Chapter Three: St Agnes

I had meant to apologise for the bandages. I did not mean to tell the prince what I thought of him.

His eyes narrowed, but he did not order me to kneel. That was something. “I’ll try to remember.”

“Good. We have a shortage of clean linen.”

The steward began to protest. I cut him off before he could explain how the infirmary’s budget had been spent on a new carriage for himself. I had learnt that the fastest way to stop a man from lying was to ask him to show the ledger.

Prince Julian looked more amused than offended. He had the fine clothes and effortless posture of a man who had never needed to carry a pail of water across a crowded ward. Yet he watched the patients rather than the room. When an elderly man coughed, Julian turned before the nurse did.

“You inspect every charity house?” I asked.

“Only the ones that lose half their supplies before they reach the sick.”

The steward went pale.

I didn’t like the prince’s confidence. I liked even less that he had noticed the same thing I had. “Then you should inspect the warehouses.”

“I intend to.”

His gaze held mine a moment too long. I looked down first, because a prince could ask questions that a woman of my birth could not refuse to answer.

I showed him the ward, the kitchen, and the locked cabinet where the infirmary stored its medicines. A bottle of fever tincture stood half-empty. The label promised a full measure. I had tested it that morning and found it diluted with water.

Julian noticed the gap in the shelf. “What’s missing?”

“Nothing that the steward will admit to losing.”

He leaned closer to the ledger. “You know where it went?”

“I know who was supposed to deliver it.”

“Who?”

“Ask your steward.”

“I asked him. He said the shipment never arrived.”

“Then he’s lying.”

A small smile touched his mouth. “You don’t seem afraid of accusing people.”

“I’m afraid all the time. It doesn’t make a lie true.”

The words came out sharper than I intended. His expression changed. For a breath, he looked less like a prince and more like a man who had heard something he could not easily dismiss.

I left him with the ledger and returned to my patients. One woman had a fever, two children needed broth, and a boy with a swollen ankle had been waiting since morning. The prince could investigate the missing tincture. I could not waste time watching him do it.

When I returned to the main room, he had found the steward’s signature beside the delivery date. The man had taken the supplies himself.

Julian dismissed him from the infirmary’s accounts and sent a guard to bring the warehouse clerk. He did not ask me to thank him. I did not offer.

“Your name?” he asked as I packed the bottles away.

“Eleanor Hartwell.”

“Miss Hartwell, I suspect we’ll meet again.”

“That depends on how often you visit places where you’re not wanted.”

He laughed, a low, unexpected sound. “I’ll try to earn a better welcome.”

I thought about that all the way home. I thought about his hands turning the ledger pages and the way he had watched the coughing man. It was foolish to notice such things. I had more urgent worries.

My father sat at the kitchen table with a stack of unpaid bills. He tried to cover them when I entered.

“Don’t,” I said. “I already know.”

His face was tired. “I wanted you to have one day without it.”

“Then tell me the truth.”

He hesitated. Before he could answer, a footman knocked at the door and handed him a sealed invitation from Lord Alistair Blackwood.

Even later, with the letter in my father’s hand, I could still see the prince at St Agnes. He had stayed long enough to make the steward nervous and the patients curious. It was an odd talent, making a room rearrange itself around him without raising his voice. I disliked that I noticed.

When he asked about the empty medicine shelf, I took him to the storeroom. The lock had been forced and repaired badly; a fresh scratch ran beneath the brass plate. I showed him the delivery ledger, where the steward had written “received” beside a shipment no one in the ward had seen.

“Could the clerk have signed for it?” Julian asked.

“Not without a second witness.”

“Who was the witness?”

I pointed to the blank line. “That is the question.”

He crouched to examine the lock. The expensive wool of his coat brushed the dusty floor. “You expect me to believe a prince knows what to do with a broken lock?”

“No. I expect you to know a prince can summon a locksmith.”

He smiled. “That I can do.”

A nurse called from the next room. One of the fever patients had begun to shake. I went to her, and Julian followed, but this time he did not crowd the bedside. He waited while I cooled the woman’s forehead and counted her breaths. When I asked for fresh water, he carried the basin himself.

That small act should not have mattered. It did. Men with titles often mistook proximity to suffering for understanding it. Julian seemed able, at least, to accept that he did not know everything.

The fever broke after a few minutes. The woman opened her eyes and gripped my wrist. “My boy?”

“He’s safe,” I said. I meant the child in the granary, though she could not have known that. For a moment the lie hurt. Then she drifted back to sleep.

Julian saw my expression. “You know the boy?”

“I know what it is to be frightened for someone who can’t protect himself.”

He did not press me. Instead, he asked the steward for the original invoices and had the man wait while he read them. One signature appeared on three separate deliveries, each routed through a different warehouse. I recognised the looping flourish: Blackwood’s factor.

The prince’s attention shifted from the paper to me. “You know that name.”

“I know enough to be careful.”

I thought I had dismissed him. Instead, he laid the page down and said, “Then let me be careful with you.”

It was the first time anyone had offered concern without dressing it up as an order. I distrusted it more than I would have trusted a threat.

The letter was addressed to me.