“Just a minute,” Anthony said from his dressing room, and soon he emerged wearing nothing but a loose pair of cotton trousers, his hair a little ruffled as if he’d just pulled his shirt off over his head. The smile he gave her was wicked.
“I think I need some help taking this off,” she said, plucking at her bodice.
“Not the skirt?”
She reached inside the waist and pulled at the drawstrings, undid the hooks. The skirt and her petticoats fell to the floor. “No, that I can do myself,” she said, smiling demurely.
Anthony put his hands around her waist and held her up, turning in a slow circle. “Don’t think that smile fools me, Alison North,” he said, and she laughed to hear her new name on his lips. He set her down gently and drew her close for a long, wonderful kiss. “Let me help you with that,” he whispered, and in no time the bodice and the detested corset lay on the floor, and she stood before him clad only in her chemise and drawers.
She leaned up against him, their bodies touching the whole length of them, and laid her cheek against his bare chest. “Say it,” she said.
“Say what?”
She put his hand on her waist and took his other hand in hers, and danced him around the room. “I know you remember, however you claim otherwise,” she said. “I want to hear you say it.”
“Oh,” he said, and laughed, then bent his dark head to hers. “You are beautiful,” he whispered in her ear. “But I’ll wager you’re even more beautiful with your clothes off.”
She moved her hand to the waistband of his trousers. “I’ll wager you are too,” she said. “Let’s find out.”
Read on for a bonus short story—
“Long Live the Queen”
Long Live the Queen
She’d had a lifetime to learn how to school her face to reveal only the emotions she chose. Now Zara North wished she had learned how not to control herself, how to run screaming and laughing and sobbing through the corridors of the palace without fear of how it might affect the hundreds of thousands of Tremontanan citizens under her care. If her face showed no emotion today, it was because she was numb from the revelation Dr. Trevellian had quietly, inexorably handed her the way one might offer an unwelcome legacy from a long-dead relative.
It had to be a relative, didn’t it? These things, these…the doctor had called it a gift, and maybe it was to him, but to Zara it was nothing but a curse, deadly to everyone except herself. But they had to come from somewhere, didn’t they? Which of the faces in the long gallery two flights above had secretly harbored this, this infection, handed it off to child after child until it had sprung into full poisonous flower in her?
There was no one she could tell. Dr. Trevellian was a good man, but he wasn’t a confidant except in medical matters, and this had gone so far beyond a simple medical matter that Zara went even more numb just thinking about it. She wished she could tell herself that she didn’t know what to do, but Zara prided herself on her cold, analytical nature, and the solution to her problem was all too clear. Clear, but impossible for her to manage alone. She had to tell someone. The right someone.
She reversed her course and made her way down two flights of stairs to the Library. Alison had been right to insist on its being moved. In only five years the collection had grown to match the dimensions of the new room that rose three stories high, with wide balconies at each new story holding shelf after shelf of books. Unfortunately for Zara, Alison wasn’t there. A stammering apprentice directed her back to the east wing.
Alison reclined on a sofa in the great drawing room with her arm over her eyes, her two children chasing each other around it, shouting words Zara couldn’t make out. They broke off their game when they saw Zara and threw themselves at her, Sylvester jumping up and down for her attention, Jeffrey flinging his arms around her knees. “Auntie Zara, we’re playing horses!” Sylvester shouted. Jeffrey made a sound very much like a horse whinnying. “I always win ’cause I’m the biggest!”
“Want to win!” Jeffrey demanded. “Auntie make me win!”
“Children, leave Aunt Zara alone,” Alison said without moving. “Come here now.” Both boys detached themselves from Zara and ran back to their mother, and Zara felt a pang deep inside at their smooth faces, their agile limbs. I will never have this. I never wanted children and now I would give anything to have my own baby screaming defiance at me.
“I thought it would be nice to spend the afternoon with them,” Alison said, not moving her arm, “but I didn’t count on this awful headache. Children, why don’t you play horses in the dining room. Sylvester, if I hear your brother complaining about how you never let him win, you and I will have a race, and the loser will go to bed early for a week.”
