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

by Melissa McShane

  “You were outstanding, Larrick,” she said. “I half expected to find you draped over the sofa with your eyes and tongue bulging out.” He might be standing upright, but Eve Kenford, the leading lady, had her arm draped over Anthony’s shoulders and her considerable bosom pressed to his side. Irrationally, she felt depressed and angry all at once. It was none of her business whether he wanted to involve himself with a cheap tart like Eve, but she had begun to think better of his judgment.

  “You were right, Alison, they do it with wires,” Anthony said. He removed Eve’s arm from around his neck without looking at her and came to join them. “It goes through the noose down the back of his coat and attaches to his belt. It really is most realistic,” he told Larrick, who preened.

  “It is. And congratulations to you all. I anticipate this will be more popular than the last, and I’m sure you know Two Came to Kingsport often played to a sold out house. I loved tonight’s performance so much. Thank you.” They cheered her, though she was sure most of them were really cheering themselves.

  Anthony slipped his arm through hers. “I promised Mother I’d bring you back before midnight,” he whispered in her ear. “Much as I’m enjoying the company, I’d rather not face her displeasure.”

  “Neither would I,” she murmured back, though privately she had trouble imagining what the sweet-tempered Dowager’s displeasure might look like.

  They emerged from the theater into a thin but persistent drizzle that forced them to dash for the carriage door and fall, laughing, into their respective seats. Alison put down the hood of her cloak and wiped a few raindrops from her cheeks. “That first snow was deceptive. I didn’t realize autumn in Aurilien was so rainy,” she said. “It’s not at all like Kingsport.”

  “We get more snow in the winter, now and then, but mostly it just gets dreary,” Anthony said. “You’ll be tired of it long before winter’s over.”

  “I expect to be gone before winter’s over. My six months are up before the Spring Equinox.”

  “True. I’d forgotten.” Anthony stretched out his long legs. “You should visit the Zedechen Bethel just before Wintersmeet. They set up Devices in the old sanctuary, around the statues of the lost gods, and whatever it is they’re made of glows in reaction. And you might like to see the permanent exhibit of artifacts from before the founding of Tremontane.”

  “What I want is to see the Royal Library just once before I leave.”

  “Why don’t you go, then? My mother can’t possibly occupy that much of your time.”

  “It’s not the time. It’s the Royal Librarian. I’m apparently not good enough to be allowed past the scriptorium because I don’t have the robe.” She sighed. “At least I can look at the books, if they can find them. I saw one of Landrik Howes’s plays the other day, the first folio. It was beautiful.”

  “Not as beautiful as the performance, I’d think.”

  “No, but beautiful in a different way. I wonder if Flanagan’s book of plays is going to be as revered hundreds of years from now. I almost envy him. It must be so exciting to feel a play coming together.”

  “I think it would be exciting to be an actor. If the play is exciting to us as spectators, I can’t imagine how invigorating it must be to actually be on the stage.”

  “I know Larrick, for one, is happiest when he’s playing a role,” Alison said, covering her mouth to yawn. She was going to be useless in the morning. “I’ve seen him the day after a play closes and he’s always deep in a bottle or talking about how he’ll never amount to anything again. Then he gets a new script and he’s back to being the same old foulmouthed genius.”

  Anthony chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard dirtier jokes.”

  “You’ve never heard Eve tell the one about the pickle.”

  Now he laughed out loud. “Which one is Eve?”

  “Corinna. She was standing next to you when I came in.” Trying to mold herself to fit your body.

  “Oh, yes. I suppose I was too caught up in the story to notice.”

  Alison felt strangely comforted by this. She looked out the window and watched the rain fall, making the street shine in the places where the lamplight spread over the cobbles. Across from her, Anthony fell silent as well. She assumed he too was watching the street pass until she glanced over and saw him watching her, his elbow propped on the window’s edge. “What is it?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I was just—nothing.” He turned to look out the window.

