Chapter 20 #2
“What did you say?” He leaned forward, delighted. “I thought I heard you mutter some very indecent curses. No one could curse as well and as creatively as you, you know. I learned the best curses from you. Ah, those were the good times.”
“I would not dare breathe anything improper in Your Imperial Highness’s presence.”
“Ah, Pippa, my Pippa. Such snobbery does not suit you.”
She sniffed.
“Come.” He lifted a finger to beckon her closer. “And pick up your reward.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I shall remain here, Highness, but I would very much like my reward, provided it is of material means.” She leaned forward with a stage whisper. “Meaning money.”
Knowing him, he would probably take advantage of the situation and try to kiss her. Or worse.
She felt heat spread up the back of her neck.
“It is of material means.” He nodded.
Pippa ignored the slight feeling of disappointment. If he gave her a coin or two, she would take it, because she was not a girl who would turn down money.
“But you have to step closer.”
Watching him warily, she took one, two steps closer. He picked up the coat, which was draped over the side of the chair, and dug into its pockets, drawing out something.
He held out his hand. “Give me your hand, and I’ll give you your reward.”
She held it out.
Into her palm, he dropped something cold and smooth and brown.
“Chestnuts!” Pippa breathed. She adored chestnuts. She loved climbing onto the tree to pick them directly off the branches, and to collect them from the ground. She loved the sweet, earthy smell of chestnuts as it filled the air, homely and comforting.
He nodded. “My entire pocket is full. I got them from a vendor outside the Burgtor. What do you say?” He looked at her expectantly. “Let’s fry them?”
That was too big a thing to decline. “But how? You don’t have an open fireplace in these chambers.” The rooms in the imperial palace were heated by ceramic ovens that were fired from the corridors. “Besides, we need an iron skillet or pan to put them in.”
“Where could we get that?”
“In the kitchen, of course.”
“Then let us proceed to the kitchen and get one.”
“But…”
“Hush, no arguing. Come, let us go.” He pulled on a banyan, a pair of slippers and headed out the door, in the wrong direction.
“It’s this way,” Pippa informed him, pulling him on the sleeve towards the door that led to the spiral servants’ staircase.
They went down the stairway, along another corridor, another stairway; once or twice they paused, hiding around the corner or in doorways, waiting for footsteps to pass by before they continued on.
The kitchen was on the lower floor of the building.
Since it was early in the morning, Pippa assumed it would be empty, and she was right.
The scullery maid who tended the hearth fire was gone, either asleep in a corner somewhere or sent on an errand.
She gave Klemens a surreptitious gesture to follow her.
Klemens followed her curiously into the kitchen.
“I daresay this is the first time for you here,” Pippa said, as she opened a cupboard looking for a small iron skillet.
“It is indeed.” He opened a drawer, peeked inside, inspected the copper pots that hung from the walls, plucked a plum from a plate and bit into it. “I miss Lotta’s apfelstrudel.”
Pippa looked at him with a pang. “You remember that?”
“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. I thirsted 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 as Metternich 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 about in 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.
Taking her hand in his, he pulled her out of the pantry, into the corridor.
“It is best we part here,” Klemens said. “Return to your room, and I will make my way back to mine. And Pippa.” He squeezed her hand tightly. “Trust me. All will be well.”
That night, as Pippa lay in bed, listening to the other girls snore and mutter things in their sleep, she stared at the ceiling, reliving that moment repeatedly.
Trust me, he had said.
All will be well.
She wanted to believe that. Oh, how she wanted to! That tiny spark of hope had begun to glow deep inside her. Wasn’t it better to quench it than to allow it to grow and turn into a fire that raged out of control?
“Oh, Klemens,” she whispered into the dark. “What are we going to do?”