The Heir's Weakness

The horse threw him. The physician says he will walk again, with a limp, and his father delivers that verdict at the foot of the bed the way another man might remark that the harvest was adequate. Then he adds one instruction. *"You will not cry again, Maximilian."* By the time he is grown, Prince Maximilian von Altenburg has a dismissal speech memorised. Four sentences, polite but firm. The new valet walks in without knocking before he can deliver any of it, does not bow, and tells him his cravat is tied incorrectly. *"It's a barrel knot. Suitable for a morning coat, but the fabric is silk, and the collar of your waistcoat is cut high. The proportions are wrong. It makes your neck look thick."* Max dismisses him. Lukas Hartmann takes out a folded, yellowed piece of paper and explains that he cannot be dismissed. His mother served the old queen for seventeen years, and when the old queen died she left a provision — a debt of honour entitling the family to a position in the royal household in perpetuity, at a rank matching their service, revocable by nobody below the king. So they are stuck with one another: a prince raised to treat any softness as a defect, and the one man in the palace who will not flinch, flatter or lie to him. The king has other instruments. Lukas has a sister, Lena, fifteen years old and working in the laundry, and the king knows precisely which workhouse in Mainz takes small, delicate girls through the winter. Count Friedrich has the council in his pocket and a use for a frightened child who can be told to steal a letter. Then Princess Elisabeth of Bergland arrives for a reception, a hunt and a ball, and turns out to want out of the match considerably more than Max does. Her terms are four horses, two hundred gold thalers, a letter declaring her unfit for marriage, and safe passage papers. What she offers in exchange is a letter under the king's own seal, arranging an accident for his son during the spring hunt. What follows is a forged confession, a tower cell, a bargain that would have Max denounce Lukas in writing to spare Lena, a tunnel, a river crossing with dogs behind them, and a farmer who asks no questions. This is a historical MM romance set in a small principality on the Rhine, a place of gaslight, laudanum and birth registries — about a prince trained out of feeling, a servant who refuses to pretend, and a debt of honour that turns out to have been written for reasons nobody explained. The romance is closed-door.