Sweet Romance14 min read
The Plum-Stitched Promise
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I told them I would not go. I told them that with the same stitched calm I used to sew the winter plum on my lap — one neat stitch after another, as if needlework could steady everything that had no right to be steady.
"Miss Juliana," Lin, my old chamber matron, said softly, "Curtis Reynolds brought such a gift list. The guest chest alone—"
"I will not go," I said, and my voice was even. My hand did not tremble as the needle darted the plum's petal into place. "I will not."
"Please look," the housemaid Spring-child murmured, glancing between me and Lin with the sort of helpless look that asks a favor but understands she cannot win. "They sent two live geese."
"Two live geese?" Lin repeated with an anxious little laugh that betrayed the counting of favors men do for one another.
"They sent silk and pearls too," Spring-child added, hoping that material might bend me. "And the general's aunt — Kenzie Weber — came in person for our family's face."
I kept my eyes on the plum. "I will not go."
Lin's breath hitched. "Juliana, the Reynolds house is sincere. Take a look at the gifts. General Griffin McDonald—"
"No." The line of my mouth was hard. "I won't marry because my father likes the man."
My father had decided for me before he knocked on the first door. Curtis Reynolds, the grand marshal, saw in General Griffin McDonald a useful alliance — a brave soldier who had been lifted by favor into rank, a man without kin but with a steady hand; to my father it was a clean match. To me, at fifteen with the shadow of the palace still warm on my shoulders, it was the end of some small hope I had been allowed to keep: my childhood promise with Benjamin.
"Juliana." Lin said my full name the way she always did when she was trying to coax me from stubbornness. "Your aunt, Imelda Keller, loved you. She made plans for you—"
"I know." The plum's half-formed petals stared back at me. "If my aunt had lived, Benjamin would not have been taken."
Lin stopped. "You still think of him."
"I only think of what was three times simpler then. Benjamin Ford saved me once, from a prince's pebble, and after that he kept doing that: who he stood between and who he fought for. He was my shadow. I wanted nothing grand but to share afternoons of reading by the pond. I never asked for a throne."
"You ask for that now?" Lin's voice was gently mocking.
I could not meet her. I pressed the needle through cloth and whispered, "I did not choose to be a coin for exchange."
Curtis Reynolds entered my yard then, the whole house still beneath his storm-shadow. He was a man carved by battles and bargains; authority made his shoulders heavier, his jaw harder. When he spoke he never raised his voice and the room went quiet as if someone had tightened a huge drum.
"Juliana," he said. "This marriage will protect our line. Don't make drama."
"I don't want a husband whose memory I'll have to explain to my children," I said. It was a small victory that I could keep my tone dignified even as my cheeks warmed.
Curtis smiled with the kind of venom that comes from iron-cold certainty. "When did a Reynolds daughter decide for herself? When did the Reynolds family begin to obey the whims of pettiness?"
"Then explain the point," I said. "Tell me why. Show me what I gain."
"Don't be ungrateful," he said simply. "This will secure your place. It will secure the house."
"I refuse," I said. Tears burned but my hands were steady. "I refuse a blind marriage. I will not be sold."
He raised his hand. "Bring me the board."
Lin nearly shrank, Spring-child's face went pale. Father had never used family discipline on me before. He would sooner have fought a war. Still, the threat hung in the room heavy as thunder.
My mother, Lea Jensen, arrived in a swirl of silk and worry, as if she had to cover both the father and the daughter. She stood between us like a wise woman playing the diplomat between two belligerent kingdoms.
"Please, father. Not in front of the servants," she said. "We can speak in my chamber."
The one bargain pregnant in my father's mind was visibility. The Emperor — my aunt Imelda's husband — had a memory that hinged on faces. Years after the palace funeral of my aunt, the Emperor had repeatedly said he would like to see me again in the Great Hall, to make sure he remembered his dead wife's features. That sentence, the memory of the Emperor's comment, was the lever my father used.
