“Is it for you?” Harry began to walk back to the bed. “Yes.” George lifted her head. “My love for you is more important than the fears I might have of marriage or of letting a man have dominion over me.”
“What fears are those, my lady?” He had reached her bedside again. He stroked a finger down her cheek.
“That you might betray me with another woman.” She leaned her cheek on his hand. “That we might eventually grow apart and even come to hate each other.” She waited, but he didn’t try to allay her worries. She sighed. “My own parents didn’t have a happy marriage.”
“Nor did mine.” Harry sat on the bed to take off his boots. “My mother betrayed Da for years; perhaps for the whole of their marriage. Yet he forgave her again and again. Until he could forgive her no more.” He removed his coat.
“He loved her,” George said softly. “Yes, and it made him weak and eventually led to his death.”
She could no more reassure him than he’d been able to reassure her. She wouldn’t ever betray him with another man; she knew that. But who was to say she wouldn’t lead to his destruction in another way? Did loving her make Harry weak?
George studied the caged leopard. “He gets free, you know.”
He paused in unbuttoning his waistcoat and raised his eyebrows.
She held up the carving. “The Leopard Prince. He’s freed in the end.”
“Tell me.” He shrugged off the waistcoat.
She took a deep breath, and said slowly, “The young king brought the Golden Eel to the father king, just as he had the other gifts. But the Golden Eel was different.”
“It was ugly.” Harry started on his shirt. “Well, yes,” George admitted. “But besides that, it could speak, and it was wise. When the father king got it alone, it said, ‘Tush! That weakling no more stole me than the wind did. Listen now, tell the young king that the beautiful princess will only marry the man who wears the golden chain with the emerald crown on it. Then you will have the man who has done all these wonderful things. That man and no other shall be her bridegroom.’ ”
“I’m beginning to suspect you are making parts of this fairy tale up, my lady.” Harry tossed his shirt to a chair.
George held up her hand. “On my honor as a Maitland. This is exactly how Cook’s aunt told it to me in the kitchen of my town house over tea and crumpets.”
“Huh.”
She leaned back against the headboard. “So the father king marched back to the young king and told him the Golden Eel’s words. The young king smiled and said, ‘Oh, that’s easy enough!’ And he didn’t even have to return home, for he’d brought the Leopard Prince with him. He went to the Leopard Prince and said, ‘Give me that chain that hangs about your neck.’ ” She paused a moment to watch as Harry started to unbutton his breeches. “And what do you think the Leopard Prince said?”
He snorted. “Shove it up your”—he glanced at her—“nose?”
“No, of course not.” She frowned severely. “No one talks like that in fairy tales.”
“Perhaps they ought.”
She ignored his mutter. “The Leopard Prince said, ‘Impossible, my liege, for if I remove this chain, I will soon sicken and die.’ The young king replied, ‘Well, that’s a pity, for I’ve found you quite useful, but I need the chain now, so you must give it to me at once.’ And so the Leopard Prince did.” George looked at Harry, expecting a protest, a comment, something.
But he simply returned her gaze and removed his breeches. This made her temporarily forget where she was in the fairy tale. She watched as he sat on the bed beside her, quite nude.
“And?” he murmured. “Is that it? The Leopard Prince dies and the young king marries the beautiful princess?”
George reached up and untied the black ribbon holding his queue. She ran her fingers through his brown hair, spreading it on his shoulders. “No.”
“Then?” “Turn around.”
Harry arched his eyebrows, but turned so his back was to her.
“The young king presented himself to the father king,” George said quietly as she stroked her hands down his back, feeling the bumps of his spine. “And the father king had to admit that he wore the chain described by the Golden Eel. Reluctantly, he sent for his daughter, the beautiful princess.” She paused to dig her thumbs into the muscles that sloped up from his shoulders to his neck.
Harry let his head fall forward. “Ahhh.” “But the beautiful princess took one look at the young king and started laughing. Naturally, all the courtiers and ladies and lords and the people who hang about a royal court just stared at the beautiful princess. They could not understand why she laughed.” She worked her fingers into the muscles at the back of his head.
Harry groaned.
George leaned forward and whispered in his ear as she bore down on his shoulder muscles. “Finally her father, the king, said, ‘What causes such mirth, my daughter?’ And the beautiful princess said, ‘Why, the chain doesn’t fit him!’ ”
“How can a chain not fit?” Harry mumbled over his shoulder.
“Shhh.” George pushed his head back down. “I don’t know. It probably hung to his knees or something.” She dug her thumbs into the hills along his spine. “Anyway, the beautiful princess looked around the court and said, ‘There. That is the man the chain belongs to.’ And, of course, it was the Leopard Prince—”
“What, she just picked him out of the crowd?” He twisted out of her hands this time.
“Yes!” George placed her hands on her hips. “Yes, she just picked him out of the crowd. He was an enchanted Leopard Prince, remember. I’m sure he looked quite distinguished.”
“He was dying, you said.” Harry was almost surly now. “He probably looked a right mess.”
“Well, he didn’t after the beautiful princess put the chain back on him.” George crossed her arms. Really. Men were quite unreasonable sometimes. “He got better right away, and the beautiful princess kissed him, and they were married.”
“Probably it was the kiss that revived him.” Harry’s mouth quirked. He leaned toward her. “And was the spell broken? He never turned into a leopard again?”
She blinked. “Cook’s aunt didn’t say. I would think so, wouldn’t you? I mean, that is the usual thing in fairy tales, the spell is broken and they marry.”