The Prince

by Katharine Ashe

  “It’s fine, thanks,” he said, shifting in obvious discomfort.

  “How did it happen? Did you fall?”

  He glanced at Archie, then shook his head.

  Libby looked back and forth between them. “What is amiss? Has Plath broken free of jail or the Lord Provost changed his mind? For after our triumph yesterday I cannot imagine why you’ve both got such grim faces.”

  Archie said, “You dinna know, then, lad?”

  “Know what?”

  From across the pub, several students burst into laughter. Their eyes were all on her.

  Libby’s heartbeats tripped.

  “This mornin’ at dawn,” Archie said quietly, “somebody found a paper placard affixed with tar to the door o’ Surgeons’ Hall.”

  “With tar? How disrespectful. A placard about what?”

  “About you, Joe.”

  “Me?”

  They knew.

  “I didna see it,” Archie said. “Nor Peter. Whoever found it tore it down. But everybody’s talkin’ about it.”

  “What did it say, Archie?”

  “There was a crude picture.” He muttered. “An’ a caption.”

  “What was the caption?”

  Archie’s eyes were on the floor, Pincushion’s on the other side of the pub. Neither of them spoke.

  “You must tell me,” she said.

  “It said . . .” Archie frowned. “‘In a fine dark alley, the Turk buggers a Smart young surgical apprentice.’”

  She hardly knew how she lowered herself to a chair.

  “It doesna matter a thing to us, Joe,” Archie said quickly, taking the seat beside her. “Peter an’ George an’ I, we’ll shoulder forward with you.”

  Pincushion’s head bobbed up, his skin a bit green. He pivoted on his heels and marched back to the bar.

  “That is,” Archie said, “no’ literally, o’ course. No’ Peter’s shoulder, at least. What I mean to say is, we’ll stand by you, lad.”

  Everybody in the pub was staring at her now, whispers and snickers from young men who for months had treated her with respect, even deference.

  “How did his shoulder dislocate this time?” Her eyes were so dry. She couldn’t manage to blink.

  “Bounders roughed him up at the water closet,” Archie scowled. “They said—well, you can guess.”

  “Because of me. Because of his friendship with me.”

  This could not be happening.

  Someone must have seen them in the alley the night before. Someone had seen him kiss her. The words on the placard had exaggerated it, but someone had clearly seen them. And now her friends were suffering for her carelessness.

  And . . . he.

  Sodomy was a hanging offense.

  “Kent’s a fine bloke,” Archie mumbled. “What, after you were ill, an’ yesterday, an’ the lot o’ it. Still, I’d like to break his neck for puttin’ you in danger.”

  “It is not his fault,” she said. “You believe the accusation?”

  Archie’s brow dipped. “Few nights ago,” he whispered, “you were actin’ mighty queer after lecture. I was worried about you, lad. Wanted to be sure you’d get home all right, so I followed you.” He paused a moment. “I saw you in the church. With him.”

  Nausea crawled through her.

  “I’ll ne’er tell a soul, lad.”

  She tried to fill her lungs.

  Pincushion returned to the table and sat down, but he wouldn’t look at her.

  “It is unwise of you to be near me. Both of you. And George too.” She felt hollow inside. “You should distance yourselves from me.”

  “Bugger that,” Archie spat out. “Er, uh, beggin’ your pardon, Joe. But we’ll no’ abandon you. An’ these piss-ants can go suck rotten eggs,” he said, glaring at the snickerers at the other table. “Hypocrites, at least two o’ them, an’ probably others.”

  “You must protect yourselves,” she said.

  Pincushion pushed a glass toward her, then finally looked into her eyes.

  “Bugger them all, right?” he said and lifted his pint in salute. “To Joe Smart, the cleverest lad in Edinburgh.”

  “It’ll blow o’er, Joe,” Archie said, and tossed a thick text onto the table. “Now to the books.”

  An hour later George arrived. Face grave, he settled in the chair beside Libby and looked about at them pointedly.

  “Aye, lad,” Archie said. “We’ve heard.”

