Servant of the Crown (The Crown of Tremontane Book 1)

by Melissa McShane

  “I don’t think less of him for having made a few mistakes,” Alison said. “And I don’t know that I am such a perfect person as to only deserve someone else who’s perfect.”

  “Oh, Alison,” the Dowager said. “You are exactly the sort of woman I wish Anthony would fall in love with. I don’t suppose you…you are friends, you say…that you might someday…?”

  She remembered how serious Anthony had looked that night three weeks ago, apologizing to her, and how his face was transformed when he laughed, and felt terribly uncomfortable. “We’re just friends, Milady,” she said. “But I think your son is deserving of a good woman, whomever she may turn out to be.”

  The Dowager smiled and patted Alison’s hand. “Thank you, my dear,” she said. “You should go and fix your hair. Forgive me, but it’s terribly frizzy today.”

  Alison returned to her own rooms and let Belle finish her toilette, keeping a blush off her cheeks through willpower alone. Romantically involved with Anthony. She barely dared call him friend, for heaven’s sake. It probably should have occurred to her that Anthony’s reputation as a romancer of women would lead others to think she was just another of his conquests. The thought made her feel terribly uncomfortable. They were together often, and she didn’t think he was squiring anyone else around town, so maybe that made sense. Well, that and the fact that people tended to assume physical beauty was enough on its own to compel someone to fall in love. It was true Anthony was the most handsome man she’d ever seen, but she’d learned from her past mistakes, and if she were going to fall in love with someone, she wanted that person to be kind and honest and funny and share her interests, and handsome was just a bonus. He’s kind and funny and he shares your interests, her fickle inner voice told her, and he was more honest than anyone you’ve ever met, after the play, and she grabbed her book and flung herself into the sitting room chair. She was going to ruin everything if she couldn’t keep her thoughts under control. And she barely knew him. And she wasn’t interested in falling in love, anyway.

  Someone knocked on the door, then opened it without waiting for a response. “Sorry to interrupt,” Anthony said, “but if you aren’t doing anything important, I thought you might like to tour the palace. It’s more interesting than it sounds.”

  “I’d like that,” she said, setting her book on the arm of her chair, then clutching it to keep it from falling off the padded, curved surface. “I was just reading.”

  “Did you borrow a book from the Royal Library, then?” Anthony lounged in the doorway while she found a pair of shoes. She’d never seen him dressed so informally before, in a buttoned, collarless white shirt with loose gray trousers instead of his formal fitted frock coat and satin knee breeches.

  “No, they don’t loan them out. This one came from my library at home. It’s an old favorite.”

  “Why would you read a book more than once? Or is that a stupid question? I’m not much of a reader.”

  They crossed the white-carpeted antechamber and Alison waited for Anthony to hold the door for her; it wasn’t a custom she really cared about, but it seemed to matter to him, so she never made an issue of it. “It’s not a stupid question,” she said. “I’ve always thought it’s because you’re a different person, every time you re-read a book, and you learn things your earlier self wouldn’t have noticed or wouldn’t have cared about. Or sometimes it’s just because the story is an old favorite, and it’s a comforting reminder of good things.”

  “I can understand that. There are places I go back to, more than once, because of what they mean to me. I’ll have to show you some of them today.” He glanced down at her, and added, “You know, you look very different without—” His mouth closed abruptly, and his cheeks went a little pink.

  “Without what? You have the strangest expression.”

  “I was going to say ‘without your dress’.”

  Alison started laughing. “You—” she began, and couldn’t say anything else. “I don’t know what to say to that,” she finally said. “I’m so glad you didn’t keep that thought to yourself.”

  “I’m glad you weren’t offended at it,” he said. “Obviously I meant you look very different in, shall we say, civilian clothes.”

  “I dress this way all the time, at home. I think I’ve worn more gowns in the last two months than I did all last year. Where are we going?”

