“He’s missed every meal since Christmas Eve,” said Delphinium. “And he’s not coming now. I feel like an orphan.”
As if on cue, the King’s voice echoed down the hall, stiff, firm words that were indiscernible but most definitely out of the library. The girls lunged for the doors, but Azalea held them back.
“Brush down your skirts, everyone, hands in your lap. Clover, make them presentable. Bramble and I will fetch him. Behave.” Azalea cast a lofty look at Delphinium. “Orphans, for heaven’s sake.”
Through the dark halls of faded wallpaper and mismatched portraits to the entrance hall, Azalea grasped Bramble’s hand. Bramble squeezed back equally hard. Azalea hadn’t thought she missed the King, his hard adherence to rules and his formalities, but the giddiness in her chest proved otherwise.
Arriving at the entrance hall, they found the King outside the library in discussion with a young gentleman. The gentleman looked up when Azalea and Bramble brushed in. Even though the entrance hall was dimly lit, black linen over the windows, light still caught in the gentleman’s warm brown eyes. Lord Bradford!
The King looked up, too, and a frown etched his face. His beard was well trimmed and his suit crisp, but he looked half starved. Azalea felt grateful they would have fish pies for dinner. They filled a person up.
“You’re finally out!” said Bramble. “It’s about time!”
“We’re waiting for you, in the dining room,” said Azalea. “We won’t start without you.”
“Rule number eighteen,” Bramble reminded.
The frown lines in the King’s face deepened.
“I have business to tend to,” he said. Cold, formal, stiff. “This young gentleman is going to stop the tower for mourning.”
“Stop the tower!” Bramble flushed. “What? Sir, you can’t! Mother loved it! She even had a bucky little dance for it—you remember!” She grasped the King’s hand, a plea in her face.
Bramble! thought Azalea. The King’s ice blue eyes grew even harder and colder at the word “Mother.”
“It’s all right,” said Azalea quickly, hoping to smooth things. “I’ll escort him to the tower. You can go to dinner.”
“Very well. You may escort him. And you, young lady”—the King tugged his hand from Bramble’s grasp—“will tend to your sisters, at once.”
Azalea’s chest trilled with hope, right up until the King strode past her to the entrance hall doors, taking his coat from the stand and yanking the door open. Hope sputtered into indignation. He was—he was leaving! Azalea stopped the door with her boot before he shut it, biting back the pain.
“You can’t leave,” she whispered fiercely. “And you can’t stay in the library, either. This is more important than R.B. We need you!”
The King released the carved doorknob and left. In a fit of temper, Azalea slammed it after him.
Why was the King being like this? He had never been the way Mother was, but he had never been like this. Everything was tense and tangled, but Azalea felt she could still manage it all if the King was there. Now she felt abandoned.
Bramble’s chin tightened at the door. She swallowed, then snapped to Lord Bradford.
“You!” she snarled, her yellow-green eyes flaring. “You!”
She dashed down the hall in a rustle of black skirts and deep red hair. Her footfalls echoed.
Only now Azalea realized she had been clenching her fists, hard. She slowly unclenched them, and in the dim light saw the crescent-moon marks her nails had dug into her palms. A bit of skin curled up around each mark, as though Azalea had dug into a bar of soap instead of her hand.
A polite cough sounded, and Azalea flushed, remembering Lord Bradford. She turned.
“I didn’t mean—” he said, in his rich voice. He kneaded his hat rim.
“Of course not,” said Azalea. “Things are a bit unstrung here. How is your hand?”
“Better,” he said solemnly. “Thank you.”
True to her word, though feeling wrung inside, Azalea led him up the main stairs of the palace. She didn’t say much. He spoke, filling the silence in a mellow baritone way, of how he owned the clock shop on Silver Street, and the King had sent for the clocksmith, but Mr. Grunnings was out, and that he himself knew quite a bit about clock mechanisms, so he came instead.
“I know it isn’t allowed to visit, in mourning,” he said haltingly. “But I thought if it was Royal Business…” He paused. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I was. About your mother. She had the nicest laugh, I think, of anyone I ever knew.”
Azalea wanted to burst into tears and throw her arms around his neck. Instead she turned, several stairs above him, feeling the polished banister beneath her hand. She considered his rumpled blond-brown hair and, in a quick movement, reached out and smoothed it down. She had wanted to do that since the Yuletide.
Bemusement passed over Lord Bradford’s face, and Azalea, face hot, led him up the rickety stairs to the tower attic.
The tower stood above the entrance hall, square and symmetrical and old. It smelled of sweet must, with a tang of metal. She had to shield her eyes when they reached the main platform. Sunlight streamed through the glass clockface, casting shadowed numbers across the floor. The gears and pulleys clanged and creaked.
Lord Bradford examined it all with fascination, touching each large carriage-wheel-sized gear, his eyes lighting with excitement.