Keys to the Kingdom (13 page)

Around her, the sisters were silent. Even Fiona now seemed to be considering her elder sister's advice.

Lenora looked around the room.

"We will remain united, as we always have," she said. "Let us be pragmatic. The time may come when we may need to join forces against our husbands, on behalf of all of us or on behalf of just one. Let us not divide ourselves so early. Please."

Fiona stared at her.

"Very well, Lenora," she said quietly. "I shall give you the benefit of the doubt since what you say does have some merit."

She turned to Lark, who sulked angrily in the corner, and smiled. "Why do you fret so? You will still outshine us all, silly."

The compliment easily won over the vain youngest daughter of the realm, who either didn't realize or care that Fiona was manipulating her in her usual fashion.

"Of course I will," Lark said. "We may be forced to marry together, but there is no rule that we must all have the same gown and mine will be the grandest of all. You just wait..."

The other sisters rolled their eyes, even as they smiled.

"Little sister," Lenora said. "We all shall have our demands heard. Mark me."

This seemed to satisfy the lot of them. And for the time being, at least, all was well.

III

From that day on a steady stream of merchants visited the castle as the sisters got about planning their day. Their initial anger at having a joint wedding was soon replaced by excitement, and a resolve to make the men's decision the biggest headache a realm has ever known.

By the end of the first week since the engagement, the king summoned the princes once again. They walked in to find him looking more tired and old than ever as he sat behind a stack of parchment.

"Is there a problem, your Highness?" Kier asked as the brothers filed in, their expressions worried. They had been hunting for stag in the forest when they received a royal summons marked "urgent."

"It is my daughters again," he sighed, gesturing to the parchments. Each one of these is a note demanding payment on a debt. He picked up one parchment.

"A thousand pink crystals."

He picked up another.

"This one is for sixteen bolts of the finest satin on the continent. I've paid for jewels cheaper than this cloth."

He tossed it aside and picked up another. "This one is a request for lodging, food and stipend for a dressmaker who specializes in splendid gowns. My daughters have not only commissioned her to make each of them a gown, but gowns for the wedding party as well. Did I mention the dressmaker requires a staff? It would appear that my eldest daughter told this dressmaker that an entire estate would be let for their use..."

He tossed it aside and rubbed his wrinkled brow. "At this rate you will marry into a kingdom in debt. And the people will not appreciate it if the wedding turns into some sort of obscene display."

"What would you have us do?" Quentin asked.

The king shot him a look that implied the third born son of Salazar, King of Randor, had asked him a question he should have known better that to ask.

"You need to reign them in," he said. And then he looked straight at Kier. "And this time, when you do, you need to handle them directly as opposed to having the elder princess do it."

Kier felt a flush of embarrassment flood his face. His betrothed had no doubt told her father that he had gotten her to break the news of the joint wedding to her sisters. She's no doubt used the information to paint him as weak, and this after he'd thought they'd built up a certain level of trust. Opportunistic wench. As soon as he had a reason he fully intended to raise Lenora's skirts, bare her pretty bottom and...

"Prince Kier, are you listening?"

The king's voice was impatient.

"I'm sorry, your majesty," Kier mumbled hastily. "I was...thinking."

"You'd be wise to listen while you do that," the king said, and Kier realized the monarch's peevishness was spurred by real concern. His daughters' spending habits were compromising his reputation and his gold.

"What you do now will set the tone for your marriages," the king said. "I do understand that you may think me a hypocrite, sitting here preaching to you on how to handle daughters I myself have let run amuck. But I am past the point of influence, and you must stop this at once, especially given that I now believe these excesses may be in retaliation for our decision to marry the girls all at once."

Kier stood and gathered the parchments. He as ready to do as the king requested, for he believed the monarch, although he was still holding out hope that the old man was wrong. Would Lenora and her sisters really do such a thing?

The answer to this question was 'yes.' It had not started out as a direct act of defiance, but as the princesses began to plan their nuptials it was all too easy to use their joint ceremony as an excuse for their excessive spending.

"Perhaps releasing fifty diamond-encrusted doves is too extravagant," Luna remarked, but when she did, Fiona countered that since they had to share they wedding day with one another then they should be able to make it a spectacle worth remembering. After all, with five princesses getting married in one day was the kingdom not expecting a lavishly unforgettable event.

"The people want this as much as we do," Lark said as she justified the cooks' preparing fifty chestnut-stuffed roast swans are part of the menu. Beside her, Angelica fretted that the vineyards may fall short of wine for the nuptial feast.

"We could tell them we will pay them double if they give us their entire stores," she suggested.

"Can we do that?" Lenora asked.

"Not really," Angelica replied. "But we can still tell them so..."

Lenora shot her a look but did not disagree. Since her altercation with Fiona she did not want to argue with her sisters in a way that would make it seem she was appearing to side with the five princes they were to marry. It was also an unfortunate fact that Lenora - despite being the smartest of the sisters - had grown up thinking that wealth was somehow self-replenishing.

However, her father had been concerned about lavish public displays of wealth.

"Not everyone is so fortunate," he said. "We do not want the people to turn against us."

Now, as she and her sisters were hastened to prepare for a wedding they would not have chosen for themselves she felt justified in accommodating her sisters' demands and sent a constant stream of messengers to all parts of the kingdom and beyond ordering merchants to bring them what they needed for the big day.

