“I told you I would touch nothing in the parlor. Not tonight.”
“And tomorrow?” she said.
“Tomorrow you will begin.”
Her hands twisted in her skirts. “I can. I shall. I do not wish to inconvenience you.”
“Of course you do.” He smiled. “But not in this manner. I understand.”
“You will not throw me onto the street?”
He moved close to her and felt all the need that he had tried to deny grip him powerfully. “Do you truly believe that I could?”
“No. It will be dawn soon. Shall I come sit for you, since yesterday I did not?”
“At this time you will go upstairs and don your student’s garb. Then I will take Joseph Smart to breakfast to celebrate the successful completion of his first session of medical studies.”
“That was weeks ago.”
“I beg your pardon for missing it.”
“You needn’t. Before you left, that last time I saw you, you made it clear to me that you have not assisted me in my studies for my sake, but for your own.”
He was a prize fool.
“I understand that,” she continued, the earnest dart deep in the bridge of her nose. “I do not require you to celebrate my accomplishments.”
“If I wish to?”
“Then I suppose you will.” The lips hitched up on one side. “Princes typically do whatever they please, after all.”
The ache inside him was too hard and deep. He could not escape it.
“I will not leave you again,” he said.
For seconds that felt as though they were years, she said nothing. Then she picked up her skirts and hurried up the stairs.
Chapter 21
The Prize
She chose her desired prize.
The proposal she made to him went thus: each Sunday she would choose a rule that she wished to bend—even break—and, at the end of a sennight of success, he must reward her with an illustration of an anatomically correct part of the human body. Drawn in ink, the illustrations would serve her studies. She explained to him that such drawings were dear and that students rarely possessed them.
Without fanfare, he agreed to it.
Beginning with the parlor clutter, she discarded first the used papers. On Monday she gathered up a pile of scraps and placed them before the fire, then left the room, her stomach in knots and throat sour with panic.
An hour later she returned, collected the pile, moved the screen from before the grate, and tossed them in. As the flames caught at the pages and consumed them, panic swelled in her throat. She stepped toward the fire.
“Have you dined?” he said from the parlor doorway.
She swiveled to face him. She had not known he was in the house.
“I want first a drawing of the shoulder,” she said.
“You will have your drawing, madam, on Sunday morning. Now, however, you will take dinner. With me.”
They dined and spoke of nothing and everything, of her studies and his commissions. When she went to bed she touched the picture of the boys in the marketplace only twice rather than the usual thrice.
By sennight’s end the parlor was empty of scraps. Always besting any rule made it easier to best others, and on Saturday morning she threw all of the scraps in her bedchamber onto the grate as well.
After that she removed every book from the foyer and corridor, neatly shelving hers and her father’s in the parlor and returning the others to their owners. She did the same with the piles of books in her bedchamber.
With lightness in her chest, she demanded of him her prize.
“The torso. Recto. Male, if you please.”
He offered her a beautiful, simple smile and then shooed her away. She hardly ever saw him. He had taken on two new commissions at once, and hadn’t even time for her sittings on Sunday mornings. But each Saturday when she requested another drawing to give her reason to resist the rules, he provided it.
“You’ve pink in your cheeks again, Joe,” Coira said as they sat side by side on the wall in the alley, sharing Libby’s lunch. “You’re glowin’.”
“It is because I am eating all of my sausages before you come outside and gobble them up,” Libby said, and bit into a hunk of Mrs. Coutts’s excellent oat bread. The sun was bright. Mr. Bridges had confided to her that Dr. Jones considered her the best among the first-year students and far beyond most of the advanced medical students as well. She had plenty of reasons to glow.
“No, lass,” Coira said. “You’re glowin’ because you’re in luve.”
Libby choked on crumbs.
Coira proffered the flask. “Have a sip, lass. It’ll soothe your agitation.”
Libby stared at her companion.
“Who is he?” Coira said. “Or is he a lass?”
“He isn’t a woman,” Libby found her mouth saying.
“Have you told him he’s won your heart? Or, if you do, is he more likely to run than drop his drawers?”
Libby’s cheeks were hot. She jumped off the wall. Packing away the remnants of food, she muttered, “Share your lunch with a person, and get teasing instead of thanks.”
Coira guffawed. Then she said seriously, “If he’s no’ a good man, he dinna deserve you.”
“Coira, you mustn’t—”
Coira made the motion of locking her lips closed with a key. “To my grave. Now go an’ make fools o’ all those men who canna see what’s right under their noses.”
That night, Libby carefully watched her friends at the pub. With each word Archie and the others spoke to her, each glance they turned her way, she wondered if they realized the truth too.
She had been too arrogant, too certain that her disguise and adopted mannerisms hid her femininity. But if Coira had realized it, who else might? Was Archie’s admiration for her so strong that he could continue while knowing the truth? Could Chedham simply be awaiting the ideal moment to expose her?