  “I heard it from my father,” George said. “First time he’s called on me since he threw me onto the street. He remembered we’re friends, Joe.”

  “Your father? How does he know of it?”

  “Everybody in Edinburgh knows, lad,” he said soberly. “Gossip’s spreading like fire.”

  She must go home, tell him, warn him.

  “’Tis a grim business,” Archie said, sipping ale. “But we’ll stick by you, Joe.”

  Pincushion nodded.

  “No need, most likely,” George said. “Jones and Bridges have already spoken up for young Joe here.”

  Libby froze in stuffing her books into her satchel. “Already? But Archie said the placard was only found this morning. How can this be?”

  “Kent’s a celebrity, Joe. He’s got the respect of half the men of power in town, and the dislike of the other half. Some will believe any nasty story about a foreign chap they hear, and they’re pouncing on this quick. Father says Jones and Bridges made the case that you’d never have agreed to it.” His lips were tight but he spoke dispassionately, professionally. “They’re saying it must have been force.”

  Worse and worse. A nightmare.

  “Father says you’re likely to be exonerated.”

  “But what of him?”

  “Indictment, most likely. Police haven’t any evidence to bring before the magistrates, only hearsay.”

  “Plenty o’ lads o’ low character envy young Joe.” Archie shook his head. “Evidence’ll surface, even if it’s false.”

  “That was my thought.” George looked her in the eye. “Joe, whatever I can do, I’ll do. Damn, but I wish I’d stood up to my father years ago so I’d be able to legally represent you now.”

  “Thank you.” She could not tell them that she had friends far more powerful than even George’s father, more powerful than all of them combined. She could not tell them that her heart was breaking. “I will write to my father.”

  She must now. The scandal with Plath paled in comparison to this horror.

  A footfall sounded beside the table. She looked up into Maxwell Chedham’s eyes.

  “Pity to hear you’re in trouble, Smart,” he said. “I am all broken up over it. Truly. But don’t worry. I’ll care for your patients after you’re gone.” He sauntered off.

  Archie’s gaze followed him. “I wonder who posted that placard,” he muttered.

  But watching Chedham greet his friend Pulley and his other toadies with a smile, Libby already knew.

  Mrs. Coutts bustled from the kitchen. “He’s had callers, lass,” she said. “Police investigators! Stayed a full hour, drank two pots o’ tea, an’ gobbled up all the biscuits too. I listened through the door, o’ course. ’Tis wicked slander! They can clap me in shackles an’ lead me to the noose, an’ I’ll defend the both o’ you till my last hour.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Coutts. Where is he?”

  “Where else? I’m off to cook for Mr. Coutts. But if you need me, lass, send a lad an’ I’ll return straightaway.” Mrs. Coutts chucked her under the chin as though she were a child—the child that the scandalized population of Edinburgh believed her to be—and departed.

  In his studio he sat on the stool before the easel, the portrait on it only partially colored over the underpainting. It was a pair of boys standing proudly in red coats and black breeches and surrounded by a pack of hunting dogs.

  He would never have another commission like this.

  Setting down his brush, he came to her. He stroked the hair back from her brow, kissed her there,
then kissed her lips.

  “We must talk,” she said between kisses.

  “Later.” He peeled the coat from her shoulders and unbound her cravat.

  “Not later. Now.”

  “If I am to be publicly accused of ravishing you,” he said, pulling the shirt out of her trousers, “then I should be permitted to actually do so in private.”

  “You did not ravish me,” she said as he released her and went into the workroom. “You ravished Joseph Smart.”

  He returned with oil and a cloth.

  “Although I am becoming accustomed to the tickle of these whiskers,” he said, dabbing the oil onto her skin and peeling away the down, “I prefer kissing you without.”

  “You will not acknowledge what I have said?”

  “In point of fact I ravished neither you nor Joseph Smart. Both of you grabbed me and kissed me. As ravishments go, the public will be disappointed. I found it very enjoyable, of course.”

