“Thank you,” I say. I’ve grown practiced at deflecting people’s condolences, because there’s simply no way to describe what Ash meant to me. It’s easier to pretend that I lost a boss and not a king, it’s easier to pretend I’m merely sad rather than completely purposeless, drifting without a master to serve.
Auden seems to sense that there’s a conversational mire ahead and looks like he’s about to change the subject, but Sidney pierces me with his gray eyes as he leans back and asks, “And what did you do for the President, Mr. Belvedere? What was your job, exactly?”
It’s an easy question, Ryan, you can do this without crying.
In and out.
“I was President Colchester’s personal aide,” I say. “I was everything he needed to get through his day. I made sure he had his notes, the right clothes, the right speech, the right food. I woke him, fed him, fended off people who wanted his time; I led him and I followed him. I was—”
I break off, suddenly unable to find words. Not just the right words, but any words, all words. They’re gone, completely gone in the face of what I was to a man who’s now dead.
“You were his,” Sidney finishes softly for me. He’s studying me as one of his fingers rubs thoughtfully over the delicate gold paint on his coffee cup. “That’s what you were. You were his.”
I nod my head once, not trusting myself to answer.
“So you were like a valet?” Cremer asks. “An aide-de-camp?”
“Body man,” Auden says suddenly, breaking into the conversation. “That’s what they’re called, yes? A body man.”
I want to close my eyes against the rush of memories those words invoke, of the time Ash once used my body to soothe his man, his estranged lover Embry. Of all the times I wished he’d use my body to soothe himself, not because I was jealous of his wife or of his lover, but simply because I loved him so much that I wanted to give him everything. I worshipped him as my hero, I venerated him as my saint, and I would have stopped at nothing to ease his burdens.
“You were like a squire of old,” Sidney says. “Tending to a king.”
A squire. I like that. I like the feel of it in my mind, laden with images of pennants and armor. It sounds more romantic, more weighty than aide or assistant.
“Yes, like a squire,” I agree.
“And you didn’t find the work ignoble at all?” Sidney presses, his finger still tracing the filigreed patterns of his cup. “It wasn’t demeaning?”
It’s an unkind question, and Sidney wields it like scalpel—but strangely, it feels good. Like he’s slicing through something sticky and confining to let in the air.
All the same, my temper rouses the slightest bit. “There’s no such thing as ignoble work,” I say. “There’s nothing inherently less dignifying about compiling notes and running errands than writing poetry or crab-fishing or curating a museum. Yes, I was a squire, a body man. But my work meant that a great man could do his work, which I believed in. I was of service, I was essential, and I made life better and easier and more worthwhile for a man I cared deeply about—and that is noble to me.”
The table stares at me, all of them quiet in the face of my heated response. Cremer looks a little embarrassed on my behalf at my outburst, and Auden has his pretty forehead wrinkled in thought, but Sidney Blount looks . . . pleased?
“So for me, there’s no shame in small jobs,” I continue. I ignore the spike of heat in my belly at seeing approval in Sidney’s gaze. “There’s only shame in jobs poorly done.”
“It must have been hard to work with someone so closely and then lose him,” Cremer offers, obviously trying to restore the equilibrium of the conversation.
“Yes,” I reply, feeling tired and weak and sad. “Yes, it was.”
“And what will you do next?” Sidney presses again. “Where will you go? Whom will you serve?”
It should have been an odd choice of words, even for a former personal aide, but to me they aren’t odd at all. Serve has the cadence of sweet music to me, the harp of David soothing Saul, the whispered percussion of a sleeping king, able to sleep soundly because his servant is keeping watch, and so the answer comes out before I can even consider what it is I want to say.
“If I serve again, it will be my choice. And God willing, it will be for a long, long time.”
4
Morning comes with silvery light and a fussy wind, and when I pad over to the windows in my bedroom, I see snowflakes big as feathers fluttering past the glass. I watch them for a minute, as the flakes catch on the branches of the trees and the shrubs, and on my windowsill. There’s something rather cozy about it, knowing I don’t have to go anywhere, knowing there are no errands to run in the slush and slick of it all. All I have to do is find a nice cup of coffee and dig through a library—I mean, people pay their own money to do that, and here I am on Merlin’s dime, with a genial host and a job to accomplish. And having a job to accomplish is one of my favorite things in the world.
I get dressed with more anticipation than I’ve felt in weeks, pulling on jeans and a thick shawl-collared sweater over a Reading Rainbow T-shirt, running a pointless hand through my stupid hair, and then donning my signature glasses. I skip my usual shave because I’m feeling a little indulgent with the snow, and it’s not a privilege I ever had working in the White House.
Auden told me last night to make free with the kitchen, but I’m not a breakfast person, so I just make some coffee in the French press while I watch the snow and then head to the library, feeling deeply rested despite the early hour. It’s a few hours later than I normally sleep, since I needed to wake around four or five most days to get things ready for Ash, and I slept like the dead last night after treating myself to some time with my hand and thoughts of Sidney Blount. Specifically Sidney Blount’s long fingers, maybe even still clad in those tight leather gloves.
I came so hard I had to bite the pillow to keep from groaning.
So I slept well and rose just after the light began filtering in. But even though it’s early, even though the house is silent except for the wind and the hiss of snow on the windows, the library is not empty.
