The Prince

by Katharine Ashe

  If she sat on the floor, she could use the dressing table chair as a desk.

  She touched the edge of the painting again.

  She was shaking. Her stockings were soaked through, her trousers were damp, and her coat too. Stripping them off, she made up the fire and hung them on a rack before the hearth, then stood before the dressing table mirror and peeled off the whiskers and placed them in the locked drawer. It was Saturday and Mr. Gibbs had long since come and gone. But she felt better with the whiskers locked in the drawer. Safer. Calmer.

  But the ritual of folding the whiskers in oilcloth and packing them in their secret hiding place did not calm her enough tonight. Disquiet still prickled just beneath her skin and in her stomach. Excessive nerves. Panic.

  She looked about at the books on her bed and dressing table and bed table. Standing in the middle of the room, every bit of her skin exposed to the cold, damp night air, she hugged her arms about her and felt the sour tightness of her throat, the salty, hot rise of desperation in her nose and behind her eyes, crackling, splitting open.

  She had allowed this to happen. This. This mess. This insanity.

  She knew better. She knew better.

  She had known better since she was ten years old and her father had told her the stories of her real mother, stories that Libby swore she would never herself repeat, stories that she had worked so hard to hold at bay.

  This could not be happening. The need to unlock the drawer, paste the whiskers back on her face, dress, and run to the infirmary tugged at her so hard. What if the nurse decided to move the surgical instruments? What if she rearranged the clamps? What if Mrs. Small’s splint slipped and nobody noticed?

  Libby’s lungs would not fill.

  The splint would be fine. She knew that.

  She knew that.

  It couldn’t hurt to check one more time. Knowing Mrs. Small was sleeping comfortably with the splint in place would make her feel better—well enough, at least, to sleep tonight, perhaps.

  Just once more.

  She had unpacked her books already. If she went out, she would have to repack the books first. And don wet stockings, trousers, and coat. Rain was striking the windowpanes of her bedchamber like tiny little fists.

  Libby’s limbs were heavy, cold. It was too much. Too much.

  She could hardly lift her head. The bed was covered in books and papers. Only part of it near the headboard was even visible beneath the mess.

  Her body was trembling. It needed food. When was the last time she had eaten?

  She would go to the dining room and throw away the mutton, clean that bowl, and store it. Then she could eat the peas. Perhaps. Perhaps. If there were no droplets of jam on the counter or the kitchen table.

  Insanity. Insanity.

  Pressing her palms to her head, she heard a noise like the grinding of gears. It was coming from her chest, her throat, inside her head, consuming her.

  Mrs. Small’s splint required adjusting.

  No. No no no.

  She opened her eyes and the noise was still coming through her teeth, over her tongue, into the frigid chamber.

  Breaking her hands away from her head, she ran to the clothespress, dragged a nightshirt over her head, then went to the fire and banked it. Through the darkness lit only by rain-speckled lamplight from the street without, she ran down the stairs, then along the corridor, her right shoulder brushing the wall to guide her. Twisting the handle of the door to his quarters, she opened it and tumbled inside.

  The studio was in blackness. Without sight, she felt her way along the wall to the bedchamber door, and under the bar across the open doorway. The bed was three strides away—only three. She parted the heavy draperies, and climbed onto the cold mattress. The blanket was luxuriously soft and thick.

  Without disturbing the blanket or linens, she burrowed into the bolster and pressed her cheek against it, willing the feathers in the cushion to reach out and warm her.

  Chapter 20

  Rescue

  The list of items was the length of the page, the print entirely in Roman capitals and cramped, almost like the hand of another person.

  TO COLLECT FOR PERSONAL APOTHECARY

  TURPENTINE

  THYME

  NUTMEG

  MINT

  CARDAMOM

  CINNAMON

  GINGER

  LICORICE

  MORTAR

  LAUDANUM

  And the list continued. It was her writing, of course. Ziyaeddin knew it just as he knew that someone else had not entered his house and piled books the length of the left side of the foyer and on every surface in the parlor, littered the desk with papers, and left dishes of food on the dining room table around which a tiny mouse was nosing.

