full with pain. It is better than the emptiness.

When he drags his lips from hers, across her cheek, down her neck, he might be crying. He sounds like a lamb about to be slaughtered.

“Gerhard,” she whispers, kissing his hair, his temple, when he presses his face into her chest, his breath hot and tormented against her exposed skin. Distantly, she realizes that she will have to change, that the King will not want her so sullied with his brother’s wetness and salt across her breasts.

Maybe it’s his awareness of the intimacy in their moment, or the threat of sound from around the corner, or the familiar smell of her hair and feel of her nails against his scalp, or the quiet way she uses his name. Maybe his emotions clear away the wine and he can think clearer, feel stronger. Either way, she senses him slipping from her, can practically see his shoulders stiffen and his posture turn to steel.

When she reaches for his hand, he pulls it away. “You forget yourself, Lady Hudson.”

The formality resonates against her as surely as a slap from the back of his hand might. “….Apologies, my Lord.” Her voice is such a murmur now, weakened and simpering, and she hates the sound of it as much as she hates the instinctive way she dips into a curtsey, eyes lowering.

As sweet and subservient as honey.