The new trend in home ownership, begun by a royal visitor to our shores, is to find abandoned ruins to renovate for purposes that defy this writer’s imagination.

Ladies, it is never too soon to introduce obedience into the lives of your children. Experts advise that when they begin to express what they want, either with words or gestures, obedience should be the first lesson taught.

—Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and


Domesticity for Ladies

CAROLINE FELT AS if she’d been living in a cave somewhere far away from the world and from London, and it left her feeling very tired and cross. “Am I to live, Martha?” she asked. “Please answer truly. I want no false hope.”

“You are to live a long and happy life, Lady Caroline,” Martha said reassuringly, and rolled her onto her side.

Martha and another maid were putting fresh linens on her bed, which necessitated a lot of rolling her back and forth. “Can this not wait?” Caroline complained.

“No, milady, it cannot,” Martha said firmly, and used another cold compress to wipe her face.

Caroline pushed her hand away. She felt grimy and sticky, and when she put her hand to her hair, she felt on the verge of tears. It was a terrible tangle. She imagined it would take weeks to return to her former glorious self.

The commotion around her eventually settled, and Caroline closed her eyes once more, ignoring the whispering as the maids scurried around her. She heard someone mention soup and said, “Yes, soup, please.”

There was the sound of a door opening and closing, and then, blessedly, nothing. But as she lay there, she became aware of a smell so sweet that she had to open her eyes and see what it was. Well, she opened one eye, as her face was mashed against the pillow. She thought she saw the figure of a man standing beside her bed. It had to be a dreamy hallucination. Or the wire dress form, shaped to her figure, which she kept in her room. She’d been working on her latest sartorial creation when she’d taken ill.

She lifted her head so she’d have the benefit of both eyes. That was not a wire dress form, nor was it a hallucination or apparition. No, that was very clearly the Arse of Alucia, smiling down at her and holding her grandmother’s vase full of fragrant yellow flowers.

“Am I disturbing you?” he asked pleasantly, as if they were at an afternoon social function, or as if they were just leaving church services and strolling along a path. What the devil was he doing in her room? And why was he holding those flowers? She managed to get herself up on an elbow to look him over. “Do you...do you live here now?” she asked uncertainly. She wouldn’t put anything past Beck.

He laughed. “No, but I’m very close by. I’ve taken rooms at the Clarendon.”

Caroline let herself drop, and rolled, facedown, onto her pillow. “This is unbelievable,” she said into the soft cover, then rolled onto her back. “Have you been here all along?”

“All along?”

“For the two days I’ve been sick.”

“No. But I’ve come periodically to see after your brother. He’s been consumed with worry for you. It’s not been two days, however—I believe we’ve entered the fourth day of the death watch. But you keep defying the odds.”

Something about that didn’t make sense. “Day four?” she repeated. “That’s not possible.” She turned her head to look at the window. Gray light filtered in through the gap in the drapes. Was it possible? Had she really been ill for so long? Good Lord, her legs were probably entirely useless now. She pictured herself in a wheeled chair, being pushed about by Hollis.

“It is entirely possible, Lady Caroline. And once again, you’ve created quite a stir.”

“What do you mean?” She turned her head to look at him.

“Have you forgotten the many stirs you created in Helenamar?”

She thought about that a moment. “I did wear some stunning gowns,” she conceded.

“I wasn’t...that was not...” He shook his head.

“What are those?”

He glanced at the bouquet he held. “Flowers.”

“Yes, but...did you bring them for me?”

He stared at the bouquet as if he wasn’t certain why he’d brought them. “They were... Yes.” He met her gaze. “I did.”

“Oh dear. You really must have feared I would die. No doubt you will demand an apology from me for not going through with it, but I won’t give it to you.”

A wry smile tipped up one corner of his mouth. “I would most certainly think you on the verge of death if you apologized for anything. Can you sit up?”

“Of course I can sit up,” she said irritably, and gamely tried to push herself up. But the exertion was overwhelming.

The prince put the flowers on her bedside table and leaned over and slipped his hands beneath her arms and lifted her up. “Stop that!” Caroline cried out with alarm. “I’m perfectly capable.”

