Page 29 of A Royal Kiss & Tell
Domesticity for Ladies
LEOTOSSEDTHEHoneycutt’s Gazetteaside, and a hotel footman deftly stepped in to pick it up from the table. Leo scarcely noticed him, as the servants at the Clarendon Hotel had been trained to be almost invisible.
Leo had taken half a floor at the hotel on Bond Street, noted for its catering to aristocrats and dignitaries. His father preferred his second son to reside in a house, preferably with an Alucian ally, but Leo preferred the hotel. It was in the heart of London, and there was enough room for his staff, which included his palace guards, Kadro and Artur, his valet, Freddar, who doubled as a houseman in Leo’s private suite of rooms, and his private secretary, Josef Pistol. It was Josef who kept his ear to the ground around town and who’d brought himHoneycutt’s Gazettethis morning.
Josef was sitting with Leo now in the library, on armchairs covered in rich leather and stuffed within an inch of exploding. They’d been served tea, and Josef was making quick, efficient notes about the week ahead in his leather-bound journal while Leo drummed his fingers against the arm of the chair, mulling over the bit of gossip from the gazette. The news was more than a week old, and yet, it still rankled Leo.
“Will you be calling on Lord Hawke today, Highness?” Josef asked as he jotted a note.
Leo wondered what else Josef wrote in that journal, always dashing off something across the page. “Yes, presently. Who watches me so closely, do you suspect?” he asked, gesturing in the direction he’d tossed the gazette.
“All of London,” Josef said blandly, as if he’d had to remind Leo of this several times over.
Obviously, Leo knew that his coming and going was noted and reported in morning papers. He was a prince and therefore a grand prize in the marriage mart. And in more than one country. He wasn’t surprised that it was widely known he’d been a guest at Lord Russell’s home. But what he didnotexpect was that anyone, besides Russell himself, would know how he’d slipped out that evening. He’d taken such care of it, too, asking the butler if he could use a service door. Evidently, he was not very good at skulking about.
Frankly, Leo was discovering that the only thing he was even passably competent at was enjoying himself. But when it came to serious matters, he was utterly inept. In other words, his worst fear was being confirmed—he was rather useless. This had been proven to him over the last fortnight, when, in an effort to at least educate himself about what Lysander had told him, he’d blundered through every turn.
“The carriage will arrive at half past two, Your Highness,” Josef said, and closed his notebook. “Shall I send someone to fetch flowers?”
“Flowers?” Leo asked. He was still thinking of the on-dit, of that night at the Russell house.
“For Lady Caroline.”
“Oh.Je, of course.” Hawke had only rarely left his home during the course of his sister’s illness. Leo had gone round every day, not only because he considered Hawke a friend, but because he needed desperately to speak to Hawke’s new chambermaid again, and that, he was discovering, was a hell of a lot easier said than done.
It galled him that he was so inept that he couldn’t even manage a meeting with a maid. He had made three attempts to find her, and just when he thought he had, Lady Caroline had stumbled upon them, swaying from side to side with a ghostly look about her. Everything about her looked gray...except her remarkable green eyes, which had seemed more incandescent than ever.
Since the night she’d thwarted him by knocking on death’s door, Leo had tried in vain to speak to the Hawke maid, but even as Lady Caroline lay bedridden, she was making that impossible. Every time he called at the house on Upper Brook Street, he felt obliged to sit with Hawke, who fretted like an old woman over his sister, even though the doctor had told him she ought to recover completely. And still, Leo could not manage to talk his way out of that study. Every excuse he offered—to fetch water for Hawke, for example—would prompt Hawke to wave his hand and yank on the bellpull. Or when Leo insisted he needed a chamber pot, Hawke pointed to one in the corner.
Leo was continually hampered by his lack of imagination and Hawke’s attention to detail.
Really, how did anyone expect he would know what to do? All he knew was that the woman he reluctantly searched for had once been a maid in the home of Lord Hill. That, and her name—Ann Marble—was all he could recall of what Lysander had told him in the palace garden.
Except that she wasn’t employed by Hill. By some hook or crook, she’d moved her employment to Lord Hawke’s home, of all places.
Naturally, Leo didn’t know that when he’d worked so hard to gain an invitation to Lord Hill’s home. He was only marginally acquainted with the man, having met him a time or two at the gentlemen’s club he frequented and at formal suppers here and there. He’d never had a proper conversation with him that he could recall. It had required a bit of thinking on Leo’s part, but he’d finally come up with an idea to connive an invitation to the man’s home. He’d thought himself rather clever, too.
“Your Highness?” Josef prodded him.
“Yes, flowers,” Leo said, suddenly remembering himself. “Something bright and cheerful.” God knew the Hawke household needed it. “And some whisky for Hawke. Although I think perhaps the time has come that he put down the bottle.” He’d passed more than a few hours with Hawke while he numbed his fears with whisky.
Josef bowed crisply. “If I may have your leave?”
Leo sighed. “If you’re not going to engage in a bit of tittle-tattle with me, then go about your business,” he said, waving him away. Josef went out. He never engaged in tittle-tattle, that one.
Leo had an hour before the carriage would fetch him and carry him to Hawke’s house, and this time, apparently, he’d be laden with gifts.
More false pretense.
That’s the manner in which he’d called on Hill—with much false pretense. Oh, but he’d racked his brain on what to say to Hill to get his invitation. And then, miraculously, he’d recalled taking part in a hunt one rainy autumn in Sussex. Hill had been there, too, hadn’t he? Yes, Leo determined, he had, as his family seat was nearby. Leo was certain that Hill had been present when their hunt party had stopped at a Herstmonceux Castle ruin to rest the horses. Hill had been there.
But how to use this memory to approach Hill? Leo had thought back to the many ways people had conspired to make his acquaintance over the years. Who knew there would be a lesson in it? But there was, and he’d put himself at a table with Lord Hill at the gentlemen’s club one day and asked if he recalled the abandoned castle they’d rode past during the hunt a few years ago.
“Of course I remember it,” Hill had said.
“Is it for sale?” Leo asked.
Hill had stared at him with confusion. “For sale? That pile of rubble?”
