“What the devil happened to you?” he said. “You smell like—like—wet fabric! And who the devil are you?”
Mr. Bradford turned to stone. Even his brown eyes hardened. The only movements to him were the bits of water that dripped off his face and suitcoat. He looked at Lord Howley, his expression completely unreadable, then to Azalea, then back to Lord Howley.
“This is Lord Howley,” said Azalea, hoping to smooth over the awkwardness with Princess Royale grace. “He’s a guest here. On…Royal Business.”
“Oh. Yes.” Mr. Bradford remained stony. “Royal Business. I have heard of it.”
Who hasn’t? Azalea thought. To Mr. Bradford, she suppressed a smile. “If Lord Howley becomes King,” she said, “he says he’ll raise the taxes.”
“Oh, does he?”
For a moment, the gentlemen glowered politely at each other.
“Well,” said Azalea, breaking the tension. “I’m an icicle. I’ve got to get changed. There is the King, Mr. Bradford. Thank you—again.”
Mr. Bradford visibly softened, no longer stone when he looked at her. He bowed smartly, clicking his heels together in regimental fashion.
“Princess,” he said.
Azalea ran to the palace. She dripped the entire way there, determined that the next time she saw him, she would have his watch in her hand. Her icy skirts and blouse clung to her, but she didn’t feel it, for how much a pair of soft brown eyes could warm her.
CHAPTER 18
Snow came a week before Christmas, turning the gardens into a fairyland. Everything shimmered with white ice, each twig and stubborn leaf coated. All the statues had cakes of snow on their heads, and it topped the hedges and pergolas dripping with icy vines. The air had a new, fresh smell and the cold whipped the girls’ faces, leaving them rosy cheeked.
They spent the day playing snow games, sliding on the pond ice, and throwing snowballs at the latest gentleman, Baron Hubermann. He was a decent sort, but he stormed away the third time they knocked his hat off, and the girls gathered at the end of the gardens to watch the King, riding in the meadow.
“He’s a very fine rider, is he not?” said Delphinium as they peeked through the iron gate, watching the King canter on Dickens. He nodded at them as he galloped past. Each hoof fall left a great chunk of snow upturned.
“I think we should go in now,” said Azalea. “If you all help me set the table for dinner, we can look in the silver cabinet again for the sugar teeth.”
The girls let out a collective groan.
“I can’t believe you still care about that,” said Bramble.
Azalea was rankled. “He has Mr. Bradford’s watch!”
“So what?” said Bramble. “Mr. Bradford is rich. He can buy another one.”
Azalea kicked snow onto Bramble’s boot.
“Anyway,” said Bramble, good-naturedly scuffing the snow off. “I’ve been thinking. We only have a few more days to dance in the pavilion, before we can dance anywhere we like. So, what if, on our last night there, we just said, ‘Hulloa, Keeper, this has been ripping, thanks for the dances, we’ll keep our eyes open for the magic thing and the moment we find it we’ll nip on back. We know where to find you!’ I mean, that wouldn’t be bad, would it? I just don’t like the thought of him toddling about outside of the pavilion.”
“Exactly,” said Eve, bundled up so only her pink cheeks and spectacles showed. “If we did set him free, what would Keeper do? He can’t have any lands or manor anymore.”
“Keeper?” said Bramble. “Who cares about Keeper? What about us? If the King found out we’d been off dancing around someone like Keeper, he’d murder us. As far as we know, the King hasn’t been through that passage since he was a wee chit—if he ever was a wee chit, which I doubt—and I’d like it to stay that way.”
The King pulled up short at the gate, scattering snow. Dickens snorted and shook his mane.
“Come into the meadows, ladies,” he said. “You’re all crowded about so. It’s not against the rules; it’s royal property. Come along.”
The gate screeched with cold and rust as they opened it and moved into the bright blues and purples of dusky snow.
“Would any of you like a ride?” said the King.
The girls backed away.
“No, thank you!” squeaked Ivy.
“Definitely not!”
“I don’t think so.”
