Page 4 of A King’s Trust (Heart-Mage Trilogy #1)

4

ACQUIESCING

B eau yawned, scratching idly at his chest as he eyed the two outfits he’d laid out. Both needed to be pressed, if he were honest, but he hadn’t thought about it until a few minutes ago, and he wasn’t sure there was a maid alive who could make these presentable before he needed to leave for the Macabries’ capital estate.

Three days with perhaps the most powerful noble family in the kingdom, and he’d left off packing until the morning of. The only thing he could possibly dread more was staying in his rooms and poring through more reports.

The door to his suite swung open, and he turned, fully expecting to beg a servant to do their best with his attire, but Oria’s announcement of, “Her Majesty, Queen Acier,” came just as he recognized his mother sweeping in. She gave Elias a dismissive gesture of her hand that sent him, hastily excusing himself, into the hall.

“Isn’t this a surprise,” Beau said, trying to sound casual as he ducked into his dressing room to snatch up a robe and throw it over himself. He could happily go his entire life without ever finding out his mother’s opinion of his tattoos. “Good morning, Mother.”

“You’ve been avoiding us,” she said by way of greeting. When he emerged from behind the door, she levelled a flat stare at him, arms crossed over her stomach. “I shouldn’t have to issue a formal summons for you to come speak to us when so much is at stake.”

“I haven’t been avoiding you. I see Father every week in court, and you even more often at your friends’ delightful little parties.”

The queen’s flat look sharpened. She raised one eyebrow slightly at him, a movement that spoke volumes: yes, of course he was avoiding them, and she knew it, and he knew she knew it. He’d literally sprinted away to avoid talking with his parents when they crossed paths.

“The visit with the Macabries must go perfectly, Beauregard. Since you refused to be sociable of your own accord, I’ve had to go to incredible lengths to facilitate appropriate meetings with the ladies. You cannot offend Lady Macabrie as you have the others.”

Her eyes darted past him to the rumpled lines of clothing laid on the bed. “What is that?”

“Uh, you caught me getting dressed for the trip,” he said, willing her not to examine the garments more closely.

A futile wish; she picked up the sage green coat and ran a finger along the crease marring the lapel. “Not in this, surely?”

She blinked around the room as if seeing it for the first time, taking in the small pile of towels and clothes to be washed, the heap of ashes in the fireplace that needed sweeping, the books fallen off the stack on his bedside table to splay facedown, pages bent.

“What is this mess?” she demanded. “Where is your valet? He should be dismissed for letting things get in such disarray.”

“I’m already ahead of you, Mother,” Beau quipped. “I don’t even have to dismiss him, as I never had a valet to begin with.”

“You assured me when you moved in that you were bringing all your own staff!” Queen Acier said, eyes widening.

“And I did. I brought Elias.”

“Elias is a guard . Who is taking care of you? Your clothing? Your baths? Who brings your meals? Who on earth were you planning to take with you to the Macabries’?”

“This palace has a thousand servants. If I really need something, I can always flag someone down to ask. And most of the time, I do it myself.”

The queen folded her hands together in front of her face, tapped her fingers against her lips, and sighed before lowering them again. He could see her wrapping herself in patience. “Beauregard, those people have jobs that you’re pulling them away from when you flag them down. And yes, of course, most of them are happy enough to help you—you’re the prince. But you’re being immensely selfish with your time.”

“Selfish?”

“Yes, selfish,” his mother insisted. “When you could’ve been spending your time considering how to affect hundreds or thousands of your subjects, you’re instead focused on how you’ll dress or feed or clean up after yourself. Do you understand? Your time is meant for other things, bigger things.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Beau said, a blush creeping up.

“Not to mention the embarrassment you’d bring on the crown dressing like this, or showing up like a pauper without a proper staff. I wish you would think , Beauregard.”

Beau scratched at the back of his neck, the heat of his embarrassment making the skin itch furiously. “I’m sorry. I…don’t even know how to go about finding a valet.”

