The Prince

by Katharine Ashe

  “What else have you wondered?” He spoke coolly. “Whether I am accustomed to pleasuring half a dozen women at once, or perhaps in succession? Whether the harem I kept numbered in the dozens or the hundreds? Whether I pray to idols? Whether I spend each night polishing my collection of daggers so that I can steal out and sacrifice Christian infants to my heathen gods? Or perhaps your wonderings have been of the more plebeian sort. Perhaps you wonder whether I eat with a fork and spoon or on my hands and knees like a dog?”

  Her stomach churned. “No.”

  “None of those? For I assure you, I have heard each of those questions while residing in this land. I won’t be surprised to hear them again, and any other wonderings your fertile imagination can add to them.”

  “I think you must know by now that although I am insatiably curious, I am neither ignorant nor without thought.”

  His eyes were obsidian.

  “For instance,” she continued, “I know that Muslims believe in the same god as Christians, although they call that god by a different name. When the American Thomas Jefferson insisted on that, many people made a fuss about it, but I think it makes perfect sense. And I know that idols are prohibited you. Admittedly I don’t know anything about harems . . . and such. But I don’t understand how anybody schooled in Scripture could think a child would be a useful religious sacrifice, for of course Abraham, who was the father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, made that mistake with his own son so that the rest of us needn’t ever after. In general I am not taken to fanciful notions, for I read a lot—a lot more, that is, than the caricatures of Byron or Morier. And I don’t depend on the ridiculous portraits of foreigners one sees at the opera to inform me. I regret that is not the case with every Englishman or Scot you have encountered. If I could slap them all, I would.”

  For a long moment he did not speak.

  “You would slap them,” he finally said.

  “Yes. For I don’t have a collection of daggers. Although I do have surgical instruments, it’s true. So I suppose I could inflict some fairly grievous wounds if necessary. I haven’t yet taken an oath as medical men do, so it would not be strictly unethical, although certainly immoral. But I would do it for your sake. Please let me know if you ever wish me to.”

  His beautiful eyes changed, and Libby felt seen—truly seen—as though he not only believed her words but understood her. All of the sensations of pleasure lingering in her body from the night before surged anew.

  She tried very hard not to look at his lips. “Could we now call it a draw?”

  “We could,” he said in an oddly low voice.

  “But there is something I should like to know about you. Something in particular.”

  “Aha. Here we are again.”

  “How did it happen?” She gestured downward.

  He only stared at her, but now without anger.

  “Was it an accident? A wound turned septic? An incurable fistula from a bullet wound, perhaps, or shrapnel—”

  “Miss Shaw—”

  “Shh! Gibbs is probably upstairs,” she whispered. “You must call me Mr. Smart.”

  “Saved by the valet.” He began to move away.

  “Please,” she said to his back. “It is a professional curiosity, of course.” The partial lie tasted flat on her tongue.

  She was opening her mouth to tell him the truth—that she simply wanted to know—that she wanted to know him—when he said, “It was the price I paid for my freedom.”

  His freedom?

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  He continued on to his studio and shut the door behind him. Libby was trembling from her stomach outward. It was the most horrible sensation, and entirely unwelcome.

  Gathering up her books from the parlor, she stuffed them into her satchel and went out. Last night she had had enough ale for a lifetime. But she wanted companionship, and a plateful of pie to calm her stomach.

  Her friends were not at the pub. Maxwell Chedham sauntered toward her, glass of ale in hand.

  “Studying on a Saturday?” he said with a superior nod toward her books spread on the table.

  “Your patients would benefit if you did too,” she said.

  “You won’t win, Smart. I’ll prove you are a fraud.”

  Acidic heat crept through her.

  “I know you want to be Professor Russell’s surgical assistant next year,” he said.

  “The chair of clinical surgery? No. I simply want to prac—”

  “You are a boy playing at a man’s game, Smart. It’s only time before you make a mistake. And I will be there to take you down.”

  He strolled away.

  You are a fraud.

  She wanted to make him explain his words. The need pressed at her to pursue it. She fought it, redirecting her thoughts to her books, but she was damp all over with perspiration.

  As she ate and her stomach settled, she paged through her notes. At the next table, a pair of students had their heads bent over a philosophical text.

  This was a miracle: sitting alone in a pub, medical books before her, young men all around with their minds turned toward learning. She had dreamed of this. She had planned and worked and striven for this. Her father had taught her by example to never settle for defeat, even when adversaries seemed to be winning.

  Women will never be admitted to the medical profession.

  This time he was wrong. She would not accept defeat. Her father might have raised her to speak like a Brit and converse like a man, but she was a Scotswoman. No arrogant English blueblood would undo her.

  By the light of a single candle Libby was trying to read the tiny text in a volume of chemical science that had clearly been printed for ants, when the parlor door opened. Lifting her head, she squinted across the shadows.

  “Oh,” she said. “What are you doing out of your cave?”

  He smiled, only slightly, but it ignited a tickle of pleasure in her stomach. It was difficult to look at him without remembering how she had felt such pleasure in touching herself while imagining his hands on her.