It was a little after lunch when the princes requested entry to the private chamber of the princesses. The sisters watched as their future husbands filed in one by one.

"You were supposed to join us for lunch," Kier said. "We sent word that we needed to discuss some things with all of you. Did you not get our message?"

"We did, Prince Kier," Lenora said. "But we took lunch in our chambers. With the wedding so close now we have no choice but to spend every waking hour on planning."

"So I've heard, Princess Lenora," he said and turned to his brother Ivan, who handed off a stack of parchment.

"Your father is concerned about the expensive your planning has accumulated," Kier said, looking at the parchment.

"A thousand perfect seed pearls..."

"We need them for our hair," said Lenora.

He looked at another parchment.

"Twenty snow white horses? And twenty glass carriages?"

"We may have to marry together but we can at least expect to each have a carriage to take us to the chapel!" Fiona argued.

"Five hundred spools of silver thread?

"You surely don't expect us to use ordinary thread in our wedding gowns?" Angelica asked incredulously.

"You hired twenty bakers for the cake alone?"

"Please," Luna intoned. "Do you expect just one man to put together a cake twelve feet high?"

"Five solid gold kneeling benches with satin pillows..."

"We have to have something to kneel upon when we take our vows," Lark concluded.

Kier fell silent and looked first at his brothers, who nodded in solidarity and then back at the sisters.

"No," he said.

The sisters looked at one another in confusion.

"No what?" Lenora asked.

"No to all of it," Kier said, and to over half of what else you're planning. "Your plans are too extravagant and far too expensive."

The sisters erupted in a chorus of protests - all except for Lenora who turned and loudly demanded her sisters be silent. They instantly complied and watched as she walked towards the man she was to marry.

"We are planning our day as we wish," she said coldly. "So the five of you and our father will either give us our way or there will be no wedding."

"How's that for leadership?" she whispered then where only he could hear.

Kier knew this was a challenge, not just for the benefit of her sisters, but a direct challenge for her own benefit. He knew he could not allow it.

Grasping Lenora by the arm, he turned to his brothers and the other princesses.

"If you would all excuse me, I am going to go answer this challenge to my authority privately."

He pulled Lenora from the room as she screamed curses at him. In the background he could hear his brother warning the others that they'd face the same consequences if they did not calm down.

"How dare you!" Lenora spat as he pulled her down the long hallway and into his chamber.

"Would you prefer that I punish you in front of your siblings?"

"You aren't going to punish me at all!" she seethed, and slapped him then - hard - across the face.

For a moment they both stood in shocked silence at what she'd done. Then Kier pulled her towards a chair, his stride purposeful as she tripped along after him. Lenora knew she'd crossed a line now, and her threats turned to pleas for mercy as he sat down and easily pulled her over his lap.

She wriggled on his strong thighs but was quickly immobilized by his vice-like grip. She whimpered pitifully as he pulled up the hem of her gown to reveal her lacy under things, which he removed quickly over her fearful protests. Her bottom was bare now, the creamy mounds of her buttocks helpless and ready to be punished. Kier paused to admire the sight, imagining a night in the not too distant future when he would bend her over the bed and kiss that soft, perfect bottom before burying his face between the cheeks and tonguing her until she screamed with pleasure. But now was not such a time. This was a time to show him that he could be as severe as he could be kind. He raised his hand and brought it down almost brutally on the soft expanse of her bottom.

Lenora screamed and then sobbed as he began to spank her. His method was purposeful and rapid this time, his hand never tiring or flagging as he spanking first her left cheek and then her right over and over, turning the lower portion of her bum a bright scarlet. The room resounded with the sound of spanks and tearful pleas. Lenora kicked her legs and pounded her little fists. She pleaded and begged and bargained, but Kier said nothing in response. He did not have to; they both knew she'd challenged him directly and on purpose. She'd given him no other choice than to do what he was doing.

By the time he'd finished, Lenora's bottom was almost glowing with heat and throbbing with hurt. Her pretty face was tear-stained, her eyes puffy. He looked into those eyes, his gaze hard and unwavering.

"You will marry me, Lenora. And your sisters will marry my brothers." It was not a request, but a statement of fact, a reaffirmation of his authority.

Lenora nodded in submission and then silently trailed him back to the quarter where her sisters waited. When she came back in she knew right away that two of them had also been spanked. Lark and Angelica stood rubbing their bottoms. Fiona and Luna appeared to have thought the wiser of antagonizing their future husband but the look of fear on their faces suggested that watching the spankings had been nearly as effective as getting one.

The sisters gathered together, facing a group of brothers unified in victory.

"You will scale back the expenses," Kier said. "The wedding can still be grand without draining your father's coffers and inflaming a populace who can only dream of such things."

"What are we to cut back then?" Lark sniffed.

Kier nodded at Lenora. "My future wife is smart enough to know what must be done. I suspect her sisters are as well. I shall leave it up to you to do what is right. I do not intend to have to hover, or to repeat the lesson I've administered today."

He bowed, and his brothers followed suit.

"Good day, daughters of Elgar."

And then just like that, he was gone.

The princesses stood silent for a moment, each waiting for one among them to say something inspiring, to issue some sort of rallying cry. But three of them were sporting very sore bottoms, and two were simply grateful they'd escaped without enduring similar punishments. Neither wanted to be the first to set them on another collision course with the five determined princes.

The parchments were on a nearby table. Gingerly, Lenora walked over and picked them up.