Chapter 5
MISTRESS DAPHNE packed the other dresses away, and then got into taking serious measurements. Johanna stood barefooted, with her hands spread wide, while Mistress Daphne put pins on every panel of the dress, until Johanna wondered if there would be anything left of the original design when she finished. Mistress Daphne and Nellie talked about fashion and fabrics, and Johanna was keen to be let out of the pincushion prison.
There was the sound of voices in the hall, and then at the door. Father’s visitor was leaving, and it frustrated her that she still had no idea who he was. A bit later, she heard the distinctive tread of Koby coming up the stairs, and then the sound of the tableware cupboard being opened and plates being put on the table. She’d been locked up in this room talking clothes all afternoon.
“I think dinner is ready,” she said. She wanted to be out of that dress. She needed to go to see Loesie as she promised. Loesie would want to know what Johanna had done about her warning, and she couldn’t tell her any good news. I spent all afternoon being measured for a dress, or No one would believe me, wouldn’t be statements Loesie understood. People from the land never questioned wind magic and willow magic. That was also why Johanna liked Loesie: because she didn’t have to explain her magic or apologise for it.
“It’s done,” Mistress Daphne said, and she started unlacing the back of the dress until Johanna could step out. “I’ll work on this, and have it ready for you tomorrow night.”
After stiff fabric and all those pins, Johanna’s old clothes felt like a comfortable blanket. She felt like she never wanted to take them off again, never mind what people said about them.
She left Nellie and Mistress Daphne to their gossip and went into the hall.
The smell of tobacco and spice still lingered in the air. The door to Father’s study was open, but there was no one inside the room. The black coat with the Carmine House pin was gone from the coat stand. A fire burned low in the hearth and the scent of brandy and tobacco lingered.
They called this the Green Room. On one side, there was a table surrounded by chairs with silk cushions. The entire left-hand wall was taken up by a glass-fronted cupboard with shelves full of books. Most of those were Johanna’s, bought for her by Father on his travels. Above the hearth hung a portrait of Johanna’s grandfather.
Father himself sat at the table in the dining room, while Koby ladled soup in a gold-rimmed soup plate.
Johanna took her place opposite him and Koby came to fill her plate, too. Leek soup. It smelled heavenly. “Thanks, Koby.”
Koby nodded and walked out, leaving behind a woolly sort of silence that stretched while they both ate. He had changed into the comfortable woollen vest which his sister Aunt Dianne had knitted for him. His short beard was now more grey than blond, and the hair that he so carefully combed over his bald spots hung down his neck in a greying ponytail.
“You sorted yourself out with a dress?” he asked. “I presume you’ve seen Mistress Daphne?” So, he wasn’t going to tell her who the mystery visitor had been.
“I have.”
“Has she made sure you got something pretty?” The wrinkles around his eyes crinkled with a brief smile.
Johanna shrugged. She wanted to show her displeasure over his avoiding the subject of the visitor, but he would probably get angry with her. “I got a dress.”
“What colour?”
“Blue.” The dress would probably turn a few heads, even if only Julianna Nieland’s.
“I trust she’ll have you looking like a real lady.”
“Don’t you start, too, Father.”
“It’s becoming more important that you take life a bit more seriously, young lady.”
Something about that remark made Johanna shiver. He wasn’t going to talk about this getting married thing, was he? “How did you get an invite to go to the palace?”
“It was a stroke of luck,” he said, thoughtfully spooning soup out of his plate. “Mind you, I’m not going for fun. Most of the ball will be to conduct business.”
“Did you apply to the council of nobles again?”
He put his spoon down, and seemed to deliberately avoid her eyes. Eventually, he said, “No. As long as the old Nieland is alive, there’s probably little point in trying that avenue again. But, there may be another way.”
“Another way into the nobility?”
Koby came in with a tray that contained gold-rimmed platters with carved duck and mash gravy, and another platter with sliced bread. Father said nothing while she set the things out on the table.
He spoke again only after she left. “This is not common knowledge, so I prefer you told no one about this—”
“Do I ever gossip about things you tell me?” He infuriated her so much. The twists and turns he took, the avoidance, the right angles in his conversation. Why couldn’t he just talk straight?
He sighed. “Prince Roald is back, and will be confirmed as the king’s successor at the ball tomorrow night.”
“Tell me something new. He came on that Burovian ship that’s still in the harbour, didn’t he?”
Father smiled briefly. “I should have known that you were smart enough to figure it out.”
“Is he cured?”
He flicked his eyebrows and continued eating his soup, in that infuriating way he would go silent when she most wanted him to speak.
The old clock on the wall went tick-tick-tick. Next to it hung a portrait of an elegant brown-haired woman. She wore a beautiful green dress—buttoned up to the neck—and a string of pearls. Lady Sara Aroden, Johanna’s mother. How would she have coped with Father’s infuriating silences?
Eventually he said, “Prince Roald will assume his duties as of tomorrow night.” As if she had asked nothing.
“What was wrong with him? Why has he been away for so long?”
Father held up his hands. “Johanna, none of this is meant to be public knowledge. There will be royal announcements about this at the ball, and you will be there to hear it from the king’s mouth.”