“Not fair! You’re bigger!”
“That’s the point. Off you go, now, before Ellen comes for you.”
The boys racketed off down the hall, neighing and whinnying. Alison let her arm flop to one side and stared at the ceiling. “I love my boys, but sometimes I think I was not cut out to be a mother.”
“You are a wonderful mother,” Zara said, more intensely than she’d meant. Alison sat up and stared at her, concerned.
“It’s mid-afternoon. I’ve never known you to leave your offices before six o’clock. What’s wrong?”
Zara turned and walked toward the empty fireplace, turned again and came back to stand behind a chair near Alison’s sofa. She closed her hands on its back until her knuckles went white and the tendons stood out on the backs of her hands. Head bowed, she said, “There is so much wrong that it would be faster to tell you what is right. If there is such a thing.”
“Zara, you’re frightening me. Did something happen to Anthony?”
She shook her head. “He is well. I am well. I’ve never been more perfectly healthy in my life.”
“I see Dr. Trevellian finally healed your leg. Did he say why it took so long? Granted that two days is better than however long it takes a broken leg to heal on its own, but I’ve never known his healing to be so slow.”
Zara raised her head and regarded her sister-in-law. “What I am about to tell you cannot go further than the two of us, do you understand?” she said fiercely.
“What do you mean? Zara, you don’t expect me to keep whatever this is secret from Anthony, do you? I can’t do that!”
“I don’t mean Anthony. This touches him as much as anyone. But no one else, understand?”
“Zara—” Alison whispered.
“Swear it, Alison!”
“I swear. I—sweet ungoverned heaven, you’re crying. You never cry.”
Zara reached up and felt the damp trail streaking her cheek. She shook her head as if denying it would make the tears vanish. “Dr. Trevellian didn’t heal me. I healed myself.”
Alison’s mouth made an O of astonishment. “But…you can’t possibly…Zara, you can’t have inherent magic.”
“Apparently I can.”
Alison looked quickly around the room as if afraid someone had come in without them noticing. “But…healing…surely no one could object to that? Even if you are the Queen.”
She felt her head shaking from side to side in negation, had to clasp her hands hard together to keep them from shaking too. “Not like Dr. Trevellian. Alison, I have never been sick a day in my life. I never bruise, I never have headaches. My body heals itself with no direction from me.”
“Zara, to me that sounds like a good magical ability for a ruler to have.”
Her eyes ached with tears she was afraid to shed, afraid if once she started crying she wouldn’t stop. “Do you know what the doctor told me this morning? He said that aging is like hundreds of tiny injuries that happen every day, deep in the blood and bone where we can’t see them. We’re born dying, Alison, everyone except me, because my body heals itself over and over again, all those tiny wounds we don’t even—” She covered her face with her hands and choked on a sob. Crying hurt. That was why she never did it. The unknown ancestor who’d bequeathed
this dubious gift to her had taken her dignity along with the rest of her life.
She felt Alison tentatively put her arms around her. How closed off was she, that the people she cared most about were afraid even to touch her? She clung to Alison and shuddered with dry, tearless sobs.
“I understand,” Alison murmured in her ear. “You’d live forever. Be Queen forever. It would be a nightmare.”
And that was why she could tell Alison; she was quick to see the ramifications of any problem. The eternal reign of an undying Queen—what a disaster for Tremontane. She gently removed Alison’s arms from around her shoulders and wiped her eyes. “The doctor doesn’t think I’ll live forever. My ability isn’t perfect. It took two days for my healing to do what Dr. Trevellian’s could have put right in a few hours. At any rate, I will still age, but far too slowly.” She didn’t tell Alison the other thing the doctor had told her, the cruel reality that her body would see any child she might conceive as an infection, and destroy it. That humiliation was too great for her to share with anyone. “But it would mean the end of the North family sooner than that, as soon as it became clear that I wasn’t aging. Once the citizens of Tremontane knew their royal family was tainted by inherent magic…it might not mean our deaths, but it would certainly mean a demand for me to step down as Queen, let the Crown pass to another family. I think you can see the problem there.”
