“Maybe I will,” she retorted. “Keep talking like an insubordinate servant, and I’ll certainly have you thrown in the stocks! At least it would keep you off that leg of yours!”
A disgusted noise wrenched from the back of his throat. “I have a hedge to trim,” he said again, and he yanked the door open.
“Duncan,” she suddenly called, and the slight tremor in her voice arrested his movements.
“What?” he asked sullenly. He shifted his gaze up the stairs just in time to see an anxious look chase across her face. That simple expression made him feel like a complete lout.
Alberta caught and smothered it an instant later, though. “Nothing,” she said severely. “Just… nothing. Do as you please.” Then, she turned and swept up the stairs, her back rigid in her retreat.
Duncan watched her disappear from his sight, suddenly uncertain of his own actions. He wanted to chase after her, to tell her he was sorry and beg her forgiveness.
“But I didn’t do anything wrong,” he muttered under his breath. In anger, he stalked out the door and slammed it shut behind him. Alberta was the unreasonable one, not him! She had always been the unreasonable one!
He returned to the back hedge, but his afternoon was hardly productive. It was hot and humid, and he had to take frequent rests to keep from fulfilling Alberta’s prediction of an outright collapse. Whether working or resting he could think of nothing but her. His thoughts plagued him, ate at him, until he thought he would go crazy.
“I have to get out of here,” he told Wildfire when he tended to him that evening. “I can’t take this anymore!”
The horse studied him closely as he chewed on a mouthful of oats. “What’s changed?” he finally asked.
Duncan related his encounter with Princess Bellinda in hopes that this would be explanation enough.
“If she were going to tell your secret, you would’ve seen evidence of it already,” said Wildfire. “Has anyone been treating you differently?”
“No,” he grudgingly answered. “I don’t feel like waiting around for it to happen, though.”
“We can leave now, if you’d like,” the horse told him. “That is, we can if you’re willing to chance Alberta strutting about in your armor.”
“I don’t care what she does!” cried Duncan just a little too fiercely.
Wildfire stared, silent.
“What? I don’t! She’s scheming and conniving, and—”
“—and she has been since before we arrived here,” Wildfire interrupted. “It never bothered you before.”
“I wasn’t in love with her before!” Duncan snapped. He wished he could take back the words the moment they left his mouth. He’d never spoken those feelings aloud, had done everything he could to suppress them. He shouldn’t have spoken such things to Wildfire, either. The cursed horse was lovelorn himself and needed no reminder of it.
“Have you told her?” Wildfire asked before Duncan could apologize. He seemed not the least bit surprised by the confession, which made Duncan wonder just how long he had suspected it.
“What? Of course not! She’d have my head for such impertinence!”
“Or kick you out of the castle,” said the horse. “It’s far more likely that she would send you packing than that she would do any harm to you—if she were to have you punished, her father would certainly discover who you were and reward you instead.”
“Are you suggesting that I—that I—”
“—tell her you’re in love with her? It does seem like the easiest solution to all this turmoil. She can accept or reject your feelings outright and you can stop fretting over it.”
“She would never accept those feelings from me!”
“As I’ve already said, it’s more likely that she’ll dismiss you from the castle. That’s what happened to that fellow Gilly, isn’t it? He overstepped his bounds in his infatuation. You should just tell her. Unless you don’t really want to leave,” he added speculatively.
Duncan squirmed. “It’s not that. I do want to leave.”
“Then get her to kick you out. That’s pretty much the only way you’re going to get your armor back before she’s good and ready to give it.”
He considered this idea. “Maybe I will,” he said with very little bravado. Wildfire noticed his hesitation but chose to keep quiet.
Duncan pondered the option all that night and the next day. Every time he thought about confessing directly to Princess Alberta, though, his courage withered and failed him. He just needed to squash his feelings mercilessly, he decided. He could endure his stay here so long as he kept himself busy and didn’t think about her. The moment she returned his armor, he and Wildfire would depart from Midd and never return.
He tried to enact this policy in the days that followed, but it backfired. Princess Alberta never once sent for him, but he often caught glimpses of her—through a castle window, or as she strode across the gardens to the stables, or when she walked with her sisters to their afternoon lessons. She never once glanced his direction, a testament of her indifference. Doubtless she was too busy plotting her next scheme to give him a second thought.
Meanwhile, his every attempt to divert his feelings seemed to augment them instead. He tried to focus on her domineering personality, on her imperiousness and the way she terrorized the entire castle, but to no avail. He had already seen beyond that act and knew full well why she maintained it. If she had been truly evil, it would have been another story entirely, but Duncan knew that her abrasive personality was practiced rather than natural. That knowledge cast her in a sympathetic—even endearing—light.
After a week of working and moping, he was more distracted than ever. Wildfire had lost all patience with him, had told him several times just to tell her and get it over with. Duncan had already rehearsed the conversation in his head a hundred times. Most of these ended with him being bodily thrown from the castle gates, but he trusted that Alberta would have the decency to send his armor off with him.
