The Prince's Slave

by P. J. Fox

  They were driving, she realized, along a curving road that appeared to have been cut straight into the living rock. Pressing her nose to the window, she looked down. And saw, not macadam or gravel, but nothing. Air. Far beneath them, a lake reflected the mountains overhead as clearly as if it had been a mirror.

  A chateau had been built out into the water, on a stone foundation.

  “It’s a bed and breakfast,” came the now-familiar voice, its cultured tones as calm as always. “Quite romantic.”

  “I—what if we fall?” she asked without turning. She had a sudden vision of the car turning wide and plunging into oblivion.

  “We won’t.” Ash sounded vaguely amused. And then, “it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”

  And it was. It was a combination of all the most beautiful places she’d ever been; she simply didn’t have the words. Even with the windows closed, she could smell the rich tang of pine sap. The few deciduous trees were turning, their leaves a riot of breathtaking color. The edge of the lake, with its driftwood and ribbon of sand, reminded her of trips she’d taken as a child to the wilds of western Maine. She half expected a moose to appear, coming down as they did from the mountains for water. The mountains themselves reminded her of Switzerland, cold and unforgiving. The meadows reminded her of Heidi, or The Sound of Music. But wilder, less wholesome. More real.

  She spotted another house, some kind of crofter’s cottage. A shack, really. She’d seen similar, in America, along the border. But those were cobbled together from mobile homes and pieces of Tyvek; this looked like something straight from the middle ages. She wondered how its inhabitants survived the winter. Or if they had; the place looked abandoned.

  “Where are we?” she asked, her resolve not to talk to him forgotten. She’d been captivated, in spite of herself. She wanted to know more.

  “We’re driving on a road that’s almost a thousand years old.” He seemed pleased that she’d asked. “It links Transylvania and Wallachia.”

  She turned, stunned. “We’re in Transylvania?”

  “We’re in Wallachia.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged slightly, an alarmingly charming gesture. “I live here.”

  She turned back toward the window, discomfited.

  A few minutes later, they arrived.

  Passing through a gate, the car turned down a straight drive lined with trees that seemed to go on forever. Movement flashed in the trees and then a deer darted out into the road. It froze for a split second, and was gone. Crows called to each other in the tree tops. The kinder birds had flown south. The sense of unreality returned.

  Growing up, Belle had sometimes fantasized about disappearing. Before they’d moved to Scarborough, they’d had a big yard and when her parents fought, which was all the time, she’d go outside and sit in the grass. With her eyes closed, the warmth of the sun on her upturned face and the smells of nature all around her, anything was possible. She felt so free.

  And sometimes, sometimes, she opened her eyes and imagined that she could see a sort of door; a portal to another universe. It might be behind a nearby rock, or under the spreading branches of a tree. But if she could get there in time, before the portal closed, and slip through just right, she’d be gone.

  She hadn’t realized until later that her parents’ move had been a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage. Two people who shouldn’t have ever gotten married in the first place, who’d wanted wildly different things out of life. Her mother should’ve let her father move back to Saint John. Donna liked Scarborough; Scarborough had a shopping mall now.

  Owen was like his daughter: he needed space. Belle hadn’t realized how much space she’d needed until, gazing out the window at this strange new world, she felt a knot in her chest begin to loosen. A knot she hadn’t even realized was there. At least not consciously. All these years she’d never connected her need to escape, her constant feeling of constriction, with something so simple. She’d resigned herself to living in the city a long time ago. There were no ballet companies in Bailey’s Mistake.

  But then, after that dream had ended…she hadn’t known what to do. Instead of Juilliard in New York, she’d gone to another prestigious school in a different city. A city as choked with people and smells as any city on earth, the traffic and the yelling and the urgency never-ending. It had never occurred to her that she could move. Besides, where would she move to?

  But this, this felt like finally escaping through one of those portals. Portals she’d known, even as she’d wished her hardest otherwise, were only imaginary. And yet had still prayed for.

  In northern Maine, and in Nova Scotia, there was lots of wide open space. But it was untamed and, in the case of virgin forest, often impenetrable. Around her now were acres and acres of land carefully cultivated to look untamed. But she could spot foot paths wending through the trees, and even the undergrowth was beautiful. Late blooming astilbe formed a vibrant carpet of purple and pink beneath the falling leaves. She’d never seen anything like it; only in her dreams had she imagined such a place.

  And then she saw the house.

  “We’re here,” Ash said.

  Belle’s attention had been transfixed on her window. Now she looked up, directly in front of her.

  At a castle.

  It was a bizarre and beautiful mix of half timbering, Disney-esque turrets and the sort of lavish carving she associated with the Victorian era. Round, impossibly complex l’oeil de boeuf windows winked at her from under broad eaves. The roofline was Tudor in places, while the turrets were topped with graceful onion domes. Each sported a finial as tall as a grown man, pointing straight up toward the heavens.

