A Royal Kiss and Tell

Leo hurried down a very long hall until Jacleen asked in a voice scarcely above a whisper if he meant to go out, for he was going deeper into the castle. “Then if you would be so kind as to direct me to the service entrance,” he said. Jacleen pointed in the direction they’d come. Which meant they needed to retrace their steps through the kitchen. With a groan, Leo pulled her along behind him. He avoided eye contact with the cook, who was, oddly enough, still standing in the very spot they’d left her.

At last they emerged from the castle into a service courtyard, and there, just as he knew they would be, were Kadro and Artur. They were on horseback, and in between them was a saddled horse without a rider.

And quite unexpectedly, there was also a young lad. He spoke to Jacleen in Weslorian, and she turned a panicked look to Leo. “My brother.”

“Your brother?”

Before he could think what to do, a sudden burst from the kitchen door startled them all. It was the footman who had witnessed the altercation in the kitchen. He had a cloth bundle of some sort, which he tossed to the boy. To Jacleen, he said, “Godspeed,” and disappeared back inside.

None of this was in Leo’s plans. He didn’t really have plans, but this was not what he’d anticipated, and it produced such anxiety in him that he thought his heart might give out. But there was no time to wait for that. They had to move. Kadro and Artur had not expected Jacleen or the boy, but when Leo told Kadro to put her before him in the saddle, he did as he was commanded without question. Artur lifted the lad up behind him, and Leo took the third horse.

Leo did not miss the look shared between his two loyal guards. They thought the worst of him, he supposed. He could hardly blame them. Through the years, they’d had to peel him up off floors and drag him out of beds. They knew what sort of sot he was on a normal day and no doubt they thought this was a drunken shenanigan.

But today was not a normal day. On the one end of it, he’d had those few stolen moments with Caroline that still lingered in his blood. On the other end of it, he had a frightened Weslorian girl and her brother, who surely thought they were being dragged off to an even worse situation. And in between those ends, he’d hardly had a drop.

He took Jacleen and her brother to Cressidian.

Cressidian met him at the door of his house in a dressing gown. He took one look at Jacleen, and then the lad, and said to Leo, “That’s three now, Highness.”

“I realize this is an imposition, sir, but I—”

Cressidian interrupted him by throwing his hand up and pointing down the hall. “Go,” he said to Jacleen and her brother.

Jacleen looked with alarm at Leo, then took her brother’s hand and walked uncertainly in the direction he pointed.

Cressidian glared at Leo. “I need money for their keep.”

“More money?” Leo asked, surprised. “I should think what I’ve given you thus far should suffice.”

“You think wrong, Highness. And if you don’t want to pay me fairly for their keep, I think the Weslorian ambassador would be interested in what you are doing.”

Leo arched a brow. “Beg your pardon, but are you extorting me?”

“Call it what you like. I’m just asking for their keep.”

Leo sighed. He looked at the grand house, at the marble floors and gold-plated fixtures, the crystal chandeliers. Mr. Cressidian was a very wealthy man. “I’ll have my secretary arrange a stipend.”

“A hundred pounds per head,” Mr. Cressidian said.

Leo bristled. “They are not cattle, they are human beings.”

Mr. Cressidian shrugged. “All the same to me.”

So now Leo had a castle, could hear his chickens behind the hotel, had added a young boy he’d not expected to his improbable rescue mission, was paying a very wealthy man one hundred pounds for each of them, and half the town was avoiding him altogether. He would have quite a lot of explaining to do when he returned to Helenamar.

But he still had three more women to rescue. That was going to prove to be difficult because all of Leo’s invitations had dried up. Even the gentlemen who had greeted him each day in the lobby of the Clarendon Hotel avoided him now.

He read about the parties happening around him in Honeycutt’s Gazette, parties he could no longer attend.

He was reading about one now, as it happened, and he lowered his paper to look at Josef over the top of it. “Not a single invitation?” he asked again.

“None, Your Highness.”

Leo shifted uncomfortably. There had been a time in his life here that a party wasn’t anything at all to write about in the papers if he didn’t attend it. “What of Hawke?” Leo asked glumly. “Has he responded to my invitation to dine?”

Josef was pointedly silent.