“Civil war,” Alison said. “None of the provincial rulers has a good claim to rule. Belladry Chadwick and Fern Harcourt would certainly be at each other’s throats. You’re right, no one can know about this.” There were tears in her eyes as well. “So what are you going to do?”
“What I have to,” Zara said. “I will have to die.”
“It’s going to be complicated,” Alison said, “and require perfect timing, and we have to control every detail. That’s why we came to you.”
Davis Doyle sat behind his desk, regarding them both with wide, unblinking eyes. He lifted the bottle of whiskey as if to pour a measure into his cup, looked at it as if he didn’t know what it was or why it was in his hand, and set it down again. “I,” he began, then shook his head. “You want—Alison, this is insane. It can’t possibly work.”
“It will work, Mister Doyle,” Zara said. “Alison and Anthony will make it happen. The doctor will make it look real. You need only provide the setting, something I expect you are good at given your occupation.”
“We’ve given this a lot of thought,” Anthony said, “and this really is the only way, Doyle.”
Doyle looked around at his office in the Waxwold Theater. “The building is no problem,” he said, “so long as the excuse for the new construction holds. There are just so many things that could go wrong…are you sure about this, your Majesty?”
“The alternative is that my death is real,” Zara said. “I cannot quite bring myself to do that. An assassination, on the other hand, will be very convincing.”
Doyle sighed. “We’ll construct the trap door in box 3,” he said, “try to keep it quiet, but if anyone starts nosing around we can give out that the royal family wants a private way in and out. You sure you don’t want the assassin captured? He’d be guilty of attempted murder even if you did hire him to do the job.”
Alison and Anthony exchanged glances. “We’re sure,” Alison said. “Just have it come out near the back door, just past the facilities.”
“I’ll do what I can. The Waxwold has a lot of extra space under the boxes because of the way we had to put in the stairs, but it will be crowded—sweet heaven, I can’t believe I just said that. As if crowding were the issue.”
“Thank you, Mister Doyle,” Zara said, extending her hand. After a moment’s hesitation, he took it. “I wish there were some way to repay you for this. I know I’m asking a lot of you.”
“I don’t think I want repaying for engineering my sovereign monarch’s murder,” Doyle said. “Allie, Tony, I’ll let you know when the construction’s complete, and you can show your assassin how it works.” He sighed. “I don’t want to know where you’re going to find anyone who’s willing to go along with this.”
“No, you don’t,” Alison said.
“You can’t possibly be as calm as you seem,” Anthony said to Alison, who was standing at the front of box 3, waving at people she knew.
“I’m not,” she replied. “I’m trying not to think about what comes next. And being happy that I’m not wearing a corset. Those things are horrible.”
“I ought to be the one, Alison—”
“We already determined you’re not fast enough, and everyone will be looking for you when it happens. It has to be me, Anthony.” Her voice sounded strong, but Zara could see her sister’s lips tremble, and the sick, anguished feeling she’d been carrying around all evening grew stronger. How coldblooded was she, that she could ask such a thing of Alison?
“But you shouldn’t have to.” Anthony took her hand and drew her close to his side.
“None of us should have to do any of this,” Zara said. She sat behind them, afraid if she stood the tremor in her arms and legs would be visible. She had thought three weeks would be enough time for her to become accustomed to her fate, but instead it had been like slow death. There were so many last times: her last Council meeting, her last visit with her mother—that had nearly broken her, and she had gone to the privacy of her bedroom and howled into her pillow until she was hoarse. The obliviousness of everyone around her maddened and relieved her by turns. She found herself more aware of Anthony now, of how confidently he moved and spoke, of the tenderness in his look and his voice when he addressed his wife and the joy in his eyes when he tossed Sylvester or Jeffrey into the air, both of them laughing. Was he ready for this new responsibility? Had she trained him well enough? Yes, she thought at supper—the last one—he’s ready, and it eased her burden somewhat.
