The Secret Prince (42 page)

Henry frowned. He’d nearly forgotten, having become friends with Derrick and Conrad over the course of the term, that neither boy could choose his future, that they were both due to inherit their fathers’ seats in the House of Lord Ministers.

“I’ve only ever dreamed of becoming a knight, sir,” Henry said honestly. “And that seemed an impossible enough thing to wish for. But what good does it do me to stay here when I’ll never live in South Britain? It’s as though I’m taking another boy’s place, a boy who might actually become a knight. And the professors are already treating me differently. Even if my classmates
don’t know, it can’t be long before they find out.” Henry shook his head, angry with himself for saying so much, especially to a man he hardly knew.

“If you truly feel that way, I would be willing to arrange for you to have private tutors.”

Henry nearly snorted. Private tutors indeed! Without Knightley Academy, he had nowhere to live.

“Unfortunately, another boarding school would be out of the question, as your enrollment would cause quite the sort of attention we are hoping to avoid.” Lord Marchbanks frowned, misunderstanding.

“That’s not what I meant, sir,” Henry said carefully. “I am a bit lacking in funds, you see. I would need to find a job so that I might pay rent.”

Lord Marchbanks let out a sharp barking laugh. “I thought the letter was clear, Henry. You are to be my ward.”

“Wh-what?” Henry spluttered. “What letter?”

And then he guiltily remembered the unopened letter from Lord Mortensen, stashed in his desk drawer.

“I’m sorry, Lord Minister,” Henry said, “but I never read it.”

“There is no need to apologize, Henry. I often vent my frustrations through ignoring the post myself.” Lord
Marchbanks’s black whiskers twitched with amusement.

“So I have to live with you?” Henry asked.

Lord Marchbanks nodded. “It’s best that way. I am the minister of Foreign Relations. You can be Derrick’s.”

At this, Henry laughed. “Good one, sir.”

“I’ve been saving that one for days,” Lord March-banks admitted with a chuckle. “But in all seriousness, lad, I will not force you to return to Knightley if you don’t wish it.”

“No, sir, I do want to come back,” Henry said, and was surprised to realize that it was true. Everything was changing, perhaps not the way he’d wished, but not unbearably so.

“I had thought so,” Lord Marchbanks said. “You will spend the summer with my family at our town house in the city. But, then, it’s all in the letter, should you have a chance to read it.”

With that, Lord Marchbanks glanced at his pocket watch, gave his apologies, and walked briskly toward the headmaster’s house, where a chrome-nosed automobile waited at the curb. Belatedly Henry realized that, somehow, without his noticing, he had been adopted—out of political obligation.

* * *

Henry couldn’t find the letter anywhere. He was certain he’d put it in one of his desk drawers, but the search turned up only pencil stubs, empty ink bottles, and a black checkers piece.

He was still searching for it when Adam and Rohan straggled into the room that evening, loaded down with sweets Rohan had purchased at the train station. “Catch,” he said, throwing Henry a large bag of salt-water toffee.

“Thanks.”

“Oi, that’s no way to treat a foreign prince, throwing food at him,” Adam joked.

“I’m not a prince. It’s just a courtesy title. Oh, never mind.” Henry gave up on explaining and offered round the toffee. “So, how did it go?”

“It was fine,” Rohan said cautiously.

“Brilliant!” Adam enthused. “It was really rubbish you couldn’t come! We got to meet the king, and everyone cheered the parade, and the police knights came as mounted guards and everything!”

Rohan sighed pointedly.

“I mean it was boring,” Adam said. “Absolutely horrible. Especially when Theobold farted.”

“You’re making that bit up,” Rohan said.

“Ask Edmund!” Adam insisted. “We nearly fell out of step, it was so bad!”

Henry laughed so hard he thought he might choke on the toffee.

Henry, Adam, and Rohan spent the rest of the evening in the first-year common room in the company of their classmates. Derrick had unearthed a meerschaum pipe from somewhere and was coughing and spluttering on the thing as he frantically fanned the fumes out the window.

“I say,” Derrick choked, “do I look distinguished?”

“Extremely,” Henry said dryly, returning to the chess game he was playing against Valmont.

Derrick gave up on the pipe and joined Adam, Conrad, and Edmund, who were playing cards and betting with peppermint candies.

“It’s your go,” Valmont said.

Henry looked down at the board and moved his knight.

Valmont, a look of incredulous triumph on his face, captured it with his bishop. “Check,” he said.

And then a shadow fell over the chessboard. It was Theobold.

“What do you want?” Henry asked irritably.

“Who’s winning?” Theobold grunted.

Crowley, who was forever at his side, peered at the game and said, “Valmont.”

“Really?” Theobold said delightedly. “Anyway, Grim, thought I’d return this.” He reached into his pocket and removed an open envelope with a hastily folded letter stuffed inside.

“Where did you get that?” Henry asked, his hands clenching into fists. He seized the envelope and pushed back his chair.

“Hmmm, now where did we find that again, Crowley?” Theobold mused. “A drawer, wasn’t it?”

“You went into my room?” Henry snarled.

“Easy, Grim. I was merely curious. I’d heard you were ill. I was rather hoping you’d succumb to the fever and pass on to the great beyond, but apparently you pulled through. Although not before infecting Lord Havelock with that same deadly illness. I think that’s the story we were meant to believe, isn’t it?”

“If you ever touch my things again …,” Henry threatened.

“You’ll do what, you piece of Nordlandic scum?”

And then Valmont pushed back his chair and punched
Theobold in the jaw. It was a solid hit, and Theobold reeled with the force of it.

“What kind of a punch was that?” Henry asked curiously, not caring that the rest of the common room was staring.