  “That was an awfully intent stare for ‘nothing’.”

  “It was a line of thought I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to pursue.”

  She went cold inside. “Something about my profile, no doubt?” She knew her voice had an edge to it and didn’t care.

  “I was wondering,” he said, not taking offense at her tone, “why you hold people at a distance. Why formality is so important to you.”

  The cold feeling turned to ice. “It appears to be the evening for people asking me about that. Doyle said much the same thing,” she said lightly.

  “I’m sorry to have brought it up, then,” he said, never taking his eyes off the road.

  They rode in silence for some while. “It just seems to me,” he went on, “that it’s a lonely way to live.”

  “Better lonely than miserable,” she said, then wondered why she’d let him draw her out. Something about the dark, and the warm confines of the carriage against the cold and rainy night, seemed to have lowered her reserve.

  “I think happiness is worth the possibility of being miserable.”

  “Then that is where we disagree, your Highness.” She knew her mistake as the words left her lips. “Anthony, I’m sorry. That was rude of me.”

  “It’s clearly an unpleasant topic for you. I apologize for bringing it up.” Now he sounded offended. Alison bit her lip and continued to stare out the window.

  After another long moment, she said, not looking at him, “I was sixteen, just barely an adult, when men started paying attention to me. It took me far too long to understand there were only three things they were interested in, and none of those three things was me. My father did his best, but…I’d lost my mother, newly come into the title, and I was…looking for reassurance, I think.”

  “What three things?”

  “My fortune. My title. My body, obviously.” She knew she sounded bitter. You would think, after all these years, it wouldn’t still bother me so much. “There’s only so much disillusionment you can bear before you begin to assume the worst of people before you’ve even met them. Easier not to let them get close at all.” She traced a line in the light fog where her breath struck the glass, a straight mark that paralleled the passing street lamps. Anthony said nothing. All those men, all those times I thought they loved me when they never even saw me. What a fool I was. She closed her eyes and cursed herself. She should never have told him anything this personal. Yes, she enjoyed his company, yes, she thought of him as a friend, but this went beyond friendship into an intimacy she didn’t want to share with anyone, even her father.

  Anthony shifted a little in his seat. “I’m sorry,” he said, with a depth of emotion that startled her.

  “What are you sorry for?”

  “I’m sorry I gave you so much pain, when we first met,” he said. “I was thoughtless. Alison, I should never have—” He broke off, and Alison saw he was looking down at his hands, closed loosely into fists on his knees. “I mean, it never occurred to me that my compliments might be offensive to anyone. All the other women seemed to enjoy them,” he added, almost plaintively, and despite herself she smiled.

  “You say what women want to hear,” she said, “but you do it with a kind of possessiveness, as if a woman’s beauty belongs to you and it’s your right to say anything you like about it. It was never about me. It was always about you.”

  He raised his head quickly, as if startled. “That—” he began, paused, and said, “You have a gift for speaking truth, Countess.”
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  “I’m sorry if I offended you.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You’re entirely right. I wish someone had told me sooner, that’s all.”

  Impulsively, she leaned across and took his hand. “You are a good man,” she said. “Your mother told me that once, back at the beginning. She was right.”

  His eyes were colorless in the lamplight. “She said that?” he said. He chuckled again. “My mother has always had a good opinion of me despite the evidence.”

  Something about the way he looked at her made her uncomfortable. She withdrew her hand and leaned back. “This is not the conversation I imagined us having on the ride home,” she said.

  “What did you imagine?”

  “Oh…we’d talk about the play, and the actors, and I would tell you stories of how Genevieve gets so tense three nights before a performance that she hides backstage with a bottle of gin and then starts singing Veriboldan love songs, but she doesn’t speak Veriboldan, so the words are all wrong—” He laughed. “And then you would say I love the theater as much as you love your horses—”

  “Would I? Yes, probably. You lose all your reserve, when you’re there. It’s refreshing.”