“Fortunately, I know of one in need of employment who knows exactly how to serve a prince of Granvallée,” she said crisply.

Dropping his weight heavily onto the bed, Beau sat. “Char’s, I assume.” He didn’t want to be waited on by Char’s staff; more people to see all the ways he was less than his brother, more reminders of the ill-fitting remnants of the life Char left behind.

“Yes,” the queen said, the word richly marbled with grief. “I’ll send Mistress Dubois up to determine what other staff you’ll need.” Her eyes swept his room, the faintest sneer curling her lip. She left without looking at Beau again.

When Elias returned, Beau threw him a frantic look. “Help me clean before the steward sees this!” They scrambled to straighten the suite, though there was little to be done about the ashes and they only had time to stuff the laundry into his dressing room before Mistress Dubois was announced.

Sweating, Beau finished tucking his shirt into his pants and nodded for Elias to let her in.

Mistress Dubois had been the palace steward for as long as Beau had lived, a fixture of these halls as unchangeable as the stone and glass of the building itself. When she walked in, it was as if the palace itself had come alive and swept a judgmental glare over the room and its contents—including one shabby-feeling crown prince.

He watched her circle the space, peeking through doorways and behind furniture, pausing to curtsy formally when she drew close enough before she scoured him with the same up-and-down scan the room received. He had the sense she knew everything he’d ever done wrong.

At length, she came to stand before him, folding her hands in front of her. “You’re not a slob, Your Highness,” she said, the first words she’d spoken. “I imagine you’ll give your staff more interesting problems than can be solved by simply following you with a broom.”

Beau wasn’t sure how to take that. “I suppose. Though I can’t imagine what kind of strange things you’re anticipating from me. If I’m not at some event, I mostly just…stay here.”

She nodded as though he’d agreed with her. “Underfoot, yes. Conducting your business here means you’ll need staff that can keep your secrets, as your guards do. Especially this one.” She inclined her head toward Elias, who startled at being spoken about. “He’s well known among the servants for being too close-mouthed for even the most superficial gossip.”

Beau laughed. “You’ll never make any friends in the palace that way, El. At least make up some juicy stories about me.”

Elias chuckled and shook his head. Internally, Beau glowed with warmth for Elias. He’d never asked the man to keep any secrets, but Elias had always respected Beau’s privacy immensely. It was why the court had no good stories about him from the isles.

Mistress Dubois’s eyes flicked between them. She pulled out a small book and pencil, scribbled a note, and slipped it back into her apron. Beau was rabidly curious what it said. “Your mother requested that, if appropriate, I recommend Master Uriel to your service as a valet. I do think he would suit the position well, although…”

She studied him again, that stare that took in everything. “Although?” Beau prompted.

“He has two chambermaids he prefers to work with,” she said. “Do you anticipate any problems with young women cleaning and serving here?” Her eyes were sharp as knives.

“No?” Beau said, shrugging as he tried to imagine what problems she’d be referring to. “Are you worried about my modesty? I guarantee it’s all been seen before. Or…are you worried they’ll be uncomfortable? Seems like more of a question for them than me.”

Dubois smiled ever so slightly, and it vanished quickly enough he might’ve imagined it. “I’ll ask them, certainly. I’ve taken the liberty of calling them here, since time is of the essence. They should arrive presently.”

“I don’t know why my service would be so different from Char’s, so if they were comfortable with him, I’d hope they’d be comfortable with me.”

The steward went still except for a slight tightness around her eyes and purse of her lips. “They were only in the late prince’s service for about a week before they were replaced with more senior attendants,” she said shortly.

“Oh.” Beau frowned. Had they not met Char’s standards? He couldn’t recall his brother being particularly finicky, but it’d been years. “Is that all the staff I’d need? A valet and two chambermaids?”