“No, you’re not,” he said as he held her up, then shoved some pillows behind her. “All right, then?”

“All right,” she grudgingly admitted. She felt entirely conspicuous with him hovering over her like he was. “Must you stand just there?”

“Your brother was right. You are cross. I’ll report to him that you cannot possibly be in any danger of departing this earth. I understand that people on their deathbed are more repentant.”

“Whatever would I have to repent?” she asked him, quite seriously. She thought herself rather good, all in all. She wasn’t perfect by any means, but she did love her brother, and she loved her friends, and she was generally kind to everyone she met. Even this arse. Well, she’d been kind to him before he’d been rude to her, at least. “Why are you here?” she asked. “I should think you would be on your jolly way after your attempt to defile our servant was thwarted. Who was she?”

“What on earth are you talking about?” he asked with a smile of bemusement.

He stood there looking impossibly handsome and innocent. Oh, but he thought she’d forgotten. Well, she hadn’t forgotten a blessed thing. She looked at the flowers he’d brought and pondered his entirely suspect motives. “What a curious place a dark hallway is to meet a proper acquaintance,” she said.

The prince leaned casually against a poster at the foot of her bed. “You must have been entirely delirious. You’ve created a fantasy.”

“It was no fantasy, Your Highness. You were in the hallway with a woman, and now you are in my room. But how? Garrett would never allow it.”

“He doesn’t know I’m here.”

She blinked. “What? Where is Beck?”

“Preparing to go out for the evening. Which is why Garrett was not available to bring these flowers. I thought to do it for him.”

She flicked her gaze over his magnificently masculine figure. His perfect appearance reminded her of how she must look. She wanted to sink under the covers and hide. “I’m not ready for callers,” she said. “I am not at my best. I’m feeling rather weak, so perhaps you’d like to return to the study to wait for Beck.”

“I think you will be feeling better very soon. I understand soup is being prepared for you.” He smiled slowly, and it was warm and sympathetic, and it made her feel a little tingly in her head.

“I should think the Alucian government would want you as far away from illness as possible.”

“I suspect if the government were to get a good look at you, you’d be right.”

Caroline tried to snort, but it was impossible due to her stuffy head.

“Your brother has been terribly worried.”

Caroline had snatches of memory of Beck leaning over her, his hair dangling across his forehead.

“I lost a sister to fever, you know,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“She was quite young, only three years when a fever took her.”

Caroline pushed up a little higher in her mountain of pillows. “I never knew you had a sister.”

“It was a very long time ago. I was awfully young, too, but I remember it very well. Hawke certainly feared losing you, notwithstanding the fortune he claims you have spent on dressmakers and modistes and cloth merchants.”

“Has he complained of it again?” Caroline asked with a weary sigh. “I try to intercept the invoices before he sees them.” She actually hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud.

The prince chuckled and eased himself onto the foot of her bed. “He takes very good care of you.”

That was true. Beck could have made her life miserable if he’d wanted to after their parents were gone. But he’d always been very protective of her. “I take care of him, too. It’s been only the two of us for so long now,” she said wistfully. For some reason, tears welled in her eyes. Lord. “He’s been like a father to me. I scarcely remember my real father. You’re fortunate, to have your father still with you.” She swiped at one tear that had leaked. Is this what illness had done to her? Made her wretchedly sentimental?

“My father was not much of a father, really,” he offered matter-of-factly. Caroline waited for him to clarify, assuming he said it in jest. But the prince didn’t smile. He merely shrugged again. “Old complaints die hard, I suppose, but my brother had my father’s attention. He spent our youth preparing Sebastian for the throne. I was... I was merely there. He scarcely noticed me at all.”

Surely that wasn’t true. Caroline couldn’t imagine having a father who didn’t notice her. What little she remembered of her father came with warm, loving feelings.

“Ah, but such are the hazards of being born the second son in a royal family,” he added with a wistful smile.

Someone knocked softly on the door. The prince stood as it swung open, and the new maid came in, carrying a tray with a bowl of soup. The scent was so savory that Caroline’s stomach growled.