  “You must be serious. Someone wishes to hurt me, or perhaps both of us, yet because of Joseph’s youth you are to bear the whole burden of it.”

  He unfastened her trousers. “I have never believed my time on this earth would be lengthy, joonam. Indeed for two decades now I have expected death to come at any moment.”

  “It will not happen,” she said, laying her hands on his shoulders as he bent to push the trousers down. “You must write to the duke. We will ask for his assistance.”

  His hands stroked along her bared thighs. “These legs. I want them wrapped around me. Now.” He looked up into her eyes and she was shocked by the fevered haze of lust in his.

  “Will you do nothing to save yourself?”

  He took her hand in his and kissed her knuckles like a knight kneeling before his lady.

  “Whatever you wish, I shall do, jan-e delam.” He stood and started across the room toward his bedchamber. “Now, come. There is ravishing to be done and I don’t particularly care who does it, only that it is accomplished without further delay.”

  She went, and shortly there was not ravishment but passion, and when he brought her to crying pleasure she hid her tears of desperation against his skin and held him tight.

  Chapter 29

  The Sacrifice

  The following morning Libby went to the infirmary for her usual rounds. Mr. Bridges said nothing regarding the accusation, but his face was drawn.

  “It’s in all the papers,” Chedham muttered to her as they stood side by side at the chemistry table. Mr. Bridges had gone to the men’s ward alone, he said because there was an unknown illness there. But Libby feared it was for her sake, an attempt to protect her.

  “Plath’s indictment is front page,” Chedham said, mixing a vulnerary salve in a brass bowl. “But your depraved little imbroglio is on page two.”

  She added a pinch of turmeric taken from Mrs. Coutts’s kitchen to her own decoction. “You did it. Didn’t you?”

  “Skulking around in dark alleys hardly suits a man of my character. Anyway, I had theater tickets that night. Opening night. It was excellent entertainment.”

  At lunchtime she walked directly to the theater nearest the alley in which she had grabbed her lover and kissed him.

  “Aye, lad,” the box office clerk said. “Two nichts aby. As You Like It. Openin’ nicht always sees a mighty crush.”

  Chedham wanted her to know that he had posted the placard—that he had won. She could only pray that he alone had seen that kiss. Then the judge might consider it biased evidence.

  But the evening’s gossip broadsheet dashed her hopes. According to reports, recently Mr. Kent had rudely rejected the delicate advances of a maiden of great beauty and charm whose father had commissioned a portrait of her. Given that young men threw posies at this maiden’s feet, her father suggested that the artist’s indifference must surely be due to his “unnatural” proclivities.

  “It is all lies!” Tearing up the broadsheet, Libby threw it onto the grate. No fire burned there. So she grabbed a candle and tossed it onto the newspaper and watched it all crackle into ash. “She hated you for rejecting her, didn’t she? And her father did too. They are jumping onto Chedham’s accusation out of spite.”

  “Seems so.” He reclined in a comfortable chair.

  “How can you sit there and do nothing?”

  “I am not doing nothing. I am watching you wear a trough in my favorite rug.”

  Going to him, she climbed onto his lap and banded her arms about his neck and pressed her face into his shoulder. His hands came around her waist and he kissed her hair.

  “They will come to take you away.”

  “They will not,” he said.

  “They will.”

  “They have no proof beyond Mr. Chedham’s word. And as you have noted, his reason to see you fail is well known.”

  “Everybody in town with any minuscule complaint with you will add their disgruntlements to the fray until the magistrates can no longer brush it off as one student’s vendetta against another.” She leaned back and stroked her fingers along his jaw. “Chedham’s family is wealthy and influential. But so is Constance’s.”

  “You must not tell her. You must tell no one.”

  “I wrote to Amarantha.”

  His hands loosened and he tilted his head back and looked up at the ceiling.

  Her fingers twisted in his waistcoat. “The duke can help.”

  “Only three years ago the Duke of Loch Irvine barely weathered a scandal far worse than this. Edinburgh has not yet forgotten the devil it loved to hate. I will not repay my friend for his generosity by embroiling him in yet another scandal.”

