Chapter I

   My name is Bernadette.  I am not beautiful.  But this does not bother me.  I have never felt the need to be particularly eye catching.  And so I am not, nor do I try to be.  My sister however, is very beautiful.  She has long blonde tresses that hang perfectly below her waist and always seem to be in place.  She has blue eyes that seem to look straight through you.  Her completion is flawless. My sister Lydian is sickening.  She has very poor eyesight, and if it seems as though she is looking straight through you, it is only because she is making some attempt to see you at all.  But Lydian is far too vain for glasses, and so she tells no one of her affliction.    If you looked closely at her golden tresses, you would see that they are rather stiff from all the ointment that she puts in them to make them hang straight and perfect.    And, if you took a water hose to Lydian’s face, her perfect complexion runs strait into her perfect bosom, somewhat dampening the towels she keeps in there.  I’ve always wanted to do that to someone.   

    My name is Bernadette.  I have never felt the urge to stuff my bodice.  My second sister has not either, as she has ample amounts of chest.  Her hair is red-gold, and her eyes are green.  They have been said to glow with love at times.  Cassidy is just as beautiful as Lydian.  She is tall, with long legs that make men swoon like women, and a tiny waist.  She has a sprinkling of freckles across her pretty nose, and long sparkling eyelashes.  Her brows are arched and perfect.  However, if you were to take note of her freckles, you would notice that they seem to vary in position, and occasionally color, as the season changes, bringing in different cosmetic merchants.  The man who said her eyes glowed seems to have started the rumor one night after he had been vary drunk and had had a run in with a pregnant cow earlier that night.  Her eyelashes often glitter because on occasion the glue that holds them in place drips down onto them.  As to the account about her eyebrows, well, one morning she came down stairs looking surprised, and seemed to stay in that state all day. 

    My name is Bernadette, and I have never felt the urge to draw in my facial features.  I have brown eyes that have never been said to glow, and brown hair that hangs just below my shoulders.  I have never been called a beauty, but I have been called kind, and I have been called good with children.  As things seem to go, however, people do not want wives that are kind or good with children.  It seems that the market is more looking for beauties with perfect hair and shining eyes.  One man in particular wanted a beauty, and he had heard about my sisters.  Not about their real selves, mind, just the make-up enhanced product.  So he decided that he wanted to marry one. 

  I remember when he came to the castle.  Lydian heard the horse in the courtyard and pulling her laces around her be-toweled bodice sent a servant out to meet him.  He bowed to the servant, and doffed his hat respectfully.  Lydian immediately disliked him.  What kind of man bows to a servant?? But then he lifted his face, and she forgot all about the bow.  Naphtali is a very handsome man, with porcelain futures.  I disliked him for that.  I wanted a man who was sturdy.  Not glass.  But there was something about his look that intrigued me.  And he had bowed to Butler, so he had to be at least some level of human.  Lydian walked into the hall to meet him.  He bowed to her, and was caught in her blue-eyed stare.  I mentally sighed.  Most men are hard pressed to find their way out of Lydian’s stares.  Naphtali however, merely blinked and smiled at her.  Lydian did a double take.  I smiled. 

  Then it was Cassidy’s turn.  She came up to him and curtsied deeply, giving him a view of her real bosom.  Lydian glared at her back.  Naphtali bowed in return, and took no notice of Cassidy’s chest.  She felt very slighted.  They all three turned to me.  I smiled and curtsied briefly.

  “My name is Bernadette,” I told him.  “Welcome to my father’s house.  Shall I fetch him?” 

  “My name is Naphtali,” he told me, also not using his title, smiling out of his eyes, “Thank you for your kind welcome.  I would very much like a word with your father.”

  “What shall I tell him your business is, sir?”  I asked.

  “Tell him I was interested in perhaps making a betrothal.”  He smiled as he said this, and I sighed.  So he was impressed with Cassidy and Lydian’s charms then, I remember thinking.  

  “Of course,” I muttered, and turned to go find my father.  I heard the girls twittering as I left:  “My name is Princess Lydian” and “I am princess Cassidy.”  And then a male voice saying, “So I assumed when I saw the castle and your circlets.”  I smiled.  I liked Naphtali in spite of myself. 