No. Not Chedham. His jealousy of her was always so obvious. He would certainly reveal her if he knew.
Returning home, she went directly to Ziyaeddin’s quarters.
Days earlier, when she had gone to demand the latest prize of him, she had found him standing at the easel, with the light of afternoon illumining his satiny hair and warm skin and white shirt, which he wore without collar or cravat. Her pulse had leaped. He always made her pulse quicken.
He had no idea. Each time the urge to confess it to him tightened her throat, she swallowed it, reminding herself that the relief of telling him would only last a moment before she must confess yet another private thought to him. The more she denied each urge, the weaker they all became.
Now she counted to ten in her head.
She had no drawing to demand of him, not for another three days. She needn’t tell him about Coira either. Coira posed no threat. She had no real reason to speak to him now, only the desire to.
Returning to the parlor, she pulled out a book and got to work.
“I have an extraordinary request.” She stood in the doorway of his studio, her hands tight around the jambs to either side. He had forbidden her to enter his quarters, even as Joseph Smart. He had also forbidden her to speak to him unless he had left his studio. Speaking with her—being with her—was unwise.
So he rarely left his studio.
Obviously she was not taking to heart at least one of his strictures.
“I would like drawings of the whole body, both verso and recto. The entire body. Male. All external parts.”
That her words should produce an instant surge of heat to his male external parts only proved his idiot susceptibility.
He returned his attention to the canvas.
“Thy will be done,” he said, dipping his brush into fresh paint.
“You won’t ask for what I am demanding this comprehensive illustration?”
“I trust you.”
“You should. For this is different.” As was her voice: subdued yet firm.
He paused midbr
ushstroke. “What is different?”
“The rule that I am determined to break.”
He turned to her. “What is it?”
Her brows arced. “You wish to know?”
He had told her that she needn’t inform him as to which rule she was conquering each sennight, only which prize she required of him to give her incentive to conquer it. In this way he had effectively removed one occasion for speaking with her each week.
He was a drowning man grasping at driftwood.
“If you wish to tell me,” he said, “yes, I wish to know.” He wished to know everything: her irrational rules, her studies, her worries, her triumphs, the scent of her neck, the flavor of her mouth, the texture of her body against his.
“Visiting the infirmary,” she said. “Without Mr. Bridges, when I needn’t. When I am not expected there. I go to check on the patients I have seen earlier in the day, to assure myself that their dressings haven’t slipped or sutures burst, or that they are being given the correct medications. After Christmas I got into the habit of going several times a day—day and night, actually. Now I go only twice, once each afternoon and once every night on my route home from the pub.”
“The infirmary is not en route from the pub to this house.”
“That is true.”
He bent his head and played the brush between his fingers. She was too somber and he was having the inconvenient need to go to her, take her in his arms, and make her forget about the damn rule and the infirmary—everything but him.
But that would not help her. That would help neither of them.
“Are there not competent nurses and physicians on call at night to see to that?” he said.
“It hasn’t anything to do with them.”
“I see.”
“Do you? I know it is difficult to understand. My father never has entirely, nor Alice or Iris, or even Amarantha or Constance. None of them truly understand how I can be bound to irrational needs. I suppose that is a compliment of sorts.” Her lips twisted a bit, as though she were trying to smile but couldn’t. “I will not think less of you if you cannot understand.”
“It is especially difficult to break this rule—visiting the infirmary multiple times—because it coincides with your actual concern for the patients.”
A sound came from her abruptly. “You do understand.”
“You call there twice every day, even when you have spent the entire morning at the infirmary and the afternoon in lecture?”
She nodded.
“Make it once each day for the duration of the sennight, and on Saturday I will give you what you wish.”
Her features bloomed into a smile. “Thank you.” Then she bowed. “Sir.”
“Begone now, ruffian,” he said.
Still smiling, she went, and he was again sunk in a peace that he no longer wanted or enjoyed.
“I did it,” Libby said, entering the kitchen as spring sunshine broke from behind clouds and shone on the coffee and bread and butter on the table.
He looked from the newspaper in his hands to her. “Did what?”
“Don’t play coy with me.”
“I would never.” His gaze was all over her, traveling across her face and down her neck and along her shoulders and arms and breasts. “You seem well.”
“I am better. I have done it. You must pay up.”
Folding the paper, he laid it on the table. “Before breakfast?”
“You’ve already had your breakfast.” She gestured to the dishes.
“I meant your breakfast.”
“I breakfasted before dawn. I could not sleep. I have been anticipating this for seven days. Unfortunately I have just received an urgent note from Alice that Constance intends to visit Leith this afternoon. I must be there. Apparently the last time Constance called, Alice had difficulty convincing her that I had not run away to join a troupe of traveling players. So I must be off to Leith now. But be assured, sir, I will collect on my prize the moment I return.”
“As you wish, madam.” He nodded.
“Are you truly royalty?”
He hesitated only a moment. “Yes.”