The King frowned at them, the younger girls clutching Azalea’s skirts and only just peeking out at Dickens, who pawed and sent great puffs into the air. The King sucked in his cheeks, gave a short nod, and urged Dickens into a gallop.
Moments later, as the girls breathed sighs of relief, the King turned Dickens about and streaked toward them. They cried out and backed against the stone wall. Leaning down from the saddle, the King reached out his arm, and whisked Hollyhock up as he galloped past. Hollyhock let out a brilliant scream.
Azalea gaped as the King pulled Hollyhock onto the saddle in front of him, keeping his arm tightly about her waist. Her screams turned to laughter. The King cantered around the meadow three times and pulled to a halt in front of the girls. Hollyhock slid from the horse, dizzy, but with a huge, delighted grin on her freckled face.
“We went so fast!” she said.
In a bustle of black skirts and scarves, the girls begged for a turn. The King obliged. He scooped each girl onto his saddle and galloped about the meadow. Eve, Delphinium, Ivy, and the twins each had a chance, clutching to Dickens’s mane as Dickens cantered beneath them. Jessamine clutched the King’s neck and buried her head in his waistcoat, only peeking out with one bright blue eye. Clover and Bramble even had a ride, but only, they insisted, because they held Kale and Lily, and the little ones should have a turn. Bramble grinned, albeit bashfully, as she slid off the horse, Kale in her arms.
“Miss Azalea,” said the King, holding his hand down to her.
“No, thank you,” said Azalea.
The King frowned, but pushed Dickens into a snow-churning gallop. Two seconds later, Dickens streaked toward her and the King leaned down, his arm out. Azalea hardly had a moment to realize what he was doing when she felt a thumpf!, and blues and whites whorled around her as her throat tried to jump out of her mouth, and the King hoisted her onto the saddle.
When the world stopped twisting around her, Azalea tried to slip out of the King’s grip and back onto solid ground.
“I don’t like riding!” she said.
“If you didn’t squirm so, you would like it better,” said the King. “Don’t dismount now! You’ll break your head!”
He galloped Dickens to the side, into the long blue shadows of the trees, pulled back, and dismounted. Azalea was left alone on the saddle, clutching Dickens’s mane.
“Try it alone now,” he said. “I taught you when you were six. You were a fine little rider then. Do you remember?”
“No!” said Azalea.
“You remembered how to ride last winter,” said the King quietly. He had his arms crossed. “You rode very well, one night last winter, if I remember.”
The horse beneath Azalea shifted, and she clutched to keep her balance.
“That was nearly a year ago,” she stammered.
“Some things are burned into one’s memory.”
The King helped her down gently onto solid ground, and didn’t say another word. Later, in the straw-smelling stables, the King made all the girls help feed and brush the horses. The girls took turns with the brushes, and Flora and Goldenrod even found some sugar cubes in their apron pockets. They squealed with laughter when Dickens nosed their cupped hands.
“Where did you learn that, sir?” said Azalea, as the King tended to the other horses. “To snatch us up like that, while you were galloping?”
“Ah.” The King threw the blanket over Thackeray. “Regiment practice. It is an old tradition, from the revolution. They say the rebellion—the cavalry—burst through the windows, thorns, and vines, and scooped up the prisoners from the magick
ed palace. Romanticized, of course. It is tradition, however, so we practice it. On sacks of wheat and potatoes.”
Azalea smiled. “I hadn’t heard that, sir.”
The King smoothed the blanket on Thackeray’s back. He opened his mouth, and shut it. Then he opened it again, and after a moment, said, “You used to call me Papa, do you remember that?”
The question took Azalea back.
“No,” she said.
The King frowned. Azalea hastily revised.
“I mean,” she said. “Papa…well…it doesn’t really suit you. I’ve never felt it does. The girls, too. I only remember calling you sir. As such.”
The King sucked in his cheeks and tugged on the ends of the blanket, straightening it. He did not say anything. The smell of horse suddenly felt overwhelming.
A cry of delight broke the tension, and Azalea gratefully ducked into the main aisle. Hollyhock, who had been digging through old saddle satchels hanging from pegs, had found something hidden in an aside saddle. The girls flocked about her, oohing.
