A Prince Among Men (8 page)

A
lexander put aside the clutter of papers on his desk, his latest attempt to create a parliamentary framework for Trevigna. His Sunday holiday was nearly done, and he'd made little progress on his declaration of the principles of a democratic state.

He closed his eyes and rubbed them with his thumb and forefinger. As long as he stayed at his desk, Lucca would not bother him, but if he ventured below, they'd quarrel again about his job, a pointless conflict, since Alexander knew he'd be going back to see Ophelia.

Getting her name had given him the upper hand only briefly. She'd come from her friend's house, cheerful and blithely indifferent to him, and at the end of their ride
had vanished into her pampered
existence without a backward glance at her groom, without even one excessive, petty demand to show that he was on her mind.

He wished he knew what she thought of him. He wished that she did think of him, but his disguise made it unreasonable to hope that he meant any more to her than an inconvenience.

He wished he'd paid more attention to the feminine mind over the years, but there had been so many other subjects to master.

First, he'd done the work of two in school until Francesca had come and treated the masters of Winchester to an explosive display of Italian temper, explaining which of their charges was the servant and which the prince. Then he had had to learn history, politics, economics—everything that might serve Trevigna and rescue his father. And still later in the mountains, among the rebels who resisted Napoleon, he had had to learn it all over again with Trevigna as his schoolroom.

Of course, he had heard his friends speak of women. At Oxford, over wine, few topics had been as enduring. But the boasts, the crude humor, the veiled allusions had hardly enlightened him. All the talk seemed to be about casual liaisons and had more to do with men than with women. His few successes had been due to indifference. Women remained elusive creatures, their natures hidden in the silences of men's conversations.

He opened his eyes and took up Aunt Francesca's latest letter. If he could persuade Francesca to accept his republican ideals, he could persuade the rest of his countrymen.

Mirandola,

You have, apparently, taken leave of your senses.

In that at least you show signs of your Italian
heritage, but not your royal descent What is
that idiot Gavinana about, to permit a prince of the blood to live above a shop?

You must act now to restore confidence in the monarchy. If you cannot come home to marry, I will undertake to persuade Tesio's daughter to come to London. You must produce an heir.

Have you forgotten why your father sent you to England? Do you imagine that base men who have been following sheep, or gathering grapes, or throwing their nets into the sea, are prepared to decide the fate of Trevigna? Do you think the merchants of Laruggia counting their sovereigns are prepared to put the common good before self
-
interest? I am beginning to think your education wasted on you.

You and you alone have been prepared by birth, education, and training to rule Trevigna. You have been bred to put Trevigna before any of the common desires of ordinary men. Your commission comes not from some committee of the greedy and self-important but from God. Would you refuse the title of king with all its dignity? To be called citizen? To be called a common man?

Francesca di Piovasco Mirandola

The common desires of ordinary men.
When had he been allowed such desires? He had been putting Trevigna first all his life. The first duty of a king was to sacrifice for the people. And he rarely minded, but he wanted to forge a Trevigna worthy of the sacrifice of even one life. He wanted Trevigna to be a better state than others in Europe, to be an example of freedom, justice,
and harmony. And if Trevigna was to move forward in this new century, not seventeen years old and already excessively bloody, she had to accept new ideas.

Alexander mended his pen and put out a fresh sheet of paper. How was he to persuade Francesca that there was no indignity in the title
man?
Send her Voltaire? The equality of man was an utterly unfamiliar concept in Trevigna. To think the simple fishermen of Trevigna's coast were equal to the nobles of the great houses required a new mind, a nineteenth-century mind. Then there were the fruit thieves in the orchards and the soot-coated colliers and tinkers in the woods. The inequalities were obvious while the equality lay hidden.

And if he were
to persuade his fellow Trevig
nans of the equality of men, how then would they act toward one another? They would still be separated by circumstances, the fishermen and peasants in huts, the nobles in
palazzios.

Maybe he could experiment. Ophelia Brinsby had a lifetime of privilege and training in the finer points of English class distinctions, yet she claimed to believe all men were equal. Could Alexander persuade her to treat him as an equal?

"Majesty?" Lucca stuck his head in the door of the small upper room where Alexander worked. "Supper, Majesty."

