Deadweather and Sunrise by Geoff Rodkey Page A

talk to me until dinner.
    “Like to see you try,” she said with a smile, standing up and smacking my leg as she headed for the door. “Let’s have a go.”
    Something about that conversation upset me badly. I had no idea why at first, but all the way through the croquet game that followed and the horseback ride after it up to the big meadow in the foothills, I was glum and snappish with Millicent.
    At first, she didn’t notice. Then she noticed and teased me about it. Then, when the teasing just made me more short-tempered, she resorted to pleading.
    We’d tied the horses up and were walking through the meadow when she saw a mountain gopher and took off after it, yelling for me to help her run it down. I didn’t bother, because it seemed stupid and pointless—she chased them every time we went to the meadow, and no matter how often she failed to even gain ground on one, let alone catch it, she never seemed to lose faith that she’d eventually outrun one of them.
    She gave up after about fifty yards and sauntered back toward me. As I watched her approach, her eyes bright and laughing, her golden hair shining in the sun, I felt an ache building in my chest. Like my glum mood, I didn’t know what it was at first.
    “Stop that infernal frowning!” she called out. “It doesn’t suit you at all! Bring back the real Egg! I don’t like this surly one! Not one bit.”
    She closed the distance between us, reached out, and took my hands in hers. “Come on—tell me what I need to do to bring you back.”
    The answer jumped into my head so quickly it almost slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it.
    Marry me.
    There were a hundred reasons why thinking that was crazy, starting with the fact that we were only thirteen. But there it was. I couldn’t unthink it. And right away, I realized what the ache in my chest must be.
    She was still holding my hands, waiting for me to answer.
    “I haven’t gone anywhere,” I said finally. “And I don’t want to.”
    “Well, who says you have to?” she replied, her smile widening as she let go of my hands. “Come on. Race you down the mountain.”
    It wasn’t until late that night, as I lay awake in the big feather bed, that I realized why Millicent’s telling me about her father’s empire—and her plans to inherit it—had put me in such a dark mood.
    I’d always known Roger Pembroke was rich and powerful, but until then I hadn’t really grasped just how exceptional he was. And the moment Millicent laid it all out for me, I knew—deep down, in the place where you feel things before you understand them or even realize they’re there—that this meant I couldn’t marry Millicent.
    Never mind the fact that no one got married at thirteen—King Frederick might have been paired off at twelve with the Umbergian princess who became Queen Madeleine, but for commoners, it wasn’t even a theoretical possibility until you were north of seventeen.
    And never mind the fact that I had no idea if Millicent liked me that way. She did on some level, clearly—it never seemedto bother her that I was always following her around, we never lacked for things to talk about or do together, and since that first smile out on the lawn, I’d gotten dozens more from her, both big and little.
    But whether she liked me the way I liked her, with the kind of feeling that put an ache in my chest—that was a mystery. And no matter how carefully I picked over every one of her smiles, gestures, and offhand comments, rerunning them in my head for hours afterward, I couldn’t solve it one way or another.
    Never mind all that—because I’d read enough novels about rich and powerful people to know it didn’t matter. If her father was that important, he’d never consent to her marrying someone like me. And as his heir, she’d be duty bound to agree.
    Unless…
    Unless I could prove myself somehow.
    So from that point on, I spent hours every day fantasizing about how I could accomplish something