Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
She was home again.
Papa was there, and Sepp, and Lotta. Lotta, with flour on her arms, stretched dough for the apfelstrudel at the kitchen table until it grew so thin a love letter could be read through it. Pippa sat on a low stool by the oven, solving mathematical puzzles. The warm air smelled of cinnamon.
Papa’s voice rose, steady and grave, reading aloud from Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a book banned in Austria for its radical ideas.
Metternich would have a fit if he knew Papa had owned the book and read it not only to her, but to anyone who wanted to listen, cover to cover.
“I wish to persuade women to endeavour to gain strength, both of mind and body.” His finger tapped the page.
The words tangled with the crackle of the oven. Then, his eyes lifted to her, shadowed and stern. “But look at you now. Methinks you have forgotten what I taught you.”
“I have tried, Papa!” she cried. “I try so hard. But the house is gone, and the money, and I am nothing but a maid in the palace, of the lowest status. Everything you taught me sounded so nice and true, liberty and equality for everyone. But reality just isn’t like that.
There are social differences that can’t be bridged.
Like Klemens. Oh, Klemens… I can’t rely on him, either.
” A sob rose in her throat. “Because he is not who he said he was. He is so high above me, it is sacrilege for me to even speak to him. What can I do, Papa? What can I do? There is nothing I can do.”
He frowned. “What have I educated you for, my Poppy? Why do you drift like a leaf upon a stream? Use your mind, Poppy. Use your mind.”
“Use your mind.” She gasped, the words still ringing as she woke.
“Wake up, wake up!”
“Ng.” Pippa tried to shake off the hand tugging at her shoulder.
The hand kept shaking her. "Yes, yes, wake up quickly and use your mind!"
Pippa jerked upright, staring at Henni, who breathed a sigh of relief that she was finally awake. “Did you have a nightmare? You were thrashing and talking in your sleep.”
“A nightmare,” Pippa gasped. It had not been a nightmare, exactly, but a dream of home, of a time long gone. Her hands wandered to her wet cheeks.
But Henni pulled the blanket off. “You must rise and get dressed and hurry to the Archduke’s chambers. He has summoned you.”
“What, now? What time is it?”
Henni handed her, her dress and cap. “Now. It is nearly three in the morning.”
Pippa scrambled out of bed so quickly, she tumbled over her blanket. She dressed in haste and rushed along the corridors.
She crashed into his antechambers and took a minute to gather herself and steady her breath. There were no other servants there. With a frown, she forced herself to walk slowly to the bedroom and entered after having scratched at the door.
He sat on the scarlet settee in front of the window, watching how the raindrops pattered against the windowpane.
He wore breeches and boots, but he had taken off his coat and necktie, and the shirt hung open, revealing his chest. His hair was rumpled, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
Pippa swallowed, eyeing him nervously. How was it possible that a man looked so utterly beautiful and degenerate simultaneously?
She stepped further into the room and made a quick curtsy.
He looked up. “Ah, there you are. I’ve had a deuced time trying to get out of my clothes.”
Pippa drew herself up stiffly. “That is why you have a valet, Your Imperial Highness.”
“He’s sleeping.” He picked at his cuff, trying to undo it himself.
Pippa huffed, placing her hands on her hips. “I, too, was sleeping.”
“Were you now? How unfortunate. Did you have sweet dreams?” He looked at her, interested. “Did you dream about me?”
She threw him a stare so dark that a chuckle escaped his lips. “If looks could kill. There.” He held out his arm. “Help me with this. This infernal cufflink won’t unbutton.”
She stepped up to him and took his wrist. The cufflink was round and gold, and the ever-present imperial double eagle was imprinted on it.
She lifted his wrist with a frown and tilted her head, attempting to uncuff it, trying to push it through the buttonhole of the shirt, but somehow it refused to slip through.
“Maybe you have to slide it the other way,” Klemens suggested, pointing with the finger of his other hand.
She slapped his hand away. “I can’t see anything if you cover it with your hand.” She tried again to wiggle the cufflink through the buttonhole, this way and that way, then turning his wrist around, with concentration, the tip of her tongue tucked out of the corner of her mouth.
Klemens watched her face, a small smile tugging at his lips.
“Hold still,” she scolded him.
“You’re tickling me,” he complained.
“I’m hardly touching you!”
“Your little finger is tickling my palm. Who would have known that it’s such a sensitive part of the body?”
