The Prince

by Katharine Ashe

  The remainder of the morning was a whirlwind of tasks that kept her late, past the time she usually met Coira for lunch.

  “I’m glad to see you, lad! Gave me a fright, what with you vowin’ to search for Dallis, then disappearin’ as you did.”

  “Has she returned?”

  Coira shook her head. “P’raps she’s gone down to Newcastle. They say the sailors pay more there.”

  “I will ask Mr. Kent if he discovered anything from Mr. Reeve.”

  Coira’s eyes twinkled. “Taken him back, have you?”

  She had not taken him back. He had taken her back. That she now wanted to spend every moment with him only proved that he had been wiser than she all along.

  Dr. Jones had learned of her illness from Archie, and instructed her to complete the missed work and be well prepared for the final dissection of the term.

  “A public dissection, Joe!” Archie said as they took their seats in the lecture hall. “Folks’ll pay to watch us perform it.”

  “Why would anybody pay to watch students do a dissection?”

  “While you were down, the college published the names o’ the top apprentices this year. You’re famous, lad!”

  If that were indeed true, when her father returned how could he deny her?

  On Saturday, after both Mrs. Coutts and Mr. Gibbs departed, Libby changed her clothes and knocked on the door to Ziyaeddin’s quarters and heard him say “Enter” from within.

  She found him in the workroom. He did not remove his attention from his task, and she watched as he deftly worked the painter’s knife into a dollop of gray paint that became greener with each pass of the tool.

  “For what are you mixing that color?”

  “Mrs. Planchett-Spinner’s eyes,” he said, the knife gliding and pressing and scraping the paint with mesmerizing rhythm.

  “I have met Mrs. Planchett-Spinner. She is an awful gossip. Her eyes are not that green.”

  “Indeed.”

  “You do not paint what you see. That is why you so often break the rules of portraiture.”

  “Do I?”

  “I saw your picture of Lily Jackson, in which the background seems unfinished. It was intentional. You wished to show the truth of her. You do not paint by the rules because you are not content with depicting what everyone sees on the surface.”

  There was tension in his jaw muscles. “Perhaps.”

  “How do you do that? How do you see what is beneath the skin?”

  “You do as well.”

  “I see bones and muscles. You see the soul.”

  He did not reply.

  “Mrs. Coutts says that you are busy with commissions.”

  “She has not misspoken. You are wearing Joseph Smart’s dressing gown and your legs are bared,” he said, his head still bent to his work. “Why is that, I wonder?”

  “I want you to paint me. All of me.”

  Finally he looked at her.

  She swallowed over the thickness in her throat.

  “Art,” she said. “I would like you to use me as you initially intended when we made our agreement, to paint what you long to paint. A nude. Or perhaps a mythological subject. Or a historical piece. As you wish. There is the oddest light in your eyes suddenly. I think you are about to reject my offer. But you cannot. I wish to thank you for everything you have done to help me, but I have nothing else to offer.”

  “There is no need. You have already made me whole.”

  He did not gesture to the prosthesis or otherwise elaborate on this astonishing statement.

  “Like your paintings,” she whispered, “will we always now be saying more than our words suggest on the surface?”

  He turned his attention again to the palette. “I require no thanks.”

  “Yet my conscience must be satisfied that I have paid my fair share in our agreement. It won’t rest until you allow it.”

  His fingers tightened about the knife. “All right.”

  Nerves spun through her belly. “I am ready to sit for you now. Can Mrs. Planchett-Spinner’s eyes wait?”

  He set down the knife and turned to her. “Everything can wait.”

  She pivoted and went into the studio, dropped the dressing gown, and perched on the stool.

  “I am somewhat spare of flesh because of my illness. But you can embellish, of course. How would you like me to pose?”

  He still stood in the doorway to the workroom.

  “As you are,” he said quite low.

  “If you choose to do a classical piece, I would prefer not to be one of Zeus’s unwilling conquests. No swan arranged between my thighs or bull looming over me, if you please.”

