The Chocolatier's Wife (2 page)

“I
have
cast
it
twice.”
The
Wise
Woman
chewed
her
lower
lip,
but
there
was naught else she could do.

“Not
Tarnia,
please?”
Henriette,
usually
a
rather
fierce
and
cold
woman,
begged.

“I
am
afraid
so.”
The
Wise
Woman
began
cleaning
up;
her
shoulders
set
a
little lower. “I
am
sorry.”

William,
staring
out
the
window
at
the
children
playing
outside,
couldn’t care
less.
What
did
it
matter where
anyone
was
from?
She
was
a baby,
and babies didn’t cause that much trouble.

“Only
you,
William,”
his
mother
said, shaking
her
head.
“Why
can
you not do an
y
thing normal?”

This
was
to
be
the
tenor
of
most
of
their
conversations
throughout
their lives.

Chapter
2

The
Thirteenth
day
of
Jarien,
Sapphire Moon Quarter 1775

Miss Tasmin,

Since
we
are
eventually
to be
married, and
now that
I
have set forth
on
my
own in order to secure
our future,
I
suppose that
it is my
duty,
as
well,
to get
to know my
i
n
tended
a
little more than
I
do now.
So I
have
taken
it into my
head
to write to
you,
and
it is my
hope
that
you
will reply
to my
missives as
best you
may;
the
letters,
and
my
r
e
ceiving
of
yours,
may
be
a
bit sporadic since
I
will be
at
sea
a
great
deal
of
the
time, but it is better
than
nothing
at
all.

Now,
if
memory serves me,
it is near
the
day
of
your birth, and
since,
again,
if
me
m
ory serves,
you
are
soon to begin
your seventh
year,
I
have
enclosed
a
doll. My
sister-in-law-to-be favors this type
a
great
deal,
and
so I
believe
that
you
might,
as well.

Yours,

William

It
was
not,
in
fact,
the
first
letter
she
had
ever received
from
him,
though
it
was
far
more
eloquent than
those
that
had
come
b
efore.
She
kept
the
first
missive
with
the
others,
but
she
never
mentioned
it
for
fear
of
embarrassing him,
for
it went, rather
si
m
ply:

Hello.
My
name
is
William
Almsley. I
am
seven
years
old
today and
I
found
out
that
we
are
getting married.
I
hope
you
are
well, though
being
a
baby
I
suppose
you
don’t
really
know.
I
like
animals and
the
color
blue.
You
shall
have
to
tell
me
what
you
like
when
we see
each
other.
Until then
I
hope
you
are
happy.

William

While
it
was
the
one
she
read
the
least
of
all
his
letters,
she
still
liked it,
because
as
far
as
she
could
tell
from
its
predecessors,
he’d
never really changed.

The
fact
was,
Tasmin Bey
did
not
mind
her
husband-to-be
at
all.
She knew
she
was
luckier
than
most,
for
few
received
anything
at
all
from
the
one with
whom
they
would
spend
their
lives,
as
if
they
were
all
trying
to
forget the
inevitable. William’s
missives
came
four
times
a
year,
like
clockwork. The
ones
that
were
meant
to
come
around the
Light
Day
celebrations
and around her
birthday
brought
with
them
a
pr
e
sent
wrapped
in
good
cloth, though
the
other
two
often
held
some
trinket, such
as
an
unusual
plant
or flower pressed
in
between
thin
slabs
of
preserving
wax,
a
stone,
a
feather, whatever
William
thought
she
might
find interesting.
One
had
held
a
ring of coral that she wore still, on her smallest finger.

And
she
liked
his
letters.
They
were
straight
to
the
point, just
like
the very first,
practical. He never wrote anything flowery
or romanticized their match,
but
she
thought
he
was
kindly
disposed
towards
her,
and
so
she
was happy enough.

She
would
have
been
quite
content,
if
it
wasn’t
for
the
fact
that
everyone around
her was quite determined to hate him.

“He’s
from
the
Azin
shore!
Do
you
know
what
kind
of
people
live
at
the
Azin
shore?”
her
u
ncle asked,
accusing her as if she’d had a
say in
it.

“They
used
to
eat
their
dead,
according
to
Apercus’s
Dictionary
of the Peoples
,”
her
father
said.
“Can
you
imagine
such
barbarity? And
we’re sending our
little girl into that that world?
It’s
disgraceful!”

“I
suppose
at
the
time
there
was
a
practical
reason
for
them
eating their
dead,”
Tasmin
observed.
“If
William
is
any
example
of
his
people, practicality is quite his main
motive of being.”

This,
she
found,
was
not
a
popular
argument,
and
they
finished their meal—an
unfortunate
choice
of
roast,
considering
the
topic
of
conversation—in
complete
and
di
s
approving
silence.
That
was
not
the
first
word
on
the
matter,
nor
would it be the last.

“You
are
determined,”
her
mother
said,
scrubbing
bleaching
oils
(meant to
counte
r
act
the
effects
of
Tasmin
spending
hours
in
the
sun)
into
her
skin with
a
slightly
less
than
careful
vigor, “to
give
your
father
a
heart
attack. And
me! What
about me?”