  “Out to the southwest wing, first. That’s all guest quarters, but they’ve had a dual role as unofficial museums since before the Norths came to power—possibly before the Valants, too. Personally, I think we should put most of it in an actual museum, but that’s a complicated project with a low priority. Through here.” He pushed open a door black with age, leaning heavily on it to make it move, and waved Alison through.

  The door opened onto a pillared, vaulted corridor tiled in squares the color of old blood, two feet on a side, some of them cracked, with black mortar dividing them as if someone had outlined them in ink. Marble pillars rose to support arches curving across the copper ceiling in which was reflected the wavy outlines of the floor tiles. Pots more than waist-high to Alison sat at the bases of the pillars, still filled with earth that smelled stale and dead and bare of plants. The smell of cedar rose from doors lining the hall between the pillars, each knob made of faceted crystal that looked dull with dust, as if they hadn’t been touched in a hundred years. Light came from Devices set into the capitals of the columns, shedding a dim light that was probably filtered through more dust. “How are they still glowing?” Alison said.

  “Someone comes in here once a year to renew the source,” said Anthony. “Apparently that’s all they do. Housekeeping is supposed to keep the entire palace clean, but it seems they’re not as diligent in areas they know aren’t being used. Hard to imagine this place used to be thronged with people. Now that the royal family is reduced to just Zara and me, it echoes. And I don’t even live here.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I have a townhouse. Much more convenient for parties and card games and the like.” He put his hand on a doorknob, made a face, and wiped his palm on his trousers. “I promise it gets nicer.”

  “I’ve never been bothered by a little dust.”

  Anthony opened the door and showed her into a room almost entirely filled with a four-poster bed. Its pink counterpane and pillows showed their original color of deep magenta in their creases. “I thought this might interest you,” he said. “Landrik Howes stayed here for six months, supposedly while he was writing Death and the Countess. So doubly interesting, though I doubt you’d like Death to come for you.”

  Alison moved around the bed and ran her fingers along the dresser’s narrow surface, then opened the top drawer. It was empty. “That’s one of his most famous plays,” she said. “Do you suppose the Library has the folio?”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible. Come, let me show you something else.”

  For someone who didn’t live in the palace, Anthony was remarkably knowledgeable about it, as if he’d spent a great deal of time roaming its halls. The southeast wing truly was a museum, filled with marble and olivewood statuary and gold-framed paintings Alison agreed would be better off on public display somewhere. There were bathrooms with sunken tubs the size of a small country and tiny nooks with windows that looked out over unexpected parts of the palace and disused ballrooms with mirrored walls that looked as if they went on forever. One room held rows of green shelves upon which sat cloisonné urns with golden lids. “Former royal pets,” Anthony said, and Alison made a face. “Don’t look like that. It was quite the tradition, years ago. They have nameplates and little pictures to say what kind of animal it was.”

  Alison looked closely. “Someone had a pet rat?” she said.

  “And someone else had a pet crow. To each his or her own, I suppose.”

  They walked a long, narrow corridor with round windows near the ceiling that was lined with portraits of the kings and queens of Tremontane, all the way back to the semi-myth
ical Kraathen of Ehuren, who’d united the three warring tribes and made the first bond between man and ungoverned heaven. Alison stopped for a long time in front of Queen Zara’s portrait. “She looks so young,” she said.

  “Zara’s always looked young for her age,” Anthony said. “It was a struggle for her to command respect from the Council after our father’s death because most of them still thought of her as the child they’d known all those years. But she’s strong and ruthless. She really hates this painting. Says it makes her think of a memorial, as if she’s already dead.”

  “It’s a good likeness, though.”

  “Very. Shall we go? There’s one last thing I wanted to show you.”

  They passed the wide central corridor that led to the north wing and ended up in a familiar hallway of dark, dimly-lit stone. “I’ve already been here,” Alison said.