  “Have mercy.” He gripped the back of his neck.

  A flush of heat was spreading across her chest and cheeks.

  “You once told me to set aside the maiden and be only the surgeon. Now you must set aside the man and be only the artist.”

  “There is no artist without the man. Not today.”

  “I shall not speak now,” she said. “And you shan’t either. Then neither of us will say anything unwise, subtly or not.”

  He took up a canvas stretched over a frame and set it on the easel.

  “Don’t you wish to sketch on paper first?”

  “I needn’t.”

  “Had you already prepared that canvas for a commission?”

  “For this.”

  “For this? But I never said—”

  He came toward her. Libby’s skin tingled all over with feeling. The eyes of the artist were assessing her, slowly, carefully, lingering here and there.

  “Like a journey one longs to take,” he said, “and thinks of to the exclusion of all else, I have been planning this piece for months.” He touched her knee. “Lower this.”

  She obeyed, sliding her foot along the floor to stretch her leg, her calf brushing his trousers. Spirals of pleasure raced through her.

  His hand came around hers and she allowed him to set it atop her thigh. She shivered.

  “I am not cold,” she said. “Only nervous. I have never before sat around in the nude, of course.”

  “What happened to neither of us speaking?”

  “A chimera, obviously.”

  His fingertips strafed her elbow and her eyelids fluttered. Moving her arm, she followed his gentle pressure until she was reaching toward the ceiling. Then he cupped her chin in his palm and tilted it upward.

  “Perfect,” he said quietly, huskily. His thumb caressed her lips and his eyes upon her were positively luminous.

  “You mustn’t make love to me now,” she said shakily. “Priorities, sir.”

  “Making love to you is my priority.”

  “Since when? Since you told me this cannot be?”

  “Since the moment I first saw your face, heard you speak, watched you move. I have been entirely dishonest with you, and with myself even more so.”

  “Not dishonest,” she whispered. “Wise, to be sure. Shall I now recite a list of the various complaints of the stomach? Or perhaps the diseases of the skin? Either can effectively dampen ardor.”

  “Unless you can recite them in someone else’s voice, it will not suffice.” His fingertips carved a line of decadent pleasure along her throat, like a sculptor smoothing a curve. “For the sound of your voice is to me at once golden sky and cerulean sea, storm and sunlight.”

  “Poetry,” she whispered.

  “You,” he said huskily.

  “Dyspepsia,” she said in Joseph’s register, “is a complaint of the central digestive organs which causes the patient to experience—”

  His hand fell away from her.

  “Rest when you wish,” he said, returning to the easel. He took up a pencil, but then only looked into her eyes.

  “Why are you not drawing?” she said.

  “Elizabeth, I am—”

  “Draw. You must now draw. And then paint. And this time I truly won’t say another word and you mustn’t either.”

  They said
nothing else. He became to all outwardly appearances the expert draughtsman, his gaze shifting rapidly between her and the canvas. When he completed the sketch he collected palette and brushes from the workroom for the under painting. But the tension had not gone from his jaw and there was none of his usual restful peace or even insouciance in his stance. The tendons on his hands and neck were taut.

  Occasionally she rested her arm and stretched her neck and felt the heat of his gaze upon her, and she imagined all of the ways he might touch her if she invited it now. Every atom of her skin was ready for that, every part of her body primed—for him.

  When the daylight waned he lit lamps.

  Finally he set down the paintbrush. Walking to the workroom, he said, “That will be all.”

  “All?”

  “The under painting must dry. Return when you are able. I will be here. Always for you.”

  She drew her dressing gown over her shoulders, pulled the sash tight around her waist, and walked across the studio. Inside the workroom, he stood with his back to the doorway, one hand covering his eyes.

  Laying her palms on his scapulars, she smoothed them across his back. The muscles flinched. Slowly she swept her hands down along either side of the rigid line of his spine that had long borne the torment of his lack.