She clutched a jet brooch in her freckled hand. A tiny bit of worn silver rimmed it, and the glass caught the golden lamp highlights of the stables. Azalea bit back a gasp.
“That’s Mother’s!” she said, delighted. “All her things aren’t locked up!”
“She must have put it in the satchel,” said Eve. “Maybe she was afraid to lose it.”
“She…used to wear it all the—the time,” said Clover. “Just…here.” She touched the top button of her collar.
“It’s beautiful,” Flora breathed.
The King finished hanging the brushes on the pegs, in order, coarse to soft, and turned to see what the fuss was about. His expression turned to ice when he saw Hollyhock’s freckled hand curled around the brooch. He held out his hand.
“Give it here,” he said. “It is not yours.”
Hollyhock clutched the brooch to her chest.
“I founnit in Mum’s satchel. Can we keep it? ’S black. I’ll share. I really will.”
“It belongs with your Mother’s things. Not with you, Miss Hollyhock.”
Azalea maneuvered so she was in front of Hollyhock. “Sir,” she said. “Why not? We’ll share it among ourselves; it won’t be breaking mourning.”
“That isn’t the point, Miss Azalea.”
“What if we just borrowed it? For the next six days? Just until mourning is over?”
“We’ll be careful with it,” said Eve.
“Oh, please, sir! Please!”
The younger girls jumped up and down, hands clasped in begging, and Ivy even dared to tug on the King’s suitcoat.
“Enough!” said the King, cutting them short with a brusque wave of his hand. “Enough. Six days, that is all. Six. Is that understood? I am doing this against my better judgment. Not a scratch, young ladies!”
“Bramble,” said Azalea that night, as they danced a quadrille. They danced in lines opposite each other, crossed and turned and traded places, the music a lively jaunt. She crossed diagonal, bending down to join hands with Jessamine, and stopped across from Bramble. “Bramble, do you remember calling the King Papa?”
Bramble crossed behind Azalea and backed up to her place.
“What?” she said.
“The King. He said we used to call him Papa.” Azalea walked with Flora up the line. “He seemed sure of it. And—” Azalea paused. “And I think—I think he wants us to call him Papa.”
The music ended, but the girls forgot to curtsy.
“He said that?” said Bramble.
“No,” said Azalea. “Not as such.”
“Puh-pah?” said Hollyhock. “Him?”
“It doesn’t really fit him,” said Eve. “Papa is more a storybook thing.”
“He is—trying,” said Clover.
Delphinium sat on the marble floor, stretching her foot out, her pink toe peeking through the torn seams.
“I don’t think he can be a Papa,” she said. “Not after everything. I still get angry.”
Azalea pulled off her black glove and considered the red fingernail prints in her palm. She sighed.
A clattering across the dance floor interrupted her thoughts—the brooch. Hollyhock had been fiddling and fumbling with it all night, unpinning it to polish it on her skirt hem, pinning it again. Now she had spun about with it in her hand, and had accidentally released it.
“Oh, Holli, honestly,” said Azalea, striding to pick it up, by the lattice. “If you can’t keep it pinned to your—”
A pair of black gloves scooped it up just as Azalea leaned down to take it.
Azalea straightened sharply. “Give it back!” she said.
Keeper, only a few inches from her, his dark form taking up her entire vision, rubbed his thumb over the smooth, curved surface of the brooch, and he lazily regarded Azalea, making no other movement.
“Keeper!”
He inhaled slowly, took Azalea’s outstretched hand—shudders went through her throat, he felt so solid—and pressed the brooch into her marked palm.
“I was only picking it up,” he said, quietly. His thumb rubbed a red nail mark on her hand. A smile crossed his lips. “Temper, temper.”
Azalea pulled her hand away, her ears hot, and gave the brooch back to Hollyhock. All the way through the silver forest and back up the passage, she wiped her hand on her skirts, trying to get rid of the silky feeling of Keeper’s thumb stroking her palm.
The next morning, Azalea awoke to a commotion. A quiet one, with whispering, the rustling of bedsheets and blankets. Hollyhock, Ivy, and the twins mussed their beds, lifting pillows with the blushing look of someone trying very hard not to look like they were blushing. Azalea groaned.