  “I feel at home around people who do nothing but lie for a living. Somehow I find it more honest than the real world.”

  “That’s an interesting way to look at it.”

  “If you both know the other person is lying, in a backwards way it’s like truth.”

  The carriage came to a stop, and Anthony assisted her down. “It’s so much nicer not to be on display, don’t you agree? May I escort you back to Mother’s apartment, milady Countess?”

  “Thank you for your consideration, your Highness.”

  He took her by a route she hadn’t seen before, through a much older part of the palace that looked more like the Library’s old stone and dark corners than like the polished and carpeted hallways she was familiar with. “You do know where you’re going, right?” she asked. She glanced down a dark cross-corridor and told herself she was only imagining movement in its depths.

  “Of course. I used to run around this place all the time when I was younger. Or…no, this doesn’t look familiar….”

  She swatted his arm. “You’re not funny.”

  “You’re laughing, aren’t you? See, this hall leads to the east wing, and then it’s just a few more steps to Mother’s apartment.” He spun her, with a flourish, to come to a stop at the foot of the slope that led up to the Dowager’s door. Alison laughed again, then stifled her humor, conscious of the two guards just up the hall who thought heaven only knew what of that display.

  “Thank you for your company, Anthony,” she said, curtseying just a little.

  “It was entirely my pleasure. No, Alison, wait a moment,” Anthony said, putting his hand on her arm to stop her. He seemed to be searching for something to say, and eventually came out with, “You forgive me, right? For thinking only of myself and not of your feelings?”

  “Of course,” she said. “You made such an effort to redeem yourself, how could I not appreciate that?”

  “Thank you. And thank you for telling me the truth tonight. I think people often tell me only what I want to hear. I’m glad there’s one person who isn’t my sister who’ll tell me what I need to hear.”

  “I promise to always tell you the truth, if you’ll do the same for me.”

  “Agreed.” He kissed her hand and was gone almost before she could register the touch of his lips against her skin. She stood motionless until he disappeared around the corner, then walked slowly up the hall to the Dowager’s door, removing her cloak and draping it over her arm despite the lingering dampness. The guards showed no sign they even knew she was there, but she nodded at them anyway. She felt drained now, as if she’d been doing something far more exhausting than watching a play and having an uncomfortable conversation. You shouldn’t have told him that, her inner voice said, he’ll just use it against you, but she was too tired to take that voice seriously. He’d apologized, and he’d really meant it, and he was nothing at all like she’d thought he was. He was her friend. And how glad she was that that was true.

  Chapter Nine

  “So, Alison, how long does a play last?” Elisabeth Vandenhout said, and scooped a tiny, demure bite of soft-boiled egg into her mouth. Alison took a long drink of her hot, milky, sweet coffee. Another two of these and she’d be ready to open her eyes. Just her bad luck that Elisabeth knew this and delighted in carrying on a conversation with her every morning across the Dowager’s white and glossy breakfast table. She sent up a brief prayer to ungoverned heaven that Elisabeth would choke on her egg and be struck speechless for the next four months.

  “Three hours, or thereabouts,” she said, and sipped her coffee more slowly. Elisabeth was going somewhere with this, and it wasn’t going to be somewhere pleasant. Her head was throbbing, as usual, and being polite to Elisabeth wasn’t going to be easy.

  “So you must have been out late last night,” Elisabeth said.

  “Yes, that would make sense, wouldn’t it?” Alison smiled sweetly at Elisabeth. It had been even later than Elisabeth guessed; she and Anthony had spent nearly an hour after the performance arguing cheerfully about the ending of Rapture Song. She was right, of course, but Anthony had held his own, and they’d ended up laughing so hard the carriage driver had given them a very strange look when they’d finally emerged. She had no idea going to the theater in company could be so much fun.

  “I just wonder,” Elisabeth said, just as sweetly, “that you’re spending so much time with the Prince. People are beginning to talk.”

