"Lucrecia has my uniform."

"Please do not insinuate what I think you're insinuating."

"Then if you know," incoming voices accompanied the frenzied maids', "Let's switch. And quick."

"Never!"

"What? Why?"

"For one, you are not my size!"

"Says who?" From behind her, Lucy pulled and pushed the girl between a bend in a bifurcated staircase and loped to join her shortly after dodging the unwanted attention of the two strangers who obtruded obstinately beneath its rotunda skylight. With each individual's respective sable and flaxen locks hovering above their unyielding pale chests, they seemed keen on sunbathing during the chill of the morning in skin-tight bodices and elbow-long silk gloves.

She gritted her teeth, rich in furry, barely managing a whisper. "We can't possibly stay here forever"—which they hadn't... that is, after a good eight minutes. In front of them was a crucial enfilade that led to the west wing where bedchambers were located—accessible with some extensive detours, but accessible, nevertheless. Yet as Theresa predicted, their many meanders only met with more swarms of female voices growing louder and louder with frightening sounds of ludic "Tee-hees", even occasionally teasing to inch into the cover of apt statuary already serving as an invisible shield.

"Why are these giddy chits blocking each hall and every corridor? Today's processions were exactly: breakfast, a royal hunt, dinner, following a performance at the concert hall commemorating the royal family's 'prestige, might, and vigour!'" Facing Theresa to parade her pruney, out-of-fingers-to-count fingers, "They should either be in drawing rooms or outside," she continued. "All activities nowhere near bedrooms... are they not?"

But, similar to the ladies under the rotunda, and equally curious about the commotion brewing outside, "Uh... sure," Theresa poked her head out the green drawing room—an convenient unoccupied sanctuary.

"Get back in here, would you! " The interest was not mutually shared; the tug back, unnaturally hard, indicating so. "Aren't you the one who normally tries not to get caught?"

"We've already been caught," Theresa moped without restraint.

"Have not!" Lucy attested. "You are just want to for some inane reason."

"I'm not supposed to be here in the first place. We are not supposed to be doing this," Theresa sat on an evergreen ottoman with acanthus scrolls carved into its rosewood legs. Quiet and somber for a long few minutes while Lucy idled at the door, they were equally unsure what to say about anything and everything. "Truly—no, candidly—this is stupid!" She suddenly shot up, grounding her feet so deep into the wood it had given in. "Why must you act too imprudently nowadays, miss Lucy?"

"That woman wanted to leave desperately. It's incomprehensible she'd return, Theresa."

"It isn't our business—her business!"

"Surely it's our business to protect their majesties!" Lucy couldn't control the rage creeping up the length of her body. "If a woman possibly being held, used, or abused against her will isn't any of our business, then the perpetrator's is paramount if his demise spells ours, is it not?"

Indignant, Theresa penetrated her self-righteous words with: "Do not blame me for living in reality and doing my job as I am told!"

"I did not—"

"I am no bodyguard; I'm a maid! That harlot knows her job just the same, so stop trying to change centuries over centuries of order!"

"If that's order, we may as well drive heads on a pike and show them what real peace looks like!"

Suddenly the door flew ajar in a brief second and slammed shut in another; as if it'd never happened to begin with. A familiar voice followed.

"Miss Auclair?"

Backing the door, every inch of the stranger's honey tan skin—face, neck, forearms—was an exhibition of cascading trickles of sweat. Even his black Napoleonic shirt hugged its wet embrace, inadvertently disheveling his normal gentlemanly look which his visage abhorred with strong opposition. His caramel-brown hair was damp. But, in an after-showering sense.

No way... Lucy thought.

With practiced (normally unsuccessful) control, she willed her hands not to fly, hover, or near her face, as to not appear prudish—Theresa was already doing one hell of a job at it. Instead, taking little pertinent steps near him, making sure not to look him in the eyes, she elegantly curtsied.

"Did you need something, Sir. David?"

Although aristocratic men normally leaned toward heavy colognes, Lucy noticed this man opted out of the bandwagon. He leaned towards a naturally musky, forest scent, bearing good measures of primitivity amongst a populous of urbanity, which she adored both now and at their first encounter.

"How may we be of service?"

Despite being indirect, "I dare not move freely around this palace without crazed children tailing me," his statement desperately asked how to fix the irritant, not how to survive one more day of discourteous torture, which appeared to have been the only response he'd gotten so far—euphemisms for "get over it."

"Children?" Theresa finally moved to join Lucy who stood oblique from Elijah. "I can assure you, Sir, every infant is occupied in the nursery."

