He couldn't remember how long he'd sat by the hearth, a glass in one hand while the other cradled his muddled head, fatigued. Once Genevieve had left, all he could remember was the door clicking shut, then no person came in thereafter. Just him... happily alone, left to contemplate which route could destroy his waning existence with maximum damage; believing that if one has to live such a hellish reality, they may as well ditch the pacifist route, consume every worldly sin possible, and perish faster.

"That's how you ended up in this predicament? Because you couldn't keep your stick in your pants?"

Somewhere in between his thoughts, a maid had crept in, going about her business as if he were invisible.

"Men are visual creatures..."

He found himself spilling everything-like a leaking tall cup, neither half-full nor half-empty.

"For better or worse..." The maid snorted at his analogy, hiking up her apron to sweep getaway specks of ash trying to escape their rightful displacement, as he made a sardonic toast.

She had no wine or goblet. So, "Will you go through with it, then?" she asked, observing the tenderly booze-swollen prince pondering still in his sumptuous armchair, internally regretting secluding herself in a chamber with him in the first place. He could see it on her face.

Her new position as "slave girl"-more colloquially known as a skivvy-had been passing uneventfully for two subsequent pre-nights. Lucy avoided trouble, remaining either in the scullery, servants' quarters, sneaking cherry tomatoes off tomato plants in kitchen gardens, or occasionally skipping rocks across its omnipresent country ponds-practically anything to assuage boredom ever since Theresa and her wages got extensively cut.

Further alienating her was an immoral rumour circulating about, which especially pleased Durrell and was no doubt catalyzed by Lucrecia Harthin. Lucy was stuck: washing dishes, cleaning vegetables, plucking several fowls and scaling many sorts of fish, scrubbing countertops and swilling floors, emptying staff chamber pots and preparing their breakfasts and serving their teas. Getting her previous position presented improbable-almost like a simple ragamuffin's dream.

Tilting his neck with swan-like grace to meet her perturbed expression, "The conversation with father granted only two prospects," Deidrick answered, the room's fireplace adding an obscene element to the ingenuous gesture. "So stop being too panicked for me. I'll go jobless otherwise."

Maybe this was another case of nasty boredom. Lucy chuckled, a smile broadening her lips in enjoying herself too much to address a valid inward supposition: a sagacious judgement that suggested better ways to assuage ennui. One which maintained a survival-driven, strictly sympathetic train of thoughts. One that ensured her, and only her, best interests.

"Care to share the least favourable option?" she asked, and he stared at her delphically, a newly empty goblet employing the languorous hand that wasn't propping his poreless, crimson visage.

"Premature death or wed a crazy bitch. Take your ' least favourable' pick!"

"His majesty couldn't possibly kill his own son."

"Killed his five older brothers; what's one more man, no?" Overindulgent chills coursed down Lucy's spine, generating shivers of which he goaded on, getting up to stretch his beautiful yet inertly impaired set of lengthy limbs. "Mother's the only reason Father's been holding out thus far..." Like a lazy, fat house cat, he yawned, envisioning touching the ceiling. "There's not a hope in hell for me now."

With the last of his golden duvet tucked in between his three-layered king-sized mattress, "She loves you..." Lucy muttered reluctantly, inwardly amazed by how a statement that shouldn't require much speculation weighed so heavily.

"Loved." Deidrick teetered beside her, long fingers tracing the puff sleeves of black cotton before retreating, offering an untoward glass of alcoholic beverage while wrinkling her impeccable administration. "She loved me."

Proceeding to preen his dishevelled mien, he slouched, still in his bed, with extravagant reluctance-one of which polite society forthrightly reproaches to no avail to this day. But Deidrick remains intractably unconvinced that bedraggled hair-with all its incomplete braids, ends, and curls-half-buttoned shirts, open waistcoats, obtruding cravats, lanky pantaloons, and a barely caked maquillage were influencing an explorative generation's sensuality.

Anxiety bubbled profusely, compromising Lucy's healthy metabolic homeostasis, like an overflowing kettle, when she noticed his unnaturally lasting gaze.

At the tender age of five-and-ten, rumours claimed to have caught him brazenly affirming a sullied taste in women, stating, "My over-leavened opinion stands by those who constitute 'pure animal magnetism.'" And, "We are all brutally untamed at heart, no matter how loud we promulgate otherwise." Lucy only recently learnt of those, plus some several lesser-known ones, which included: "Humans are no less civilized than a lion pride-mate, evolve, or die!" And even, "Did your great great great great great grandparents fuck because their royal majesties decreed so? I thought so!"

Consoling herself that she looked nothing indecent, tempting, or sultry, she nudged the fireplace's dying embers routinely with a wrought iron poker, generously gusting puffs of wind through it using a worn bellow, but picked up her otherwise peaceful pace, regardless. After collecting debris with the brush and dustpan into a bucket, his eyes still passionately puzzling her actions out, "My work here is done, your highness," she bowed, racing towards the door when a sickenly earnest "May I tell you a dirty secret?" sounded.

She turned, finding him patting an interdict-infested space right beside him. "I'll let you in on it, and only you, if you humour me a bit."

"Egg you on, you mean?" she said, in the most polite, innocent voice she could muster. "Your roguish tendencies precede you, your highness."

Deidrick made another toast, happy with her astute analysis. "Father's always saying I'm an incorrigible delinquent." But she remained unimpressed.

"Trust me, nothing you've said thus far is surprising, in the least."

"You'd deign to marry a man whom sensible persons consider vile?" Ignoring her sagacious words, however, Deidrick carried on, spewing scotch in between incoherent sentences, tossing and turning and ultimately obtaining little comfort in any which position. "For a woman to ruin me using external manna-an illegal form of forbidden magic, mind you-conspiring with an uncannily nonchalant mother... death wouldn't be so cruel a consequence in the grand scheme of things, no?"