“I wounded you. With that broken glass. Will you have me beheaded for it?”
“You have no respect for authority,” he said, taking up his paper again. “I wounded myself with that glass.”
“Not really.”
“Yes, you will be punished for causing a scratch upon the anointed skin. Though not beheading. Barbaric practice, that.”
“Indefinite imprisonment, perhaps?”
“Perhaps. I will see to it as soon as I can find the time. Until then, enjoy Leith.”
When she was gone from the house, finally he set down the newspaper he had stared at without reading, leaned his elbows on his knees, and put his face in his hands. With her will to succeed and her strength that teetered on the verge of splintery vulnerability and her intelligent sparkling eyes and her lips—by all that was holy, her lips—she would be the death of him.
The doorbell rang. No acquaintance of his would call this early of a Saturday morning. Taking up the paper again and determining to actually read it, he settled back in his chair.
Another ring sounded through the house. He folded the paper and went to the door.
A stranger stood on the stoop, a horse on the street below dark with sweat.
“Mr. Kent?” the man said.
“I am he.”
He proffered a letter, then hurried down the steps and to his mount.
Ziyaeddin stared at the hand on the front of the letter. Ali had never before sent mail by a private messenger.
The grace of Allah be with you, Tabirshah!
I write with news from the princess: the general’s health fails. He will not live through the summer. His end is near, and with it the restoration of justice.
The princess sends to you now a trusted friend who will serve you upon your journey home.
Ali
Ziyaeddin reread the words until they ran into each other. His sister would be free, her captivity at an end, her children safe from threat. With the general’s death, their family’s allies would rise up in her defense. It was all he had wished.
Yet his breaths would not come.
Tabirshah.
King of Tabir.
When Libby returned home she did not find him in his studio or even in the kitchen. He often went out in the evening.
She went into the parlor to fetch a book.
He sat before the fireplace, a glass and bottle on the table beside him.
“You are here!” she said, then threw up her palm as he reached for his walking stick. “No, don’t stand. It is only I.”
He looked at her so singularly, as though she had spoken in a language he did not recognize. His eyes seemed full of darkness.
When he did not reply, she said, “Why are you here?”
“I live here,” he said. “This is my house.”
“You never sit in this parlor. In all the months I have lived here. Not once.”
“Perhaps I do when you are not in.”
She crossed the room and sat on the edge of the chair across from him.
“You so adamantly do not want to see me,” she said, “that even though you wish to be at home you remain away from it and never come into most of the house when I am here. Admit it.”
“Yes,” he said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and folding his hands. “I do everything in my power to avoid seeing you. How went your day in Leith with Lady Constance?”
“Awful. That is, she was not awful. It was wonderful to see her, and little Madeline, who is growing so swiftly. But Alice wanted cakes for Madeline, and Constance suggested we make a stroll of it, and somehow we ended up at the market. That went poorly.”
“You have trapped your lips between your teeth,” he said, looking at her mouth, but without pleasure it seemed.
She popped her lips free. “What of it?”
“You do so when you
are especially distressed.” He lifted his gaze to her eyes.
She stood. “Something is wrong. What is wrong? You were in excellent spirits this morning. What happened? Is it your leg? Are you in p—?”
“No. What went poorly at the market?”
She reached into her pocket and drew out several crumpled bits of paper. “There were so many people. And so much noise.”
“There are noise and people on every Edinburgh street, yet you have traversed them successfully for a month. Have you not?”
“I don’t know the reason that some places agitate me more than others. It never happens when I am tending the ill.”
He glanced at the fire.
She tossed in the scraps. The relief of watching them burn was slow, a spring welling up to bubble over a dry rock.
“I am like an infant, learning how to walk and tumbling over again and again, a child who must sing the alphabet repeatedly to remember it. I suspect that is how you see me.”
“I do not see you as a child, Elizabeth Shaw. Not in the least.”
“Why are you drinking spirits? What has happened? I won’t cease asking until you tell me, you know. My mind will not allow questions to go unanswered. You must tell me.”
“Yet I will not, however many times you ask.” Now the slightest crease appeared at one side of his mouth.
“I can break you,” she said. “I broke my father. He grew so weary of it he fled to London for an entire year. I think he always hoped that I would outgrow my peculiarity. When I did not he needed a holiday from it finally. At times I have broken Alice and Constance too. I’m certain Alice allowed me to do this because even the idea of having me live in her house exhausted her. Dr. Jones is always exasperated by my questions. Archie laughs, but sometimes he looks at me as though I am mad or simply impetuous. I am not impetuous. It is only that my mind never rests.”
“You will not break me.”
“I might.”
“If seventeen years of exile has had one benefit, it is that I have learned patience.” His gaze traveled over her face and down her neck and shoulders. “Perhaps two benefits.”
She could simply throw herself at him. On him.
“Seventeen?” she said, gripping the back of the chair to prevent herself from moving.
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