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Control?  Offspring?  This is my life , she thought.
    As if of its own volition, her head began shaking in the negative. Her body shivered with a sudden chill, yet her underarms and palms were wet. She wiped her sweaty hands on her thighs . A most unladylike action but there was no help for it. After all, Louis the Pious was just a man. Perhaps he should be handled like any other man.
    “Is there something you wish to say?” the emperor asked with a teeth -clenched softness, more than a little warning in his voice.
    “I do not wish to marry,” she said, her voice cracking on the word marry . A hiss of indrawn breath came from her right, though she wasn’t sure if it was Theo or David. A slight buzz filled the room as the repetition of her words passed to its furthest corners. She lifted her chin to stare at him. “And I do not want a war fought on my estate.”
    “I do not care what you wish,” he said quietly, his narrow face beginning to mottle with red . Then he shouted, “I do not care what you wish!” 
    “ I am doing just fine on my own,” she hazarded. Good judgment made her drop her gaze again to his feet, feet that began to pace a circle around her, prowling in a way that could only be meant to intimidate. She bristled at the thought, trying to remember that he was her emperor.
    “You live on your land by my grace, and if you do not like my plans for it then I will take it!”  Louis circled her . Watching his moving feet made her nauseous so she focused instead on the soft brown leather to her right, even if one of those feet tapped an impatient beat. The emperor spoke again. “Your father served mine well, yet loyalty does not necessarily follow generation to generation. You make me wonder where your loyalties lie.”
    She was loyal to Alda . She’d never thought much about her loyalties beyond that. The sun rose every morning, she ran Alda, and Louis ran the Empire. It was not something to think about, it just was. Yet the emperor did not want to hear about loyalty to her home. “I am loyal to you,” she said quietly, not knowing what else to say.
    “Good . Any more disagreement and I will take your land and throw you in a convent. Insolent chit,” he muttered.
    “A convent! ” Rochelle protested, her voice a great deal louder than etiquette or good judgment allowed.
    Theo cleared his throat over her words . “Give me a moment to talk with her.”
    She looked up as the emperor stopped pacing . His head swung heavily on his neck toward Theo. “Not you. Him.” He pointed to David. “She is his responsibility now. If he cannot get her from here to that chapel, I will find someone who can.”
    Someone shouted, “A Bavarian?  He is giving her and that rich estate to a Bavarian?” 
    The room erupted in arguments and seemed to tilt before Rochelle’s eyes. A shift in perception. Perhaps she had landed on the moon, summoned there by Louis. What she once understood to be real was like a daydream, an illuminated drawing in one of her father’s books. She needed time to make sense of it, but something – someone – was dragging her back. That someone was grabbing her elbow again, pulling her to her feet, feet of heavy, lifeless clay. She staggered. His hands caught her waist, surprisingly gentle as he supported her from behind, so close she could feel warmth coming from his body. “Steady,” he murmured.
    “The floor is so hard,” she breathed, mortified at her physical weakness . “I can barely feel my feet.”
    “Shall I carry you?”
    “Of course not!” she hissed, anger bringing reality back in sharp relief.
    “I think the emperor would like it.”
    She tried to pull away. He held her, his voice at her ear. “Let us go to the chapel.”
    “I am not going there . Not with you. Not with anyone,” she declared over her shoulder, beginning to struggle in earnest against his hands. “It is you he has chosen, is it not?  I will not have it. I will not have you. Do you hear