  Her satchel occupied the floor beside the desk in the parlor. In the months since she had come to live in his house, he had never seen the satchel unless the woman was here too. Her overcoat, hat, and shoes by the front door were still wet.

  The roads from London had been muddy everywhere and frozen in parts, and the journey northward slow. It was a remarkable thing to ride again, to put his legs around the girth of a fine horse and feel that power beneath him. A miracle she had made possible.

  He intended finally to thank her, and to explain to her the real reason he had never had a suitable prosthesis made before. The truth. He did not know exactly how he would do that without coming within sight of her, and thereby putting himself in danger of grabbing and kissing her. But he would. It was far past time.

  He had gone to London to speak with Britain’s foreign secretary, Lord Canning. Sinking himself into diplomacy he had made modest progress in convincing Canning and the king that the war brewing between Russia and Iran—and smoldering on the borders of Tabir—would hinder the interests of Britain’s East India Company in that region. It would also further weaken the Ottomans’ eastern border.

  The Duke of Loch Irvine had accompanied him on the journey. Disclosing nothing of Elizabeth’s secret, Ziyaeddin had admitted to his preoccupation with her.

  Gabriel had made his position on the matter clear: If you break her heart, I will kill you.

  Ziyaeddin did not intend to die by the hand of his best friend. And away from Edinburgh he had gained a clarity of perspective on his houseguest that being always within grabbing-and-kissing distance of her did not allow.

  Henceforth he was determined to maintain a wiser distance from her. It was entirely possible to reclaim the initial dispassion of their encounters by confining them to fully clothed one-hour drawing sessions only. Without conversation.

  And there would be no more fantasizing. Or confessions. None.

  He had this under control.

  Leaving the traveling trunk in the cluttered foyer for Gibbs to tend to on Monday, he went to his quarters. The studio was frigid. He coaxed a flame forth in the hearth, then pulled the draperies wide to allow in the daylight.

  Scotland in late winter: gray, rainy, cold. An ideal day to paint.

  He had missed this studio, his easel, a paintbrush between his fingers.

  Inside his bedchamber he set down his traveling case and only then noticed the lump on the bed. Parting the curtain entirely so that daylight from the studio illumined the mattress, he took in the interloper: a slight, slender woman with short locks, curled up in a tight ball in the very center of the top of the bed.

  Elizabeth Shaw. In his bed.

  Every one of the well-intentioned lies he had told himself over the past weeks disintegrated.

  Her cheeks and brow were ghostly, her hair slick against her scalp, and a voluminous white nightgown tucked around every inch of skin except her face. She barely stirred, her exhales so weak that the movement of her chest did not even touch her knees drawn up before her. Yet with each inhale her body shook.

  He grabbed the blanket from the foot of the bed and draped it over her. She did not move.

  Making up the fire here too, he then went to the kitchen, where he put
a kettle on the stove and prepared tea. A simple task, it required stillness and patience. He needed that now.

  When he had first come to Britain, broken and angry, he had railed against anything that moved more swiftly than he did—which everything had—yet also at every man who refused to move swiftly to help him unseat the usurper of his father’s throne.

  After months spent proving his identity to the prince regent and foreign minister, he had learned of how the general had captured his sister and forced her to wed him to legitimize his rule among the local tribes. With hardly the twitch of an eyelash the Russian ambassador to Britain had told Ziyaeddin that if he returned to Tabir, the general would kill Aairah, her children, and anyone loyal to her.

  Reeling, he had begged his hosts for help. To no avail. Tabir was too small an ally to risk infuriating the Russians. And the general had the support of the local khans, who welcomed bribes of Russian gold and Russian weapons to wage petty wars among themselves.

  Your Highness is welcome to remain the honored guest of Britain at your convenience.