She restrained a snort. As if the king would tell the good nobles all the details about his family. If he hadn’t done so when they first decided to make Celine the crown princess, he certainly wouldn’t do so now.
“Why were we invited?” Mother and Father had been to these balls at time, but usually that was because of some business thing, like that time when Father had opened up trade with the lands beyond Estland and some of those people happened to be guests at the palace.
Father gave a half-smile. “The Brouwer family seems to be going places, after all.” He put his spoon down.
Johanna sensed the importance of his words. “Is this about the visitor you just had? He was from the royal family, wasn’t he?” Just what was Father getting into? There were other ways?
Other ways of what? Was he buying his way into the nobility?
Wait.
The crown prince was back to resume his duties. The prince was twenty-four. His duties would include finding a wife and getting busy with producing an heir.
She and Father looked at each other and she saw in his eyes that he knew what she was thinking.
He nodded, slowly. “King Nicholaos has issued a call for all ladies of good standing to attend the ball for a dance with the prince.”
Johanna opened her mouth—
“No, Johanna. Do your old father a pleasure and for once do as I say. The king has fallen out badly with most of the city’s nobles. Many of those so-called nobles don’t even have half the capital that we do. You are the most eligible lady from the new merchant class.”
“You have got to be kidding! I thought you wanted me to look after the company.”
“I do.”
“How could I do that if I’m choking in ruffles and court ladies?” And she’d just asked Mistress Daphne for that ridiculously frilly dress.
“My guess is: better than if you marry Octavio Nieland.”
“But . . .” Johanna stopped there. “Oct
avio Nieland?”
“Yes. He’s been in my office several times to ask for your hand in marriage.”
“But why? The Nielands hate us!”
“They only hate what they can’t get. The best way to stifle a competitor who frightens you is by marrying into their family.”
“But . . .” The Nielands were nobles. The very ones who scorned Father. Why did he involve himself with them?
“Johanna. He’s very insistent. You amuse him, he says. He wants a strong woman who is able to look after his affairs when he goes to sea. I’m not going to be able to say no to him indefinitely. Not if there is no other option.”
No other option?
She had assumed that he had been happy enough not to let her marry. Not Octavio Nieland, not anyone. She’d just continue to do the work he’d been doing, without the need for a man. She’d shown him that she could do it.
One thing she hadn’t considered: he saw her marrying to the advantage of the company. Tears of anger sprang to her eyes.
“I thought you loved me,” she said, her voice unsteady.
“I do love you, and that’s why I’m trying to get you the best I can negotiate. The prince desperately needs to marry. At the ball tomorrow night he will be presented with Saardam’s most eligible ladies. I’ve negotiated one dance for you with him. The court adviser who was just here has let me know that the king looks favourably upon you. Take the opportunity to present yourself well and he may want to see you again. It seems fortunate, perhaps, that King Nicholaos has made a lot of enemies amongst the nobles with his insistence on church donations. We are successful, and the royal family wants support from successful traders, and they desperately need an heir from a family that goes to church. We can provide those things.”
He thought of the rest of her life like that? Something to be bartered?
Johanna rose from the table, throwing her spoon down. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
“It upsets you.”
“Of course it upsets me.” She tried very hard to keep the anger out of her voice, but didn’t succeed entirely. “How can you just drop this on me like that?”
“Just one dance, Johanna.”
“And what if he likes me . . . or what if he doesn’t? Would you honestly expect me to marry Octavio Nieland after all the bad things you said about him?”
“I don’t want you to, no. But if you don’t marry and I die, our wealth goes to my useless cousin. I want that even less than I want the company to go to the Nielands.”
“Do I get a say in this?”
“I’ve waited years for you to have a say. You don’t look like making up your mind any time soon.”
“I don’t want to get married. Look at the girls who used to be my friends. Claire got married. I never see her anymore. Does she even leave the house? Augustina got married, and her husband won’t even let her do any shopping. Willemina got married and she’s got so many children that she has no time for anything else. They never go out. They rarely talk to me anymore. Does that look like fun?”
He slammed his flat palm on the table. “This is not about fun!”
The explosion of his voice shocked her into silence.
He took a deep breath, nostrils flaring and went on, “You are behaving like a spoilt child. I’m thinking I’ve waited far too long already. There is a lot more to marriage than two people. It’s about their families and their combined wealth and business.”
“You married for love.” Not only that, her mother’s parents had let their daughter go off with a foreigner.
“I was extremely lucky.”
Johanna, on the other hand, was in danger of becoming an old spinster, and at this point in time, she was just a piece of property to be moved around for maximum gain.
She got that message loud and clear.
“I won’t be around forever, and I worry about what would happen to you if you don’t have a family—no, don’t tell me that you’re happy to run the company by yourself. I know you are, and I know you’re capable, but things don’t work that way in this world, do they? No one will do business with a woman who runs the company by herself. And it’s getting worse because of that stupid Church.”
Johanna looked down, tears pricking in her eyes. She knew, and had always known. The world was changing. It had no room for happily unmarried women.
“Please, Johanna. One dance with him. Chat to him. Try your best. Because I wouldn’t give my company to Octavio Nieland over my dead body.”
After one long stare, Johanna left the room without speaking.