Page 6 of Lady Like

The furniture in the parlor is covered in sheets, their edges furry with dust. The prince yanks one off a couch and immediately coughs as dust blooms in a cloud around him.

He is, Harry thinks as she sits on the bench of the pianoforte and waits for him to finish asphyxiating, likely unpracticed at coming into contact with anything that has not been prepared for him by four or five people.

What very different lives they have lived, she and her father.

The question of parentage has never occupied much space in her mind.

Once or twice in her youth she had made a halfhearted attempt to pry open the locked doors of their mother’s heart and learn the secrets of who her father might have been.

But before long, Harry realized it was best to accept that who her father was made no difference to who she was now—her mother certainly didn’t give a fig after him, and Harry shouldn’t either.

However, even in her bandit youth, it had never occurred to her that her mother might have been consort to the prince regent himself.

Let alone that those liaisons may have begot Harry and Collin, or that such lineage might one day lead her here, to a meeting she has a suspicion is about to change her life, though in what way she can’t be sure.

Is it so outlandish to imagine that she might leave here a princess?

Why else would he have called them both?

Certainly not just to introduce himself.

She wants to ask where this revelation puts her in line for the throne, but it doesn’t seem the right moment.

“You’re my father,” she says as the prince at last settles himself upon the sofa.

“I am,” he replies. “And allow me to offer my condolences on your mother’s passing.”

“Yes, I’m sure you mourn all your whores.

” Harry sticks her thumbnail between her front teeth, a habit from childhood she always thinks broken until she finds herself under duress.

Should she offer similar sentiments on his own father’s death, though the mad king had been ailing for so long, Harry wonders if it was a relief to finally have him gone.

Still, some sympathy might go a long way.

But in moments of emotional stress, she has always found herself reaching for cruelty rather than compassion, which is why she instead says, “Would you like my thanks for not having dropped my brother and me in the Thames as infants?”

“You could thank me for your mother’s allowance,” the prince replies, and when Harry raises an eyebrow, continues, “Did you never wonder how an incognita could afford the rent on a renovated townhouse in Westminster? New dresses every Easter, tutors for you and your brother, presents at Christmas?”

Harry feels her nail crack between her teeth. “I thought she was a good lay.”

“And now that she’s gone, I’d like to offer you the same support.” The prince pauses, waiting for a reaction. Harry doesn’t offer one. “This house is yours, as well as the land and title. I have a second manor set aside for your brother, about a furlough west of here.”

“Why?”

The prince must have been expecting grateful tears and blubbering and kissing of his rings, rather than suspicion, for he has to consider this for a moment before answering.

“Because I was fond of your mother,” he says at last. “She gave me companionship when it was dearly needed. And no matter the circumstances, you are my daughter. I have several children besides you and your brother to whom I am extending similar offers.”

“So you can’t have loved her that particularly,” Harry says.

She knows there is risk of speaking thus—especially since her current living situation is only slightly better than the workhouse—but suddenly her mother’s distrust of the upper classes seems justified.

Surely no offer such as this has ever come without conditions.

The prince regent inclines his head. “I hope to fill the nobility with allies.”

“What are the conditions?” Harry asks. “Should I accept your offer.”

“Did I say there were conditions?”

“There are always conditions. No one has ever given their bastard children a house and a title and asked simply for their word that when the time comes they’ll take up your cause.

What if I’m a criminal and I use this place as a cache for stolen loot?

Or I donate the house to some disgruntled Sapphist cult intent on overthrowing you?

I would never, obviously. I’m very gruntled.

” Harry presses a hand to her chest. “But the Sapphists.”

The prince folds his hands in his lap. Presses his thumbs together. Scrutinizes his nails. “I would like to help provide for you, Miss Lockhart,” he says. “Your brother as well. I do not wish to see you destitute.”

He glances up at Harry, and she can sense a clause creeping up on her like a thief down a dark hallway.

And then the prince finishes, “As long as you are married to a respectable husband by my coronation.”

“There we are.” Harry slaps her knees and stands, dusting off the seat of her breeches before fishing in her coat pocket for her riding gloves.

She’d rather he said she’d need to shackle herself to the colonnade.

Literal imprisonment would be far preferable to the prison of matrimony, particularly with that respectable carrying so much weight.

