ONE

Adalene could not believe what was happening.

Shocked, numbed and scared as she was, she could only gasp as they lifted her up onto the Baron’s horse. She could barely hear him as he apologized for not having a pillion seat for her, for he had not expected to have a rider on his way back to his chateau today.

Today.

Today was her wedding day, but it was not to the Baron that she was married this morning.

No, of course not.

She was a peasant maid, the daughter of a villein-a peasant farmer. How could a Baron marry someone like her?

The actual story was that her pere, in what they all suspected was a drunken state, was convinced somehow by a man named Louis Didier to marry her off to him. She had never even met him! Her father said he was a vineyard owner and had a considerable amount of money, which meant Adalene would live a comfortable life as his wife and her immediate family would gain from the betrothal, too. They needed the payment for the farm. They were not having good harvests in several seasons now. Her parents were worried her nieces and nephews would starve during the coming winter season and they had lost one child the last time. Adalene worried as much as they did, terribly so, as she loved her baby niece and it hurt her as everyone else about the loss. So she knew she must go through with the wedding, because she couldn’t think of losing another one.

But this morning was the first time she met her groom, and it was very distressing.

Louis Didier was possibly one of the ugliest men she had ever met.

And it wasn’t just about the way he looked, which was already terrible. He had this constant expression of nastiness on a face that had no discernible shape except if one lay eyes on a fallen avocado from its tree. He seemed to have no strength in his jaws and his nose was too crooked and long. The expression that he constantly smelled something bad very near his nose seemed permanently etched into that face, so it might very well be true. She cringed inwardly, as it was his mouth that was nearest his nose. She cringed heavily in internal disgust.

He was also older than was told her days before.

Her father said he was in his forties, but he looked twenty years older. He was so small and stocky that even though Adalene’s slender composition and straight poise gave her the deceptive look of being taller than her five feet and five inches; she appeared taller than Louis. His brown hair was stringy and balding, and he had gray eyes as dull as an old rat’s. Overweight, he wheezed like an old man. He also acted like he was in a constant state of drunkenness, though he was not exactly slurring his words.

Adalene wasn’t particularly picky and her poor mere taught her all her life to bear her cross in silence, and yet her mother fainted at the first sight of the man. Once she recovered, the look she threw her husband’s way cowered him so that he looked the smallest she had ever seen him. They were all thinking he must have arranged in an intoxicated state, for her father imbued much alcohol when he was nervous, and arranging marriage for his only daughter was not something he did every day.

Her brothers were also very upset. They groomed her for the hopes of marrying someone well-off, right, like a merchant or a land-owner slightly higher in status than the villeins, but never one like... that. She was going to live with him her entire life! They had chaperoned her almost all her life. They couldn’t believe they took so much care of her so she would marry a man like Louis Didier!

But it was far too late to withdraw from the arrangement. Her father’s words would have become nothing if this one was broken. Louis Didier soon hastened them through the disbursement of the bride token, which decided the arrangement. Agreement had been previously arranged that there would be no dowry and Louis would pay a bride token for her.

But as soon as the pouch was given and coins inside it were counted, her father protested it was considerably smaller than what was originally discussed. Her mother had feverishly informed him the first-hand that if coins didn’t count to the right amount, she would kill him herself, deducing that someone who acted like Louis Didier was going to swindle them.

Her mother was a wise woman. The money was considerably less than the agreement and the family hoped she was going to be saved after all. Her father would not get accused of breaking his word if the vineyard owner broke it first!

“She is plain! You said your daughter is the fairest in the village. If this is what fairest is to you peasant people, Rene, then I cannot fathom how the other maids in the village fare!” he angrily announced, much to the offended gasps of the villagers who were there.

He continued to grumble. Her blue wedding dress, which she and her mother took pains to sew out of the meager allowance her pere could afford to give them, was cheap and coarse to him. And how dare she have freckles? Did she have those all over her person, too?

“It is the most contemptible thing for a woman!”

Finally, the priest harrumphed and announced that the ceremony would start.

When she turned to Louis, thinking of all the years she would spend living with him, she stood there frozen. She felt the cold creeping up her skin, seeping inside her body and consuming her heart. She was in shock. He wasn’t showing any feelings that could tell her he at least could care for her or would be gentle. She wanted to tell them she did not want to go with him. But there was nothing she could do. It would just be a month before the heaviness of the winter comes to them. There was no time. They needed the money badly. She did not want to lose another niece or nephew. She did not want to lose other animals that needed to be fed because they could not feed them. What was she to do?

Adalene began to cry.