“For a minimal staff, I’d recommend a page. I’ll find you someone suitable. It’ll be good to see Aloise and Capucine work alongside Uriel again. I’ve had a hard time finding a good place for them. They’re both very competent and very discreet. They’ll give your First a run for his money.”

“If they’re so good, why have they been hard to place?”

She hesitated, then glanced toward Elias. His guard raised his eyebrows and nodded slightly, an answer to a question Beau hadn’t understood. “Aloise and Capucine are very beautiful young women,” Mistress Dubois said.

She stopped there, as though that were an answer. When Beau didn’t respond, she made a small sound in her throat and said, “There are quite a few people of considerable power in this palace who I do not feel comfortable placing pretty girls within reach of.”

Another knock at the door announced the arrival of Master Uriel and the two chambermaids, and curtailed any response from Beau. Mistress Dubois waved them in.

As the three new people filed into his rooms and stared around, Beau was lanced with painful awkwardness. He hated having people in his space, and this was so many people.

A plump, well-groomed man in his middle years, Master Uriel said in a reedy voice, “Hello, Your Highness. I am Enrich Uriel. This is Aloise Degland.”

He waved forward a short, curvy, dark-skinned young woman whose twists of black hair fell just past her shoulders, each ending in a carved bead of a different color. She curtsied politely and then shook Beau’s offered hand.

The second woman didn’t wait for her introduction, but said, “Capucine Availe, Your Highness.” She curtsied but never dropped her eyes, watching him almost confrontationally with brown eyes that stood out starkly from her pale face and red-gold hair.

“Lovely to meet you all,” Beau said. “Master Uriel, I’m told you’re the best valet a prince can ask for. And both of you come highly recommended, Mistress Degland, Mistress Availe.”

Uriel’s smile was very kind. “Always a pleasure to hear one’s work is appreciated. Shall I get started with your packing? The girls can do a tidy-up now and a deeper clean once we’ve returned from the Macabries’.”

“Oh—um. Well, I suppose...” His anxiety spiked as he realized they planned to stay, to accompany him both away and at home. “Is this all happening a bit quickly? It feels quick.”

Master Uriel nodded in an understanding way. “It is quick. Mistress Dubois made clear the urgency of the situation. I understand you’ve not kept a staff up to this point. We’ll adapt to your routines and preferences over the next few weeks. In the meantime, if you want anything specific or wish us to do things differently, you have only to ask, of course.”

Beau nodded. It wasn’t as if he’d never had servants, but he’d all but banished them from his rooms as a teenager because of how uncomfortable he was with someone always around, and in the isles, he’d had no one at all until Elias.

As if Beau’s thoughts had summoned him, El crossed the room to stand next to him, arm brushing Beau’s elbow. “His Highness and I have some work to do, so we can stay out of your way while you prepare.”

The prince escaped to the study gratefully, shutting the door that connected it with his bedroom. He’d barely sat down when the front door of his suite opened again, bringing Mistress Dubois back in accompanied by a child of perhaps twelve, red-cheeked and panting, having apparently sprinted to his rooms.

“Good morning, Your Highness,” the kid said with a cheerful grin and an eager, wobbly bow—not a curtsy, interestingly. The hair cut short around the ears and the boots instead of slippers sticking out beneath the palace dress and apron made Beau rethink his initial guess of how to address the kid.

“Good morning,” Beau said, the child’s enthusiasm tugging his lips into a grin despite the chaos of the morning. “What’s your name, young…runner?”

The child bobbed on their toes and hesitated before saying, “My mother calls me Chloe Moulin, Your Highness.”

“Nice to meet you, Chiv Moulin,” Beau said, and his smile grew when the child positively vibrated with excitement. It wasn’t palace protocol; it was what they called deckhands in the isles, and the only polite form of address he knew that didn’t evoke male or female. “Sorry to make you run all the way here. My urgency seems to have set everyone running today.”

“S’all right. My mother says if I don’t run myself ragged, I turn into a right terror.”

Beau chuckled. “So, your mother calls you a terror and Chloe. What should I call you?”