  The car entered a circular drive and pulled up at the entrance to some sort of huge courtyard. At the far side of the courtyard, a half round ornamental garden enclosed a fountain set against the castle wall. The fountain hadn’t yet been drained for the season and water trickled into a broad basin filled with lilies.

  “There’s no point in running,” Ash remarked, his tone conversational. “There’s nowhere to go.”

  “But what if I want to?”

  “You’d be doing it just to prove a point,” he replied. “A point that you’ve already made, I might add, quite successfully. Ergo, you lose nothing by not losing yourself in the woods. Trust me, your compliance won’t result in the mistaken belief—on anyone’s part—that you’ve accepted your circumstances. But it will save you pain.”

  The door opened, and Ash got out. A minute later he opened her door and offered her his hand. She studied it for a minute, uncertain of what she should do. She didn’t want his help. But he was right: being difficult to prove a point would only sap her energy. And perhaps make him mad, neither of which she wanted.

  Placing her hand in his, she let him help her out of the car. She stood next to him, staring up at the massive pile of architectural contradictions that was his home. Contradictions that jarred the eye, but that somehow worked regardless.

  “Would you like a tour?” he asked.

  She blinked. “A…tour?” she ventured.

  “What?”

  “Well I thought….” She trailed off, uncertain. Once again, this hadn’t been what she’d expected. He’d kept her continually off balance since the previous night, and her mind reeled.

  “You thought I’d lead you straight to the dungeon?”

  She chewed her lip. That had been what she’d thought. After all, why purchase a woman if not to abuse her? People didn’t purchase people to go on tours with them, or to eat plum dumplings with them. As gracious a façade as her captor put up, Belle was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. She was keenly aware of the fact that she had not even one stitch of clothes, and that identifying marks were still written on her thigh in grease pencil.

  “I’ll take you on a tour,” he said, “and then I’ll show you to your room.”

  FIFTEEN

  He
r room?

  He offered her his arm. After a confused minute, she slipped her hand through his elbow. She was still holding the coat closed with her other hand, and afraid at any moment that she’d expose herself. Turning, he saw this. His lips quirked into an almost-smile. Releasing her, he turned and stood in front of her. Gently, but firmly, he pried her hand free.

  “The miracle of the coat,” he told her, “is that it has buttons.”

  Deftly, he began closing them for her. His hands were soft and free of calluses, the hands of someone who had never done manual labor, but surprisingly strong. From an observer’s standpoint, the tableau must look strange indeed: a parody of how a mother might suit up a child for a trip outdoors, reassuring him that he’d have fun with his friends as she made sure that he was warm.

  He stepped back and straightened. Buttoned, the coat closed to almost mid-thigh. “Now take my arm properly,” he instructed.

  She did.

  The courtyard was bounded on two sides by the castle itself. Behind her stretched the drive and to her right was a broad walk leading to the front door. Above her, massive bay windows loomed. The bright sun reflecting off the glass made it impossible to tell if anyone was watching her from inside. Still, her skin crawled. She felt watched.

  He led her, not to the front door but to the back of the courtyard. On either side of the fountain garden was an arched pass-through, what in medieval times would have been used for defense against intruders. A grate was dropped on either side and, trapped, the intruders were annihilated. Glancing up, she half expected to see murder holes.

  But all she saw was smooth stone.

  Seconds later they were back outside again, the sunlight smarting in her eyes and making her blink. She paused, reorienting herself. And then, “oh. Oh.”

  He walked her to the edge of the colonnade, an enormous structure that stretched almost the entire back length of the castle. It appeared to have been carved from some species of white marble and looked like a place where a nervous woman might lose her glass slipper.

  “The colonnade was added when the palace was remodeled in the 1800’s. It was meant to host outdoor balls, or to provide seating for the adults as they looked out over moonlit picnics. Which were, for awhile, quite the rage for introducing young lovers.”

  The formal gardens stretched away into acre after acre of rolling meadows, and beyond them rose the mountains. The Carpathian Mountains, those must be. There was no other sign of habitation, of other human beings sharing this corner of the world with them, although there must be. A place this large didn’t run itself. Couldn’t. There must be invisible servants, somewhere. Perhaps watching them right now. The skin on the back of her neck crawled again. She was truly in the middle of nowhere.

  “The last renovation, before mine, was in 1883. When I bought the place, I added such modern novelties as electrical outlets. I fell in love with the mountains when I was here on a business trip, and purchased five hundred square miles that included this castle. I have a small private security force, some of which live on the grounds, as well as a domestic staff.

  “The castle,” he continued, as he led her across the colonnade, “has been everything from a private residence to an artist’s commune to a military base. Given its state of disrepair, its previous owners were quite eager to part with it. And while much of the reconstructive work has been completed since then, parts of the place are still uninhabitable.” He paused, staring out at the world beyond. “This place been mine for five years now, but I don’t think I’ve spent more than six months’ time within its walls combined.”

  “An expensive hobby,” Belle found herself replying, her arm still in his, and then immediately regretted her words.

