The Prince

by Katharine Ashe

  Around them, London in all its ambitious complexity bustled. But his heart was not in this city.

  He missed Edinburgh. He missed the Old Town’s narrow alleys, the coffeehouse in which he drank wine with artists and poets, the bustle of students, the bookshops, and the brilliant blue skies cluttered with clouds and emerald hills, and the roll of Scots in his ears.

  He missed his house, his studio, his paints. Only a fortnight away from them, yet his fingers were hungry for a brush. He missed the scents of walnut oil and linseed.

  He missed her. He missed her so much that sometimes he forgot to breathe.

  “Edinburgh,” he said.

  “Cold stone and constant rain?” Joachim screwed up his brow. “The house in which you lived was smaller than the servants’ quarters in your palace.”

  Ziyaeddin smiled. “It is a fine house, actually.” Hers now. He imagined her in the parlor, books strewn about, a cup of tea abandoned by her elbow.

  “Do you remember, Ziyaeddin, how the brilliant summer sunlight bathes the courtyard of your palace in warmth?”

  “In truth, I remember little of it.”

  “Your sister will help you remember it all.”

  Ziyaeddin glanced at his friend, who now stared out the window. In the days he had spent with Joachim, he had seen this often: the gray eyes turn sightless when he mentioned Aairah. Now he could not help but wonder how Joachim seemed to know so well the courtyard’s summer warmth. The general had died during the chill Caspian winter, and Aairah had taken control of the palace only then. Ziyaeddin wondered if his old friend’s vow of fealty had brought him here, or another bond—a bond with a captive princess—forged in secret in a courtyard bathed in summer sunshine.

  Surrounding a busy port, for centuries Tabir had been a land of many faiths and many peoples. The people of his realm had long since learned to negotiate their differences, to learn from and live in peace with each other. Still, to a Muslim royal princess the love of a Christian soldier was forbidden—as was the love of a royal prince for a bastard orphan girl, a commoner who was anything but common.

  But he was no longer that prince. In exile from her now, he knew that the moment he had met Elizabeth Shaw he had been nothing more or less than hers.

  Rapping on the carriage ceiling, he reached for the door handle.

  “We have not yet arrived at Westminster,” Joachim said as the carriage halted.

  “There is a stationer’s shop just there.” He gestured with his stick, then climbed out. “Go on. I will walk the remainder of the way.”

  “But, Your Highness—”

  “Have no fear. I will come.”

  Frowning, Joachim pulled the door shut and the carriage moved away.

  Gripping the walking stick, Ziyaeddin started toward the shop. He would purchase a sketchpad with thick linen sheets that took both chalk and lead well.

  The day was warm and the street was peopled with all the world, the highborn and the lowly, fashionable men in black coats and tall crowned hats and stylish women in muslin and silk of green and burgundy and blue, the dusky and the pale from all across Britain’s vast empire, starchy tradesmen and humble beggars and nurses marching behind prams.

  As he went, to give himself pleasure he looked for a riot of guinea curls and bright sea-blue eyes and lips that drove a man mad, and pretended that someday he might accidentally see her pass by and again, for a precious moment, be home.

  Chapter 32

  A New Agreement

  May 1828

  Edinburgh, Scotland

  “There. No, there. There. Good heavens, Archie, can’t you see?”

  “Aye, I can see, Miss Perfection,” he said, lifting his attention from the half-stitched wound to glare at her. “I’m doin’ it my way, thank you verra much.”

  The patient, a weathered old fisherman, looked warily from one to the other.

  “It’s all right,” Libby said to him gently. “Mr. Armstrong stitches a superlatively good suture.” She folded her arms. “It would just be a lot quicker if he allowed me to do it.”

  “Aye,” Archie said. “But then both o’ us would be barred from this place for a fortnight. Again. I’ll no’ be riskin’ that so close to sittin’ for exams.”

  “You’ll do fine.”

  “Chedham’s ahead o’ me.”

  “He has always been ahead of you.”

  “Done!” He straightened up and nodded at the fisherman. “How does it feel?”

  The fisherman bent his arm. “I woulda rather the lass done it.”

  “Ha!”

  Archie rolled his eyes. Snatching up his suture kit, he moved toward the washbasin.

  “Why has nobody taken my recommendation to run a pipe from the pump into this basin?” she said. “Running water is far better for cleaning instruments than still water. It would save lives.”

  Archie dried his hands. “You’d be president o’ this place someday if—”

  “If the college would allow me to become a fellow. I don’t know how much longer I will have the patience for this, Archie,” she said as they left the building. “My tutors are all wonderful, especially Mr. Bridges and Mr. Syme.”

  “Bridges was braggin’ about you again the other day. Canna help himself.”

  “But to be forbidden to work at the infirmary after all I have proven again and again, and forbidden from the other teaching hospitals as well . . .” This morning she had received yet another joint warning from the town council and the Church of Scotland that if she attempted to perform surgery at any established medical institution she would face the full displeasure of the law. “Even the apothecaries guild has closed its ranks against me. There is no place in Edinburgh for a woman surgeon.”