Now she looked at him standing with Alison near the front of the box. His hand curled around hers casually; five years of marriage and they still acted like newlyweds. Well, they’d earned that. It eased her burden more to know she wasn’t leaving behind a Consort to mourn her. What a heartbreak that would be. She thought, briefly, Suppose that waits in my future, and quashed the thought. Time enough for planning for the future when this was all over. Dr. Trevellian had warned her that it was possible this could actually kill her; it was a chance she was willing to take for the sake of her country, but she hoped she would survive it. And then she could think about what came next.
The curtain rose and the lights went down, Alison and Anthony took their seats, and Zara made herself concentrate on the play. It was a tragedy, which was fortunate; she would have had trouble pretending to laugh in all the right places for a comedy. As it was, she barely heard the words because she was running through the plan in her head. Alison had been correct—it would require perfect timing, and they hadn’t been able to practice all the steps as they’d wanted. She clasped her hands in her lap to still their shaking and prayed to ungoverned heaven that all would be well.
Too soon, the lights came up on the intermission. Anthony stood. “It’s not too late to change the plan,” he said. “We can find a way to fake your death.”
“We’ve discussed this thoroughly,” Zara said. “I must remain convincingly dead long enough for independent witnesses to affirm my demise. Drowning is far too complicated. An accident isn’t complicated enough and could involve innocents. We tried to imitate a fatal illness, but no poison was capable of doing more than inconveniencing me. This is the only way.”
“You know an assassination could destabilize the country. What if we succeed at this only to throw the country into the very turmoil we’re trying to avoid?”
Zara took a deep breath. “I have faith in you both,” she said. “We’ve planned how to organize the search. The ‘assassin’ will be found dead at his own hand rather than face trial—you have all the evidence to prove his guilt. No one else need die over this.”
Anthony gripped the
back of his chair hard. “Zara, if this kills you….”
“Then I will go to heaven, or hell, knowing that I have caused the two people I love most immeasurable pain,” Zara said. “But if we do nothing, this family will suffer as much as the kingdom. That is the sacrifice we’re all making tonight. Please.”
Alison and Anthony exchanged glances. “There’s really no other way,” Alison said.
Anthony closed his eyes briefly. Then he took his sister’s hands and raised her to her feet so he could embrace her. “I hope it works,” he said. “Goodbye, sister.” He let her go, then offered Alison his arm. “Shall we?” he said. Then, more loudly, he said, “I think I’m in need of the facilities,” and opened the door.
“Take one of the guards,” Zara said.
“Zara, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Anthony said.
“We’ve had too many threats I have been unable to eliminate,” Zara said. “Humor me.”
“All right, sister dear.” Zara heard him say, “Lieutenant, the Queen asks that you—“to one of the pair of guards standing sentinel outside the door before it closed on his words. She began to count. They’d timed this part, Alison pacing from the box to the facilities while Zara waited and counted as well. Now, when Zara reached a count of fifty, she stood and opened the door. “Please fetch my fan from the carriage. It’s rather warm in here,” she said.
“Your Majesty, I can’t leave you unattended,” the woman said.
Zara’s throat tightened. Who knew what might happen to this guard for leaving her post tonight if Anthony couldn’t engineer a pardon for her? “It will only take a few minutes, and I will be perfectly safe,” she said. “Go now.”
The guard hesitated, but in the face of the blue-eyed North stare she had to back down. Zara shut the door, then knelt by the trap door and opened it. Seconds later Alison emerged, climbing easily through. “I couldn’t have done that in a corset,” she said quietly. She was wrapped in a dark cloak she’d left wadded up in a corner of the props room. It completely covered her blue silk gown.
Servant of the Crown (The Crown of Tremontane Book 1) Page 39