“An undercut,” Valmont said smugly. They both peered at Theobold, who sat on the floor, rubbing his jaw in shock.

“Works well,” Henry said.

“I could teach it to you,” Valmont offered.

“Yeah, all right,” Henry said.

“There’s just one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“If you ever throw a chess match against me again, Grim, I get to use it on you.”

Henry grinned. “Fair enough,” he said.

The school term came to a close, as school terms tend to do, though they sometimes seem determined to plod on forever. Students brought their textbooks outside and studied for their exams under the shade of the gnarled old oaks trees, and the heat made it a bother to put on jackets each morning.

Theobold hadn’t forgotten that night in the common
room, and he’d taken to referring to Henry and Valmont as “the prince and the pauper” whenever he saw them playing chess before bed. Henry sighed and set his jaw, refusing to let Theobold’s taunts goad him.

One afternoon Derrick put together a game of croquet and dared everyone to whack the balls into the boys who were studying outdoors. No one took him up on the dare, although Edmund hit a ball at Geoffrey Sutton by accident.

Henry had never played croquet before, and was relieved to find it far easier to master than cricket. It was strange, thinking that he’d be back. That after the long stretch of the summer holiday, he’d return as a second year, with a room on a different corridor, and with Sir Robert as their head of year.

Sir Robert had been named the new chief examiner, and while the Knightley Exam wasn’t open to commoners, the school had decided to reserve the now traditional three places for any fourteen-year-olds who wished to sit the exam in the National Gallery.

Somehow the shock over the passing of Lord Havelock had receded. But it was still there, the hovering ghostly memory of his death, creeping up behind Henry as he studied for the military history exam
given by Lord Ewing, the temporary tutor.

The battle society did not meet again before exams, and often Henry saw Valmont slip out to the graveyard beyond the woods before supper, as though he preferred the company of the dead to that of his classmates.

After his last exam, Henry turned up on the doorstep of the headmaster’s house. He hadn’t visited in ages, but he’d needed the time, both to catch up on his studies and to come to terms with everything that had happened.

Ellen opened the door and curtsied.

“Come in, Master Henry!” she said, ushering him into the foyer. “Can I take yer coat? Will yeh be requirin’ tea?”

Henry shook his head. “I’m fine, Ellen. Thank you.”

That had been happening more and more. Henry had gone down to the kitchens to ask for some tea and biscuits one evening, and the maids had panicked. Liza had quickly shooed him out of the kitchen with a full lemon tart he hadn’t wanted, and not a bit of gossip.

Somehow Henry rather suspected that they knew. Theobold’s taunts hadn’t gone unnoticed, and though
no one dared to ask him directly, more than once a group of students had fallen silent as Henry had walked past.

After all, with the relentless fear of a Nordlandic invasion, it wasn’t exactly the best time for it to come out that he was Nordlandic—or for there to be whispers that he’d run off to the Nordlands for nearly two weeks, returning with a coffin containing their head of year. And then there was the way Henry hadn’t marched in the parade, and the way he always seemed to set Professor Turveydrop into a panic during protocol….

Sometimes Henry wished that he could explain. But to explain would be to cause the exact sort of attention that Lord Mortensen had cautioned them against. At least he still had the group of friends he’d made that term. And so he had silently endured the changes, and the way so many of the other students, who had once been friendly, now regarded him with suspicion.

Ellen led him up the grand staircase and down the hallway to Professor Stratford’s study. There were voices, but she threw open the door anyway.

Professor Stratford looked up. He was evaluating Frankie on a piece of French poetry. She scowled at the interruption and continued with her recitation.

Henry had to admit that, from what he heard, she truly hadn’t needed tutoring in French.

“Formidable, Mademoiselle Winter,”
Professor Stratford said once Frankie had finished. He laid down his book.
“Dix-huit.”

Frankie flushed at the praise. “Are we finished, Professor?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I’ve just finished my exams as well,” Henry said.

“So you’re leaving tomorrow,” Frankie said. It wasn’t a question.

“Lord Marchbanks is sending his driver. It’s a nightmare. No wonder Derrick warned me I’d hate it.”

“It’ll be good for you,” Professor Stratford said. “You’ll get to see how the aristocracy live.”

“I’d rather work in the bookshop.”

“You can come and visit,” the professor promised.

“Only for the summer,” Henry complained. “And next year— I don’t want to lose either of you. It isn’t fair.”

“My services are no longer needed,” Professor Stratford said lightly. “And it’s a curious thing, change. You never get used to it, and you’re never sure where it comes from—”

“But you better learn to expect it,” Henry finished.

Professor Stratford nodded, and Henry could see that he was pleased.

“I know,” Henry said. “I just wish it didn’t have to be that way.”

Henry bit his lip at the thought of Frankie going off to finishing school. He’d known about it for a week, but that didn’t make it ache any less to know that the carefree days of Frankie climbing through his window were long gone.

“It’s only because of my blasted grandmother,” Frankie put in. “She
knows
I loathe finishing school. She’s sending me as a punishment for running away.”

“Good thing she doesn’t know about the kiss, or you’d be sent to a reformatory,” Henry muttered.

“Kiss?” Frankie frowned. “Now, Mr. Grim, I don’t think I know what you’re talking about. Perhaps you ought to refresh my memory?”

At this, Professor Stratford cleared his throat, but he wasn’t truly upset.

After all, how could he be? This was the last time Henry would be able to ring the doorbell after lessons, the final trip to the headmaster’s house. For in the fall these rooms would be empty. Frankie was leaving for
finishing school, and Professor Stratford was moving on, and the triple room on the first-floor corridor would gain new occupants while Rohan went off to room with James. And no matter how hard they pretended it was just the final day of term, it was more than that—it was the end of an era.