  “Really? I wonder that people don’t have better things to do with their time.”

  “Now, Elisabeth,” the Dowager said, “surely you don’t think Alison would be carrying on a secret courtship with my son, practically under my nose?”

  Elisabeth went pink. “No, of course not, Milady. But I thought Alison should know, because of course she’s concerned about how her reputation reflects on you. And after what happened at the Equinox Ball—”

  “Elisabeth, your concern for Alison is touching, but I must remind you that you are not the keeper of her reputation, and isn’t that fortunate! I’m sure each of us has enough trouble tending to her own affairs without worrying about those of our friends. And I think you may be exaggerating these rumors, because I have to say I haven’t heard anything of the sort. It is my son we’re talking about, after all.” The Dowager’s smile didn’t reach her eyes, and Alison suddenly understood what Anthony had meant about his mother’s displeasure. Elisabeth went from pink to red.

  “Of course, Milady. Alison, I beg your pardon if I overstepped.”

  “Not at all, Elisabeth, and I’m glad you’re so concerned.” Alison glanced at the Dowager, who had gone back to spreading jam on a toast triangle. Granted that Elisabeth seemed to delight in finding ways to needle her, but how many other people might assume she and the Prince were romantically involved? Now that she thought about it, they had spent much time together in the last five weeks, and to anyone who only observed them at a distance, it probably did look similar to courtship. What kind of whispers were going around Aurilien about them?

  She poured herself more coffee, mixed in cream and probably too much sugar, and helped herself to some melon chunks. There wasn’t much she could do about those rumors, short of seeing Anthony less frequently, and that idea made her stomach, always a little sensitive at breakfast, feel sick. Well, if she couldn’t do anything about them, there was no point in worrying about it. And she certainly wasn’t going to let other people’s low minds ruin her new friendship.

  Elisabeth seemed to have felt the Dowager’s rebuke, because she said nothing more, and Alison’s headache diminished to the point that she could give the woman a pleasant smile before leaving the table. She dressed in comfortable old trousers and a soft shirt; the Dowager was paying calls that morning, and a quiet morning reading sounded like a wonderful idea. She s
at at her vanity table, combing her hair and making a face at how frizzy it had decided to be that morning, when someone knocked at the door. She rose to answer it and met Belle halfway. “Milady the Dowager would like to see you, milady,” she said.

  The Dowager’s dressing room was pale pink rather than white but still as gilded as the rest of the apartment. The Dowager sat in front of a mirror easily as tall as Alison was while a pink-uniformed maid brushed her short hair. “Thank you, Justine, that will be all,” the Dowager said, and Justine bowed and left the room, leaving Alison alone with the Dowager.

  “You wanted to see me, Milady?” Alison said.

  “Sit down, Alison,” the Dowager said, indicating a low stool a few feet away. Alison sat. “Now, tell me the truth.”

  “The…the truth, Milady?”

  “Zara told me she’d released you and Anthony from the responsibility she put on you. Why are you still spending time with one another?”

  “Well…we’re friends, Milady. We both enjoy the theater.”

  “And that’s all?” The Dowager’s gaze was uncharacteristically sharp.

  “What more could there be, Milady?”

  “Don’t be disingenuous, dear. Are you romantically involved with my son?”

  Alison gasped. “No, Milady!”

  “You needn’t sound so shocked. Would it be so terrible if you were?”

  “I—“ Was she the only one who didn’t think her relationship with Anthony was romantic? “I didn’t mean to be rude, Milady, and Anthony is…he’s a good man, and of course…but no, we’re not romantically involved.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” The Dowager turned away and looked at herself in the mirror. “But I suppose he really isn’t the sort of man…you know he’s had a number of inappropriate affairs, it’s common knowledge. I’m just so grateful none of them resulted in a child. An entailed adoption—such a nightmare. But you deserve better, I suppose.”