"The emperor expects to see her," he told me later, alone. "He's looking for any child's face that reminds him of Imelda. He asked for her. They think I hide you. He wants to see the ancestral lines."
"Does that mean," I whispered, "that he wants to possess all of what she once had? Her likeness? Her memory?"
"For your safety," Curtis said, voice softer. "For your honor. For the house."
"I am not property to be shown like a mirror," I said, but I understood. The palace had a penchant for nostalgia, and my face, the one that used to sit on my aunt's lap, had a magnet for power. If the Emperor decided he liked me, he could decide all sorts of things. And so my father's scheming sought preemption.
It was not a simple choice. Father was not cruel for the sake of cruelty. He was a man who had survived campaigns and had seen pieces of his life dissolve because he hesitated. To him, expediency meant survival.
In the end, resistance was costly. I refused in heart, but the household refused to collapse. The day of the formal betrothal arrived and I came wearing the plum I had sewn: a small, stubborn bloom on my sleeve.
I met him for the first time at the garden pond. Griffin McDonald stood like a cliff by the water, his silhouette high against the late light. He wore the simple armor of a man who had grown up marching under banners — tall, weathered, honest as a plow. His skin carried the wind; his eyes were grey-silver and honest. He stepped forward and bowed.
"Juliana Fontana," he said, "it is my honor to meet you."
"You are Griffin McDonald," I answered, feeling oddly small under his height. "General."
"Please, call me Griffin," he replied, and the single syllable had a plainness that made me blink.
"I am Juliana," I said, feeling my voice a little raw.
For a while we spoke like that: small, punctured phrases, polite attempts to measure each other's edges. He was blunt in a way that made me smile without meaning to. When I asked about his feeling toward marriage he said simply, "Curtis Reynolds stood by me. I owe him. I give what is owed."
"And the household?" I asked.
"Your house has steadiness. It is worth having," he answered.
We were two people coming from wholly different orbitals. He smelled of earth and iron; I smelled of teas and the palace. I caught myself thinking of Benjamin — soft-handed, scholar-eyed Benjamin, who had once stood between me and a prince's mischief — and the comparison hurt. But Griffin's humility was not hollow. When he saw my skirt ruined after a failed attempt at mounting a horse and offered two bright replacement robes — gaudy, practical, ridiculous — there was something so sincere in his readiness that a tiny root began to grow somewhere near my sternum.
"You ruined the skirt?" he asked when he found me, furious in a good way with embarrassment. "I will fix it. Two are better than one."
"You got me two great clashing colors," I said, embarrassed enough to be honest.
"They'll suit you," he said with the kind of stubborn faith men reserve for their beliefs. "We can change them to something you like."
"Perhaps," I said, "you are the sort of man who sees a problem and wants to fix it outright."
"That's the sort of man I am," Griffin said and there was no apology, and yet it was comforting.
Courting turned into tinkering. He taught me to sit a horse without foolishness; I showed him how to take tea with enough gentleness not to spill it on an embroidered sleeve. He made jokes that were the brutal kind the barracks taught him, yet every time he brought a single small thing — a box of peach-scented powder, the only thing in his awkward world he thought would please me — I surprised myself by liking it because he had chosen it with his hand and his will.
"Griffin," I told him once in his courtyard, "I don't owe you my heart because my father owes you his loyalty."
"I don't ask for the heart," he said. "I ask for our days. I will make them ours."
I had practiced resistance for so long that tenderness came to me like a stranger. Yet there were moments he did things that were not only useful but unexpectedly intimate: he remembered how I liked the seam of my tea cup polished; he noticed when I didn't eat and he, without asking, made a bowl of stew.
One afternoon Benjamin Ford stepped back into the periphery for a breath. He had changed — taller, more severe in his scholar's poise, the same hands that used to close over mine when we hid from a prince's games. He greeted me with a courtesy that had become suited to courtiers. We exchanged the small charity of two people who had lost a childish future and grown into other roles.