  “What’ll you do, Lib?”

  “Continue to assist at the paupers’ hospice in Leith, and to study.” And wait. She could not say it aloud, but the truth was that for two years she had been waiting. Waiting for a miracle.

  She pasted on a grin, much as she had once pasted on whiskers.

  “And I will continue to pester you and Pincushion to let me work on your patients here when no one is watching.”

  “Someday we’ll open our own private surgery, the three o’ us. George’ll be our solicitor an’ we’ll be the most popular sawbones in Scotland.”

  She smiled genuinely now.

  They had come to the corner of her block.

  “You’ve time for a pint?” Archie said.

  “Not today. I’ve got to finish writing up notes on the strangulated hernia I repaired yesterday.”

  “Tomorrow, then.”

  “Tomorrow perhaps.” She watched him lope away.

  She would not join her friends at the pub tomorrow, nor the next day, nor the next. She adored them. They had remained loyal companions even as her private studies took her abilities and knowledge far beyond theirs. But they were so young. Like Iris, they were playing at life without fully understanding themselves yet, while she was a grown woman who knew her heart and mind, but was still waiting for a day that would never come.

  It was time to leave Edinburgh. The community of medical men was too strongly set against her. According to some in Edinburgh she was still an unnatural female and a fallen woman, disguising herself as a man only to be seduced by the Turk, then abandoned, and now scandalously living alone. That she was accused of both, side-by-side, was a pile of irrationality. The worst, however, was the ignominy she brought upon her mentors and friends for merely associating with them.

  She needed to go elsewhere, perhaps to a remote village so desperately in need of a healer no one would chastise her for it. She would miss Alice, Iris, Coira, and Mrs. Coutts dreadfully. But she could no longer endure this partial life.

  And she needed to go away from the places in which she could not help but think of him.

  The grief of rising every day without him in the house would not entirely fade. Memories kept it fresh. She had not even changed his studio. He was ruling a kingdom t
housands of miles away, yet she could not make herself discard a single paintbrush.

  Leaving Edinburgh was the wisest solution.

  She could live with her father and Clarice in London. Mr. Bell had promised to take her on as a private assistant. But the hospitals and the College of Surgeons there would not accept her either, and anyway she didn’t care for London. She did not want to leave her friends here, and the coffeehouse on the corner, and the little church where she liked to sit in the last pew, and her perfect house.

  She did not want to leave behind the memories of her portrait artist. Her prince.

  The Times from London had announced the end of the war between Iran and Russia, and praised the fair-minded ruler of Tabir for helping to negotiate the treaty.

  War was brewing anew between Russia and the Ottomans. But for now, a world away, he was well. She wanted only that.

  Two years of waiting was long enough. Life must be lived.

  Swiping at a ticklish spot on her cheek, she climbed the steps to her front door and reached into her pocket for the key.

  “Are you prepared for this?” came a voice behind her—the most perfect voice in all the world.

  She pivoted and there he stood on the footpath below, a tall, lean, dark figure of exceptional elegance with a walking stick tipped in gold, completely still and watching her.

  The most extraordinary sensations broke from her tight heart and spilled through every part of her. Astonishment. Desire. Joy.

  “Prepared to live entirely among men?” she said, not particularly stably. “To learn their ways and pretend to be what I am not so that they will not know me for what I truly am? To be always alone?”

  He offered that beautiful tilt of his head she had always thought so princely even when she had not known he was a prince.

  “No,” she said. “For now I know who I am, and I wish only to be me.”

  He ascended the steps and she remained immobile while all inside her was a tumult. So close now it was impossible not to see the changes two years had wrought in him: his hair was longer, and short whiskers framed his mouth and jaw. His coat was very fine, the style regal, his waistcoat threaded with gold. He looked like a ruler of a foreign realm. Like a stranger.

  He was looking at her as though she were a stranger too, his dark eyes questioning. Hesitant uncertainty hovered in the air between them.

  “You’ve plaster stuck to your cheek,” he said into the awkward silence, his voice a little rocky too. He reached up and picked it off her skin, and his fingertips lingered for an instant—for only an instant—for long enough.

  The uncertainty wavered, then vanished.

  “I forgot to look in a mirror before leaving the infirmary,” she said, drawing the scent of him into her and getting dizzy. “Archie’s patient was howling so I mixed the plaster even though I have been prohibited from assisting him. It was hours ago. But I was distracted. Actually, I was distracted all day.”

  He bent his head and she saw the shifting of muscles in his jaw. “Tell me it is because today is the anniversary of the day I left.”

  “It is because today is the anniversary of the day you left.” With shaky fingers she tucked a loose curl behind her ear and hope pounded in her. “It is not possible that you arrived today by coincidence.”

  “In fact it required a fairly significant effort on my part to arrive by today. Winds do not always blow in the direction one wishes.”

  Tingles of happiness were spreading inside her. “Metaphors again?”

  “Actual winds too, as it happened. My ship was delayed arriving in port. I was obliged to ride from Newcastle to arrive here today.”