“Oh, Hollyhock,” she said. “Please don’t tell me you’ve lost what I think you’ve lost.”
Hollyhock burst into bawls.
“I—I—I didn’t mean to!” she cried. “I just lost it!”
All the girls, now awake from the ruckus, set to looking for the brooch. They shook out dresses, rummaged, folded, unfolded, smoothed, searched. Azalea took Hollyhock by the shoulders.
“You brought it back, didn’t you?” said Azalea. “After Keeper picked it up, you pinned it to your blouse?”
Hollyhock gulped and hiccupped.
“I don’t remember!” she said. “I put it in my pocket, I think!”
“Keeper!”
Azalea spat the word, the loudness deadened by the curtains and bedsheets. Everyone stopped rifling through the linens. Bramble gave a last shake to Hollyhock’s boots, and a spoon clattered onto the wood floor.
“We…don’t know it was him, not for certain,” said Clover, wrapping ribbons around the worn slippers.
“Oh, it was him all right!” The familiar boiling-blood sensation began to heat her fingers. She recalled the cold deadness of his eyes when he pressed the brooch into her hand. Azalea snatched the silver handkerchief from her apron pocket.
“Tell Tutor I won’t be to lessons,” she said. “Invent some sort of disease. I’m going to get it back.”
Azalea hardly paid attention to the glimmering silver-white forest as she hurried through, hot temper speeding her steps. The stale, stagnant smell of the pavilion suffocated her, so different from the gardens. It felt dead. She shoved the silver willow leaves aside, click click clicked over the bridge to the pavilion.
Keeper lay balanced across the railing, between the arched sides of the lattice. His cloak dripped to the floor, a strand of midnight hair over his eyes. He looked like a black, serpentine cobweb clinging to the lattice. Only his long, gloved fingers moved.
They crawled and wound about a scarlet-colored web with uncanny dexterity, a needle dangling as he did so. He was playing spider’s crib with Flora’s embroidery thread. And while he played, he murmured a nursery rhyme:
“How daintily the butterfly
Flits to the spider’s lace
Entranced by glimm’ring silver strings
Entwined with glist
’ning grace.
“How craftily the spider speaks
And whispers, ‘All is well,’
Caresses it with poison’d feet
And sucks it to a shell.”
“Where is it?” Azalea stood in the middle of the dance floor, arms crossed, so tense she could hear the blood rushing in her ears.
Keeper twisted his hands, the string wrapping even more weblike about his fingers.
“Ah, my lady,” he said.
“Where is it?”
Keeper gracefully leaped from the railing to the floor.
“Do you know why I am called Keeper?” he said. “Because I keep. You have known me thus long.”
“Give it back.”
“No. It is the first thing I have that is your mother’s. I will keep it.”
The tight parts of Azalea’s dress—her corset, the cuffs of her sleeves, her collar—pulsed.
“Oh, no hard feelings, my lady,” said Keeper. “I simply think you are not trying hard enough. Your mother’s brooch should give you all…encouragement.”
The hard, burning heat inside Azalea went snap.
“It won’t,” she spat. “Keep the stupid brooch. Keep the stupid pocket watch. Keep the gloves and sampler and whatever else you’ve stolen. You can enjoy them on your own. We’re not coming down here again. We never should have trusted you in the first place.”
She swept around, skirts twisting hard against her, eyes searing, and strode to the entrance. Keeper laughed.
“One last dance, my lady, before I am never to see you again?”
Azalea turned at the entrance, eyes narrowed at Keeper. They burned his image into her mind, his hard, black form cutting against the soft silver, his sleek, rakish ponytail pulled back from his pale face. His dead eyes.
“I hate dancing with you,” she said.
She stepped on the threshold.
A grating, cracking-ice explosion seized the air. The silver rose bushes that flanked the sides of the pavilion shot up, black-thorned monstrosities, curling themselves around the lattice. They twisted over the entrance, and Azalea stumbled back before the thorns snagged at her skirts.