  “I was hoping we could see a little more,” Anthony said, and opened the scriptorium door for her. It was far emptier than she’d seen it before, with only two people reading at the desks and a lone apprentice sharpening pencils at the end of the librarian’s desk. The skeletal man—Bancroft, she really ought to call him Bancroft no matter how objectionable he was—was nowhere in sight. A librarian Alison knew as Baxter left off rummaging in the cupboards and came around the desk to meet them halfway to the catalog.

  “Excuse me. The Countess and I would like to see the Library,” Anthony told Baxter. The man glanced from Alison to Anthony and back again.

  “Not allowed to see the Library,” he said. “No one goes in but the librarians.”

  “Does that include you?” Alison asked. Baxter nodded.

  “Then I’m sure if you accompany us it will be all right,” Anthony said.

  Baxter looked at each of them in turn again. “Don’t think so,” he said, but he sounded uncertain.

  “What seems to be the problem?” Bancroft said from behind them. Alison cursed mentally. Someone ought to put a bell on him.

  “Your assistant was about to show us the Library,” Anthony said.

  “He was certainly not. No one sees the Library.”

  “Master Bancroft,” Anthony said, his voice quiet but intent, “I recognize your authority here. I also recognize that in a sense I own this Library. The lady and I simply wish to see the room. We have no desire to handle your collection or to intrude further on your time. I don’t see that this is an unreasonable request. Can you not spare five minutes?”

  “Your Highness, you may be this Library’s sponsor—although I think it is more truthful to say your sister is—but I am, as you say, responsible for it. I cannot set policy aside for anyone, even you. Even for the Queen, should she ask it, which she never would because she respects my authority. If there is a book you would like to see, you may request it. Otherwise, I suggest you go elsewhere for your entertainment.” He glared at Alison; she could clearly hear him thinking No question who put him up to this. She glared back at him. He was obnoxious and rude and had really poor personal hygiene, and maybe she could have put up with the latter if they were friends, but that was never going to happen and she was tired of being polite.

  Anthony looked as if he was going to erupt. Alison laid her hand on his arm, saying nothing, and he took a deep breath and stepped back. “Thank you for your time,” he said, and turned away.

  He seethed all the way down the hall until Alison grasped his arm and made him stop. “You see how frustrating it is to deal with him,” she said. “I should have let you hit him.”

  He looked at her, startled. “I wasn’t going to hit him,” he said. “I was going to start shouting. And then I was going to take his key away from him and open the damned door.”

  She covered her mouth to suppress a giggle. “Oh, that would have been lovely. And the Queen would have been furious with you.”

  “I don’t care. It was supposed to be a surprise for you. I mean, I’ve been in there before, and I can tell you all about it, but I knew you’d appreciate seeing it better than I did when I was fourteen.”

  A warm tangle of emotions, pleasure and happiness and a pang of sympathy for him, filled her heart. “Anthony,” she said, “that is without question the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. Even if it didn’t work out.”

  He made an exasperated face. “Alison, I don’t understand why he won’t let anyone in. The last Royal Librarian—no, the one before the skeleton’s predecessor—he didn’t have any problems with it. I was even required to see it. I think it’s strange.”

  “I think there are a lot of strange things about that Library.” She took his arm. “Tell me what it looks like.”

  “Big. Dark.” He grinned at her. “I was fourteen. I don’t remember much except that I was thinking about the new horse Father had bought for me and how I could be riding it if I didn’t have to look at a bunch of boring books.”

  She laughed. “You must remember more than that.”

  “The windows are high, and I don’t know how recently they’d been cleaned. It smelled like old paper and dust. And the shelves seemed to go on for miles.”

  “Wait—dust? Not dampness? Because the few books I’ve been able to handle have felt a little…it’s hard to explain the sensation, but damp is a decent approximation.”

  “No. I remember because the Librarian said these were the perfect conditions to keep books, that dampness would ruin them. They have a Device that keeps it that way. Or should do.”

  “True.” So what had changed in the last, how old was Anthony now, the last nine years?