  “You haven’t yet even changed your clothing. You smell of horse.”

  “And you smell of camphor.” His eyes smiled.

  Joy went wild in her breast.

  “I have been following news of the war.” Following. Gobbling up. Twisted with anxiety that one day she would read that Tabir had fallen, that he was gone forever. “I—I was happy to read of the treaty—that your kingdom is well, and your—your people.”

  “Stuttering?” He lifted a brow. “When did this begin?”

  “This moment. This is extraordinary. I did not actually think to ever—to ever see you again.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “I didn’t. I wanted to. I imagined it. Of course. I thought every day of how this conversation might go were you to ever return: what you would say, what I would say, where it would take place, all the particulars. Sometimes I thought of it every hour. Eventually it became so distressing that I was obliged to give myself rewards for not allowing my mind to spin around this potential conversation.”

  “You bested it.”

  “I did, first by allowing myself to spend a quarter of an hour each day writing out what I imagined we would say to each other. The following fortnight I allowed myself only to think about it for a quarter hour each day. But the latter proved impossible, for you were always in my mind anyway. Finally I allowed myself to think of anything about you except this conversation.”

  “Is this conversation resembling what you imagined?”

  “Bits and pieces of it. The part where you said you made a significant effort to return, yes. Not the part about plaster.”

  His mouth was resisting a smile. “How I have missed you,” he said very beautifully and reached up to tuck the errant curl behind her ear. This time his fingertips lingered for more than a moment, caressing the slope of her jaw and sending sparks of pleasure through her.

  She laid her palm flat upon his chest, and the solid reality of him filled her as his lungs filled deeply beneath her hand.

  “You are here,” she whispered.

  “I am here,” he replied softly.

  “This is a gorgeous coat, never mind that you smell of horse. You are dressed magnificently. Royally. That walking stick is the most beautiful piece of carving I have ever seen.”

  “I wanted to impress you.”

  “Me?”

  “When we first met, I drew your face to impress you. Afterward I could not make myself forget any detail of these features. Yes, I have always wanted to impress you, jan-e delam.”

  She curled her fingers around the lapel of his coat, knowing she should not do so here on the stoop, but unable to release him, and anyway she had made a life out of doing what she should not.

  “I asked for news of you,” he said.

  “Did you? From the duke?”

  “Every fortnight.”

  “Every fortnight? What did he report?”

  “That you remain undaunted. That you have continued your studies. That you are brilliant.”

  “You knew the last already.”

  “And that you have not married.”

  “Why should I?”

  The reluctant smile she loved so much creased his cheek. “Why should you, indeed.” It wasn’t really a question.

  “Are your sister and her children well?”

  “Very well.” His gaze was traveling over her face slowly. “After the treaty, once I was assured that all was stable, I abdicated.”

  Her arm dropped. She gaped. “You—you—”

  “We must do something about this stuttering. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “You abdicated? But—can you do that?”

  “I did. So, yes, I can. That is, first I formed a parliament. That took some time, of course,” he said as calmly as though he were reciting errands. “When that was settled I wrote a petition to parliament that my sister should serve as regent for her sons until they come of age, and in its first official act the members ratified it. It all went quite smoothly, actually. This is the modern era, you know. Constitutional monarchies are all the rage.”

  “You mustn’t jest about this.”

  “I am not jesting.”

  “You abdicated.”

  “How can you doubt it?” he said, now soberly.

  “One does not simply abdicate!”

  “One does
when the woman one wants is on the other side of the world.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly—so tenderly. “I am not the first monarch to abdicate for love.”

  For love.

  This could not be real.

  “When you left here,” she said, “I believed that you would never return.”

  “When I left here I knew within a mile that I am no one without you.” He bent his head so that their brows were nearly touching. “Elizabeth Shaw, you fill my heart. You fill my head. I have thought only of you, wanted only you. Away from you I have been like a man sleeping while awake, always in a terrible dream from which I could not wake. Without you I am half a soul. With you I am whole.” He looked into her eyes. “I am home.”

  She could not breathe. “But you cannot have given up your crown.”

  “I would give up more than a crown. For you I would give up the world.”

  With a cry of joy, she threw her arms about him.

  He kissed her brow, her cheek. “I am not too late?”

  “You would never have been too late.”

  “Will you accept me?” he said with gorgeous fierceness. “Will you allow me to care for you and make love to you and watch you be extraordinary in the world, this time for a lifetime?”

  “Yes, yes, I will, of course, now kiss me. For this was the part I imagined every time.”

  He smiled, and kissed her smiling, and stroked the pad of his thumb over her lower lip.

  “Then we are agreed?” he said.

  “We are agreed.” She pulled the key from her pocket and pressed it into his palm. “Welcome home.” She smoothed her hands down his chest and felt all the glorious strength of him. “Where is the portrait of me that you took with you?”

  He kissed her again, savoring her lips. His hands wrapped around her waist and he pulled her snugly to him.

  “Hanging in a gallery in Paris,” he said between kisses. “Why do you ask?”