When the King noticed they walked back in the ballroom, he stood up from his position and fixed his tunic's collar. Silence fell in the room as he stood up, every lady didn't stop looking at him since his return to the room.
"I want to thank each one of you ladies for having accepted this invite, your presence here is highly appreciated but I want to inform you I haven't found a potential wife just yet. My father, William would have loved to settle me down with an excellent lady but I don't think I will find someone who will be ... enough to meet my expectations." King Liam took a sip from the silver glass he was holding and then continued his speech, "for this reason, I will take part in events and bouquets to monitor each of you and slowly decide who is the potential lady at the height of my father's expectations."
The man walked toward the adjacent table. Because of the quietness in the room, the noise of his shoes could be heard clicking on the marble floor. The steps paused, and he filled another glass with wine, leading Shirlyn to wonder what it was containing the other glass if it wasn't wine. He sipped from the new glass he just filled and after smirking to the crowd, he raised his glass as if he wanted to toast.
Was he really toasting and claiming to be single in front of dozens of ladies who were hoping and preparing for that day for all their life just to see him claiming about how he couldn't pick a lady?
Shirlyn giggled, covering her mouth with her hand, but her eyes which thinned during the laugh betrayed her intentions of not being caught laughing.
Sharon, her sister, nudged her. Few of the other ladies in the room shook their heads, noticing Shirlyn's miseducation.
After holding the glass for a few moments and gazing around his audience, he went to drink all the liquid in the glass in one gulp.
Few ladies vociferate from the corner of the room and in a few seconds, silence faded, leaving the room in whispers. The King didn't complain but he went back to sit on the throne.
The woman who entered before him at his entrance rushed toward him and they seemed to quarrel, but the ladies' vociferating was impeding Shirlyn to hear their conversation.
His toast caused panic in the room. Ladies were concerned and were whispering to each other trying to interpret what the King meant.
"If he wasn't looking for a lady in the first place, then why invite us here?"
"What if he's testing us? And what to know who can fight for him?"
"What if he's not interested at all?"
"The Kingdom needs a Queen!!"
Every lady was freaking out and Shirlyn was enjoying all that. For the first time they felt like she felt all her life, inadequate and puzzled.
Maybe the King was not that bad at all.
The crowd slowly left the castle, including Shirlyn and her sisters. They step on the carriage with an annoyed look, frowning furiously, especially Sharon who probably really pictured herself next to King and just saw her dream vanish in a blink of an eye.
"Such a mockery!" She let out an angry scream. Shirlyn had to bite her upper lip to prevent her from laughing.
"m-o-c-k-e-r-y!" She kept complaining, "to invite us there just to toast to his free spirit??? is he a horse or something?"
"So rude." Abigail agreed, nodding her head.
"He even gave a speech about how he was still unsure about which lady to pick and then toasted to his free heart, such an incoherent, disrespectful person." Sharon kept complaining and fisted her palm as if she was trying to release the anger from repressed anxiety.
When the carriage stopped, Sharon marched right to their mansion and knocked violently on the door.
When their second maid came to open, Sharon walked in and released another scream of anger.
Ginevra, who was on the second floor, went downstairs in a rush as soon as she heard her daughter's voice.
"Mom!! Worst day of my life!" Sharon exclaimed, quick altered at the sigh of her mother. Her mother's brows knitted together, so Sharon proceeded to explain herself, "he disappeared for majority of the time and when he finally got back, he went just to toast to his," she took a long breath and leaned in so that her mother could hear better her forthcoming words "free-spirit!!". She scoffed, widening her arms.
"That's not a pleasant thing to do, considering he's the King now and shall mind his manner." Ginevra replied, "maybe he just has to get used to his new life and needs time."
"Or he has no intention of feeling the urge to find a wife." Shirlyn spoke finally but got ignored by both her sisters and her mother, who glanced at her.
Was that theory so bizarre not to even be taken into consideration? Just because he was the King and people were born in that century, they had to have as a major goal to find love which will last forever?
Shirlyn was probably the only one in Yorkshire who was not complaining about his behavior, on the contrary, for the first time in her life, she felt understood and comprehended. Maybe she was not the only one in Scotland whose primary purpose in life was marrying, maybe she was just part of a minority she hadn't met yet.
What was supposed to be just a day like any other turned out to be a day of revelation and of hope. Maybe she didn't have to give up to her mother's threats and constraints.