"You look well, Juliana," he said.
"You too." I kept my eyes steady. "Benjamin, congratulations on your... arrangement."
He hesitated, as if he could still pick between two paths. I cut through his pause.
"Tell me, Benjamin, when you make a decision, do you ever regret what you forfeit?"
He looked very young and terribly grown at once. He answered with that scholar's calm, "Every choice leaves a shadow, Juliana. But we cannot live in their shade."
We parted that day circling the way planets do: we remained close but no longer on the possibility of a shared orbit.
Time passed and I learned to let Griffin be the kind of man who straightened an army's ranks. He was not book-smooth like Benjamin; he had calluses and a stubbornness that was sometimes clumsy. But he kept showing up — in the hallway with a simple smile, in the courtyard bringing gear he had had made for me, in the night bringing small boxes of the peach powder he didn't know how to use but thought I might like.
Our life settled into a rhythm: he went to camp; I ran the house. My father comforted himself with the balance of alliances. My mother said small things about "trying" and "seeing." Lin continued to hold my sleeves in ways only the intimate could.
Then, after the first month, I discovered I was with child. The news fell into our private room like a bright, uncertain coin. It was a secret for a day and then a week, and finally we told those who needed to know. Kenzie Weber came with a pile of tonics, and she kept blessing me like an aunt who loved her nephew's house. Curtis walked around with the loose terror of a man whose line matters more than the warmth of his hearth.
When the season turned, a larger storm came from another quarter. My elder sister, Sandra Wolf, who had once vanished with Carter Blevins — a bold soldier who took her and made of marriage what men call honor and women call survival — returned after ten years with two small children in tow. Her reappearance unmoored things at home. There had been rumors of desertion, of dishonor, and her coming back pulled at the fabric of family pride.
"She left me once," Curtis said the day she came back. "She defied me."
She bent and took her place before father, and the house trembled as if the past had returned to make a claim.
The courtyard was full when the matter of the conjugal wrongs had to be settled. A spectacle was unavoidable; my father had to show that his household could not be scoffed at. Then, in a voice colder than the winter sky, Curtis decided to punish Carter Blevins — my sister's husband and the man father regarded as traitor and embarrassment.
The punishment was not a mere private beating; father wanted witnesses. He wanted the public to see restoration of order.
"They will not harm her," Curtis told the crowd that gathered. "But they will see what it means to take from this house in secret."
"Will they do it before the market?" someone whispered. "Will they do it with the magistrate?"
"They will do it now," Father said. "This is my house."
For the sake of truth—and because the rules demanded it—I will write the scene as it happened, with the crowd, the sound, the collapse of the villain's arrogance. If any of you believe in small defeats then you will understand the joy and the cold iron of the moment.
We walked into the main yard. Snow, old and frozen, made the air diamond-bright. Townsfolk had clustered at the edges, drawn by the day's rumor. Men who had once been colleagues of Carter stood with their hands dug into their sleeves. The market women had stopped their calls; children had scurried to windows. The world had paused to see a man unmasked.
There stood Carter Blevins, broad of chest, the same soldier who had once been admired in the ranks. He held his head like a prizefighter facing a new fight. But his jaw had a thinness now. The years had made him older than when he had first taken my sister away. Blood is patient; pride is not.
"Take off his coat," Curtis ordered. The marshal's voice cut the wind.
Two men stepped forward to obey. "Carter, you stand accused of abandoning your posts' duties by running off with the country's peace," the marshal intoned. "You dishonored my house and fled with a woman who was my daughter's —"
Carter snorted. "You call it honor to beat a man for loving your daughter?" His words were meant to sting. "You made us outcasts. I did what I did for love."
"Lies," the marshal said. "A man of rank does not excuse himself by pronouncing romance. You are here to answer what you did. This is a public answer."