  At his convenience—as though remaining three thousand miles away from where he belonged was a matter of expedience.

  Then, as he had climbed out of a carriage one gray London day, an assassin had plunged a knife into his side. Broken, hopeless, he had almost wanted death. That was when Gabriel invited him to Scotland. There, the duke said, he could continue to petition the ministers and regent and foreign ambassadors while healing.

  In Scotland finally he had learned stillness. And patience.

  Even when Elizabeth sat for him she was not entirely still. She asked questions, shifted position, told stories, looked about.

  Now her utter stillness on his bed was worrisome. Given their last encounter, her presence on his bed was worrisome.

  Climbing the stairs, he went into her bedchamber. Like the parlor, it was crammed with books and papers intermingled with cartons of plaster bones, broken pens, a box overflowing with empty chemists’ beakers. It was chaos—a uniquely ordered chaos.

  Searching for keys in the pocket of the damp coat hanging on the clotheshorse, he unlocked the traveling trunk and found what he sought: the torn stockings. Nineteen torn stockings, each rolled into a neat cylinder.

  He scanned the chamber again, and prickling dread crept up his spine.

  Descending to the parlor he made up the fire there and looked through a pile of scraps. Some were covered on both sides with lists: a list of book titles, another of cures for the symptoms of liver ailments, a third of cobblers in Edinburgh, and more, all struck through entirely. Another scrap bore hastily penned equations of letters and numbers and symbols he did not recognize, all of them struck through as well.

  On a sheet of notebook paper in dark brown ink she had drawn a rudimentary torso, then several more garbed in coats, each with an increasing quantity of padding in the shoulders. Beside them, equations indicated the volume of padding required for each. Ziyaeddin recognized the coat; he had painted her wearing it.

  He stared at the precise study of suitable shoulders for a boy Joseph’s age, and the back of his throat grew hot.

  So much thought. So much labor. Nevertheless, she persisted.

  Setting aside the page, he dropped the refuse into the flames.

  “Don’t do that.”

  She stood in the doorway. The nightgown fell to her feet, the thick fabric swallowing her shape but gaping open at her chest where she had not laced it. Nearly as white as the linen, her face seemed thinner, her cheeks and chin pronounced, her eyes pools of sharp blue surrounded by gray shadows.

  “Good day to you as well, Sleeping Beauty,” he said, taking up another pile of scraps, his heartbeats hard. “How was your repose? Fancy yourself the master of the house in my absence, did you?”

  “What are you doing?” She lifted a hand to clutch the front of the shirt closed. Her fingers were bones covered in pale skin. “Don’t. What are you doing in here? Don’t.” She jerked forward, her eyes pinned to his hand outstretched before the flames.

  “They are nothing.” He gestured with the bits of paper. “Refuse. I am assisting you—and Mrs. Coutts—in decluttering this poor parlor. I hardly recognize it. Or you, for that matter. Have you dropped a stone?”

  “No. My weight is none of your concern.”

  “I am a portraitist. Whether it is my concern, I will notice it.” He would always notice every detail of her. “Are you ill?” he said, forcing calm into his tone.

  “No.” Her attention did not leave his hands. “This session is much more challenging than last. Put those down.” One arm outstretched, she moved another step into the room. “Please.”

  “This,” he said, lifting a scrap before him, “is a list of items to purchase at the chemist’s shop. Every item has been crossed off the list. On the reverse is a crudely sketched diagram that has been scribbled over.” He tossed it into the hearth.

  “No! Stop! This moment, stop.” She ran toward him and snatched away the remainder of the pile.

  He took up another paper. “What of this list? A shopping list for the stationer’s.” Including sketching paper, chalk, and hog’s hair bristles. Items for his work. None of them were struck through, however. His throat thickened.

  “Stop!” She grabbed it with icy fingers. “These are not yours to discard.”

  “You are frozen. And barefoot, it seems. Go upstairs and dress. Then come have a cup of tea and something to eat.”