"In a minute," he answered. He looked at the letter he'd begun to his aunt and discovered half a line ending in a large ink stain. He threw down the pen. Ophelia Brinsby ruled his brain.

In the chilly, inadequate dining room, he found one place set with the royal plate of Trevigna, carted to the tailor's shop when Alexander had abandoned his costly manor outside of Windsor. Lucca, in Trevigna's blue and gold livery, stood stiff and silent at the door, ready to serve his prince.

"
Only one place, Lucca?"

"Your majesty has no guests tonight." The frostiness in Lucca's tone hadn't warmed at all.

"I'd hoped to dine with a friend."

There was a silence while Lucca, his haughty nose tilted at the ceiling, decided whether to pretend incomprehension. "It would not be seemly, Your Majesty."

Lucca was repaying him for working in a stable and undermining the dignity of the Crown.

Alexander took his place at the table and lifted the lid of a silver tureen. A mingled aroma of wine and bay and garlic swirled up from a rich fish soup. The familiar smell of Trevigna's kitchens held him for a moment, a smell from childhood, from before England and school and duty and sacrifice, when he and Lucca had wandered the port of Laruggia barefoot, always glad to accept a bowl of soup in one of the huts along the shore.

He could command Lucca to dine with him and receive instant obedience, but that would not put the dinner on the footing of equality or friendship. He didn't want to be a potentate. He stirred the soup, letting the rich smell do its work. Lucca sighed, homesickness warring with notions of dignity. Abruptly he released a string of curses and stomped off. Alexander lowered the tureen lid.

In minutes Lucca was back with another setting and without his livery. "A priest's trick," he muttered, as he slapped silver and plate on the table.

They ate in silence until Lucca's abrupt, jerky movements subsided into a smooth flow of the spoon from bowl to lips.

"I know you don't like our circumstances, Lucca, but we've seen worse. And a few more months should see us back home."

Lucca put down his spoon and lifted his great dark eyes to Alexander. "Why don't you stay here and do your work? Why must you lower yourself to a stable? Who is giving orders to the Prince of Trevigna?"

Alexander traced the pattern of the damask with the tips of his fingers. "I feel free there. I can joke with my fellow grooms, drink with them if I want to, and no one will think I've undermined my princely dignity."

Lucca shuddered.

"I can flirt with—"

"There's a woman?" Lucca froze. "What sort of woman is in a stable?"

"A duke's daughter," said Alexander. It was comic to see Lucca's face change.

"Ah," he said. "A sweet and proper young lady, who rides."

Alexande
r laughed. "An imperious, hard-
headed miss with more tricks than the devil. You must tell me how you always find women who are soft and yielding, while I always find those who have been to Aunt Francesca's School of Independence."

"It's the nose," said Lucca, lifting his handsome, substantial Roman protruberance into the
air and giving a sniff. "You have too much the brain working."

Alexander studied the tablecloth. His brain hardly functioned at all in Ophelia's presence.

Lucca left him for a moment and returned with coffee in cups that had once belonged to Alexander's mother, sent to him by Francesca—a reminder, like the livery, of Alexander's royal heritage. Lucca asked about his progress on a constitution for Trevigna.

"I am not writing a constitution, you understand, but a declaration of the principles that need to underlie it, like the American declaration."

"And what principles are these? Liberty, I suppose?"

"And equality," said Alexander carefully.

"You are
tr
ying to straighten the dog's legs, you know."

Alexander regarded Lucca through the steam rising from their cups. "Perhaps, but if I am going to give up every choice a man has in life for Trevigna, I want her to be better than other nations." He was afraid when he'd said it. He'd put the dream and the sacrifice into words.

Lucca bowed his head. "Do you have anything for me to do?"

"I have letters for Hume and Tollworthy about the committee's loan scheme. Will you deliver them?"

T
he Grays had two stalls in a common mews across the lane behind their garden. In practice the shared stable arrangement meant the place was often neglected, so Ophelia couldn't help
noting the change Alexander had made. The floor was raked clean, buckets and tools had been put away, and tack hung on the walls in neat array. He sat on a bench, leaning against the wall, his muscled legs stretched out, a book in hand, the picture of idleness, as if he'd had nothing whatever to do with the improved state of the stable. She peeked at the book but couldn't make out the title.