Chapter II

   Naphtali stayed with us for a month.  My mother was smitten with him as soon as she met him; faster even then Cassidy and Lydian I think.  She loved having him there, and she was determined that he marry one of her girls.  Except, he never paid anymore attention to one of them then the other, and when his attention was given, it was merely polite, and mildly interested.  He never looked at other of the girls the way most men did.  I found myself liking Naphtali more and more.  He was perfectly courtly to all of us, never placing so much as a toe out of line. 

    One morning, I was out walking with my horses (I have four) when I saw him in the garden with his head in his hands.  His shoulders seemed to be trembling, and before I could stop her, L'inverno, my white mare walked over to him and stuck her nose under his hands and huffed loudly.  He put up his head and smiled at her, placing his arms around her neck.  She pranced in place; pleased with the attention.  The other horses were jealous.  L'estate came over and nosed him also, and was quickly joined by L'autunno and La primavera.  Surprised by the sudden onslaught of horses, he laughed and looked over to where I stood, horrified at my horses behavior.  They were normally very well behaved.

  “Are they yours?” he called over the horses’ heads.  I nodded and came walked over, and L’inverno nuzzled my neck in apology for abandoning her mistress.  I smiled.  Naphtali didn’t seem to mind the horses company.  “What are their names?” he asked after they had calmed down.  I listed them.  He whistled softly. 

  “Long names,” he commented with a grin. 

  “They are Italian,” I told him, “For summer, winter, spring and autumn.  I mostly address them in English,” I admitted.

   “Ah, I see,” he chuckled, “So you aren’t the all powerful language goddess after all.”

  I shook my head and smiled back.  It seamed a pity that such a nice man should have to be burdened with Lydian or Cassidy.  We walked together back to the stables, and he helped me brush out their manes and backs. 

    “Do you want to go for a walk,” he asked me, rather awkwardly.  I sighed.  There he was, being polite and perfect again.  I smiled, albeit sadly.  I told myself not to go; that I shouldn’t get idea’s about how Naphtali felt.  I did anyway.

  “Sure,” I said, and walked out of the stables, linking my arm in his offered one.  We walked in silence for a while, until he spoke.

  “Do you know what my favorite flower is?” he asked me.  I shook my head.  “I like the daisy.”

  “The daisy?”

  He chuckled.  “Yes, the daisy.”

  “What about roses?” I muttered.

  “See, the thing about roses is that they are everyone’s favorite flower.  Everyone wants roses for their birthdays and for weddings.  Roses are just so… Oh, I don’t know, prissy.  Sometimes it is just such a relief to sit and see something that isn’t demanding, isn’t full of themselves.  You’ve never heard of a daisy making anyone bleed, and you have never heard of a daisy garden.  Because people don’t pay so much attention to daisies, they are free to grow however they want to.  Roses are just so superficial.  They smell good, they look pretty, but they are hard to grow, hard to care for, and never loved anything.  Daises grow where ever they want to, and don’t need to be taken care of constantly.  Sometimes it just gets so tiring talking to roses when you really would just like the words of a daisy…”

   “Roses don’t talk, Naphtali,” I pointed out.  He blushed.

  “I suppose you’re right, Miss Bernadette,” he sighed, and stopped in front of a side door to the castle.  “Your company has been a pleasure,” he told me.  He never called me princess, and I never called him milord.  It was a mutual agreement that we had come to when he first entered our castle.

   The next morning I woke up to my mothers yelling.  I pulled on my smock and rubbing my eyes walked out into the hall, where my mother was wailing.

  “What is it mother?” I asked, admittedly annoyed.  When I say the next morning, I mean early morning.  Like around three.

   “He is GONE!!!  And he took your sisters with him.  I suppose he means to marry both of them…” She trailed off, looking as though she was trying not to look extremely pleased with herself. 

  “Who is gone mother?” I asked, very annoyed, now that I figured out what ever was disturbing her wasn’t really disturbing her at all.