Under the weight of these thoughts, he was weeding along a garden path one afternoon, only to have a shadow fall across him. He looked up and discovered, unexpectedly, the former castle surgeon, Ansel.
“She wasn’t kidding,” the gruff old man said in wonder. “I told you not to do anything strenuous. I thought you had agreed.”
The “she” he referred to could only mean Alberta. Obviously she had tattled to the surgeon. “I hadn’t planned on still being here,” Duncan retorted sullenly. “I don’t have much choice in my chores as long as I’m still at the castle.”
Ansel grunted. “Well, leave off and come with me. I’m here to check the state of your injury. Have you been taking your medicines like I told you?”
“Yes,” he said. The last thing he wanted was an infection in his leg, so he had been quite religious about medicating the wound.
Another grunt escaped Ansel’s lips, but this one was slightly more approving than the last. “Come along, then,” he commanded, and he led the way back to the castle. Duncan trudged behind him to submit himself for examination.
Ansel took him to a small room in the servants’ quarters and performed the task in silence. “It’s healing better than I expected, considering everything you’ve reportedly been doing,” he finally pronounced. “The catgut has started to absorb into your skin, but it’ll take several weeks more before it’s fully gone. You’re going to have quite the scar.”
“It’s not where anyone can see it,” Duncan replied carelessly.
“That’s no excuse for putting it under any strain,” the surgeon replied with a severity that surprised him. “I think you’re past any risk of infection, but you should still give your body a proper chance to heal.”
Duncan glowered. “I would if I could get away from here. She’s got me pretty well trapped.”
If he hoped that Ansel would take up his cause with Alberta, he was sorely disappointed. “That’s between you and her,” the man answered. “But just because you’re stuck her
e doesn’t mean you have to overexert yourself.” He then issued new instructions for Duncan’s medications and took his leave.
The whole encounter made Duncan grumpier than ever. He didn’t need an old grouch like Ansel showing up out of the blue to chastise him. He certainly didn’t need Princess Alberta to send for the man, and he would have thought her insufferably meddlesome except that he knew she had done it for his own good. He wished she would decide once and for all to be as evil as she pretended, though. Her seeming concern for him only twisted his heart that much more.
He really did need to get away, and the sooner the better.
With that conviction pressing down upon him, he squared his shoulders and oriented himself not back to the gardens, but toward the upstairs residential wing of the castle. Almost before he knew it, certainly before he was ready, he stood in front of Princess Alberta’s closed door. His nerves roiled as he lifted one hand to knock.
“If you’re looking for Bertie, she’s in the library.”
Duncan jumped at the unexpected voice. Princess Bellinda was hanging halfway out her door, a flat expression on her face.
“Do you know where the library is?” she prompted.
“I… yes,” he said. He felt completely foolish, abandoned by his previous courage. He didn’t want to confront Alberta in the library. He preferred a more familiar battle-ground.
“Oh, I’ll take you there myself,” Bellinda suddenly declared. Before Duncan could protest she swept out of her room. Her skirts swished as she passed him up the corridor. “Come along,” she commanded.
He tried to gather his thoughts as he went. It had been more than a week since his injury. Perhaps he could persuade Alberta to return his armor based on that passage of time. Perhaps she had grown tired of storing the heavy bundle. Perhaps he could convince her that he was well enough now to take his leave and never have to mention how he felt toward her.
Princess Bellinda stopped in front of the library door. “Here we are,” she said. When she made no motion to open it, Duncan stepped forward and grasped the knob. He did not know whether Bellinda meant to follow him in, or if she was merely pausing to see that he entered before she went on her way. He learned the answer when he pushed the door inward, though.
“Bertie, your dog was looking for you,” she called over his shoulder. “I’ve brought him here!” Then, she shoved Duncan through the door and slammed it shut behind him.
Obviously she was still angry with him. Under the present circumstances, he gave this no further consideration. His attention immediately fixed upon Princess Alberta.
She was curled up on a sofa in the center of the room, a book on her lap. “What do you want?” she asked peevishly.
“I’ve come for my armor,” said Duncan.
“No. Go away,” she told him, and she returned to reading.
He glanced around at the otherwise deserted library and then stepped boldly forward. “I’m done here, Alberta,” he said. “I can’t take this anymore. You need to give me back my armor and let me go. I’m perfectly fine now, I assure you!”
She didn’t even bother to look up this time. “You’re weak as a kitten.”
“If I am, it’s no concern of yours!”
“Of course it’s my concern,” she retorted. “What am I supposed to do if I hand you back your armor, only to hear that you’ve gone and gotten yourself killed by a pack of these treasure-hunting marauders? I told you before: I’ll give it back to you when you’re fully recovered.”
“I can’t wait that long!” he cried in growing frustration.
“Why not? Is Gardener working you too hard?”
“That’s not it,” said Duncan. His thoughts swirled with conflicting emotions. He didn’t know how to express them all, how to make her understand. “It’s not Gardener at all! It’s you—I can’t be around you anymore!”
Her eyes snapped up then. He thought he saw a flash of hurt in their depths, but then they narrowed into a critical glare. “I have left you completely alone,” she said flatly.
