Chapter 6
Rose lay awake for some time, considering all the ways the evening had gone wrong.
She just hoped Natalie wasn’t angry that Rose had spent half the night talking to Leo after claiming in the carriage that she had no interest in him.
She resolved to do better at avoiding him in future and finally fell asleep—only to dream of brown eyes, dark hair, and broad shoulders.
She woke early the next morning, despite the late night.
During the daytime, she had bemoaned the low lighting in the room, but after her first night, she was dismayed to discover that her chamber had the opposite problem in the early morning.
The thin curtains did little to keep out the first rays of the sun, and she was awake far sooner than she would have liked.
Accepting the inevitable, she rose and looked around for her tray of breakfast. There was no sign of it.
Clearly it hadn’t been delivered by a Lanoverian servant, and Joanne—apparently less sensitive to light than her royal mistress—still slept in her cot against one wall.
Rose sighed. After her late night at the reception, Joanne had no reason to anticipate Rose’s early waking. And apparently Natalie didn’t have a high enough status for a local servant to deliver the tray. It wasn’t as if Natalie was an invited guest.
Rose felt a brief moment of impatience with the mountain girl. She really was the most outrageous creature, and she’d left Rose in a difficult position as a result. Except it hadn’t been Natalie who suggested they switch. So it was Rose herself who had created her own problems.
She briefly considered waking Joanne, but the maid had been carriage-sick half the way from Arcadia and had then waited up for Rose’s return the night before. She needed her sleep.
“I’m supposed to be an ordinary girl right now,” Rose whispered to herself. “Surely I can find the source of breakfast as easily as Joanne.”
Armed with determination, she let herself out of her room, closing the door as quietly as possible behind her.
Thankfully her early waking meant it was breakfast time for the servants and minor officials of the palace, and once she reached a main corridor, she was able to follow a steady stream of people to the general dining hall.
The vast room might never have been graced with a member of the royalty or nobility, but it was a pleasant space, lined with long tables and filled with the buzz of voices. Rose’s spirits lifted as she smelled the food and followed the man in front of her to join the line along one wall.
Continuing to follow the lead of those ahead of her, she took a plate and shuffled toward three kitchen helpers who filled the plates of those filing past. No one asked who she was or questioned her presence.
No one commented on her gown either. She’d chosen the simplest one in her wardrobe—the only one she could get into without assistance—but it was still out of place in her current company.
She did notice eyes flickering her way as she took an empty seat at one of the tables, though. Had she violated some invisible seating plan? She smiled tentatively at the older man sitting across from her, and he frowned back.
“I saw you at the reception last night,” he said. “You were one of the guests.” The rest of his words were implied: If she had been a guest at the royal reception, what was she doing eating breakfast with the servants?
“I saw you, too,” a younger man beside him said. “When I was clearing plates. You were talking to His Highness.”
“Which one?” asked a young woman further down the table, covering her mouth to giggle.
“Prince Leo,” the woman across from her said before turning to Rose. “I heard you’re from the mountain kingdom. And don’t have any rank.”
They all stared at her, waiting for her to confirm the rumors.
“I’m Posey,” she said, preferring to keep her words as truthful as possible. “And I hope it’s all right for me to be here. I woke early and was starving, so I followed my nose.”
Several of them laughed, the tension broken, although a third man several chairs away continued to regard her with an intense look.
She vaguely recognized him, her mind telling her he was a footman.
He must have been present at either her arrival or the reception.
Had he seen her behaving oddly? She tried not to meet his eye.
Conversation continued over the meal, but she contributed little, focusing on eating as quickly as possible. People continued to arrive, while others left whenever they finished their meal, providing a constant flow of people that made her feel less conspicuous.
Those seated near her seemed to have accepted her presence and were continuing as usual, except for the occasional glance her way or stifled comment when Princess Rose came up.
Rose had the impression they were all greatly interested in the arrival of a foreign princess but were restraining themselves due to her presence.
