“How could I forget?”
Pippa felt a wave of homesickness rise. Quickly, she turned away to retrieve the skillet. “The fire is perfect. We can place the skillet on the embers.”
Klemens placed the chestnuts in the skillet.
“Wait! We need to make incisions on them with a knife.” Pippa picked up a knife that was lying on the counter and made incisions on each of the chestnuts, with Klemens watching closely.
Then she placed the skillet on the embers.
Pippa crouched in front of it, her hands on her knees, staring into the fire. Klemens sat next to her on the cold, stony floor.
Soon, the smell of roasted chestnuts filled the air.
“If we leave them longer, they will burn,” Pippa said.
Klemens picked one out, tossing it from one hand to the other, then, after it had cooled off, picked off the peel. Then he held it to her lips. “Try it.”
She took a bite and sighed contentedly. “They are good. Here. The next one is yours.”
She peeled one for Klemens. He opened his mouth and bit off, her finger grazing his lips. A jolt passed through her fingers at the touch, and she withdrew.
They ate quietly until all the chestnuts were gone.
“I miss your father,” Klemens suddenly said into the silence. “My summers with Professor Basil were like an oasis for me, like water for a man lost in the desert. Ithirsted for it like a dying man. It saved me. I think I would have gone stark raving mad without it.”
Pippa listened quietly, just allowing him to speak, sensing that he needed to get this off his chest.
“My entire life I have been chained by convention and etiquette, rules and regulations. From the moment I wake until the moment I put my head down on the pillow. I live and breathe duty. But for what? It might make sense if I were to inherit the throne one day. But I won’t. My brother Ferdinand will, poor sod. He is the crown prince and already suffering more than an ordinary person should, and his health is not the best, either. Still, I have two other brothers ahead of me in line. So why can’t they just leave the rest of us be and let us live our lives as we want?”
Pippa had seen the crown prince only once, a pale, thin fellow who stayed away from public events. He suffered from the falling sickness and, in general, was of poor health. It must be an unimaginable burden to be growing up as a prince in the line of succession. His other two brothers she’d seen only from a distance. They’d been wearing uniforms as both were military men.
“I suppose that is why you felt drawn to Papa’s philosophy. Equality for all and all that.” She leaned her chin on her folded hands, which rested on her knees.
“Yes, and no. You heard us argue summer after summer.” Klemens had always countered Papa’s arguments in lively, heated debates. He was never a dogged follower of the radical philosophy. He was neither an anarchist nor revolutionary, nor a Jacobin, but critical of it; yet neither was he as resistant to liberal ideas asMetternich was. Klemens was a category in and of himself.
He ruffled his hair. “It isn’t so much his political convictions that fascinated me. Your father is neither the first nor the last to hold radical, so-called enlightened beliefs. I have heard them before and am neither impressed nor shocked by them. Metternich would repress them, and the Emperor is inclined to agree. But even that is a reaction that I deem too excessive.” He shook his head. “But what drew me to your father was his insatiable knowledge of subjects like the natural sciences, mathematics and astronomy. I have had many tutors in my life, yet none as knowledgeable in these matters as he.”
Pippa wanted to reply that she remembered the time when he’d spent the entire night building a telescope with her father. Except just at that moment they heard footsteps approaching in the corridor.
They jumped up and looked around wildly for a place to hide.
Pippa tore open the larder door. It was less a cupboard than a narrow chamber, lined with shelves on three sides where sacks of flour, jars of grains, and loaves of bread were stored. She darted inside, heart thudding, pulling him after her. He shut the door behind them, and just in time, for the footsteps and voices entered the kitchen.
She stood pressed against Klemens, hardly daring to breathe. Maybe hiding was folly, but it had been their first instinct to do so.
They heard someone (the cook?) rumble aboutin the kitchen, moving pots and pans. But Pippa barely heard it because all her senses were focused on the man in front of her, who gazed down at her, his lids heavy under his sultry gaze. His arms encircled her and drew her forward toward him. Slowly, slowly his mouth lowered to meet hers. At first achingly slow, then with increasing hunger, devouring her lips, her mouth, her soul, her entire being.
Her heart pounded wildly, and she kissed him back, savouring every moment.
An eternity must have passed.
The sounds in the kitchen had long subsided, and it appeared the room was empty and safe for them to emerge, but neither cared.
When finally he lifted his mouth, he traced her swollen lips with the tip of his fingers.
She cleared her throat and looked straight into his stormy blue eyes. “I won’t become your mistress.”
He held her gaze for one moment, then dropped his hand and gathered her close into a hug. “No. I never would want you to,” he whispered.