  “You needn’t. I already have.”

  “Elizabeth—”

  She leaped off his lap, her fists tight at her sides.

  “It was my need that put you in danger, my need for reassurance, for forgiveness and all the foolishness that I can be. I am at fault. Me. You have done nothing of blame and I cannot bear that you will be hurt.”

  “Before your father returns you must complete this extraordinary year’s accomplishment,” he said with infuriating calm. “Until then, put this from your thoughts.”

  “How can you be so indifferent to your fate? My father will hear of this. My future is already determined. Yours is not.”

  “Your father need not know Joseph Smart is his daughter.”

  “I have already told him.”

  His features fell into disbelief.

  “I had to allow him time to accept the truth before he returns. I did not tell him about you. But now he will know. He will hear of this scandal into which Joseph has fallen.” She turned away from him. “How wretchedly I have served every person I love. I wanted this so desperately that I cared nothing for the pain or danger it would bring anyone, only for the satisfaction it would bring me.”

  “Happiness.”

  She swung around. “What?”

  “It has not only brought you satisfaction,” he said. “It has brought you happiness. And me as well. Happiness I thought never to enjoy.”

  She stared at him.

  “You must leave here at once,” she said. “Go anywhere. To London. Alexandria. Istanbul. Leave here and save yourself.”

  “I will. When your project here is finished.”

  A great, hard scream pushed its way up into her throat. She choked it back and strode out of the parlor.

  He found her in his bed. Taking her into his arms, he held her until her rigid acceptance of his embrace became acquiescence, and in the stillness he counted each of her quick breaths and equally swift heartbeats.

  When finally she turned to him and wrapped her arms around him and lifted her lips to be kissed, he gave her what she desired.

  The Duke and Duchess of Loch Irvine arrived before breakfast.

  “Tuppin’ lads now, Your Highness?” the duke said.

  “Ladies present, Your Grace,” Ziyaeddin murmured to his friend.

  “Only one lady, properly,” Elizabeth said. Moving fo
rward, she grasped the duchess’s hand. “Thank you for coming.”

  She did not curtsy to Gabriel, or even nod, and Ziyaeddin felt that powerful pride thickly in his chest. Elizabeth Shaw would bend to no man’s superiority. She was perfect. Perfect.

  “Of course we came,” the duchess said. She was a beauty in the English mode, with pale skin and freckles scattered over her nose and cheeks and fiery tresses.

  “How are the little ones?” Elizabeth asked.

  “My son is a bundle o’ drooling good nature,” the duke said.

  “Like his father,” Ziyaeddin said.

  “Aye.” He was a giant of a man, with shoulders like a stevedore’s and features weathered by a decade at sea. “My daughter’s a holy terror, o’ course, just as I like a female.” His brow grew thoughtful. “Speakin’ o’ holy terrors . . .”

  “There is nothing holy about what I have done.” Elizabeth stood alone now near the desk upon which were arranged her books—too neatly. A new pile had gathered on the floor, atop it a small stack of scraps of used paper.

  Brilliant, ambitious, bighearted, and determined to succeed.

  These setbacks coming one upon another had ignited the demon that within her always awaited a moment of weakness, of fear. He must wrest her free of this. Swiftly.

  “Gabriel,” he said, “can you open your house here?”

  “Aye.”

  “Of course,” Amarantha said. “Libby, you must come live with us. If Joseph continues to be seen entering and leaving this house, it will only stoke the flames of gossip. If he is no longer seen here, people will swiftly forget. Such is the nature of scandal. When do you expect your father here?”

  “Soon.” Her hands were clasped tightly together.

  “He will be our guest as well, and it will appear a regular merry party of friends.”

  “But what if he is arrested?” Her blue eyes swung to Ziyaeddin. “And don’t say it will not matter because you have experienced worse.”

  “I was not intending to say that.”

  “You were thinking it. I can see it in the very set of your mouth, you know.”

  He strove not to smile. She was too sober, her brow too taut.