32. Sound of Palatino
SOUND OF PALATINO
ERIC
I t’s five in the evening, and I haven’t seen Francesca all day.
By my count, it’s been nine hours and twenty-three minutes.
I’ve been counting because those numbers are easier to process than the amount of hands I’ve had to shake.
Lord this, Lady that—Sylvaine has dressed me up as the mascot for courtship between the Duchy and the Crown.
Thought Sheffolk hated outsiders, and here they are, treating me like the second coming.
Eric, I love your aesthetic; Eric, don’t scowl, you’ll scare the elderly; and Eric, stand over there and smile.
I’m sick of it.Worse is that I once convinced myself this place would despise me, and I almost long to return to that state of utter delusion.
Lord Havardly held me captive and told me about all fifty-seven of his granddaughters, so I haven’t even had a chance to read Francesca’s previous messages. By the time he finished, I’d aged a year, he’d aged ten, and she’d deleted everything, replacing it with a simple ‘I’ll tell you in person’ .
And here I am, hours later, still waiting.
Her grandfather, on the other hand? Glued to my side.
I know what he’s doing because the men in this family wouldn’t recognise subtlety if it crawled out of the grave and politely introduced itself.
We do the gentlemanly rounds together and pretend we’re comrades in the same war.
He never asks how I slept, though when he first sees me, he flicks lint from the centre of my chest, right where a second heartbeat had slept just hours earlier.
Sylvaine has tea served in the drawing room where I first met Francesca, and instead of listening to Lady Winifred recount her trip to Paris, I’m noticing how still Frank goes.
He never lets his attention roost on anything in the rooms that watch back.
In those spaces, our gazes repel one another like two equal magnetic poles.
Wordlessly, he tells me that he knows this castle. Knows we’re being watched.
When he passes me a glass of white wine in the ballroom while we watch sculptors chip away at ice birds, for one absurd second, I wonder if he can smell it. Lavender body oil clinging to the space between my jaw and collarbone; the gravesite where Francesca buried her face.
Frank says nothing.
I say nothing louder.
Last night sits like an acid burn on my tongue: her pulse under my thumb as she drifted to sleep, her laugh when Tommy shoved me, how she leaned in before pressing her lips to mine, and her blunt murder confession.
Frank must read those memories in every twitch of my brows but still chooses to play dumb.
Whatever he’s fighting against telling me, I’m not going to ask for it.
“You play?” he casually enquires when we pass the Fibonacci piano, seven figures right there on display, just waiting to be cracked open by some maestro. I try to picture his words as he speaks, mapping the shape of them, and I hear what he doesn’t say.
You’re aware this place is fucked up?
“Badly,” I answer, which basically means I’d be blind not to notice .
We stand there a minute longer, two versions of the same role—him, the man from the original film, and me, the idiot in the reboot nobody asked for. Same set, same curse. How the fuck did I end up in the Sheffolk Cinematic Universe?
He says nothing else, probably because he spots the storm that is Winifred Fortescue advancing on us.
Thalia trails after, a blushing loaded weapon, still dressed in that ruffled monstrosity of a coat.
Frank apparently develops lockjaw, and his pulse visibly spikes so violently I almost expect him to drop dead before the ice wren.
Somewhere during Winifred’s speech on sensible heirs, it all culminates in Frank and me booking it for the only trench left in Sylvaine’s war zone—St Nic’s, also known as Sheffolk’s smoke shack.
“So the rules don’t apply to you, I see. You are aware of this morning’s situation, no?” I’m side-eyeing the half-filled crystal ashtrays laid out along an ancient mahogany table.
It’s absolutely ridiculous how much pride staffers take in guarding this dilapidated patch of a health hazard.
Frank is a vertical strip of tweed glued against the rough stone wall, a cigarette idly held between two fingers.
He gives me a lazy once-over and puffs another swirl of smoke towards my figure as though trying to fumigate me.
“Are you aware, Highness, that I’m married to the ruling duchess?”
The slight arrogance to it almost makes me want to tell him that, since we’ve been here, at least seven different staffers have snuck off for a smoke break but dodged the building as soon as they saw the back of his head through the window.
I scoff instead, triggering his chuckles. “So marriage to the duchess gives you free rein, then.”
