“I suggest you had better go about your business, chambermaid. Pull back the curtains,” he ordered. His voice had turned cold, distant.Indifferent, exactly like an archduke would talk to a servant.
She stumbled to the window and pulled back the heavy brocade curtains. The first pale rays of daylight crept into the room. She turned and found him lounging in the chair in the corner next to the ceramic oven, his arms crossed, regarding her with a hooded, brooding expression. He was wearing a loosely tied banyan, andhis hair was dishevelled, his chin shadowed by stubble, and even in that state breathtakingly handsome. Prince Lucifer. Never had a name been more apt. Her heart clenched. She tore her eyes away and stood indecisively in the room.
He waved a hand. “Go ahead. Clean the room.”
“N-now?” According to Frau Benedikt’s instructions, she wasn’t supposed to be cleaning the room in his presence.
He lifted a supercilious eyebrow. “When else?”
Pippa turned and turned down the blankets. Her mind worked feverishly, and her hands shook. Pull yourself together! She was the chambermaid Anna. She must pretend she did not mind in the least that he was sitting there, like a dishevelled fair Adonis, watching her every move through half-closed, sleepy eyes. If she did not push him from her mind, she would fail miserably at her tasks.
Pippa recited the square numbers under her breath. Her father had taught her it was the most efficient way to focus. “Eleven squared is one hundred and twenty-one. Twelve squared is one hundred and forty-four. Thirteen squared is one hundred and sixty-nine…” She moved her lips without a sound and, indeed, like a miracle, her mind calmed.
Curse it, how many pillows did he have? Four, five—then two more he had tossed on the floor… And they weren’t small either, but big, bulky, and rectangular, covered in two different fabrics: simple linen and heavier brocade. She stripped off all the covers and set them aside, then tugged at the bedsheet. It resisted. Once more she pulled, but it was a hopeless task. The sheet was firmly tucked beneath the corner of the heavy, unwieldy mattress. The bed was too large, and she assumed that under normal circumstances there would have been a second chambermaid to help her lift it. But she was all alone, and lifting the mattress on her own… She could go to the other side of the bed to untuck the linen from the far corner—which would bring her once more into dangerously close vicinity of the Archduke, whom she was trying so very hard to ignore.
“It is stuck,” he observed quite redundantly, clearly delighted at her dilemma. He stretched out his legs, crossed them at the ankle, and folded his arms behind his head, eager to see what she would do next.
Her fingers cramped around the sheet. She had one other option left, and that was to crawl onto the bed to the other side. She lifted herself onto the bed.Fourteen squared is one hundred and ninety?—
“Stop!”
She froze. She was on all fours squarely in the middle of his bed. It was a most awkward position, to say the least. She turned her head towards him, and he was regarding her, the corners of his mouth twitching. Then he said something she had never thought she would hear him say, even in her wildest dreams.
Smoothly, softly, with a sweetly angelic smile playing about his lips: “Lie down.”
She gasped. “But Your Imperial Highn?—”
“Put that pillow under your head.” He pointed to one of the pillows.
She stared at him. “But…” She reached out and reluctantly took the pillow.
“Put your head there.”
Slowly, ever so slowly, she did as he bid.
“Good. Now that wasn’t so difficult, was it?” He stepped up to the bed, and her entire body tensed. “Relax, I won’t hurt you,” he murmured. Then, “Open your eyes.”
To her own surprise, she hadn’t noticed that she had screwed her eyes shut. She opened them.
“Now, tell me. What do you see?”
She stared right up at the canopy, an intricately carved design with figures. “Tell me exactly what you see. It is the first thing in the morning I see, and the last thing before I fall asleep. Every. Single. Blasted. Time. I lie in this bed.”
She frowned. “A naked child—oh. He must be Cupid targeting his bow at—Narcissus and Psyche, possibly,” she muttered. The passionately embracing couple could be anyone, really. The implications of the design did not pass her by, and she blushed hotly. He followed her gaze.
“Interesting. I always thought it was Persephone and Hades,” he said conversationally. “About to consummate their marriage. Though she doesn’t seem willing in that depiction. Not that it is of any significance, for it is beside the point. If you would direct your gaze further to the left of the canopy.”
She did as she was bid.
“And now tell me what you see.”
“There’s nothing in particular,” she blurted out. “Mere ornamental carvings, flowers and the like.”
He heaved a dramatic sigh. “Take a closer look. Must I indeed exert physical effort to point it out?”
She looked, confused, at the canopy, and could, for the life of her, not see anything peculiar.
He sighed, got up, and ambled over to the bed.