  “Why did you not use a real prosthesis for so many years?” she said. “Why did you allow yourself to be hobbled?”

  “So that I needn’t leave here.”

  Her hands halted.

  “You do not wish to leave Edinburgh?”

  “When I leave, Elizabeth, it will be to war.”

  “War?” Her throat was hot. “In your home?”

  “That is my birthright. My blood. My responsibility.” He lowered his arm to his side. “This is my home.”

  Leaning forward, she pressed her body against him, the pleasure of it dislodging the bristling fear inside her. She ran her hands around to his chest.

  “It is a miracle,” she said, “this body, such unyielding strength, yet encasing a heart of such gentleness.”

  His lungs expanded against her palms. “There is nothing gentle in this heart at present.”

  Laying her cheek on his back, she stroked the contours of muscle to his waist, feeling the tension in him and the shudder of his flesh where her hands passed.

  “Since that night I have thought of little but this,” she said. “I knew it would be pleasurable. But I did not know how it would be consuming. I did not know that once we kissed, once we touched, I would want only this.”

  “This is not the half of it.” He did not move. “Not the quarter.”

  “I should have known. It is the way of my madness. The more I feed it, the more it craves. My body is positively humming. No distraction serves to lessen the hunger. I want so much to satisfy it finally.”

  “Go,” he said. “Upstairs. Anywhere else. Away.”

  But her hands would not release him. Her body would not peel itself away from the heat of his. Here, touching him, she felt safe, both at peace and utterly alive.

  The bang of the front door knocker echoed through the silent house.

  “Joooooooooe!” From the stoop Archie sang in a full-throated warble. “Joe Smaaaaaart! Be you home, Joe?”

  The bell rang.

  “We’re celebrating!” George shouted.

  “Georgie’s gone and tied the knot!” Pincushion cried.

  Their voices burbled together, and then copious laughter.

  “Joe!” Archie called again. “Where you be, young Joe?”

  Ziyaeddin broke from her hold, moved around her and swiftly crossed the studio. She followed. When he reached to open the door, she slid behind the panel.

  “There you be, J—Sir!”

  She heard scuffling footsteps, then more laughter. Rain fell without, pattering steadily on the stoop and cobbles.

  “Can young Joey come out to play?” Pincushion said in a nasal twang, then he and George fell into laughter.

  “Good evening, sir,” Archie said. “George here’s gone an’ wed his lass today o’er the anvil. We’re celebratin’.”

  Ziyaeddin’s profile illumined by their lamp was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. He was hardly older than her friends—four or five years at most—yet he had crossed the world, endured shackles, and made a life for himself in a foreign land, and still he would go into danger because he must. No wonder she thought only of him.

  “Congratulations, Mr. Allan,” he said.

  “Thank you, sir!”

  “Is young Joe in?” Archie said.

  “He is. I will tell him you’ve come.”

  “Much obliged!” George said.

  “Seein’ as we’re soaked, sir, we’ll wait out here.”

  They were singing as Ziyaeddin closed the door.

  “They are not entirely drunk, but certainly on their way,” he said, then started toward the back of the house.

  “This is unsustainable—what we are doing now.”

  He paused and turned partially toward her. “Go. Celebrate your friend’s happiness—your friend who ought to be with his bride tonight,” he added in a lower register, “but some men are idiots.”

  “I am tired of you being honorable!”

  “This is not honorable. This is self-preservation and a healthy dose of fear. Now, go.”

  “Fear?”

  He came to her, grasped her waist, and took her mouth beneath his. She wound her arms about his neck and accepted his hands sliding upward to part the dressing gown and cup her breasts.

  It was a wild kiss, urgent, deep, hot. His skin against hers was scalding, his thumbs stroking over her nipples making pleasure she had never imagined. She pressed her naked belly to his waistcoat and shifted, parting her knees to feel this thigh harder against her need. He groaned and his hand swept around her hip, surrounding her buttock. Bending to her, he pulled her thigh up alongside his.

