When the first few courses of the meal were over, the cooks brought out cherry pastries, cakes, compote, and pies.
“Cherries!” Avelina exclaimed. “How did they know?”
“I remembered you said they were your favorite fruit,” Reinhart said. “We had some stored in the buttery and the cooks made all these for you.”
“Just what I wanted.” She nearly drooled at the cherry tart in front of her. Then she leaned over and kissed her husband’s cheek.
He turned to look into her eyes. He was just what she wanted all those nights she dreamed of romantic love, of her own true love asking her to marry him. Her heart swelled with tender emotion every time she looked at him. So satisfying was the way he had changed, the cheerful expressions she saw on his face, and the way he actually thanked the servants now and was kind to them. He was also kind to her father and siblings and made them feel welcomed and wanted.
Sometimes she was surprised that she was not more in awe of her husband. After all, he was a margrave and she had been very awestruck by him when she first met him. But she sensed that it would not please him if she considered herself anything less than his equal, and they often teased each other about the king’s praise of her and how impressed he had been with her.
People had often warned her, when she was a poor maiden and a servant, that romantic love would be ground under reality’s heel, that true love was only something invented by minstrels and poets, that she should not be so naive and fanciful as to believe in romantic love. As it turned out, the reality of her love story with Lord Thornbeck was much more satisfying than any of her romantic stories and imaginings.
She no longer had to dream about love. God had given her a love all her own, one that the troubadours would sing about for years to come.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I WANT TO thank my extremely supportive, hardworking, and wise agent, Natasha Kern, and my fabulously talented, thorough, and otherwise wonderful editors, Becky Monds and Julee Schwarzburg. I am very thankful for everyone at Thomas Nelson who works hard to help make my books as successful as possible.
I also want to express my heartfelt appreciation to all my friends and readers who encourage me with their positive reviews and by spreading the word about my books. I truly couldn’t keep writing without you.
This past year has been busy, to put it mildly, but I have loved writing and polishing this story so much. I relate so much to the journey of a poor girl who wonders if she deserves to be respected, the girl who feels blessed and highly favored from a very high place, and eventually accepts that God has made her worthy of love. He lavishes love on us, whether we realize it or not, and though there isn’t much about Avelina’s spiritual journey in this story, I like to think she grows to realize just how much God loves her, and draws a deep confidence from that love, apart from her own performance or the love of the people in her life. Human love often disappoints us, but God’s love is faithful and endures forever.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What was Lord Thornbeck’s greatest fear about getting married? How does the pressure from the king, sending a list of ladies he wishes him to choose from, increase this fear? How does Jorgen’s suggestion of the two-week party help?
2. What was Avelina’s greatest fear in going to Thornbeck Castle? Did she believe she would be able to accomplish what Lord Plimmwald was asking of her?
3. What did Avelina request from Lord Plimmwald for accomplishing this task, and what did her request tell you about her?
4. What would you ask for if you were Avelina?
5. How did it make Avelina feel, once she arrived at Thornbeck, to have important people ask to hear her opinion?
6. Why did Avelina’s strong opinions about love and marriage and a margrave’s wife’s duties cause Lord Thornbeck to feel attracted to her, especially after he said he didn’t want a wife with strong opinions?
7. What did Avelina confess she felt about Dorothea being born a noble while Avelina was born a peasant?
8. What were Avelina’s conflicting feelings as she tried to step back and make Lord Thornbeck fall in love with Magdalen?
9. What do you think would have happened if Avelina had simply told Lord Thornbeck the truth from the beginning? How might things have been different?
10. Do you understand how Lord Thornbeck might have been confused as to how Avelina felt about him? And how she might have misunderstood his feelings for her?
11. At the end, the king intervened and, to a great extent, reversed his earlier mandate ordering the margrave to marry a nobleman’s daughter. How much of the ending was due to the king’s whims, how much to Magdalen’s intervention, and how much to Avelina’s own initiative and bravery?