“As flattering as it is to be one of your loose ends, I must decline.”

She starts for the door, but pauses when the prince asks, “How do you plan to keep up your current lifestyle?”

“I earn a living.”

“You earn enough to occasionally cover a round of drinks after your matinee,” he replies, and Harry almost asks him how he knows her profession before she remembers—goddamn future king of England.

“But you live off the remaining allowance your mother provided for you. Or rather, that I provided for you, as she had no savings.”

Damn. Her mother had so little regard for her children in life Harry realizes she should have been more suspicious about her generosity in death, meager as it was.

“You’re a hobby actress,” the prince says. “A hobby duelist. A hobby horsewoman. None of those earn much money, do they?”

Hurtful, Harry thinks. Though not untrue.

“All I ask is that you marry and keep up a respectable facade,” the prince continues.

“Your name will not be publicly attached to mine, but with the bequeathal of the house, assumptions will be made, so I would ask that you exercise discretion. No more duels. Or affairs with nobles. Or thespian pursuits.”

“You’re asking me to quit the theater?”

“I’m asking you to conduct yourself with more…modesty. Though with the house and land, there would be no reason for you to work. The income from the estate would more than support you.”

Of all the devil’s bargains! She’d rather he’d invited her here to murder her. He might as well have, for these preposterous conditions will leave her so little of herself. Such terms could only have no impact on a life as dull and conventional as Collin’s.

Collin.

“Are you making this same offer to my brother?” she demands.

“Yes.”

“Under the same conditions?”

“I will require the same discretion and behavior befitting his new station,” the prince says. “But there is no marriage clause. The question of ownership and inheritance is less complex, on account of his sex.”

“And you would rather perpetuate this inequality between the sexes than address the institutional failing in your capacity as regent?”

The prince smiles. The familiar squint of his eyes is so much less endearing than it was in the entryway. “I’m sure you’ve heard stories. I myself had a rather misspent youth.”

A misspent middle age as well, for by all accounts, kingship has done nothing to curtail Prinny’s fondness for drink and gambling and expensive parties.

The rags were reporting that for the upcoming coronation, the new king had commissioned a robe with a twenty-seven-foot train, and as many kitchens would be needed to prepare the feast.

“But if, as king, I am to create crucial allies for myself in the nobility, you must understand that their morality cannot be questioned. It would reflect badly upon my own reputation.”

“So that is what you want me to be?” Harry asks. “Some kind of respectable buttress so you can keep carrying on however pleases you?”

He considers this for a moment, before he nods. “Yes, that about sums it up.”

Harry drops her chin to her chest, hands mashed into her jacket pockets.

The prince stands and faces her. The height Harry had had over their mother suddenly makes a great deal more sense, for she and the prince are nose to nose They stare at each other, and Harry wonders if the prince too is considering how strange it is to meet someone you had before only known in your own reflection.

“Is there anything you’d like to say?” he asks at last.

Bollocks —that’s what she’d like to say.

The idea of marriage—not just a hasty one, but marriage at all—makes her want to lie facedown upon the floor.

And the bloody morality clause! If she accepts his terms, her life will forever hinge upon what this arbitrary god deems appropriate.

Though the prince’s ideas of propriety would be secondary, for a reputable husband is better than any morality clause for keeping a woman within the bounds of convention.

She suspects that, like so many royal bastards before her, some length could be let out of her father’s contractual chain if she exercised a certain amount of discretion.

But what husband deemed respectable enough for marriage would want a wife who outfitted herself in trousers and cropped hair?

“What I’d like to say is damn you, ” she replies at last. “But that might get me executed.”

“I’ll allow it,” the prince replies.

“As my king?”

“As your father. You needn’t say yes or no definitively today. But I suggest you consider it.” He places a hand upon her shoulder, and Harry lets it stay. “Please, consider it, Miss Lockhart. Even if you doubt my intentions, I promise, I am only thinking of you.”

“Do I actually have a choice?” she asks. “Or is this simply theater?”

The prince inclines his head. “That depends on what you really want from your life.”

In the foyer behind them, Harry hears the squeak of the front door, then Collin’s voice calls, “Hal? Are you dead?” A scrabble of paws on stone, then Collin cries, “No, get away from me! Don’t lick me, no!”

The prince smiles. “Well then. Shall we call your brother in?”