Princess of the Midnight Ball - Jessica Day George [29]
Rose waved this aside. “He was hardly our friend,” she said, absently digging the toe of her low boot into the soft earth around the bench. “Neither were the princes of La Belge and Analousia. Otherwise we would be prostrate with grief, for they are dead too.”
“What’s this?” Galen had come all the way back, and now stood directly before the two young women. Realizing that his jaw was hanging open, he shut it with a click.
“They dueled,” Violet said shortly. “They met at the Belgique court a week after the Analousian prince failed. He accused the Belgique prince—I cannot remember their names, forgive me—of sabotage, claiming that the Belgique prince had left traps here, to ensure that the Analousian prince would fail and be humiliated. It wasn’t true, but they fought, and killed each other.”
Speechless, Galen only stared at her.
“The others are dead as well,” Rose added. “All the princes who have come here have died. A ship sank. A normally gentle horse spooked and threw his rider, breaking the poor prince’s neck.” She looked up at Galen. “We are cursed. That is why you deserve to know: our family is cursed. You should leave; find work elsewhere before something happens to you, too.”
Galen rallied. “But, Princess Rose! You aren’t cursed. You’ve been ill, but surely that—”
She cut him off with a sharp gesture of her hand and got to her feet with an effort. “We are cursed,” she said with finality. As she passed him, leaning on Violet’s arm, she touched Galen’s shoulder with a thin hand. “Leave this place,” she said softly.
When Uncle Reiner found him some minutes later, Galen was still standing in the middle of the walkway. He was thinking furiously, staring at the bench where Rose and Violet had been sitting.
“Galen! Don’t you have any work to do?” Reiner looked like he could easily find some for the young man, if he was at a loss. “And why is there an orange lying on the ground?”
Galen looked up at him. “I’m going to solve the puzzle,” he said.
“What are you babbling about?” Reiner held out a trowel and a packet of seeds, but Galen didn’t take them.
“I must see the king,” he muttered under his breath, pushing past Reiner and going out of the hothouse. “Poor Rose. I must help her.”
Dancer
Rose’s days passed in a fog.
Her pneumonia had given her a reprieve from her usual duties as hostess, and Lily or Jonquil stood in her place, depending on which of them was feeling better. Rose had always thought the state dinners and official receptions boring, but now that she did not attend them she realized how much of a diversion they had provided. Her schooling was done, and she did not have hobbies like Violet or Hyacinth did to keep her busy. She enjoyed reading, but her fever and exhaustion made it hard for her to concentrate. She had been working her way through the same Bretoner novel since the week before her illness began, and she still had not finished it.
Now that she was well enough to leave her rooms for an hour or so at a time, it was too cold to go anywhere. She didn’t have friends outside the palace to visit, and the gardens were out of the question. It was Violet who had suggested the hothouse where the exotic fruits and rare orchids were grown, and had put aside her music to help Rose bundle up and walk there.
The tropical hothouse where, on a bench beneath a banana tree, she had come face-to-face with Galen again.
Rose was startled by how pleased she was to see him standing there in his brown gardening smock. After the parade of self-important princes that had gone by, since rendered faceless by her illness, she found Galen’s easy manners and warm, sincere smile refreshing. He had cropped his hair again, so short that you could see his scalp along the sides. His hair was wiry, and she had the urge to rub his head and feel it.
She hadn’t meant to become so morbid with Galen, to tell him