The crowd's hush deepened. Then, like a storm loosening, voices rose — some in shock, some in hungry anticipation. "Beat him!" someone called. "Make him plead!"
"Not with that voice," said a grey-haired merchant in the front. "We want repentance."
Carter's eyes flicked. He had a moment's bravado — the last flicker of a man used to living on quickness and heat.
"Then let it be quick," he said. "I won't beg for my own honor."
Curtis gestured. "Begin."
They forced him to his knees. The first strike landed like a judge's gavel, loud and precise. He absorbed it with a face that slowly altered. At first he tried to grin, to carry the mark with stubborn humor. The second blow took that away. Blood spattered on the packed snow. The crowd's mutter turned to a raw chorus.
"Beg!" someone hissed.
"Carter," my sister whispered into the air, "Answer me. Tell me why you left."
"I did it for us," he said, voice breaking as pain opened his voice. "I did it because staying would have killed the dream in me."
The third strike — not in anger but in the quiet legal brutality of Curtis's will — landed. Something happened in Carter's face then: the arrogance slid and, like a house built on faulty ground, everything looked ready to collapse. He tried to deny it, to "not feel," but his hands fumbled and he clutched the snow. Around him, men who had once respected him shifted their footing with visible disgust.
"Carter, did you ever send word when storms came?" the marshal asked, not really asking. "Did you ever return to clothe those who followed you?"
"Yes," Carter groaned, then the denial broke. "No. I drank. I was proud. I was—"
The crowd leaned in; children pulled up to windows. Someone in the recess cried, "Shame! Shame!" A woman began to clap, the poor-cure clap of a witness avenging a wrong. Phones didn't exist for us then, but there were hands that pointed, faces that recorded the moment in the scroll of gossip. A few men took out little notepads; a better name than 'recording' at their time.
At the fourth blow, Carter's face crumpled into disbelief. His mouth opened and words began in a stuttering cascade: "I... I... my hands were—"
"Stop!" my sister cried, and I felt her voice like a hand. "Enough."
Curtis looked at her. For the first time his own face softened. He had thrashed the man not only in anger but in performance: to create a boundary, to make clear that houses cannot be taken and shame cannot be left unaddressed. Seeing the man no longer able to hold his posture as if he were a soldier, but a human bowed, cut something in the watchful crowd.
Then the change in Carter's reaction was terrible and sudden. From haughty to ashamed, from embarrassed to tearful, he tried to find words unhelpful and beyond him. He attempted to stand tall and failed. Denial was his quick defense but it was crumbling. He called out, "I only... I wanted to protect—"
"Protect?" a voice from the crowd mocked. "He ruined two lives."
Others muttered agreement. A woman pressed a hand to her mouth. Some took out cloths to wipe the blood — this small kindness contrasted with the severity of the blows. Camera-like eyes (gossips with ink and wax) fixed details: the water in his hair, the way he gulped like a child who suddenly must explain himself to adults. He went from dignity to supplication.
He knelt, the marshal motioned no more, and the crowd let him. Men who had once been his colleagues turned their heads. My father's face, stern and weathered, had a quietness in it that made the punishment feel like not only retribution but a necessary salve. He had not attempted to exact murder; he had meant humiliation that matched the humiliation Carter's abandonment had caused his household.
"Beg for her forgiveness," the marshal said.
Carter looked at my sister and something fractured in his face — the last bit of pride. He muttered and could barely control his voice. "I... I ask pardon. I was a fool."
It was not a righteous conversion — he was not a saint — but the public undone had to be seen. The crowd's chatter turned to whispers. Some wanted him taken away. Others wanted food for the family he had harmed. My sister's face was a portrait of pain and a surprising, terrible composure. Some bystanders took out their smelling salts; others spat.
People took sides that day. Some applauded the house's strictness; some felt sorrow at the spectacle; some gloated. The man who had been the symbol of escape, now a man who had to explain his escape, finished his humiliation kneeling. He might be forgiven later; he might be shunned. The public unraveling had served its story: houses, honor, and the law of social bonds had asserted themselves in a way that could not be undone.