  Pleasure spiraled in her, thick, perfect, his body between her legs hard, his arousal massaging her where she most wanted it—most wanted him. He kissed her throat, her neck, rocking her against him with his fingers splayed on her behind, and she could only make sounds without words, the pleasure spinning higher, quicker.

  “This is all I want,” he said, his mouth on her skin, his hands holding her tightly to him. “In every moment, to touch you, to feel you in my hands, to taste your lips and hear your voice.”

  “Yes,” she said, aching unbearably, on the cusp and needing his mouth on hers—everywhere on her. “Yes.”

  “Joooooeeeey!” The singsong call came from the street.

  Ziyaeddin lifted his head. His eyes were aflame.

  “This hunger will never be satisfied,” he whispered harshly. “If that does not suffice to give you fear, then you are a far braver man than I, Joseph Smart.”

  He released her and she slid back against the wall as the rhythm of his footsteps receded into his quarters and her friends called her name from the street.

  Chapter 25

  Rules, Disregarded

  She saw nothing of him. She spent her days at the infirmary, the lecture hall, and the library or pub, and her nights in the parlor with her head bent to her books. But always her body was strung with the memory of desire and restless anticipation.

  “Sunday night, gentlemen, will be our final meeting in my surgery,” Mr. Bridges said, scrubbing his hands at the washbasin. On her insistence, they had taken to washing between each examination on the ward. Respecting Ziyaeddin’s wish to remain as inconspicuous in Joseph Smart’s life as possible, she had searched every medical text about disease she could find for justification of hand washing. Finally she had found it in a treatise on maternal health by an English physician.

  Drying his hands, Chedham cast her a swift glance. “Yes, sir.”

  The surgeon departed.

  Chedham turned to her. “You think they’ll name you top apprentice this year, don’t you?”

  She grabbed her satchel and s
tarted out.

  “I will win,” he said behind her. “Whatever I must do, Smart. I will win.”

  Hurrying out into the courtyard flooded with sunshine, she gulped in air.

  Whatever I must do.

  She had said that to Ziyaeddin months ago.

  Alice had accused her of succumbing, and perhaps she had. Certainly she had. She thought of little but him—his touch, his hands on her, the scent of his skin. But neither she nor he was free to follow that desire. She understood that now, but understanding brought no peace, no relief, no satisfaction, only a hunger so deep it made her dazed.

  “Cheddar’s up to something,” Archie said later, eyes narrow. “I dinna trust him.”

  “He only wants to succeed,” she mumbled, turning a page in her book. “Just as we all do.”

  “Aye, to be sure. My future’s set on it. But you want it more. I’ve ne’er seen the like, lad. You want it like a man wants opium.”

  “What?” she said. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s unnatural, Joe,” Pincushion mumbled against the edge of his glass.

  Unnatural.

  George entered, and the conversation turned. But Libby could not retrieve her concentration.

  She packed away her books, bid her friends good-bye, and left the pub. She was walking through the gateposts of the infirmary courtyard before she realized her feet had carried her here.

  She wanted to believe she had come out of habit. But she had not. Need had guided her here. At the bedsides of her patients and in the preparation chamber where clean instruments hung in neat rows, relief beckoned.

  Drawing the cool, damp air into her lungs, she pivoted about. With each step away from the infirmary, the desperation receded.

  Her friends thought her unnatural. And she was. But not as they believed. Only Ziyaeddin understood. Yet he had never judged her for it. Not once.

  A half block from the house Mrs. Coutts came walking toward her.

  “Dinner’s on the table,” she said. “Mr. Coutts an’ I be off to our son’s farm tomorrow, so I’ll no’ be seein’ you till Monday. I’ve made up plenty o’ food. You’ll no’ need to be spendin’ every night out, as the master.”

  “I thought you liked him to attend parties.”

  “No’ when he’s attendin’ simply to be outta the house,” she said with a shake of her head.