“Free reign?” He rolls the filter between his fingers and taps the ash into the tray. “My boy, I’ve got two dodgy knees, and we’ve been flung from one end of the castle to the other all morning, shaking hands and nodding at people I don’t even remember. I’ve earned this bloody cigarette.”
I barely catch the rest of what he says after he calls me ‘my boy’ . Frank doesn’t even seem to register that he’s said it, and it’s a little nauseating that I’ve to reroute the meaning of those two words away from what I know them as.
A title. A leash.
Frank’s not claiming you , I tell myself. When that doesn’t work, I strip my father’s voice from those words and make an effort to believe it’s just casual affection. More effort than my pride would allow me to admit.
“Quit smoking three years ago,” I tell him, watching the ember glow between his knuckles as he kicks off the wall to tread the edges of the room. “So you’ll have to do the enjoying for the both of us.”
He turns back for a moment to stare, like he can see my fingers twitching in my trouser pockets, and smiles as though he thinks I’m being fucking precious. I’d tell him that I technically broke my own rule the other day, just to see Francesca blush, but that would give him ammo.
“Three years clean? Good man. I tried once; it lasted three days. I commend you, though. One word from Winifred and I’m ready to chew through a cigar. And you’re just over here all calm. Ha!”
“I disassociated throughout that conversation, to be honest.”
He exhales smoke through his nose and chokes, resuming his pacing. “Explains why you weren’t hanging off Thalia’s every word. Not impressed, eh?”
“Not exactly short on fascinating company,” I retort before my brain has a chance to catch up. Frank swivels so quickly that I hear his joints protesting. Recognition creases his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything.
Somehow, that’s worse.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this is your attempt at converting me back to lung poisoning,” I add after an awkward beat.
He pulls a face. “ Ach , you’re too young for a vice anyway. No arthritis, you’ve got a full head of hair and two working knees. Look at me; I’ve got sunspots, I creak when I walk, and I’m bald in four different places.”
I hum. “I’ll add all of those to my list of reasons to live, right beneath finding out how long Winifred’s forehead vein can pulse with colonial rage before it ruptures.”
Frank tips his head back and barks out a laugh that’s way too full-bodied for the simple dry comment I’ve made.
Not the polite chuckle he gave Winifred, but the kind of unselfconscious joy that starts in the chest and bangs its way out.
The sound startles some pigeons that have been nesting in the rafters, and I internally thank the universe for none of them having shat on me in the fifteen minutes I’ve been here.
“They don’t mention it in the papers,” he wheezes, stubbing the butt of his cigarette and laughing again. “All those headlines, and none have you pegged as having a sense of humour. Tragic omission, I’d say.”
The idea of any media outlet releasing information that portrays me as likeable almost makes me laugh. “They write what gets them paid. Miserable royals are easier to sell.”
“Christ, what would they do with the truth then? You’re miserable and funny.”
He laughs at his own line, and for a heartbeat, I see her in him. Not in his smile, or even in the way he expresses his amusement. It’s all in the eyes, and I think there it is . That’s where Baskerville gets the little bit of Palatino that’s been giving me grief.
She inherited that lake-green mischief from him. One pair leaks an appetite for joy, rimmed by years of good tobacco. The other carries the ache of what grief nearly took, yet also the warmth of every good thing she planted after.
If I were feeling more poetic, I’d call it two fonts sharing a heartbeat; how she claims the duchess-heir typesetting from the Sheffolk lineage but steals the softness from the old man who just made himself laugh.
But I don’t call it that; I just name it trouble , because my heart is beating each syllable until it’s branded on the inside of my chest.
“Miserable and funny. Two incompatible qualities in one person,” I let the acidic comment leak from behind my teeth. “My father would say that makes me a well-rounded disappointment.”
His mouth kicks up into a half-smile. “Last I checked, your father’s legacy ends at the gates of Sheffolk.
Here, you stand on your own merit.” Once the cigarette is tossed into the metal container, he straightens his back with another creak and begins for the door.
“And keep that wit, son. God knows this place will test your limits.”
The warning in his tone rings louder than the gratification I feel at being asked to separate myself from the name Atherbourne. It comes as a reflex when I ask, “Do you speak from experience?”
He stops. Pauses in the doorway long enough for me to picture a younger version of himself, coming to terms with what exactly he’s walked into.