She'd brought him biscuits again, and now shifted them to one hand, tucking under her other arm the latest bundle of Berwick's manuscript.

"You're free, you know, while I visit Hetty." She refused to blush over her past behavior toward him. She had treated him fairly from the day he'd agreed to bring her to Hetty's. "You don't have to clean stables, especially not for someone else."

He slipped the little book into his pocket and came to his feet, taking the offered biscuits.

"For me? Thank you, Ophelia."

Her name again. He wouldn't stop using it. A tiny ripple of warmth passed through her as if they'd touched.

She remembered her bare hands and began pulling on her gloves. "You needn't wait for me here. I daresay you'd find company if you explored the neighborhood. William used to visit a cookshop nearby."

"You didn't bring him biscuits, did you." He stated it as a fact that she couldn't deny.

He set the biscuits on the bench.

It was an invitation to conversation, and she ought to resist. "You prefer books to company?"

"I'd prefer to come inside and meet your friend."

The stunning boldness of such a wish stated so simply made Ophelia speechless. He wasn't moving, wasn't gathering tack or following orders, but waiting for her reply—testing her, of course. She glanced at the stalls, giving him a hint of his duties.

What did she believe about equality? All men were equal in theory, but in practice, a lady's groom didn't accompany the lady beyond the pavement when she made her calls. Any ease or comfort in their connection would disappear in a drawing room, where he would not know the first thing about how to conduct himself.

It would not make them more equal but rather less. Here with the horses was the only sphere in which there could be some equality. "I doub
t you'd enjoy our conversation."

"Too deep for me?"

She knew that wasn't true. Whatever the limits of his education, his mind was not like William's. "No." What could she say? He could not come int
o Hetty's dining room because…

"I'd like to meet the friend who changes your face each morning."

Ophelia concentrated on her gloves. He had a habit of noting minute details about her and then revealing them. "Changes my face?" She looked up, determined to watch him as closely as he watched her.

"When you leave home, your face is tight and closed." He was looking at her intently. "Especially around the mouth."

She ought to do something—laugh, shrug, turn away—but she stood frozen.

"When we leave Miss Gray's, I can tell you've been laughing. Your face has lost
its
…
pinched look." He took a step closer, his head tilted to one side, his gaze on her mouth.

"Pinched!"

He drew his lips together.

She had to laugh. "A lady does not look pinched." His brows went up. She certainly hadn't convinced him. "Weary, perhaps. Dancing all night, rising to greet the dawn."

"Your face starts to close up as we approach Grosvenor Street."

It was dangerously thrilling to listen to him, to hear how minutely he'd observed her. No one in her household noticed her much, certainly not enough to read her mood.

"It's because I must wear a hair shirt to bed."

He laughed a pleasant laugh of shared amusement, and it sent a wave of deeper warmth through her. But she would not let her vanity lead her down that path again. She would be tougher and less transparent. She hardened her expression.

"I must ask a favor of you."

He was instantly alert. He would probably insist on some bargain or other.

She held out the bundle of sheets of Berwick's poem, wrapped in crackling brown paper and string. "I need to smuggle this package into the house."

"Smuggle?"

She nodded.

"What is it? Seditious speeches?" He was looking at her, not the package.

"Of course, calling for the rights of women."

"Or a novel your mother could not approve?"

"In which a woman's groom is tortured to death for teasing her." She felt silly offering it to him while his hands remained at his side, but she couldn't quite order him with the same capriciousness she had shown days ago.

"Or is it a packet of letters from your many importunate suitors?"

"You're expecting a bribe?"

"You offered one first."

"What do you want, then?" He was asking just to put her off balance, and he had something in mind. She could see it in his eyes.

"Nothing." His expression changed, became veiled. "I was teasing. I'll smuggle for you without repayment."

At last he took the bundle and began unbuttoning his brown silk waistcoat from the bottom. The sight of his fingers freeing the buttons caught her attention. Helplessly she watched the growing patch of white cambric. Then, as if he felt her gaze, he paused, looked up. A carriage rattled past as they regarded each other. His fingers resumed their task, deliberate now. When his unbuttoning had reached halfway, he sucked in a breath and shoved the manuscript under the open sides of the waistcoat.

Ophelia heard the paper crackle as she turned away, cheeks flaming.