“Even if I did, they wouldn’t need all that to collect them,” and he gestured toward the front of his farm, where now the Count and Countess and all their pages and soldiers and servants and courtiers and champions and carriages were coming closer and closer. “What could they want to ask me about?” he said.
“Go see, go see,” Buttercup’s mother told him.
“You go. Please.”
“No. You. Please.”
“We’ll both go.”
They both went. Trembling…
“Cows,” the Count said, when they reached his golden carriage. “I would like to talk about your cows.” He spoke from inside, his dark face darkened by shadow.
“My cows?” Buttercup’s father said.
“Yes. You see, I’m thinking of starting a little dairy of my own, and since your cows are known throughout the land as being Florin’s finest, I thought I might pry your secrets from you.”
“My cows,” Buttercup’s father managed to repeat, hoping he was not going mad. Because the truth was, and he knew it well, he had terrible cows. For years, nothing but complaints from the people in the village. If anyone else had had milk to sell, he would have been out of business in a minute. Now granted, things had improved since the farm boy had come to slave for him—no question, the farm boy had certain skills, and the complaints were quite nonexistent now—but that didn’t make his the finest cows in Florin. Still, you didn’t argue with the Count. Buttercup’s father turned to his wife. “What would you say my secret is, my dear?” he asked.
“Oh, there are so many,” she said—she was no dummy, not when it came to the quality of their livestock.
“You two are childless, are you?” the Count asked then.
“No, sir,” the mother answered.
“Then let me see her,” the Count went on—“perhaps she will be quicker with her answers than her parents.”
“Buttercup,” the father called, turning. “Come out please.”
“How did you know we had a daughter?” Buttercup’s mother wondered.
“A guess. I assumed it had to be one or the other. Some days I’m luckier than—” He simply stopped talking then.
Because Buttercup moved into view, hurrying from the house to her parents.
The Count left the carriage. Gracefully, he moved to the ground and stood very still. He was a big man, with black hair and black eyes and great shoulders and a black cape and gloves.
“Curtsy, dear,” Buttercup’s mother whispered.
Buttercup did her best.
And the Count could not stop looking at her.
Understand now, she was barely rated in the top twenty; her hair was uncombed, unclean; her age was just seventeen, so there was still, in occasional places, the remains of baby fat. Nothing had been done to the child. Nothing was really there but potential.
But the Count still could not rip his eyes away.
“The Count would like to know the secrets behind our cows’ greatness, is that not correct, sir?” Buttercup’s father said.
The Count only nodded, staring.
Even Buttercup’s mother noted a certain tension in the air.
“Ask the farm boy; he tends them,” Buttercup said.
“And is that the farm boy?” came a new voice from inside the carriage. Then the Countess’s face was framed in the carriage doorway.
Her lips were painted a perfect red; her green eyes lined in black. All the colors of the world were muted in her gown. Buttercup wanted to shield her eyes from the brilliance.
Buttercup’s father glanced back toward the lone figure peering around the corner of the house. “It is.”