  She wanted to confess it to him. Sometimes the need to confess her thoughts and actions grew so hot and desperate, she could think of nothing else. Confession always brought her such relief. But she had only ever felt that need to confess all with her father, and sometimes Constance and Alice, who were like family. Never a stranger.

  Something had changed between them.

  “I have come to apologize,” he said, remaining by the door.

  She swiveled to face him, and her skirts tangled in the chair legs.

  “Barely a month, and already I’ve lost the knack of wearing a gown.” She yanked at the hem. “How fortunate gentlemen are to enjoy freedom of movement at all times, day and night.”

  “The night I entered this room to give you the adhesive you were wearing trousers. Why not tonight?”

  She didn’t know.

  “For what have you come to apologize? For assuming the worst of me? You needn’t,” she said, turning again to her books and taking up her pen. “I am accustomed to making wretched mistakes and everybody thinking me awful. I am forever apologizing to my friends for saying or doing something grievously amiss.”

  “I am sorry for speaking to you as I did.”

  She wrote a word. She’d no idea what word it was.

  “About pleasuring women and harems and such?” The nerves were dancing about in her stomach again.

  “Yes.”

  “Again, I say, you needn’t,” she said, writing another nonsense word. “I began it, after all, mentioning lovers.”

  He said nothing.

  She looked up at him.

  “It was ungentlemanly of me.” His jaw was again rather tight.

  “We could go on all year insulting each other and then apologizing for it, I suspect.”

  “You would rather we did not?”

  “Shockingly, I do.” She stood up. “In fact I have a favor to ask of you now. I have been considering ask
ing you about it since yesterday, before the unfortunate interruption, and I would prefer to ask you now rather than to wait until tomorrow’s sitting. I would rather not ask it in your studio, you see.”

  “I find it difficult to believe there is any question you would not ask in any location,” he said with that almost-smile that made him even handsomer.

  “Usually there isn’t. But I am endeavoring to be respectful of your work space.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. Belatedly. You know, you should acknowledge my good intentions in at least some matters. I am not all awful.”

  He walked to her, the cane making a quiet thump on the rug.

  “I do not think you are even partially awful,” he said, his gaze shifting over her features. She supposed he always looked at people like this, as though he were studying the curves and shapes and tones of their faces, much as she studied people’s postures and humps and knobby knees.

  Lyricism.

  When he looked at her, did he see poetry?

  “But you are,” she said, feeling all the heat from the night before reaching up inside her with hungry hands.

  “I am what?” he said.

  “Awful.”

  “For giving you the run of my house and enduring interruptions at all hours?”

  “This afternoon you left me with the bill after looking at me as if I were mad.”

  “I keep an account at that coffeehouse. You needn’t have paid. But do feel free to subtract it from your rent.”

  “You haven’t yet told me what my rent is.”

  “Haven’t I? How financially negligent I am. Then how much do you wish to pay? I will be content with whatever sum you like. But don’t forget to add a few quid for late-night spying.”

  “An apology is obviously insufficient for you, after all. I told you, I had never had quite that much ale before. I was foxed.”

  “You were nonplussed.” His gaze upon her was dark and complete. “By all that is holy, you are even prettier when you are furious. How is that?”

  “Because you are a numbskull. I was not spying.”

  “My English is sometimes inadequate. Perhaps you prefer the word . . . what is it? Gawking.”

  “I don’t. For heaven’s sake, will you allow me to ask my question?”

  Seating himself on the arm of the chair before the hearth, he gestured with his hand. “I am at your disposal.”

  “Last night in the pub my friends were discussing a matter that suggested to me acutely an area of study that, I fear, may cause me some if not considerable trouble in the future. Not only that, but being unable to share in even casual conversations about it is proving inconvenient.”

  He nodded encouragement for her to continue.

  After last night, there was no other way to state this. She dove in.

  “My knowledge of anatomy is lacking. Male anatomy, in particular,” she clarified.

  A single brow lifted. “Is it?”

  “When the other students trade puerile banter, I am conspicuously silent. My studies on the subject are proving insufficient for the pretense of manhood I am living.”

  “I see.” He glanced at her books stacked all over his parlor, about which he had said nothing for weeks. He was a generous host. She was depending on that now.

  “Haven’t you examined male cadavers?” he said.

  “Those do not move, of course.” She looked squarely into his eyes. In the candlelight they were the color of coal and, as always, very beautiful. “But you do.”

  “Ah,” he said, smiling slightly. “I begin to see the direction of this conversation.”

  “Will you help me with this?”

  “Your studies would continue to suffer.” The knuckles wrapped around the end of his walking stick were stretched tight. “I, as you know, am not a whole man.”

  She stepped forward. It was unwise, especially now that she knew what she was capable of in his proximity. But she could allow nothing to hinder her project, not even memories of his spectacular musculature.

  “If I am to succeed in this charade, I must know everything about being a man,” she said. “And it is not male legs that interest me now.”

