ACROSS THE STARS
Chapter Six
Three Days Later
Rosé sat before her dressing
table, looking in the mirror as TC-16 arranged her hair in an elaborate upsweep.
She was already dressed for the evening, with only her makeup and jewelry left
to add, which she would do after the droid left to help her mother.
Tonight was her betrothal dinner.
She grimaced at the thought. Caledon had made all the arrangements, not asking
for any input from her, inviting the most influential Senators—those who could
make or break his career if indeed he was elected Arcadia’s new Senator—and his
chances seemed very good.
She supposed she should be happy
for him—she herself would enjoy a great deal of influence if he became a
Senator, at least in their social circles if not in the political arena itself.
And yet, she couldn’t help but
hope that someone else would win. Caledon had been one of her father’s aides,
but Cleon had often expressed frustration at the man’s lack of compassion and
tolerance. She had been very surprised when her parents had arranged the
marriage between herself and Caledon, but early on, it had been just what she
had wanted.
Rosé had taken an interest in
politics from an early age, but Parni women were rarely permitted much open
influence in the way things were run. Many a woman had become a force to be
reckoned with behind the scenes, but the credit almost invariably went to the
men in charge. Rosé had always thought it unfair—after all, amongst the Nem,
women had the greater influence—but there was nothing she could do to change
things. Her father had recognized her sharp mind and begun bringing her with
him to Senate sessions three years before, when she was fourteen. It was there
that she had first met Caledon.
He had paid little attention to
her at first, and she had been happy enough to ignore him, sensing that her
father had hired him only as a favor to an old friend, Nathan Hockley,
Caledon’s father, but when she had turned sixteen—marriageable age for a Parni
woman—Caledon had suddenly become much more attentive.
She had been confused at first—he
had never paid much attention to her before, and she didn’t think very highly
of him—but he had persisted, greeting her cheerfully and engaging her in
conversation, inviting her out to eat with him, bringing her increasingly
elaborate gifts—it wasn’t long before she began to think she had misjudged him,
and even her father had been surprised at his change in attitude.
When Nathan Hockley had
approached Cleon about arranging a marriage between his son and Cleon’s
daughter, Rosé had begged her father to agree, and finally, he had done so,
though not without reservations. In his years in the Senate, he had seen all sorts
of ploys to gain something, and he hadn’t fully trusted Caledon. But Rosé had
wanted the betrothal, and Ruth had also thought it a good match, and so he had
agreed.
It wasn’t long before Caledon had
gone back to his old ways. He still brought her gifts—such was expected from a
man of his position—but he no longer took an interest in what she thought or
even paid much attention to her most of the time. She was always on his arm at
political functions, and at social ones, but in more private settings he usually
ignored her. When she joined them at Senate sessions, he treated her as though
she was an interloper, a person of no worth who was trying to join in something
she couldn’t possibly understand.
Rosé had grown more unhappy with
the betrothal as time passed, and Cleon, who suspected that Caledon had sought
the match so that he would have a better chance of becoming the next Arcadian
Senator, had been on the verge of breaking the betrothal in spite of the
consequences when he had been assassinated.
Caledon had been very
sympathetic, both in public and in private, though Rosé doubted he was as sorry
as he seemed. Of course, as the late Senator’s soon-to-be son-in-law, he was
gaining a great deal of support on Arcadia both amongst those who maintained that
political power should be passed down to family members and those who
sympathized with the grieving daughter and her soon-to-be husband.
Now Rosé had little choice but to
go through with the marriage—it was a matter of family honor that she do so.
The social and political consequences of ending the betrothal now, especially
with so many Parni favoring Caledon to be the next Senator, were unthinkable—or
so her mother kept reminding her.
Rosé was drawn from her thoughts
as TC-16 finished with her hair and announced that it was going to help her
mother unless she needed further assistance.
“Thank you, TC-16. I’ll be
fine—I’m almost ready.”
As the protocol droid shuffled
out of the room, Rosé turned her attention to the locked container holding her
jewelry. Punching in the code, she opened it and examined the items inside,
finally selecting an elaborate pair of earrings and a necklace that she rarely
wore but was one of her most prized possessions.
She examined the blue Nubian
stone before putting the necklace on, admiring, as she always did, the way the
gem seemed to catch and reflect the light with a life of its own. It was all
she had to remind her of the unknown woman who had given birth to her over
seventeen years before.
She wondered about her for a
moment. Who had she been? She must have been wealthy, for Senator Amidala had
told her that such stones were rare and usually passed on from parent to child,
and were rarely sold except for in the direst of straits. She wondered how her
birth mother had come to possess the gem, but realized that she would probably
never know. Adoption records were tightly sealed on Arcadia, and her parents
had never given any indication that they knew who her birth parents had been,
only that her mother had been widowed in the civil war before she was born.
She had long wondered, though,
why her mother, a woman of obvious wealth, had given her up. Surely she would
have been able to care for her, to give her what she needed. Even if she had
lost her wealth during the war, the necklace alone was worth millions of
credits—more than enough to care for a child and keep both of them more than
comfortable.
Deep inside, she had concluded,
uncomfortably, that she hadn’t been wanted. She knew that she had been better
off with two loving adoptive parents than with a birth mother who didn’t want
her, but she still wondered why. But if the woman who had given birth to her
hadn’t wanted her, then what might the woman who raised her, who had only
adopted her, do if she went against her wishes in important matters?
Would Ruth reject her and send
her away if she broke the betrothal to Caledon?
Rosé didn’t want to find out. It
would be so much easier if Caledon decided that he didn’t want the
marriage—though the rejection would sting. But as it was, she felt that she had
no choice but to go through with the marriage three standard months from now—no
matter how she dreaded it.