The looking glass was of poor quality, clouded around the edges and the glass bulging, showing a parody of the girl standing in front of it. In the mirror, Adeline looked much like herself, but the flaws in the glass made her breasts bulge out comically and her hips show much wider than they were . She gazed at herself haughtily, the pale flesh of her body showing nearly white in the early light of dawn. She ran her hands down her body, feeling the smoothness of her skin. She admired her face, her large dark eyes staring at herself in vanity. "He has chosen well," she said to her reflection, "He will not regret his investment."
"Adeline!" the grating voice of Sister Mathilde echoed down the hallway, "Adeline, by God you had better be dressed in there!"
"Just a moment," Adeline groaned. She slipped her shift over her head. A parody of being dressed, her naked form still visible under the thin cotton. The rest of her clothes came next, and soon the lithe young creature was covered head to toe in a simple black dress, appropriate for the convent.
"You would do well not to keep him waiting," Sister Mathilde's voice said again, this time at the door of her cell, "He's kept you here, you know, you ought to be grateful!"
"Yes, Sister," Adeline replied, rolling her eyes. She tied her long black hair up and pinned it, covering it with a white kerchief, as all of the convent's wards did. She was older than most of them, a few months passed her eighteenth birthday. Most girls gave up on their benefactors ever coming for them by the time they were sixteen or seventeen. Most of those girls took the veil, preferring to live their lives within the walls of the abbey than take their chances on the outside world.
"And that he's kept you as long as he has!" Mathilde exclaimed, still at the door.
"I understand my duties, Sister," Adeline called,
"When is he coming?"
"When is he coming? Why he's been here for near twenty minutes now! He grows impatient!"
Adeline sashayed lazily towards the door. She put on a show for the other wards, not being afraid of the man who had bought her from her parents and sent her to the convent, to be raised away from the prying eyes of the world, until he was ready to take her as his bride. The other girls, many in the same situation, trembled and cried and begged to take their vows and their place among the sisters. Adeline, though, waited impatiently for the day when she could walk out of the gate that she had walked into at the age of ten, and rejoin the world as she felt was her right. No matter what the old man looked like, his money and influence would certainly buy her a place in society... whatever the price. That he had waited all of eight years was a source of secret shame to her. She was sure that he had seen her through the bars of the gate, the only window to the world outside the thick stone walls of the nunnery, and thought her unworthy. "Well!" she thought, "He won't think me unworthy now."
She exited her cell and was met by Mathilde, who seized her by the elbow and dragged her through the cloister and out into one of the buildings on the outside of the abbey. She averted her eyes from the stares of the nuns and novitiates who labored in the gardens and over steaming kettles of laundry. "A life of hard work is not my lot," she thought, "They feel sorry for me, don't they... well the joke's on them!"
She was led to an upstairs room, devoid of furniture except for an old, rickety table, and two chairs.
"Wait here!" Mathilde ordered. She nodded primly and seated herself on one of the chairs.
It seemed like an eternity, her thoughts racing. She had never laid eyes on the gentleman who would now come to claim her. Most of them were old, in their sixties, wanting wives young enough to be their granddaughters to comfort them in their old age. She imagined hers would be one of those, paunchy and white-haired, probably incapable of performing the act which seemed to be so dreaded by all who dwelled within the convent's walls. Besides Jacques, the simple-minded lad who took care of the grounds, and the rotating series of guards who stood watch outside the gate – to keep the world out or to keep the nuns in she was never quite sure – she had never laid eyes on any man since she was a child. That, of course, did not mean that she was unschooled... there had been one other girl, with whom she shared a room in the six months since her eighteenth birthday. Hélène was her name and the two were of the same age, having been born only a week apart. She was a wild girl, incorrigible in the eyes of the good sisters. Hélène had a cousin to whom she was very close, who was married to a man who worked in a printing press. This cousin smuggled her books from the outside, books that described all sorts of sordid things that men and women did to one another. The two of them had pored over them, more closely than they had ever studied the word of God. The author was certain Marquis whom Hélène said was shut in a madhouse. Of course, the two of them being shut up alone so much had found the time to act out some of these activities on each other, and so Adeline felt herself reasonably well versed in what would be expected of her.
Hélène had been married off several weeks beforehand, to a businessman recently come to claim her from the West Indies. She had not received any letters yet, had promised to write to her once she herself had been claimed.
She was startled from her memories by the return of Sister Mathilde, the Abbess, and the man who could only have been her betrothed. Fear suddenly seized the girl, and she had to force herself to look up into the man's face. He looked back at her through piercing blue eyes, something like a smile on his face. He was young, by the standards of most, in his thirties perhaps, and unmistakably good-looking. His clothes were of high quality, and the ring he wore on his smallest finger was probably worth more than all the land on which the sprawling abbey was located. This, though, made her even more suspicious. "What would a young, handsome, man, want with a bride from a convent?" she thought,"There must be something wrong with him"
He said nothing, but just stared at her.
"Adeline, this is Etienne L'Eveque, you'll be married later today," the Abbess declared, looking from one to the other nervously, "We shall return in twenty minutes." The last words she said, looking at the man directly.
"She's skinny," he said to the Abbess, "Like a goat."
"She'll fatten up soon enough, I imagine," the abbess said. She took Sister Mathilde by the arm and hurried her from the room, leaving the two of them alone.
"Good morning, Etienne," Adeline said politely, though inside she was seething. Like a goat?
"You will address me as 'sir' at all times, girl," he said, "Do you understand?"