   “Lord Naphtali and Lyd and Cass!”  My mother always called Lydian ‘Lyd’ and Cassidy ‘Cass’ much to both of their displeasures.  She never called me anything but Bernadette.  “He has to marry them both now, you know, they simply can’t be wandering off with men in the middle of the night.  You kidnap them, you marry them, that’s my motto!” my mother crowed.  “It’s not unheard of for a man to take more then one wife after all, look at the men in the Holy Book!” 

  “Naphtali didn’t kidnap Lydian or Cassidy,” I snapped.

  “You are just jealous that you weren’t pretty enough to be taken too,” my mother sneered.  My lip curled in disgust.

  “You are a filthy excuse for a mother,” I told her, “Pretending to be upset that your daughters were kidnapped, then calling your oldest ugly!  Well, just because I don’t paint on my face every morning or stuff my bodice with towels does not make me ugly.  It makes me… a daisy!”  I told her, not really caring that she wouldn’t understand my daisy reference.  Then I did something I had always wanted to do.  I took my perfume bottle and dumped out the foul stuff, a hand-me-down from Lydian, and filled it with water.  Then I went back out into the hall where my mother was still standing openmouthed, and sprayed her in the face.  I watched with satisfaction as her perfectly applied make-up ran down in a single streak down her nose.  Her skin was a sickly whitish-pink under the copper cosmetics.  I stormed back into my bedroom and slammed the door, not at all concerned about whether or not my mother was still standing in the hall with a pink streak down her nose.

Chapter III

    I sat  on my bed and toyed with the food that Kit, my maid, had brought up.  I just wasn’t hungry.  After the initial denial of the fact that Naphtali had stolen my sisters, and my revenge against my mother, I was starting to believe that her story was the case.  After all, Naphtali was gone, and so were Lydian and Cassidy.  There hadn’t been word from either of the three, and it had almost been a week since I had shut myself in my bedroom.  The spaghetti was probably cold by now, I scolded myself.  It was cold in my room.  I needed to shut the window.  I walked over and stood for a moment in the breeze. 

   “I hope you aren’t planning on shutting that, Miss Bernadette, it was an awful climb up this wall, and I don’t know if I can let go of my hand holds long enough to open it again.”  I froze, and slowly peered down out of the window.  There was Naphtali, looking rather ruffled, clinging to the wall outside my bedroom.  I stepped back from the sill, and with out another word, he pulled himself in through the window. 

  He apparently had not planned out what he was going to do once he had managed to get in my room, so he sort of waved with one hand, as if to say: hello, I’m here now, everything will be fine.  But that isn’t what he said.  “Um, I need your help,” is what he said.  I nodded.  I figured that he probably needed something, since he had, after all, scaled the castle walls to get here. 

  “It’s your sisters.  They… they want to marry me.  They said that I had to marry them now that they have been stuck with me for a week.  I… I didn’t even know what was happening!  I was asleep, and then I felt something hit my head, and then I was in Red Meadows, in my estate, in my bed with your sisters hanging over me in these see-through nightgowns.  I don’t want to marry your sisters.  Actually, I had been planning to ask you if I could marry you, that’s what I wanted to do in the garden, but I didn’t have the nerve to do it.  Look, Bernadette, I love you, actually, which surprises me, because I expected to find a wife, not someone to love.  But, I’m afraid I got stuck with two wives, and the woman I love is the one who got left.  I won’t marry Lydian or Cassidy, but I would love if you would marry me, Bernadette.”     

  “Oh,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.   “I mean, yes,” I added as an after thought.  He looked relieved.  Then he sighed.

  “I’d like to kiss you,” he told me, “But I’m afraid that I can’t stay for very long.  When the girls find out I’m gone I’m sure they’ll come stomping back here.  And… that would be bad I think, so we need to do something about them first.  Besides, I can’t marry you if it means you have to live with them.” 

  “Well, I’m not climbing down the castle wall,” I told him.

    After we had climbed down the castle wall, stolen (well, not really stolen, we took my horses) horses and rode all night, laughing and enjoying each other’s company, we made it to Red Meadows.

   The estate was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen in my life.  The terraces… the stained glass windows… it was perfect.  I had no problems seeing myself living the rest of my life there.  IF there was a way out of him marrying Lydian and Cassidy.