  His gaze snapped to hers, and in that moment it occurred to her that this man, who had agreed to her terms for living in his house, was neither celibate by nature nor inclined to remain so for much longer.

  “No,” he said, standing again and towering over her.

  “Please don’t misunderstand me,” she said quickly. “I am not propositioning you. I would only like a brief demonstration, a purely clinical demonstra—”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Come now,” she said, dragging courage into her lungs. “I know everything about both male and female human anatomy except how a live man functions in that manner. Textbooks are frustratingly foggy about the details, which is no doubt because only men write and are intended to read those books, and they all already know. The texts describe lack of function in more detail than healthy function, in fact. And now, of course, you and I have already conversed—and quarreled—about the most intimate subjects. I know it is an extraordinary request but you must agree that this is an extraordinary situation and I have no one else to ask. My success in this program may depend upon it.”

  “I am not a subject of laboratory study,” he growled.

  “Neither am I,” she shot back. “Yet every Sunday I sit on a stool in your studio being precisely that. Why is it so shocking to you that I would wish to study one part of you when you have done exactly that to me? My nose. My ears. My fingers. What am I to you but a collection of parts to be described in pencil lead? How is what I am asking of you now any different than that?”

  “If you do not know the difference, Miss Shaw, then on behalf of all your future patients not to mention your gentlemen admirers, I despair of you.” He bowed. “Good night.”

  He left her staring at the open door.

  Her words had come unbidden but she meant them. That she was to him a model only—a female face and figure to draw, and no more—hurt. She had never lived alone. Now she did, sharing a house with a man who despite all was as much a stranger to her as any of her fellow students.

  She was a curiosity to her friends and father, an inconvenience, a burden, a responsibility that must be encouraged to pursue acceptable pursuits and think regular thoughts and kept safe, even from herself, and be normal. In her housemate’s company, though, she never felt abnormal because he never expected her to be anything except her true self.

  But that was false. To him she was nothing more than an oddity too, merely to be endured while he must.

  As she stood in the flicker of the guttering candle, the loneliness crept up through the cold floor, into her legs, twined around her belly, and filled her chest.

  Chapter 13

  A Portrait

  Each time she sat for him she said nothing—not a word, neither in greeting nor in parting—no questions, no monologues, and no candid observations of the most inconsequential matter. She and the increasingly large piglet came and went like a Scottish mist, settling a layer of disquiet upon him that required hours to shake off. Days.

  He missed her conversation. Her monologues. Her endless questions. Her outrageous requests.

  It was better this way. The less he saw of her the more he could successfully pretend that he had no interest in more than the nose, ears, and fingers.

  It was then a surprise when, at a supper party at the home of Lady Hart, one of his most avid patrons, Miss Elizabeth Shaw appeared before him and said, “I did not know that you had been invited to this party. I often overhear Mrs. Coutts telling Mr. Gibbs about the parties to which you are invited and complaining that you do not attend. But she never mentioned this one. You must have discovered the invitation to this party before she had an opportunity to look through the post.”

  He loved how her mind functioned: observing minute details, and then analyzing each of those details of every scenario
to a logical conclusion. Her thoughts never rested. It made her recent silence with him especially troubling.

  “I must have,” he said, taking in the shape of her wrapped in white lace and cerulean silk that made her skin glow and left bare a moderate display of soft pink bosom. “You—”

  “Don’t,” she said. “This is a silly frock and I only wore it to please Constance, who had it made up for me because the fabric matches the color of my eyes. If you compliment me now I might have to not speak to you for another month, and that would be inconvenient. And unpleasant.”

  “I see,” he said. “I wasn’t about to compliment you.”

  “You weren’t?” In her hair was a comb studded with sparkling beads, the shorn length of her locks braided with satin ribbon and arranged like a coronet. Her lips had been gently rouged, obscuring their perfect hues. In the gully of her collarbone rested a cameo silhouette of ivory that hung from a gold filigree chain. He wanted to paint that neck and collarbone. He wanted to paint every inch of her.

  “Then, what were you about to say?” she said.

  “You are acquainted with Lord and Lady Hart, it seems?”

  “Oh. Polite party conversation.” A spark in the eyes dimmed. “No, I’m not. Constance and Saint are, and they brought me here. Papa made them promise to wrest me out of the house on occasion. I cannot turn down every invitation or they will begin to wonder where I have gone. But I am very glad you are here, because parties like this make me extraordinarily anxious and it is good to have a friend present.”

  A friend. That the word should induce an instant, quick thumping beneath his ribs was mere proof of his duplicity upon duplicity.

  He wanted more than to paint her. He wanted to lay his lips upon that graceful collarbone and make her sigh.

  “Now I will take you to task,” she continued, “for Mrs. Coutts said that you were invited to dinner at the home of William Playfair. Playfair! The man who designed Surgeons’ Hall! Yet you did not invite me to attend with you so that I could meet him and the plethora of influential surgeons in this city who will undoubtedly attend too. Why not?”