The faster she could eat and leave, the more comfortable they would be.
She wasn’t the only one making them uncomfortable, though.
When a new group of men arrived, almost everyone around her stood to leave, shoveling in any remaining mouthfuls as they left.
Rose regarded the newcomers, but they wore a variety of uniforms and looked no different from the other servants in the room to her eye.
She stopped watching them when they chose seats on the other side of the room—clearly she knew nothing about the dynamics of the servant hall and staring wasn’t going to bring understanding.
Only one person at her table seemed unaffected by the latest batch of diners. The vaguely familiar footman made no move to leave, continuing to stare at her between every bite. His concentrated focus unnerved her more than the combined interest of all the others had done.
What might he have seen or overheard? Rose wracked her brain to remember where she had seen him, and a sudden, sickening image came to her.
It was true that she had seen him before and in the role of footman—but she hadn’t seen him in the last two days.
She had seen him at home, in her own palace.
He had been one of the footmen to accompany Frederic on his last visit to Arcadia—back before he became king, when he had visited as crown prince.
She stood so abruptly that the conversation at the next table broke off. She tried to smile at the curious faces turned her way, but her features seemed to have frozen. The footman had recognized her, and any second he was going to blurt out her true identity.
Her mind emptied of every thought except to flee.
Dropping her plate and cutlery in the large tubs near the door, she dashed out of the dining hall.
She had been out of place in there anyway, just as she had been at the reception.
She had no idea where Natalie was supposed to fit in the palace hierarchy, so maybe it was a good thing she was about to be exposed.
But as she hurried down the corridor, her mind started working again, and her steps slowed.
From the intensity of the man’s stare, she had to assume he had recognized her immediately.
But he hadn’t said anything. Something was keeping him quiet, and that meant she had a chance to convince him to stay silent.
She just had to find a way to speak to him alone.
Turning back toward the dining hall, she walked slowly, considering her options.
A middle-aged woman came through the doors, giving her an odd look as she hurried away in the opposite direction.
And then the very person occupying Rose’s thoughts stepped out, looking down the corridor first one way and then the other.
As soon as the footman caught sight of her, he broke into a jog, heading toward her. Clearly he had followed her out.
“We need to t—” she began.
He seized her arm and pulled her through a plain wooden door into a large storeroom, shutting the door behind them just as fresh voices exited the dining hall. He immediately dropped her arm and took several steps back.
“My apologies, Your Highness.” He bowed low.
“So you do recognize me,” she said ruefully. “I wasn’t so quick to recognize you.”
He bowed again. “I’m honored you remembered me at all, Your Highness. It makes this conversation a little easier. I, of course, recognized you as soon as I glimpsed you yesterday.”
Rose’s brows rose. “You already recognized me yesterday? How many people have you told?”
“None,” he said simply, and her brows rose even further.
It sounded too good to be true. Was he planning to blackmail her or something? She wanted to stay as Natalie a little longer, but she wasn’t committed enough to the role to allow someone to blackmail her over it.
“I’ve been trying to work out how to manage a private word with you,” he said.
“I needed to establish the purpose of your charade before I could work out how to proceed. So you can imagine how pleased I was when you turned up in the dining hall this morning without a maid in tow.” The intensity returned to his eyes. “Are you in danger, Your Highness?”
“In danger?” She stared at him, taken aback by the direction the conversation had taken. “Not as far as I know.”
He relaxed. “I was concerned you might have been forced to assume a different identity for your protection. If that was the case, then I could have gotten you safely out of Lanover and back to Arcadia without anyone knowing your location or route.”
“You could have?” Rose asked, finally guessing at the footman’s true identity.
“Certainly, Your Highness,” he said. “I wouldn’t have needed direct instructions to know my duty in that circumstance.”
“Instructions,” she said slowly. “I’m guessing you don’t mean from Prince Leo.”