When the beating finally ended, his entrance into the crowd's tape of memory had been violently altered. He had arrived with swagger and left as a man who had been unmasked. The faces around him had changed — pity, derision, condemnation. He staggered off in the hands of two attendants, no one applauding. If there is a bitter joy in seeing a prideful man undone, I felt none of it; only the cold clarity of a household defending its name.
We moved on after that. My sister's return found a place at the table and a part in the order. It did not erase the years she had lived away. It made them small and public.
After the punishment, things in our house resumed an uneasy peace. Griffin, who had watched with a soldier's distant comprehension of discipline, came to me that evening with a look I had seen only once before — when he had heard of a near-miss in a skirmish far away. His hands were trembling.
"Juliana," he said, and the quiet in his voice carried more than any speech. "I will keep our home safe."
"I know," I whispered and lay my head on his shoulder. The plum I had sewn showed a little thread of red where my heart had started to soften.
We had small mercies. We argued, we laughed, a child, for a time, made our center real.
Months later, our son came into a white world — small, furious at first, then settling into sleep like a seal. We named him Griffin's way: "Griffin Jr." for official documents, but at home he was "An" — a short name meaning peace in the pockets of our language, or the sound of me saying "my love" with the same mouth. The child had Griffin's squared jaw and my eyes. He had terrible hands like a man who had been a soldier's child from birth.
An's birth healed much and complicated more. The Emperor's court shifted; a winter storm of politics bit at Griffin's skirts. He was given a command unexpectedly and thrust into a snowbound relief mission for thousands. He left with our child's blanket wrapped twice and a packet of my tea stitched into his kit.
"Bring him back," I begged. "Bring yourself back."
"I will," he said. "Bring me back. I will bring the men home."
The winter relief went quickly; Griffin returned covered in a certain soldier's wear — a man who had done what he could and come back. He came back to our small room to find An reaching for him and me ready to nag him for being late. He looked like a man who had been given a title. But the title did not change how he took his place at the hearth; in the dark of the night he still came to me and said, "We promised a life. We'll have it."
"He is my strength," Lin said once, as she set my teacup down.
"He's my hand," I answered, and for once both truths fit at the same time.
We tried to live like ordinary people with extraordinary ripples running through us. The Emperor kept his wish to see semblances of my aunt; the palace continued to want what it wanted. Benjamin ascended in court and his name appeared in petitions. He married a princess long after. Sometimes — and I do not hide it — I felt the small sting of the childless future we might have had if things had gone differently. But when An laughed and grabbed for Griffin's thumb, my sense of small loss shrank.
One spring afternoon, sitting in our courtyard watching An chase the shadow of a sparrow, Griffin leaned over and whispered, "Do you think you ever liked me at first?"
"Not in the way you mean," I said, which was true. "At first I tolerated you because you were what the house needed. Later you became what I wanted."
He smiled, delighted. "Then you grew into loving me by accident."
"Not an accident," I said. "A choice. Like the plum I stitched on a dress. I kept sewing."
He kissed my temple. "And what if the Emperor called you again?"
"Then I would show him my son," I said. "I would show him my life. He would see that what he wanted to keep from the memory is still alive — but alive in my hands."
Years later, when the scar-told stories of the past tried to press me into the old images the court loved, I would think of that plum: stubborn, stitched in place by a hand that had once been defiant. It reminded me that both breaks and mends formed what we end up loving.
I keep that plum on the sleeve of my favorite robe. Every time I look at it, my memory opens to the day my father brought his thunder, the day Carter Blevins knelt and the crowd watched, the day Griffin, who was at first an arrangement, became the house's shelter. And I think of An, who tugs loose the threads of the past with small, relentless hands, and I know why we stitched, why we held on, why we chose again and again.
The End
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