Pippa paused and looked into his eyes. They were sky blue, brimming over with laughter. “Just be quiet and hold still.”
“Yes, Fr?ulein,” he said meekly.
She dropped his wrist. “This won’t do. I think I know what to do. Don’t move; I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Indeed, Fr?ulein. I wouldn’t dare move.”
Indeed, he was in the same position when she returned.
“I didn’t even blink,” he informed her. “Do hurry, because I’m developing a cramp in my neck from remaining frozen in this position.”
An involuntary laugh escaped her lips. “Give me your hand again.”
He lifted it obediently.
With a quick movement, Pippa pulled a pair of scissors from the pocket of her apron and lifted them.
He moved back with a yelp.
“Goodness! It’s just a pair of scissors! It’s not as though I’m about to assassinate you with them.”
“You wouldn’t be the first,” he muttered so low under his breath she thought at first that she must have misheard.
She lowered the scissors. “Are you saying that someone tried to assassinate you?”
He shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. “Not exactly with a pair of scissors. It was during a parade. He was caught before he could do any actual harm.”
“But that’s terrible! Did you get hurt?”
“No. I don’t want to talk about this now. I want to get out of this shirt!” He tugged at it with growing irritation.
“And I am trying to help! If you would only remain still so I don’t actually stab you with the scissors.”
“What exactly do you intend to do with them?”
“Cut off the cufflinks.” Pippa pointed at them. “The reason they won’t open is that the buttonhole has been sewn shut. What was your valet thinking, literally sewing you into your clothes?”
“What indeed?” Klemens said faintly, gazing at his cufflinks as if he had never seen them before.
“And how come you did not notice what he was doing?”
“I tend to be rather sleepy in the mornings.”
“I did not get that impression,” Pippa muttered under her breath. “It can’t be the first time he’s done that, either.” She suspected he had known all along it was sewn shut and merely refrained from telling her to tease her. Or just to see what she would do to fix the situation.
After a moment’s hesitation, he put his hand in hers. “Just don’t cut off my fingers.”
With a few snips the cufflinks came off. A few more, and the cuffs fell open.
She caught the cufflink before it dropped to the floor. “Other hand.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When she was done, she looked up and found he had bent his face so close to hers their foreheads were nearly touching. She could count the hairs in his eyelashes, which fanned out thick and curly, the envy of every girl.
His gaze was ardent, intense, with a hidden question inside it.
A breath caught in her throat.
This was Klemens. Klemens, the man she had known and loved. Whom she had trusted with her life. Who had teased her, laughed with her, who listened to her endless ramblings of her stories, her dreams, her general na?ve ideas about life.
The man she had loved.
The man she could never love.
The man she would always love.
She dropped his hand as if it were a piece of glowing ember.
“It is done, Highness,” she said in a formal, indifferent tone and turned to place both cufflinks on the little side table by the window.
“Good. Then help me get my boots off.”
Pippa threw him a disbelieving look. “I am not a valet—”
He waved a hand. “I know, I know. But would you rather I go to bed with my boots on, then, hm?”
She eyed the boots with misgiving.
“I’ll give you ample reward if you help me.”
“Very well,” she grumbled. “Lift your foot.”
He did, and she grabbed it by the heel and tugged, and tugged, and tugged, and it did not even budge a centimetre.
She began to sweat; her cap sat askew on her head, and her hands were slippery. “Are you sewn into those boots as well?” She dropped the foot to wipe her forehead. She reached for her scissors. “I could try to cut the leather—”
He withdrew with a yelp. “Don’t you dare!”
“How else am I to get them off?”
“Mangling them with your scissors won’t do the trick this time.
They’re so well made, the leather is moulded closely to my feet.
There, try again.” He placed a hand against her shoulder, and she pulled, and he pushed, and she pulled, and with a shout, she gave a final, powerful yank, and the boot finally slid off his foot.
And she tumbled backwards and ended up smack on her bottom on the hard floor.
“Ow.”
He laughed.
She glared. “I am happy to be such a source of entertainment for Your Highness.”
“No, no. If you could only see your face. Like an infuriated kitten.” He broke out in another bout of laughter.
“The second foot,” she growled. “Your Imperial Highness.”
“It was so nice when you forgot to tag that blasted title on.” He wiped the corners of his eyes. “Can you not call me that when we’re together, just the two of us?”
She yanked the second boot off, and it came off on the third try.