"I really must be leaving," Lucy responded, in haste. "The head housemaid will find reason to question where I've been off to for so long." Especially after having grudgingly assigned a task unfit for a person in her current station-also accounting her strange predicament-in the midst of critical pre-night festivities.

Short-staffed, but nearing its conclusion, no reputation in the world could impede practicality's advantage-of enforcing each royal servant's dutiful contribution, despite stolen carriages, arguing with superiors, or even alleged whispers circulating about sleeping with an anointed commanding knight. These couldn't, however, go invalidated by disappearing for extended periods of time, rousing only the most unfavourable speculations in an already thorny circumstance.

"Lilith accosted poor Elijah in broad daylight, didn't she?" Deidrick mused, ruffling himself in his comfortable bed at her sudden interest. "We're good friends," he paused. "I and him."

Lucy remembered stalking into his room, finding him dispirited... lonely, drowning in an emotion she, too, wished substances could assuage.

"Unfortunate news; yes-yes," he said, sounding like an overgrown toddler. Nothing suggesting the appeal of maturity or the overflowing remoteness he'd shown when they first met-sober. Not a trace of remorse, and barely a shilling's worth of distress, Lucy noticed.

"Shouldn't you be at dinner?" That intangible something which made her pause previously disappeared completely.

He beamed prettily, ballsy amusement bubbling within his proper, regal eyes. "People have always told me caring too little is-and always has been-my inexorable problem." But seeing hat the humour flew over his company's head, via her discontented expression, "I very much ought-to be dining with righteous malcontents, at this very moment; yes," he answered.

Lucy picked up her flounces again, ashamed. Realizing that if the comfort she was seeking couldn't come from a friend, it definitely wouldn't come from the self-absorbed likes of him. That this boredom wasn't really boredom. That Theresa was never wrong, along with other palace staff who proceeded to ostracize her, walking on eggshells whenever they were forced to consort because of "secret dalliances" touching Sir. David.

This was true.

It was frank and honest... They were being all frank and honest, wise, sagacious... everything she'd believed herself to be-crumbling.

Realizing now, after some excessive days of reflection, she exacerbated this queer emotion welling deep within her chest. By being orphaned her entire life, she's found herself projecting onto an ignorant prince whose pretentious drinking habits only outwardly made it appear like he cared or somewhat understood the intensity of helplessness.

Insubordinate... crass... foolish... impertinent... she couldn't control any of it. Always, she'd be acting against her better judgement, and the frustrating part was that she couldn't figure out why exactly, either.

Determined to leave this time around, Lucy clasped on the doorknob when a firm hand tugged back on her bleach collar, "There's only so much a man can take," ultimately pulling her back into the gold sheets of a walnut-carved canopy bed. "But your intransigence has been very amusing so far."

The figure joined her shortly, smiling. His hands curved around her face, scalded hot with intense anxiety, before catching his breath, choking ferociously on some unswallowed scotch. "Elijah's newfound popularity precedes him; Lilith wouldn't be the first... n-nor the last to pull what she did."

"I have no relations with Sir. David..." She lost the strength to push hard against his firm muscles, both appalled by the dangerous situation yet aroused by the feel of it-physically. He was a ripe prince of seven-and-twenty due for marriage who, in keeping with his elder brother whose nuptials would betide in exactly two days, wasn't supposed to be doing this.

As a matter of fact, tentative plans were made to announce the pair at a dinner which he should've been attending-all everybody has been talking about. Instead of imbibing bottle after bottle of substances or romancing conscientious and unsuspecting maids innocently trying to make a decent living, he should be out there taking on responsibility.

"Your behaviour is absolutely abhorrible."

"Yes." He turned her body into his, coaxing off her mob cap and playing with some brown baby tendrils. "There you go... What's your name?"

Then it hit her.

"Lucrecia," she said, excitedly.

It struck her! Exactly like lightning!

"My name is Lucrecia Harthin, and you're right. You shouldn't marry someone who sensible persons would object to! What kind of sense would defend a perpetrator and not the victim anyway?"

"The cheeky maid who'd left me waiting for a coach for over 30 minutes?" he chuckled. Beside her, his eyes appeared vast-just like Cecilia's, but resembling an endless aqua waterfall and not a sea-blue summer ocean. His skin looked like it was made from the explicit fragile material of milk glass, with peach splotches simmering beneath its creamy surface.

"Yes," Lucy beamed, suppressing the rapid succession of thumps coming from her chest, or the rouge blush rising to her skin. "Don't marry Lady Lilith. Absolutely do not marry that Barret Houghton, because you deserve better! If anything goes wrong because of that, punish me! And punish me hard! But I seriously think you shouldn't marry her!"

"Honey-brown hair, sparkling eyes..."

Sparkling eyes? She wondered, more (and unintentionally) enthralled by the flattery. "H-half the palace's servants literarily exhibit those features, your highness,"-a push. "So, if you come looking for me, just tell Miss Durrell that you're looking for Lucrecia, alright?"-and was he seriously still fixed on deciphering her identity? "We'll talk some more then. But, for now, I've got to go."

"George..."

George?

"George's gonna kill me."

Kill...?

This man was her direct ticket to freedom! Anyone planning to end him soon had better postpone that occasion for another time!

"Your highness, who's this George?"

No response.

"Your highness?" She pushed again against him softly, his body rolling easily off hers. "Your highness? Your highness?" She nudged his cheek. "Your highness?" Then slapped his arms when a faint smoky breath parted his raison-dry lips.