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“I didn’t recognize her,” Posy said. “It takes cheek to get past sentinels guarding the Royal wing, much less to approachhim. She must be a courtesan.”
“Pfft. As if he needs to pay for a whore,” Vale revoked. “I’d say she’s a resident dancer. She has the body of one.”
“No,” Cadence scoffed. “He doesn’t fuck court performers.”
“How do you know?”
“Everyone knows.”
Another moan skittered through the lawn. At the sound, I bristled.
One, how dare these ladies speak so freely in my presence. Two, how dare I take part in voyeurism.
I berated my conscience and was about to wrench the casement closed when the male re-emerged. He strode from the hedges without pause, as though nothing had transpired in there. Resuming his original path, he proceeded down the garden lane. Torchlights sketched the dark layers of hair teasing his nape, plus a stack of ribbon-like bracelets encircling one of his wrists.
The woman didn’t return. The orchid he’d stolen was nowhere in sight.
I frowned. This amounted to crumbs. What inspired me to keep observing him, as if more obscene displays might happen any second, I didn’t know.
The princess in me huffed aloud.
And that’s when he stopped walking.
Clamping their hands over their mouths, the ladies ducked. Because I hadn’t thought to do the same thing, I stood there, visible and grasping the sill.
The stranger’s head slanted sideways, tilting faintly in the direction of my balcony. I sensed his eyes skewering the ground in concentration, listening rather than looking.
The angle revealed traces of his profile. I prided myself on having keen eyesight and caught the fiendish twitch of his lips.
He heard me. He knows I’ve been watching.
I thought he might turn and look up. Instead, the specter snapped his fingers lightly, as though in deliberation, then kept going. He crossed the garden, that long coat whipping around his frame, then vanished like fog through a door leading into the north wing.
The Seven popped back up. Cadence made a feral noise reminiscent of a cat in heat. “I know other places he can snap those fingers.”
“You are shallow,” Vale chuckled.
Candace shrugged. “Not where it matters to Poet.”
I would have startled at the crude remark, had I not been distracted.
Poet.
Was that his name? What sort of pretentious moniker was that?
Again, the pants and coat didn’t pass for a servant’s livery or noble’s attire, but a person belonging to an entirely different class. A male who sported a lavish standing collar, black leathers, and a set of ribbon bracelets around his wrist.
One of them had been red. Scarlet.
Cadence misread my expression, and her lips slanted in derision. “Sorry, Your Highness. That was shady of me.”
She didn’t sound or look like she regretted the lewd comment. “I must dress,” I heard myself say, too gripped by anxiousness—I wanted a second look at that ribbon in my drawer—to remember that I was already clothed.
My announcement ushered the females out the door. As they trotted down the hall, a muffledprudecombined with the courtiers’ answering sniggers wormed their way into my suite.
Privately, I winced but kept my chin raised.
Unlike every other female Royal, Mother and I didn’t keep a retinue of ladies-in-waiting at our disposal. By tradition, practical and simple Autumn required only one for each of us.