Moulin’s eyes flicked over to Mistress Dubois. Beau realized he might be overstepping some etiquette line, but the steward only watched. “I like to be called Theodore.”

With a nod, Beau said, “Ah. Very good, Master Theodore.” The boy’s smile could’ve lit a ballroom. “Is Theo here to be my page, Mistress Dubois?”

The steward rubbed an affectionate hand over Theodore’s hair and smiled genuinely at Beau. “Yes, he’s got all the energy needed to keep up with you, Your Highness.”

“Very good. While I’ve got you, please tell me more about the ‘quite a few’ nobles you can’t trust with our servants.” Mistress Dubois seemed surprised to have the topic raised again. He flicked through faces in his imagination, guessing at which of the nobles she meant. “Have these individuals done anything that could be brought as a formal complaint against their House?”

Theo clicked his tongue. “Servants can’t make complaints against nobles.”

“They most certainly can,” Beau said. “The complaints are open to anyone who can present trustworthy testimony.”

“Trustworthy,” Mistress Dubois repeated in a low voice.

Beau leaned back against his desk, propped his elbow on his knee, and chewed on his thumbnail as he thought. “The testimony of servants isn’t taken seriously? Hmm. And I suppose it’s a con siderable risk to come forward. Even in a best-case scenario, you lose your job, and who’s to say another household would take on a servant who’s filed a complaint against a previous employer?”

Dubois nodded once, crisply.

He hummed under his breath, drumming fingers against his chin. A hint of a plan tickled the back of his mind, but he’d need to let it simmer there before it would take form. “Would you give me a list, Mistress Dubois?”

“A list?”

“Of noble names.”

She considered it, then shook her head. “No. Forgive me, Your Highness, but I don’t think this is your problem to solve.”

“My nobles are misbehaving in my palace,” he said incredulously. “I challenge you to find a problem that is more ‘mine’ to solve. If you’re worried about my intentions, I promise I only want to make the palace safer for everyone.”

“I don’t doubt your intentions, Highness. Only your wisdom. There are names on that list who could trace the complaints right back to individual girls. You’re stepping into a mire where you don’t understand the consequences.”

Beau nodded, thoughts racing. It would be hard to predict the consequences if he did something en masse . He needed more information. He needed the list and an understanding of what had made Dubois move those servants out of reach, so he could determine what the response should be.

“Give me the list, Mistress Dubois,” he said at last, “and I promise to take no action on it without your approval.”

“Approval?” she repeated, eyebrows shooting to her hairline.

He spread his hands. “You’re right—I don’t understand the consequences. But I don’t want any of my people afraid to go to work if I can change it. So work with me. Help me fix it.”

She tapped her notebook against her palm as she studied him. “You’d have me direct your actions?”

“In this situation, yes. Why, is there someone who’d be better?”

Mistress Dubois ran her thumb over the pages of her notebook, then nodded to herself. She flipped it open and began to write, one line after another. He watched, unable to read names from his vantage but able to see when she filled the entire sheet—and then turned it over and continued writing. He made a choked sound of alarm, and she paused to look up at him.

“How many names are going to be on that list?” he asked. “Will I have any nobles left?”

“There are one hundred sixty-two Houses with permanent or semi-permanent living quarters in the palace,” Mistress Dubois said. “I have written…” She mouthed a count silently. “...twenty-four names. If you don’t have the stomach, I’ll simply work as I always have and kindly request that you forget this conversation, Highness.”

“No, no, continue.”

Elias stared at him expressionlessly. At the sound of paper tearing, Beau turned back to see Mistress Dubois creasing the page before pressing it into his palm.

“I am trusting you, Your Highness,” she said as she folded his fingers over it.

He could see how afraid she was, though he didn’t fully understand why. He supposed these things had happened in secrecy and darkness for a long time; bringing them to light bore a risk of making things worse. He wanted her to feel secure in his intentions.