  “You will burn them if I go.” The skin about her mouth and eyes was stretched tight.

  “The rubbish, yes.”

  “No. You may not burn anything. Do you wish me to fail?”

  “Fail?”

  “You do. You wish me to fail.”

  “That is also rubbish, of course.”

  “I need these.” Her eyes were fever bright in the pale oval of her face.

  “You cannot need a ticket to the museum exhibit that happened months ago.” To which she had invited him to accompany her, and he had declined.

  “I do.” She grabbed it.

  He encircled her hand with his. “What is happening here?”

  “Release me. Or have you decided it is acceptable for you to touch me when I don’t wish it, even though you will not when I request it?”

  “You are obviously unwell. What happened while I was away?”

  “I said, release me.” Slamming her palm into his chest, she grabbed the papers. They tore. She pried his hand open and took the scraps. Flying across the room, she tucked them beneath a pile on the desk.

  “Tell me, Elizabeth,” he said, controlling the panic rising in him. He had spent enough time among artists that he recognized madness. “Are you drinking spirits regularly? Or ingesting any medication, perhaps?”

  “Of course not,” she snapped. “Do not condescend to me.”

  “You are not eating. And this is not you.” He gestured about them. “This chaos.”

  “You know nothing about me.”

  “In fact I know quite a lot about you. I know that your mind is capacious, your ambition high, and your determination boundless. I know that you are brilliant and talented and possess a streak of creative independence that, were you a man, would already have led to your fame as a surgeon, even at such a young age. And I know that this is not you.” He reached for another pile of scraps.

  “You don’t—Stop! You mustn’t.” A sob escaped her. It sounded dry, empty. “How can you act with such disregard for me? How can you want me to fail?”

  He placed the pile on the table and moved toward her. She backed to the doorway but did not cross the threshold, her eyes darting from him to the piles, back and forth.

  “There is nothing I wish more than for you to succeed.”

  “You want to be rid of me, as everyone does after a time.” Rounding him, she gathered up the piles of scraps and hurried out of the room.

  He followed her up the stairs. She was closing the bedchamber door. He stopped the panel with hi
s hand, pressing it open against her surprising strength. Retreating suddenly, she let the door swing open. Glass shattered.

  “No!” Her scream echoed against the walls. She lunged toward the box of broken beakers as though to grab the jagged shards. He knocked the box away, smothering his shout as pain sliced across his palm. She fell forward. He grabbed her, pulling her up and away from the shards, dragging her back against his chest and wrapping his arms about her.

  “Stop,” she cried. “You do not understand.” Her body convulsed and her sob rocked through him. Then another. He held her tight and pressed his cheek against her hair.

  “No, I do not understand what is happening here,” he said. “But I know this is not you.”

  “It is me,” she choked out, straining against his grip. “I hate you. I do.”

  “I have lived in a palace pocked with assassins. I have fought as a captive in shackles. I have died on the deck of a ship aflame, cut into pieces beneath the burning sun. I can withstand your hatred for a time, güzel kız.”

  Limbs slackening, she groaned.

  “They are legion,” she whispered.

  He bent his head aside hers, loosening his hold enough to test her reaction. She did not seek to break free.

  “What are legion?” Not voices. By the grace of Allah, do not say voices.

  “The rules. All of the rules telling me what to do, what not to do, how to do them. I cannot deny them. I cannot make them retreat this time. You must release me.”

  “If I release you, what will you do?”

  “I will bring the remainder of the papers here.” Misery suffused the words. She pressed against his arms. “Release me.”

  He allowed her to slip from his grasp.

  “Now, leave,” she said.

  “You said ‘this time.’ Has this happened before?”

  “You disregard my demand, when you have expected me to give you privacy? That is rich. This is my bedchamber. Will you not allow me to be alone in it?” Color sat high on her cheeks and anger pulsed like waves from her.

  Nothing could be done here now.