  But his response surprised her. He didn’t appear offended, or upset. If anything, he was amused. “Yes,” he agreed. “But a castle in this part of the world costs the same as a flat in the upper east side and maintenance is quite a bit less.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s an issue of supply and demand. No one wants a castle.”

  They went inside. A place like this must have a hundred rooms, each of them stunning. Despite having, as Ash had put it, a place for every useless purpose, Belle found none of the rooms she saw useless. Each corner was a revelation, with its astonishing carved detail. There was even a hunting trophy room. She lost track of the salons, tea rooms, morning rooms…every hour of the day seemed to have its own separate room.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “It’s beautiful…beyond beautiful…but,” she added, “it’s hard to picture anyone feeling at home here.” She thought about what she was trying to say. She imagined that he’d grown up in a place like this, or at least closer to this than where she’d grown up. “In Maine,” she continued, “we had a manufactured home. Model MR-3, a double wide that sat on a concrete foundation instead of being hitched to a trailer.”

  They’d stopped before a window, an enormous thing that looked out on the inner courtyard. He was staring at her. She wondered if he knew what a double wide was. “I liked it. It was warm in winter, and my room had a walk-in closet. Manufactured homes are a lot nicer than people think.”

  She watched a crow flutter to ground on the flagstones, and start to eat something. A second later another crow arrived, and they began fighting. “We had one living room, which was also our dining room—a great room, in middle class architectural parlance, sort of like how government housing is always named things like estates. Makes it sound better than it is.”

  “I see.”

  “But…we were happy there. Happy enough.” Until they weren’t, anymore.

  “But the castle feels cold.”

  “Yes.”

  “Most likely because I’ve had someone else furnish it. And I haven’t been here when most of the work has been done, although I approved the plans.” He walked over to the fireplace. It, like the rest of the room, was built on a grand scale. And this was a comparatively small room. What in palace terms qualified as a cozy space. It might fit only half of Belle’s house. The fireplace, like much else, was marble: this time a warm, honeyed gold.

  “What do you do?” she asked. “How is it that you can live here?”

  He rested his hand against the mantelpiece. “I exploit natural resources.”

  She laughed, in spite of herself.

  He turned. “What?”

  “That’s…refreshingly honest,” she said.

  “I am. Honest.” That unreadable expression was back, as he studied her. “And I value honesty in others, despite what you might think. Beauty fades and money can be lost, but truth is forever. I want—I need—truth in my life.”

  “Beauty and money. Spoken like someone who’s always had both.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Only someone who’s always been both handsome and rich could speak of losing either one so casually. Because you don’t know what it’s like, to go without.”

  “You find me handsome?” His tone was strange.

  She blushed, and turned toward the window.

  She felt suddenly, acutely conscious of the fact that she had no clothes and he was staring at her. That he’d seen her naked. This wasn’t the direction she’d envisioned the conversation going. At all. But, just like they had before, in the car, they’d entered a realm that was strangely intimate.

  After one person had bought another, she supposed they had no secrets.

  “I….” She felt awkward, her conversation stilted. She didn’t know how she was meant to respond. “You’re not…you know you’re attractive,” she managed in a small voice. Which he did; people like him always did. They traded on their looks, to get what they wanted.

  “And yet you despise me.”

  She didn’t respond. Instead, she found herself studying the design on the nearby table. She traced her fingers over the inlay, a repeating pattern of loops and swirls.

  “It’s called pietra dura,” he said, from behind her. S
he held very still; she hadn’t realized he’d moved. “Hard stone. The technique of using cut and fitted, highly polished pieces of stone to create a design. Marble, mostly. Sometimes semiprecious stones, like lapis lazuli.”

  “Oh.”

  He was very close to her now. She could feel his breath on her neck and just the faintest brush of his jacket. His fingers were next to hers on the table. “Beauty doesn’t matter,” she whispered, frozen in place.

  “Yes it does. It’s an extraordinary thing, to bring beauty into the world.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she breathed.

  “I find you beautiful.”

  Belle shut her eyes. She felt his fingers on her shoulder, his touch hardening into a possessive grip. She waited. His mouth was very near her ear. For a long time, neither of them moved. Dust motes danced in the light. A bird called. Twenty-four hours ago she’d been in her dorm room, working on a paper. Her bed had been spread with note cards, and she’d been both bored and exhausted. She’d taken a nap before going out with Charlotte; she’d known that if she hadn’t, she’d never make it through the night.

  How little she’d known.

  “I…I have class on Monday,” she faltered. Crazily, part of her worried about the fact that she might miss it. Might? She doubted that he’d release her, because he hadn’t realized she was in school. Her priorities were clearly not his priorities.

  “You don’t need a degree,” he said. “You’re here to serve me.”

  “But—I do.”

  “Don’t tell me that the city states of ancient Sumer are your passion,” he said with surprising vehemence, “because I know they’re not. I look at you and I see a woman who’s buried her passions. Who’s afraid of them.”

  “You don’t know me,” she protested, still barely above a whisper. His words hit too close to the mark, and she didn’t want this. She didn’t want him to know her.