  “It was very tidy. I remember asking if he, the Librarian, knew where everything was, and he said he had a system.”

  “I wonder what it is. Oh, right, if I could go inside I’d be able to find out! Don’t make that face, Anthony, that wasn’t directed at you. Bancroft has his head so far up his ass he’s practically looking out his own mouth.”

  Anthony let out a choked laugh. “Language, Countess!”

  “Sorry. It’s a measure of how frustrated I am with him. How did he even get appointed in the first place?”

  “You don’t know? The Scholia chooses the Royal Librarian and sends him to us when the previous one retires. It’s always a him, too. I don’t know why.”

  “Then it sounds as if the Scholia has their collective heads up their—”

  “By heaven, Alison, you can be crude when you want to be, can’t you?”

  She sighed. “I know. It’s one of my many flaws.”

  “I haven’t been keeping track of them, but I don’t think there are all that many.”

  “You haven’t known me long enough.”

  They had reached the hall to the Dowager’s apartment, but Anthony kept walking. “Are you ready for dinner?” he said.

  “I’m hungry, but at the risk of sounding uncivil, you didn’t say anything about dinner or I would have changed.”

  “Oh. Yes. Well, I meant to ask you if you would have dinner with Zara and me, but I suppose I forgot.”

  Alison felt herself go blotchy. “If you’d said that, I would have changed into something nice.”

  “No need to be embarrassed. Zara’s likely to be as dressed down as I am. Come, you don’t want to go back and eat with all those chattering women, do you?”

  Alison considered. “I suppose not. But you’ll have to carry the conversation.”

  “Don’t be so sure. Zara is good at drawing people out.”

  The east wing bore the marks of the Dowager’s decorating taste. A large open space carpeted in a familiar blinding white was filled with couches upholstered in lemon yellow and spring green, outlined in gilt, and mirrors caught what little sunlight there was on that overcast autumn day and spread it around to make the room cheerful, if a little overdone and uncomfortably padded. “It’s rather ornate for my taste,” Anthony said as if he’d read her mind, “but Zara doesn’t care enough to change it. Usually it’s the Consort who does.”

  “Didn’t the Queen…I’d heard she was thinking of m
arriage.”

  “Hah. Any time she meets more than once with a single man aged fifteen to fifty, that rumor goes around again. Stefan Argyll’s a good man, but not nearly strong enough a personality to match Zara. Here, this is the dining room.”

  The dining room looked as if the Dowager hadn’t ever set foot in it. It was paneled in dark oak with black moldings, and a floral carpet in tones of rust red and ochre covered most of the hardwood floor. The dining table, twice as long as the Dowager’s, was set for three, but Zara wasn’t there. Anthony held Alison’s chair for her exactly as if they were dining formally, then sat down across from her. “Don’t worry, we’re just a little early,” he said, putting his napkin in his lap. “I hope you’re not too hungry, because despite my sister’s instructions, chef won’t send the food out unless she’s here.”

  “Which I am, now,” the Queen said, coming out of a concealed door behind the table. “It’s good to see you, Countess. Thank you for joining us.” She was dressed even less formally than her brother, which eased Alison’s mind.

  “Thank you for inviting me, your Majesty.”

  “You will call me Zara, Alison Quinn. Don’t make me make it a royal command.”

  “Very well, Zara.” She cast an embarrassed look at Anthony, who looked amused.

  “I wish I’d thought of that. It took me weeks to get her to call me by my name,” he said to his sister.

  “You aren’t as ruthless as I am, Anthony.” She sat back to allow the server to set out the first course, then helped herself. “We don’t stand on ceremony for these dinners, so please serve yourself whatever looks appetizing.”

  “Thank you, your—Zara.”

  Zara glanced at her brother. “You weren’t joking about how formal she is.”

  “Would you both stop talking about me as if I weren’t here?” Alison said, annoyed. The Queen looked at her. Her mouth twitched just a little. Alison stared, then began to laugh. “You are ruthless, aren’t you?”