“And I thought that would be fine, but it’s only made things worse!”
She stared, silent and with a confused little furrow between her brows. He decided it was now or never. He took a deep breath and plunged into the heart of the problem.
“Princess Alberta, I’m in love with you,” he confessed. “I’ve done everything I could not to be, but it’s like a disease that only gets worse the more I fight it. And I know perfectly well that I’m a worthless peasant and such feelings overstep my station, but as long as I’m here, these feelings will persist. I need you to give me back my armor so that I can get away from here and clear my head! Please!”
A tense silence enveloped them both. Alberta’s expression did not change. Duncan thought she would probably snap with rage at his audacious confession. The longer she remained quiet, the tighter his nerves wound against that impending explosion.
At long last, her lips parted. “Are you making fun of me?” she asked with a sharp edge to her voice.
Duncan started. “What?”
“Did you come up with the idea yourself, or did someone else suggest it? Bella, maybe?” she asked. “How am I supposed to react? Did you expect me to become flustered and blushing and hand back your armor with a tittering laugh?”
He recoiled. “No!”
“Am I to be angry at your insolence and run you from the castle, then?” His fidgeting gave him away on that point. Alberta continued. “That’s really low of you, Duncan, to utter some false confession in the hopes of manipulating a woman. If it had been anyone else but unfeeling me—”
“It’s not false,” he interrupted with dawning comprehension. She didn’t believe him. She thought he was lying through his teeth. That possibility had never even crossed his mind. “It’s true! I’m telling you the truth!”
“I suppose you think it’s funny on some level,” Alberta went on, “someone confessing his love to the evil-minded middle princess—”
“You’re not evil-minded,” said Duncan crossly. “You’re manipulative and conniving, but you’re not evil-minded.”
She arched her brows.
“You’re not,” he repeated. “You keep trying to make yourself out to be some sort of a villain, but you’re not. And you should run me from the castle! How many threats have you made to get rid of me if I got any false ideas about your sisters? And here I’ve just made the most forbidden confession to you, and every word of it was true! You should run me from the castle!”
Those words hung in the air between them. Then, suddenly, Alberta shifted her attention back down to her book. “Go back to your gardening, Goldilocks,” she said quietly.
Duncan could not believe his ears. “What?”
“I said, go back to your gardening. You’ll get your armor back when I’m good and ready to give it to you. I refuse to be manipulated in the meantime.”
“Wh—” Whatever protest he might have made left his lungs in a whoosh of air. “You’re impossible!” he cried once he had collected his wits again.
“And you’re dismissed,” Alberta replied. “Go away.”
Of all the outcomes he had imagined, this had not been one. He thought there was a chance she would have him thrown into the dungeons or flogged by the castle guard. He had banked on Wildfire’s suggestion that she would return his armor and banish him from the castle, though.
“I should’ve told you I was in love with Bellinda,” he realized aloud.
“It certainly would have been more believable, but it still wouldn’t have mattered,” said Alberta.
“Why not?”
“Because Bella’s in love with Prince Perceval right now, so there’s no danger of her falling for you. Besides that, I think you can control yourself enough not to creep into her room to snip off a lock of her hair. If I ran off everyone who was in love with Bella, we’d have only a skeleton staff left.”
“But I’m not in love with her. I’m in love with you.”
/> “So you say.”
“You know I’m a terrible liar.”
“I know I’ve dismissed you once already. I’m sure you have plenty of chores waiting.”
“Alberta—”
“Get out!” she suddenly snapped, and at long last he saw a glimpse of the rage he had expected ages ago. “You’ve said your piece, and I’ve said mine. You’re not getting your armor back today, and that’s final!”
He might have protested further, but there was something in her expression that made him stop. She looked like she was ready to break into pieces. In that moment, all he could think was that it would be better for him and her both if he followed her orders and left. And so he retreated, wordless and thankful that he still had self-control enough not to act on his instincts. Deep down, he felt like he had caused her an injury, that by speaking his heart aloud he had introduced to her some painful, inner trauma.
He had considered the situation too simplistically. He had assumed that she would react in a straightforward manner—with rage or scorn—and he had spoken for a wholly selfish purpose. She had been right: he had tried to manipulate her. Her unexpected reaction was unsettling and dangerous—unsettling because it revealed how little she regarded herself, and dangerous because that revelation desperately made him want to convince her of the truth.
In short, his adoration of her was infinitely worse after speaking than it had been before, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to relieve it.
“A pox on Wildfire and his idiotic ideas,” he muttered under his breath, but he knew the horse wasn’t to blame. The fault lay entirely with him, plain and simple.
Chapter 29
He dove even further into his gardening duties in the days that followed. Sheer desperation pushed him to focus on weeding and pruning rather than his woefully unrequited love. He shut his ears to any castle rumors and shut his eyes to the royal family and their routines.
Even so, there were certain events he could not miss. One morning ten or so days after his return, as he left the stable from having attended to Wildfire, he nearly collided with Prince Perceval.
Goldmayne: A Fairy Tale Page 34