Beau raised his hand palm-out. “I, Beauregard Mylan Adelard Tristain Highput, Duke of Verdmont and Crown Prince of Granvallée, do solemnly swear to aid you as I can and, by your advice, to do no harm.”

Her eyebrows climbed again, and that faint smile returned. She said, with an undercurrent of wry humor he hadn’t heard before, “With any other man I’d assume you were being a pompous ass.”

Beau dropped his hand and laughed. “Maybe I am?”

She curtsied again, not answering, and then turned to leave.

“Come on, Theodore. You’re not needed here for the moment.” As she passed El, she poked the First in the chest and said, “You should’ve been gossiping, Master Elias.”

Dropping the paper on his desk, Beau stared without opening it. “So I have servants now. I can stop being ‘selfish with my time.’ The question is, which of the ten thousand problems to solve first?”

“You get married,” Elias said.

“Surely this is more important?” He flicked the folded paper.

El picked up the torn-out page and unfolded it. “Everyone is going to have more to worry about than handsy nobles if you kick-start a civil war by fucking up the succession,” he said bluntly. “Get married. Get your crown. Then worry about everything else.”

He scanned the list, mouth flattening and brows drawing down into a frown. “Hmm. No surprises here, but it is going to be ugly if you hand out consequences.”

“What do you mean, no surprises?” Beau snatched the paper. “You knew about this?”

Elias exhaled a completely humorless bark of a laugh. “I know nobles.” When Beau met his eyes, he added, “Present company excluded. Probably only present company excluded.”

“Only me?” Beau said, rolling his eyes.

“Yes. You’re the only titled man I’ve met on this continent who didn’t feel entitled to every person, place, or thing his eye beheld. Even your fa—” Elias practically swallowed his tongue cutting himself off, laughter extinguished like a candle flame as he started shaking his head at himself.

“My father wouldn’t do this,” Beau said seriously, intently. “He would not do this.”

“No, of course not,” Elias said immediately. Too quickly.

“He wouldn’t , El.”

“I’m agreeing with you.”

“You’re not agreeing, you’re acquiescing,” Beau pressed.

Elias gave him a sickly grin. “I think you’ll find those are synonyms, Your Highness.”

His guard took the list back and read loudly, forestalling further argument. “Lord Hugh Abadie, Lord Lyam Cellier, Lord Auguste Harcine, Lady Nadia Kinasha…I know the stories of some of these from kitchen gossip—and yes,” he said, cutting Beau off before he could speak, “I don’t contribute to the gossip, but I do listen. This list is going to be very bad for your relationship with the nobles.”

“Well, sure, now I know twenty-something names of people who are willing to hurt their own staff,” Beau said bitterly.

“I’m not talking about the nobles on the list. I’m talking about all the rest of them. You’re already so contemptuous of them, the way they speak, the way they spend their time. You don’t bother to hide it. And now you’re going to be suspicious of every one of them.”

The prince scowled at him. “I am not contemptuous .”

With a snort, Elias said, “If I say ‘of course you’re not,’ am I agreeing or acquiescing?”

Beau chewed on his bottom lip. He was about to be trapped with those nobles on the Macabries’ estate—though no Macabries on the list, at least, thank the gods—for days. He already had such a hard time relating to these people, and now this. Elias was right. The list was going to be terrible for his goal of falling in love with a noblewoman. “Fuck. I need Char’s damned Watchers to be real so someone can make all the unsalvageable nobles disappear.”

Elias breathed out a laugh, going to the bookcase and running his finger down the spines. “The trouble with imaginary secret societies is you never know quite who they answer to. Who can say whether they’d find the same nobles disagreeable?”

“Well, it was Char’s imagination, so presumably he and I could agree on this set, at least,” Beau said, jabbing the scrap of paper.

“Hmm.” When Elias turned back from the bookcase, his face was blank. “Should we check in on your valet? We need to leave soon, and you’ll want to be better dressed for the ride.”