"Not in that sense." Ironically being gruff, dark, and rich in virility, his voice bounced easily around the ears' sensitive canals.

"Miss Auclair," her shoulders flinched at the sweet, second utterance of her name—plus his flexing muscles as he turned to survey the daunting, filly-infested hall before sinking, albeit, dismally into a chaise lounge chair. "I don't mean to inconvenience you."

"No, not at all. It's a simple instance of impropriety which we will take up with the girls' governesses. One mustn't stalk a gentleman while he takes a shower; correct me if I'm wrong." Turning to Theresa, she jerked her head towards the door after another customary curtesy. "I will relay to your valet your predicament. Shall I get his name?"

"I don't have one."

"Oh."

His chartreuse eyes looked into her black opal orbs with self-deprecation. "Is it that strange, dressing one's self?" As if asking for validation, he broke it off. Then, with Theresa aptly out the door, Lucy pithily followed after to shut it again before drawing to his side on the lounge. "I wouldn't know. I do do it all the time," she reinstated their gaze, trying to sound indifferent. But any attempt of assuaging her jittery nerves and focusing her dancing eyes off him only incited suspicion.

Intently regarding her, "Is something wrong?" his voice dropped to a whisper, which left her feeling flustered.

"No. Well... actually, yes..."

"Did you get in trouble for the coach?" it sunk lower. Extremely lower. "Or has mistress Barret Houghton been giving you a hard time ever since?"

A blush rose to her face as she swung her head side-to-side, motioning "No" despite not fully knowing who he was talking about.

"The young lady who accosted me that night we'd met; her name is Lilith."

"Oh." The name sounded familiar, but Lucy chose not to dwell on it. "There's no problem there. My bane's the lady who left with the carriage."

"Delilah Purstek."

"Really?" She caught his mutter. "I didn't even know her name! Merthingham above, am I a fool!"

Noticing how anxious she became, Elijah instinctively sought to still her helter-skelter arms in his. "Is she back?" They were weightless, he noticed. Her fingers, dainty yet callous-riddled; so small and mingy that he pondered the feasibility of her charge as a maid.

"I shouldn't care this much..."

"I think it's wonderful you care."

"More for my sake, I want her gone so I can lead a peaceful existence without worry that she'll poison the second prince's mind against me. The man loathes me already!"

"Sir. Elijah David!"

Good God.

Lucy knew that voice too well-more than she would have liked, in fact.

Deftly shutting the room's grand double door, the housekeeper curtsied in haste, anxious to pull her away from the affectionate embrace which a king's highly esteemed and anointed must not dispense so nonchalantly.

"Madam, I was just-"

"Please." Dour yet practical, her tenor demanded silence if she was ever going to address Elijah, who had promptly stood up upon feeling the harsh tug Lucy left his arms with. Her hands, previously wrinkling life out of Lucy's, with much effort, fell laxly over her skirt, holding one other conscientiously like a nun in the holy presence of a Merthinian convent. "Sir. David." Her disposition unequivocally emulated a saint's.

"Eli works the same," he interjected.

She didn't budge. Adding, instead, a sardonic smile to the untasteful words, which ruffled Elijah's thick, brown brows. "Sir. David, I must advise that you bring such matters up to me next time, not an insubordinate servant who isn't even supposed to be here. Auclair is so ineffectual, her crassness disparages his royal highness' urgency, happening just a few days ago. So, please, allow me to offer real assistance."

She equally itched to lecture him about the inappropriate conditions he impelled her staff into, and how his savage side was unbecoming of the honourable title he just newly attained, and if he persisted on retaining his degenerate practices and traits, no matter how anyone looked at it, he would forever remain an uncouth commoner.

Turning to Lucy, "Back to work," Durrell growled, seeming to have tested Elijah's patience had she not pleaded otherwise, an iridescence playing sheepishly in her pitch-black eyes.

Defending a maid would raise questions about both their intentions, having her out on the streets before sundown and him long displaced. He understood that much, so he backed down. But not before making her this steadfast promise: "Thank you, miss Auclair. Everything will be sorted out; just make sure to take care."

Her stomach burned with such unease, speaking proved difficult.

She left straight away with Durrell, back to the dungeon called a scullery where she realized these strange feelings emerging sporadically was one she could never be able to afford or entertain.

Amongst others thoroughly trashing her nervous system, like empathy... subversiveness... and amity, love had to be the deadliest of them all. And she was in love with Sir. Elijah David, a knight newly appointed as commander in Merthingham's salient eastern lines.

_ _ _

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