With my father’s pilfered clothing tucked under my arm, I slip out Giovanni’s back door to find both Saber and Reginald waiting for me. I peer around them but see no one else.
“You made me a promise,” I say sternly to Reginald. I hold a thick envelope—this week’s payment for his Glitter—where he can see, but I don’t proffer it.
“Are you blind?” Reginald asks, and knocks Saber with his shoulder.
Only then do I realize that Saber’s dressed not in his usual black jeans and the sacklike gray garment the world calls a hoodie but in the same Baroque costume he was wearing the last time he came to me at the palace.
“No,” I say before I even realize I’m about to speak. “Not him.”
“I’d like one good reason why not,” Reginald says, sounding most affronted.
But what to say? That I don’t think I can concentrate when Saber is around because the sound of my own heartbeat fills my ears? That his green eyes are so hypnotizing I feel as though I’m taking drugs rather than selling them? Or maybe simply that I’m already fighting my conscience so hard that I don’t think I can tolerate this person who treats me like a particularly putrid bit of mud on his boot?
I had considered this possibility but dismissed it instantly. “He’s your second-in-command,” I argue. “You can’t think to send him to live in the palace for two months.”
I don’t expect Reginald to laugh. I certainly don’t expect him to bend over and howl. Saber avoids my eyes and color stains his cheeks and somehow, I’m not in on the joke.
“Don’t worry,” Reginald says, dabbing at his eyes once he’s recovered. “Saber’s no one. I can do without him.”
I don’t dare even glance at Saber to see how he bears that insult. “He’s conspicuous.” Lord knows I can focus on nothing else when he’s around.
“I dressed him up.” Reginald sounds petulant, like a child wanting praise for his abysmal art project.
“It’s not his appearance. Or rather, it’s more than his appearance. It’s his very presence. He draws the eye.” An almost-honest answer.
“Then why haven’t you noticed him before?” Reginald says, a strange smile on his face.
“Pardonnez?”
“Why. Haven’t. You. Noticed. Him. Before?” Reginald repeats slowly, mockingly, as though I were a lackwit.
Wordlessly, I give him my best look of regal displeasure.
“He’s in your palace often. Used to bring your father his patches—scouted the place for me when you first started. In case you weren’t up to snuff and I had to take matters into my own hands,” Reginald adds, because he can’t let pass an opportunity to slight me.
“But—” I’m trying to avoid looking at Saber, even though I can feel his eyes boring into me as he stands, determinedly saying nothing, even as we speak of him. I remember how Molli’s eyes slid by him in the hallway. Is it truly just me?
“He blends in quite nicely, I think,” Reginald says. “He’s been working with you for months, he knows the palace, he knows the product. Maybe the problem, Your Highness, is that your eye is drawn to him.”
I suck in a breath in a hiss of indignation, but though my mind whirls, I can’t think of a single thing to say in response. If Reginald wanted to sabotage any degree of friendship Saber and I have been able to cobble together the last several weeks, he’s just pulled it off magnificently. With a sigh of faux resignation, I attempt to mend my tattered dignity. “I suppose I won’t need my father’s clothes, then. I confess myself surprised to find you so prepared.”
“Pleasantly, bien s?r,” Reginald says with a grin.
I only shoot him a glare.
“Saber has better ways to communicate with me than you do. So any messages can go through him. I can also get the raw Glitter to him more often, so you won’t have to worry about these meetings.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I have my own reasons for coming to Giovanni,” I say, letting a trace of false innuendo slip into my tone.
“Of course you do,” Reginald says, his drawl fairly sopping with sarcasm.
There is a real reason: I keep my money at Giovanni’s.
I’m feeling somewhat more in control until Saber lets a snort of laughter escape and I’ve a sudden wish to expire where I stand.
Instead, I glance over at him skeptically. “Any particular instructions, beyond feed it and dress it?”
That makes Saber shut his mouth. And clench his jaw.
And makes me feel awful. I suspect his opinion wasn’t solicited on this assignment either. I swallow the urge to apologize—at least in front of Reginald.
“He’s got an extra set of clothes and—”
“They won’t do. I’ll have him fully outfitted.”
“He’s always been fine there before.”
“He wasn’t the future Queen’s personal secretary before. He’ll need full livery.”
Reginald raises both eyebrows at this. “I’m not paying for fancy-pants Louie duds.”
“Of course not,” I snap. “His Majesty will provide.”