The King's Lover-Chapter 368: Teaching Lessons
"Shall we begin your lessons?"
Rose was in the crown prince’s room on the guise of tutoring her. Rose’s mind had spun on several things as they made the walk here, the silence had made that easy. However, it seemed the crown prince was true to his word. She stared around in disbelief and a bit of relief, but it was certainly not gratitude.
The writing desk was filled with enough paper to cover every inch of its surface. Other than the pieces of parchment paper, there were also books on the table, a quill, and some ink. Rose could count about three books.
"Teaching lessons?" Rose asked with uncertainty.
She knew about this; they had argued about it, and she had heard the Crown Prince give orders to Fabian to get writing materials, but for some reason, she still didn’t believe he would follow through with it. She couldn’t see him as a tutor.
Caius smirked at her question, and Rose knew what was coming almost immediately. She braced herself for his usual comments, but surprisingly, his smirk disappeared, and his expression changed but rather than saying anything, he simply nodded.
"Yes, lessons are better in the morning. Come," he said and stretched out his hand again.
Rose didn’t want to take it, but she couldn’t exactly leave his hand hanging. She lifted her hand and placed her palm on his. Caius squeezed it gently, something she didn’t like that she was paying attention to.
He stared at their joined palms for a moment before he slowly lifted his gaze to her face, almost as if he was gauging her, but before she could conclude on this, he turned away and started pulling her towards the desk.
Caius placed her on one of the two seats that had been arranged together by his writing desk. Only then did he let go of her hand as he took the seat next to her. He adjusted his seat so it was unnecessarily close, their shoulders brushing slightly.
Rose was uptight as she watched all this, she couldn’t help it, finding that she had nothing to say. What could she possibly say? Because regardless of how she viewed it, the Crown Prince teaching her how to read was still something precious. Even though she couldn’t stand him, she truly wanted to know how to read.
She leaned forward, staring at the paper stacked on the table. She wasn’t completely inexperienced, and she could remember some of what Lady Delphine had told her. It was the reason she could recognize the letters that made up her name.
The desk was set by the window on the other side of the balcony, near the shelf filled with Caius’s important documents. The windows weren’t fully open to prevent the winter morning wind from coming in, but they were open enough to let light float in.
Caius picked up a quill and, selecting a piece of paper, laid it out in front of him, making sure she had a proper view. He turned to look at her, and his face immediately turned serious.
"Letters of the script," he stated. "This is the fundamental and most important part about reading and writing."
"Writing?" Rose asked. She thought this was only reading lessons.
"Yes," Caius said casually as he dipped the quill in ink.
She was quite shocked; it was one thing to teach her to read, but to also teach her to write? She wasn’t sure how she should respond to this. Not to mention that the crown prince was treating this so casually. Surely, he must know what he meant to teach a peasant how to read and write.
He drew two lines that met at the top and a short horizontal line right at the middle. Rose recognized it easily. The first letter wasn’t easy to forget. However, recognizing it and being able to remember what it was called weren’t the same thing.
"This is the first letter," Caius stated, and Rose nodded as she stared intensely.
"Can you pronounce it?" he asked.
Rose shook her head immediately but kept her eyes glued on the paper, doing her very best to memorize it. Caius had mentioned writing; it looked like it would be easy to write, but she had never written anything in her life.
When Lady Delphine taught her, she had mostly concentrated on her dialect and had corrected her on how to speak properly. Rose had not written anything.
Caius pronounced it and asked her to repeat. It was easy to repeat, and she couldn’t help the smile that appeared on her face when he nodded in agreement. He repeated the letter two more times and then moved on to the next one.
Rose didn’t miss that he didn’t ask her to write it, and she felt a little relieved, which made her want to smack herself. Relief wasn’t going to help her learn, and she didn’t know how long the Crown Prince would keep up with this. It was best to learn all that she could while it was still available.
She also noticed that he was only teaching her uppercase letters. The only reason she knew this was because of Lady Delphine. She couldn’t remember the lowercase of other letters, but she could remember most of the ones that spelled out her name because in the letter Caius had written only the first letter of her name was written in uppercase.
Caius drew the fifth letter. His easy strokes made it seem really easy to write, but Rose knew it was far from it. He dropped the quill, and before he could say what letter it was, Rose excitedly spoke.
"That’s the last letter of my name!" Rose announced excitedly. Despite her expectations, she found that she was enjoying the lessons quite well.
Caius glanced at her with genuine shock and soft amusement. "You can spell your name?" he asked.
Rose suddenly felt self-conscious. He had hardly stared, only glanced when she pronounced the letters to make sure she got it right, but now he stared at her with pure concentration.
"No," Rose said and looked down, embarrassed that she couldn’t meet his expectations. "I-I just recognize the letters."
She heard shuffling, and when she lifted her head, a new sheet was placed in front of her with the letters of her name written in bold.
"Rose," she whispered.
"What letter is this?" he asked, pointing to the first one.
Rose slowly shook her head. She couldn’t remember. There wasn’t a lot of time for Lady Delphine to teach her for long, and she hadn’t done any practice after her only few lessons.
He frowned slightly and pointed to the last one. "This?"
Rose shook her head again. "I can’t pronounce any of the letters; I just recognize my name."
"Is that so?" Caius asked and scratched his stubble. He was quiet for a moment before speaking again. "That is good, as memorization plays a huge part in learning. Unfortunately, you can’t just memorize the letters; you have to remember what they are called, too."
Rose nodded as she listened attentively. It was hard not to be serious when the Crown Prince seemed so serious. He had not even made any of his usual crude remarks or seemed to lose his patience.
He suddenly moved as though having an idea and scribbled once again on a new sheet and showed it to her. Rose leaned closer as she stared, a frown appearing on her forehead. It took her a moment, as she wasn’t familiar with seeing the first letter of her name in lowercase.
"Rose?" she whispered, a little unsure.
"Yes," Caius nodded. "You also seem familiar with lowercase, too," he commented.
Rose just nodded. She didn’t want to tell him it was because of Lady Delphine. Knowing Caius, he would most likely want to know what else the courtesan had taught her.
"But you can’t pronounce them," he added.
Rose nodded again.
"We will continue from where we stopped and do some writing lessons to see if you can replicate the letters I have written. Have you ever written anything before?"
Rose shook her head again as horror washed over her. She could hear the disappointment in the Crown Prince’s voice. A part of her was a little happy, and she hoped that when he got frustrated he would assign her a proper tutor, but another part of her hated to disappoint, and she wanted to show him she was smart enough to learn.
Caius carried on with teaching her the letters. He diligently wrote out all the uppercase letters and told her each one, and after that, he did the same for the lowercase. Then he would occasionally point to random letters and ask her what they were called.
Rose felt all her energy drain the further the lessons went on. She was thoroughly disappointed; Caius didn’t mind repeating the same thing hundreds of times, and she quickly found that, contrary to what she thought, she might be the one who would end up breaking.
