The Decoy Princess Read Online Free PDF Page A

fanned herself, falling back on the couch by the window.
    “Oh…” she moaned. “You will have so many children, you will put the peasants to shame. To shame!”
    I turned away, pleased. I was obligated to marry the most lucrative offer, no matter what the man who came with it looked like or how stupid he was, especially with the “Marry her for glory or murder her for safety” mentality the surrounding noble families were afflicted with. And the marriage offers had tapered off dramatically since poor Prince Rupert.
    “Looks aren’t everything,” I said, running the brush over my hair and getting it stuck in a curl.
    Heather’s face was masked in a mocking horror as she met my gaze in the mirror. “Listening to you, one would think looks were nothing!”
    I cocked my head. “If one thought that, one would be… half-right?”
    She threw a cushion at me, which I easily knocked aside. “Your royal blood is showing,” she said in disgust. “Looks are everything .”
    I gazed at myself in the mirror, hoping Garrett didn’t think so. “I want a husband as smart as I am,” I said, thinking wistfully of Prince Rupert’s witty letters still at the bottom of my wardrobe drawer. “One who can play a decent game of thieves and kings.”
    “Games,” Heather said with a sigh as she came and took the brush from me. “Is that all you think about? Men are pigs rooting in the mud, royal and common alike. The sooner you realize that, the happier you’ll be.”
    “A man with high standards,” I continued, knowing she didn’t understand. “Dangerous, maybe?” I said, and her eyes went bright with repressed laughter. “A man with power, not necessarily wealth.”
    Heather snickered as she brushed my hair. “You have a better chance to catch a punta by the tail than finding a man that meets your standards, Tess. Especially when you have such a small inlet to cast your net in.”
    I sighed. “Use a mythical creature to catch a mythical creature,” I said, thinking that it was a good analogy—and not very encouraging. Puntas were large, ferocious cats with tufts of silver on their ears, able to vanish in a whirl of wind when surprised, which wasn’t very often. They haunted the beach as well as me mountains, reputed to be able to heal the sick, bring rain to end a drought, or call wandering herds of goats to their doom. I’d seen a punta pelt before, dry and dusty, cracking with age. They avoided people to the degree that it was questioned whether there were any yet alive.
    I stood, running my hands down my white linen dress. It wouldn’t be my fault if Garrett and I met in the corridors. “Do I look all right?” I asked anxiously.
    Heather sent her gaze over me, shaking her head in dismay. My eyes dropped, and my face went slack. It didn’t matter how tall I stood or how courtly my accent was, I was not built right. My curves were too shallow and my figure hidden under the yards of fabric was too defined by my afternoons on horseback. It hadn’t seemed to matter before. It did now.
    There was a heartbeat of silence, then clearly realizing what she had done, Heather bustled close, fluffing my skirt. “Oh, your hair looks fetching,” she asserted brightly, her face flushed. “I’ve never seen longer, and it’s that lovely rich brown, like freshly turned earth. Just like your eyes. You look—nice.
    Princess nice.”
    I gave her a thin smile. I wasn’t ugly, but we both knew I wasn’t the one the palace guards were sighing wistfully after when we went down the hallways together.
    “All you need is your circlet,” Heather said as she turned to my vanity.
    A small, pained sound escaped me, and I said nothing, keeping my eyes on my reflection.
    “Tess!” Heather wailed, her shoulders slumping. “Heaven help you, again? I swear, you’d lose your feet if you didn’t use them to stand on.”
    “I didn’t lose it; I traded it for Garrett’s knife,” I said defensively. “Could you slip out to the