A smallish boy, wearing not a tailed coat but one that stopped at the waist, whisked the valise away.
“Work him hard.” Wintervale smiled at her. He was as tall as the prince, blond and strapping, almost spinning in place with nervous energy. “Benton hasn’t done much in your absence.”
She didn’t ask why she had to work Benton hard—the prince would explain everything later. She only grinned at Wintervale. “I’ll make him regret that I ever came back.”
Before Little Grind, Master Haywood had taught at a school for boys. Each evening, after sports practice, a group of them would walk past Iolanthe’s window, chatting loudly. She’d paid particular attention to the most popular boy, carefully noting his cheerful swagger and good-natured insults.
Now she was acting the part of that happy, affably cocky boy.
The prince, walking a pace before her, turned his head and slanted her an approving look. Her heart skipped a beat. She didn’t think he was the kind to approve easily.
Entering Wintervale’s room, however, stopped her dead. On his windowsill bloomed a sizable weathervine—terribly useful for knowing when an umbrella would be required for the day.
Only it couldn’t be a weathervine, could it? The weathervine was a mage plant. What was it doing in—
The prince put his arm about her shoulder. “Forgot what Wintervale’s room looks like?”
She let him ease her inside, knowing that she shouldn’t have stopped to gawk. “I was just wondering whether the walls were always so green.”
“No, they weren’t,” said Wintervale. “I changed the wallpaper just before the end of the last Half.”
“You are lucky—and good,” the prince whispered in her ear.
His breath against her skin sent a jolt of heat through her entire person. She couldn’t quite look at him.
The room was soon filled to capacity. Two small boys crouched before the fire, one making tea, the other scrambling eggs with surprising expertise. A third delivered buttered toast and baked beans.
She observed the goings-on carefully: the young boys, no question about it, acted as minions to the older boys.
Benton, who’d earlier been tasked with taking her valise to her room, now returned with a plate of still-sizzling sausages.
“You didn’t burn them again, did you, Benton?” Wintervale asked.
“I almost never burn them,” Benton responded indignantly.
Wintervale poked Iolanthe with his elbow. “The new boys, they do get so ornery by the third Half.”
His elbow rammed a very tender spot in her chest. She would always be proud that she only sucked in a breath in reaction. “They’ll learn their places yet.”
She walked to the plant and fingered its soft, ferny leaves. A weathervine, no doubt about it. “Did you always have this?”
“I raised it from a seedling,” Wintervale answered. “It was probably only three inches tall when you went home with the broken limb.”
Perhaps the prince gave one to him? “It doesn’t seem as if I’ve been gone quite that long.”
“How was Somerset?” Kashkari asked.
Somerset? Instinctively she moved closer to the prince, as if his proximity made her less likely to make mistakes. “You mean Shropshire?”
The prince, who’d taken a place on Wintervale’s bed, gave her another approving look.
Acacia Lucas, one of Master Haywood’s pupils in Little Grind, had been quite keen to marry the prince. One day, during a practical under Iolanthe’s supervision, Acacia had pointed at his portrait and whispered to her friend, He has the face of an Angel. Iolanthe had looked up at the prince’s coldly haughty features and snorted to herself.
Acacia was not entirely right—or entirely wrong. He was nothing like a sublimated Angel. But a sublunary one, perhaps: the dangerous kind that made those gazing upon them see only what they wished to see.
She saw a stalwart protector. But was that what he truly was, or merely what she desperately wanted? As much as she did not wish to, somewhere deep inside she understood that he had not risked everything purely out of the goodness of his heart.
“Sorry, is it Shropshire?” Kashkari shook his head. “How was Shropshire then?”
He had straight blue-black hair, olive skin, intelligent eyes, and an elegant, if slightly forlorn mouth—an outstandingly handsome boy.
“Cold and wet for the most part,” said Iolanthe, figuring that was always an acceptable weather for spring on a North Atlantic island. And then, remembering herself, “But of course I spent all of my time inside, driving our housekeeper batty.”
“How was Derbyshire?” the prince asked Kashkari, moving the topic away from Archer Fairfax.