When I caught my breath, we were in a beautifully appointed space with two fireplaces, the near wall lined with bookshelves, the far wall lined with enormous silver mirrors that showed snow falling on a winter wood. A klavier stood at the center. A white gown smudged with dirt hung from a rack beside the instrument. I frowned.
“This,” I began, but my voice squeaked. I cleared my throat. “This is your retiring room?”
The Goblin King nodded. “Of course, my dear. What do you think of it?”
“But it’s—it’s the one connected—” I could not finish the sentence.
“The one connected to your bedchamber?” he asked dryly. “But of course; we are married, after all.”
A flush heated my cheeks. “And then your bedchamber—”
“Is on the other side of this wall.” He gestured to the wall on the opposite side from my bedroom. I noted no threshold connecting his quarters to the retiring room. The Goblin King saw me searching and lowered his voice.
“There is no direct path from your bed to mine,” he said softly. “And I could remove them even farther from each other, if that is your wish.”
My cheeks flared even hotter, but I shook my head. “No, no,” I said. “It’s fine.” I straightened my shoulders and lifted my eyebrow, matching his dry tone as best I could. “After all, we are married.”
A twitch at the corners of his lips. He conjured two chairs and a reclining couch before one of the fireplaces. “Relax, my dear.”
I sat on the reclining couch. Two comely youths crawled from the shadows, one bearing a decanter of brandy, the other a tray with two cut-crystal glasses. I was startled by their appearance, not just because I hadn’t seen them in the dark, but because of their humanlike appearance. Most of the goblins I had seen were of Twig and Thistle’s ilk: more creature than kin.
One of the attendants presented me with a glass of brandy. I gasped; for the space of a breath, I thought it was Josef beside me.
Then I blinked. The face waiting so very patiently by my side did not belong to my younger brother; the skin was too pale, the cheekbones too angular, the features altogether too pretty. Yet there was something of Josef in this youth’s face, in the sensitive tilt of his mouth, the cant of his brows. But the eyes were pure goblin: a flat black that left no room for the whites about the pupils.
The Goblin King gave me a sharp glance. “What is it, my dear?” He saw me staring at his attendants. “Oh, Elisabeth,” he said, “surely you’ve not forgotten my changelings?”
He rested his hand on the youth nearest him, affectionately caressing the boy’s face. The attendant’s expression betrayed nothing, but when the Goblin King tilted back his head for a kiss, the youth complied with a razor-toothed smile. It was a lascivious, knowing sort of smile. Then I realized he was one of the goblin swains I had met at the goblin ball, one with whom I had played games of bluff.
I took a sip of the brandy to disguise my discomfort. It tasted of summer peaches, of sunshine, of life, and it burned all the way down. I coughed.
The Goblin King studied my face, burning bright and red, and nodded at the changelings. They vanished without a word.
“So,” I said, trying to smooth the awkwardness between us, “what shall we do to pass the time?” I couldn’t tell if it was the room or the brandy, but I was suddenly warm—too warm.
The Goblin King shrugged. His eyes flitted to the klavier, where it gleamed in the glow of the fire and fairy lights. “It is up to you,” he said. “I am at my lady’s command.”
It felt all so surreal and strange to be sitting with him, in this beautifully appointed room with a glass of brandy in her hand. When Käthe and I pretended to be rich noblewomen, we had played at their airs and graces, their refined and elegant tastes. But when confronted with the reality of it, I was at a loss. At the inn, there was never any time for leisure. After dinner had been served, there were dishes to wash, tables to clean, and floors to sweep and mop. It had always been Mother and me, working our hands to leather while Papa went out with his friends, while Constanze rested in her room upstairs, while Käthe primped and preened, while Josef played.
“What would you do?” I asked.
The Goblin King poured himself a glass of brandy, his silver-white-gold hair falling to cover his expression. “I would play some music.”
I held my glass in both hands, as though it could protect me from what I knew he would ask next. He would ask me to play. He would ask to listen to my music.
“All right,” I said. He lifted his eyes to meet mine, a knife-slash of a gaze that cut deep. But it was the hope and delight in his face that cut deeper. “Why don’t you play a little something on the klavier for me, mein Herr?”
The light in his eyes dimmed. “As you wish, my queen.”
The Goblin King set down his brandy and walked to the klavier, flipping out the tails of his coat as he sat down on the bench. He ran his fingers lightly over the keys and began to play.
At first I didn’t recognize his choice of music. Gradually it revealed itself as a simple children’s skipping song, one Käthe and I had sung as we played in the wood. The Goblin King elaborated on the theme in a few variations, and I listened politely, my toe tapping the floor beneath me.
The variations were not particularly inspired, nor his execution on the klavier especially clean. For a man of myth and legend, the Goblin King’s playing was astoundingly ordinary. But his touch on the keys was light and nimble, and he had a wonderful sense of rhythm, moving in and out with the rise and fall of the melody.